After a time Borgar dared to raise his face from the grass. “Is he yet alive?” he whispered.
The men did not seem to hear him. Humped over the earth, with starting eyes and necks stretched to their uttermost, they were like so many boulders. Nor did Frode’s daughter seem to feel that the hand the Brass One had raised himself upon was crushing her foot; she did not even glance toward him as she answered: “Simpleton! Do you think the King does not know how to handle his weapon? If only his strength—”
Her sentence was not finished, and the man next to her drew in his breath with a great whistling rush. Canute’s weapon, playing with the lightness of a sun-beam, had evaded a stroke of the great flail and touched for an instant the shoulder of its wielder. Had he put a pound more force into the thrust—A groan crept down the Danish line when the bright blade rose, as lightly as it had fallen, and continued its butterfly dance. It consoled them a little, however, that no cheer went up from the English,—only a low buzz that was half of anger, half of astonishment.
Farther along the eastern bank, where Thorkel the Tall stood beside Ulf Jarl and Eric of Norway, there was not even a groan. The first rift came in the puzzled clouds of Eric’s face. “Here is the first happening that makes me hope!” he said. “If he has something more than his fencing accomplishment to support him, it may be that an unfavorable outcome need not be expected.”
The Tall One’s brows relaxed ever so little from their snarl of worry. “The boy has experienced good training, for all that he has at present the appearance of a great fool. If Rothgar’s warrior skill is in his arm, yet my caution should be in his head.”
Certainly there was no Berserk madness about the young Danishman; there was hardly even seriousness. Now his blade was a fleeing will-o’-the-wisp, keeping just out of reach of Edmund’s brand with apparently no thought but of flight. Now, when the Ironside’s increasing vehemence betrayed him into an instant’s rashness, it was a humming-bird darting into a flower-cup. But it always rose again as daintily as it had alighted.
The Danish bank was frantic with excitement. “It is the dance of the Northern Lights!” they cried. “Thor has sent him his own sword!”
The lines of English were wild with anger. “Crush him, the hornet, the wasp! Crush him, Edmund!” they roared.
In his exultation, the Scar-Cheek rolled himself over and over on the grass, and wound up by thrusting his shaggy head into the lap of the red-cloaked page. “I must do something for joy,” he panted; “and—except for your hair—you look near enough like a handsome woman. Do you bend down and kiss me every time Canute pricks him.”
His head fell to the ground with a thump as the child of Frode leaped to her feet.