"So much for your soothsayers," he cried, with a contempt that was not unmixed with relief. "That, then, is all this prediction is worth! But where are the bones of my good old horse? I should like to see what little is left of him."
He was taken to the spot where lay the skeleton of his old favorite, and gazed with some show of feeling on the bleaching bones of what had once been his famous war-horse. Then, setting his foot on the skull, he said,—
"So this is the creature that is destined to be my death."
At that moment a deadly serpent that lay coiled up within the skull darted out and fixed its poisonous fangs in the conqueror's foot. And thus ignobly he who had slain men by thousands and conquered an empire came to his death.
THE VENGEANCE OF QUEEN OLGA.
The death of Oleg brought Igor his ward, then nearly forty years of age, to the throne of Rurik his father. And the same old story of bloodshed and barbarity went on. In those days a king was king in name only. He was really but the chief of a band of plunderers, who dug wealth from the world with the sword instead of the spade, threw it away in wild orgies, and then hounded him into leading them to new wars.
The story of the Northmen is everywhere the same. While in the West they were harrying England, France, and the Mediterranean countries with fire and sword, in the East their Varangian kinsmen were spreading devastation through Russia and the empire of the Greeks.
Like his predecessor, Igor invaded this empire with a great army, landing in Asia Minor and treating the people with such brutal ferocity that no earthquake or volcano could have shown itself more merciless. His prisoners were slaughtered in the most barbarous manner, fire swept away all that havoc had left, and then the Russian prince sailed in triumph against Constantinople, with his ten thousand barks manned by murderers and laden with plunder.