A burst of triumphant yells re-echoed down the gorge. The last Frank had fallen. At the warning, Olvir thrust the scarlet blade back in its sheath and ran swiftly across the gorge.
"Now do all lie slain," he muttered; "and I--I go to bear the tidings, if so the Norns will. Here is a cleft,--I can yet climb; but if the feeblest of foes lies in wait on the crest, he may cast me down."
Thrusting the corner of his cloak in upon his wound, Olvir sprang up the cliff foot and began the ascent of its all but perpendicular face. Though every movement of his injured shoulder cost him terrible agony, he climbed with the utmost haste; for on the one side he could see advancing parties of the plunder-laden Vascons, while on the other, Moslem yells of victory rang near around the turn. So swiftly did he scale the cliff that he had gained a side ledge which sloped up to its crest before the Saracens raced into view.
Overcome by exertion and the anguish of his wound, he paused for a time at the top of the cranny, too faint and giddy to attempt the narrow ledge. But the pursuers, far below in the gorge bottom, never thought to look up for their quarry where all along was sheer precipice. For a little they circled about the bodies of the black courser and the Frank count, like hounds which have over-shot the scent; then they raced on through the gorge. Not until they came upon the advancing Vascons and learned that the fugitive had not passed that way, did they turn back to scan the cliffs. But they saw no warrior clinging to the dizzy ledges.
Urged on by the peril of discovery, Olvir had crept sideways up the ledge, even as the Saracens galloped away. The rock, as he slipped along its face, seemed to reel and thrust out against him, so that at each slow step he thought to hurl down into the chasm. It was well for him that in his boyhood he had climbed for the nests of sea-fowl on cliffs yet dizzier. The rock was swaying before his darkened gaze. Instinctively he drew himself upward. At last he was bending over the cliff's edge. Then darkness fell upon him, and he sank forward in a death-like swoon.
But life lay strong in the breast of the sea-king. In a little he sighed and half turned. His opening eyes gazed sideways along the cliff's edge. A hundred paces or so distant, over a projection of the rock, he saw the tops of a pair of turbans. Stung to instant action by the sight, he drew himself up from the brink of the cliff, and crept over the rocks toward a little fir wood on the slope above. Within a spear's length the heads and shoulders of the two Saracens came into view; but both men were leaning over the brink of the precipice, staring down at the wild scene in the gorge bottom.
"Odin blind the Asiamen!" he muttered, and he glided like a wounded weasel over the bare space which lay between him and safety.
At last he gained the first tree. He was safe from the swart watchers. But then something stirred in the midst of the young firs, a few feet before him. A groan rose to his lips. He sank down, only to grip his sword-hilt and rise again, the bared blade ready to strike. His lips pressed together in a smile of grim despair, and he crept forward again. Something showed through the fir twigs. He peered under the branches into a tiny glade. There, within half-a-dozen steps, stood Zora his red mare, tethered beside two other coursers, and no man was in sight.
CHAPTER XXVII
Then Brynhild laughed