“Then,” said Tostig, “King Harold, my brother, may prepare for battle. Never shall it be said that the son of Godwin forsook the son of Sigurd.” It must have been a strange look that passed between those two brothers, thus on the verge of a deadly strife, each surrounded with dangers that could scarcely be averted, and but of late actuated with bitter hate, but, at the decisive moment, that hatred giving way, and their hearts yearning to each other, with the memories of long-past days, yet both too proud to show how they were mutually touched, too far pledged to their separate parties to follow the impulse that would have drawn them once together in love. It was too late; the battle must be fought—the brothers’ deeds had decided their lot.
The Saxon horseman rode off, and the Norwegian King asked, who was the man who had been speaking so well.
“It was King Harold Godwinson,” said Tostig.
“Why did I not learn this sooner?” said Hardrada. “He should never have had to boast of the slaughter of our men.”
“It may have been imprudent,” said Tostig, “but he was willing to grant me peace and a great dominion. If one of us must die, I had rather he should slay me, than I slay him.”
So spoke Tostig, who had, of late, been rushing from country to country to stir up foes against his brother. Surely he would have given worlds to check the ruin he had wrought, though his sense of honor would not allow him to forsake his ally.
“He is but a little man, but he sits firmly in his stirrups,” returned Harald Hardrada; and then, to cheer his men in their desperate case, he chanted aloud one of his impromptu war-songs:
“Advance, advance,
The helmets glance;
But blue swords play
In our array.
“Advance, advance,
No hawberks glance—
But hearts are here
That know no fear.”
“These verses sound but ill,” said the Sea-King, interrupting himself; “we will make some better;” and, careful of his verses as a Skald in his last battle, as well as in his first, he sung:
“In battle morn we seek no lee,
With skulking head and bending knee,
Behind the hollow shield;
With eye and hand we guard the head,
Courage and promptness stand instead,
Of hawberk, on this field.”