"While my brother breathes I will not leave him," replied Olvir, and he bent from the saddle to embrace the count. Then sudden grief fell upon him. The blue eyes were glazed, the noble face ghastly with the death-pallor. Olvir stared down upon the torn and bloody corpse, his heart wrung with bitter grief.
But it was no time for mourning. Thicker than ever, the arrows came whistling overhead and upon the barrier, and one struck the black courser through the neck. Roused by the beast's wild bound, Olvir sat up and gazed alertly about him. Already the Saracens were thrusting back the Frankish shieldwall.
"Ai, my fleet one!" cried Olvir. "Even you are stricken. But you have yet to save your rider. Bear me over the wall and back through the death-gorge."
Though quivering with pain, the black courser heeded instantly the voice and touch of his master. Lightly as a gazelle he bounded up and over the barrier, and fled along the bloody gorge at racing speed.
Though the way was heaped with rocks and logs and the bodies of men and horses, the black courser raced on unchecked until, swinging around a sharp bend, he all but ran upon a Frankish horse coming up the gorge.
"Anselm!" shouted Olvir--"you live? Thor! We shall both go free! Turn back! Yonder's a cranny in the cliff--turn back!"
"No, Olvir; I could not climb!" gasped the count, and he pointed to the splintered shaft of a javelin, fast in his side.
"You 're wounded, friend!"
"Where's Roland?"
"Slain,--slain by the swart dogs! His body lies on the wall crest. Before it fall the last of the horsemen. I alone have fled."