"Oh, pshaw! I never saw a horse fly yet!"
"But He flies on his eight-hoofed gray steed through the clouds and over the wind-swept forests, when he drives the woman of the woods before him. Hark, what was that? At the right!"
"The hoot of an owl! Very near us!"
"And there--one at the left."
"Hark," cried a third soldier, "didn't that sound like metal on metal--the clanking of arms--close in front of us?"
"No," said the fourth, "but I hear the faint trampling of a horse's hoofs. Hark! There are several. Now it comes again, nearer still! The foe!"
"Yes, it is the foe!" said Rignomer, seizing the signal horn to raise it to his lips--but he had no power to do so. Horror, paralyzing terror, awe which shook every limb, seized upon the brave man. His hair bristled; voice and hand refused their service. Rigid with fear, he stared at the wooded height before and above him, which suddenly seemed alive.
A warrior sprang from behind every tree; every bush; yet it was not these hundreds of Alemanni that terrified the battle-tried Batavian, but another spectacle. Sometimes in a full glare of light, sometimes dimly seen by the flame of two blazing torches, swung in circles by two horsemen riding at his right and left, a powerful figure of superhuman stature on a grayish-white horse came dashing down from the height toward him. White hair and a floating beard waved around a fierce but majestic countenance, above which a bird-monster, whose like Rignomer had never seen, seemed to flap its white wings threateningly against the mercenary as the vision rushed onward in silence, a huge spear thrust before him, a long dark cloak flowing back from his shoulders like a cloud; then, when close at hand, the horseman shouted: "Odin! Odin has you all!"
The German flung down spear and shield and, with the cry: "Odin is upon us! Odin is leading them! All is lost," ran back to the ditch at full speed. Two of his comrades followed his example, and all three leaped into the ditch shouting: "All is lost! Odin is upon us! Fly!"
Rignomer was considered the bravest of his race, so even the Batavians, who were too far off to understand his words, were infected by his example; for they saw their leader unarmed, running with every sign of the utmost terror from the ditch toward the northern gate to tear it open and vanish in the camp.