"Ay, we kept it; and all is well."
"Jefan is not dead," he said next; "he lay and watched it all. I could see him."
Then across my shoulder he saw some one, and smiled. I turned, and there was Hilda, white and still, standing by us, and she set her hand on my shoulder. Then she bent toward my comrade.
"Ay, you two kept the gate, and all are praising you. They say that but for you the fort had been lost."
The lightning came again, and after a second or two the thunder, close still, but not so terribly so. The rain would come presently, and I longed for it, but not yet. I dared not move Erling, and there was the priest to come.
Now he came, and with him brought that which was needed; and so we two knelt, and there came one or two Welshmen, gently, and knelt also, unlike our Saxons, who would have stood aloof, with bared heads indeed, but unsharing.
I will say naught of that little service. When it was ended Erling closed his eyes and sighed, as one who is content; and we waited for them to open again, but they did not. It was the first and last sacrament of the new-made Christian.
The priest ended his words, and looked at me. Hilda took her cloak and gave it to him, and he set it across my comrade, and that was all. He was Ethelbert's first follower to the new place he had won, and that also seemed good to me.
Through the gate came Kynan, followed by four men who bore on a spear-framed stretcher their prince who had fallen.
"All well," he called up to me cheerfully. "Naught but a broken leg from the fall, and no wound."