“The English!” bellowed Rothgar. “The English are flying—Edmund’s head! Yonder!”
Frode’s daughter had Viking blood, but she hid her face with a cry. There it was, high upon a spear-point, dripping, ghastly. Could the sun shine upon such a thing?
Ay, and men could rejoice at it. Above the panic scream she heard cries of savage joy. But Canute sat motionless, on the new horse they had brought him. “It is not possible,” he muttered. “The flight began while he still faced me. It was their crowding that saved him.”
To stare before him, Rothgar let the blood pour unheeded from his wounded arm. “Yonder Edmund rides now!” he gasped. “You can tell him by his size—Yonder! Now he is tearing off his helmet—” Nor was he mistaken; within spear-throw the mighty frame of the Ironside towered above his struggling guard. As he bared his head, they could even distinguish his face with its large elegantly-formed features and Ethelred’s prominent chin. Brandishing his sword, shouting words of reassurance, exposing his person without a thought of the darts aimed at him, he was making a heroic effort to check the rush of his panic-stricken host. There was no question both that he was alive and that he knew who was belying him; even as they looked he hurled his spear, with a cry of rage, at the form of Edric Jarl.
Missing the Mercian, it struck down a man at his side; and high above the voice of the ill-fated King rose the shrill alarms of the traitor’s heralds.
“Fly, ye men of Dorsetshire and Devon! Fly and save yourselves! Here is your Edmund’s head!”
Randalin stared about her, doubting her senses. But light had begun to dawn on Canute. He wheeled sharply, as Thorkel pushed his horse to their sides.
“Whose head was that?” he demanded.
Thorkel’s face was a lineless mask. “I believe his name was Osmaer,” he answered without emotion.
“It was unheard-of good fortune that he should be so like Edmund in looks.”