Wager of Battle: A Tale of Saxon Slavery in Sherwood Forest

by Henry William Herbert

He paused a moment to watch, as the first party, his direct pursuers, reached the broad river-bed—they crossed it, and that seemingly without alarm or suspicion of danger, though their heavily-barbed horses sank belly-deep in the treacherous ford; but having stemmed it, as they charged onward, it was clear to Eadwulf that the horses buried their hoofs deeper at every stride; soon they were fetlock-deep in the heavy sands.

The second party crossed the same water-course higher up, and with less trouble; and these were now within two miles of the panting slave, shouting their war-cries, and spurring yet more furiously onward, having lost, if they had ever entertained any, all idea of danger, in the furious excitement of the chase, and taking no heed of the tokens of imminent and awful peril; and yet those tokens were now sufficient to appall the boldest.

One of the peculiarities of those terrible and fatal sands is, that the first approach of those entering tides, which come on, not with the ordinary roll and thunder of billows and flash of snowy surf, but swift and silent as the pestilence that flies by night, is harbingered by no outward and visible sight or sound, but by the gradual and at first imperceptible conversion of the solid sands into miry and ponderous sludge, into moving quicksand, into actual water.

When the sounds and sights are heard and seen, it is too late to make an effort. Death is at hand, inevitable.

And now sights and sounds were both clear, palpable, nigh at hand. The dull murmur of the inrolling volumes might have been heard by the ears of any, so that they were not jangled and deafened by the clangor of their own iron-harness; the long white line of surf might have been seen by the eyes of any, so that they were not so riveted on some other object, that they could take heed of naught else within the range of their vision.

But the pursuers heard, saw nothing—nothing, unless it were the beating of their own savage hearts, the snorting of their laboring chargers, the clanking din of their spurs and scabbards, and the jingle of their chain-mail—unless it were the wretched fugitive, panting along, with his tongue literally hanging out of his parched jaws, and his eyes bursting from their sockets, like those of an over-driven ox, stumbling, staggering, splashing along, often falling, through the mingled sand and water, now mid-leg deep.

The party which had taken the sands at the most northern point had now so far over-reached upon the fugitive, that he had no longer a chance of crossing the course of the Kent in advance of them. If he persisted in his course, ten minutes more would have placed him under the counters of their horses and the points of their lances. The other body, who had followed him directly, had already perceived their danger, had pulled up, and were retracing their steps slowly, trying to pick their way through the dryest ground, and, coasting up and down the side of the Beetham water, were endeavoring to find a ford passable for their heavy horses. Lower down the bay, by a mile or two, they were the first to be overtaken, the sands were already all afloat, all treacherous ooze, around them; the banks, dry places there were no longer any, were not to be distinguished from the channels of the rivers.

Suddenly, seeing himself cut off, blinded by his immediate terrors, and thinking only to avoid the more instant peril, Eadwulf turned southward—turned toward the billows, which were now coming in, six feet abreast, not two miles below him, tossing their foamy crests like the mane of the pale-horse of the Apocalypse, with a sound deeper and more appalling than the roar of the fiercest thunder. He saw the hopelessness of his position; and, at the same moment, the first horror of their situation dawned on the souls of his savage pursuers.

In that one glance, all was revealed to them; every thought, every incident, every action of their past lives, flashed before the eyes of their mind, as if reflected in a mirror; and then all was blank.

Every rein was drawn simultaneously, every horse halted where he stood, almost belly-deep in the sands, snorting and panting, blown and dead-beat by that fruitless gallop; and now the soil, every where beneath them and about them, was melting away into briny ooze, with slimy worms and small eels and lampreys wriggling obscenely, where a little while before, the heaviest war-horse might have pawed long and deep without finding water; and the waves were gaining on them, with more than the speed of charging cavalry, and the nearest shore was five miles distant.