For the White Christ: A Story of the Days of Charlemagne

by Robert Ames Bennet

The Saxon warriors--Eastphalian, Westphalian, Nordalbingian, and Engern--were mingled in a shapeless horde, which sought to thrust back and overthrow the equally disarrayed mass of the Frankish footmen. But to the left, the Frisians, most stubborn of all fighters, stood firm in orderly array against the ferocious attack of the Grey Wolf and his Thuringians, while across on the far side of the battlefield, where the left wing of the Saxons had been thrust back, could be seen the Frankish horse, with Karl himself in command, vainly striving to break the ranks of the mail-clad Danes in Wittikind's shieldburg.

Here was the key to the battle-scheme. None need tell Olvir where to strike. The first glance had shown him how the battle went. He must strike, and strike quickly. Already the Franks were giving back before the Saxon wolf-horde, and even as the vikings burst from the coppice after their leader, from the willows on their right a Frankish horn sounded the retreat, and Count Hardrat came leaping into the open, to fall headlong among the yellow gorse.

Bewildered and dismayed by the call to flight, the last ranks of the Neustrians wavered and broke, and the yelling Saxons leaped forward to slay the fugitives. But at sight of the band of mailed warriors who came charging from the thicket not a spearthrow distant, they halted and closed up their ranks to meet the coming shock. As well might they have thought to check the mad rush of an aurochs herd. The vikings, though still locked in solid ranks, were now charging at full run.

As they swept down upon the Saxons, arrows streamed from their midst into the thick of the enemy; but they cast no spears until their leader was within twenty paces of the Saxon line. Then at last Al-hatif swung up, and a deadly flight of darts and javelins whirred into the dense mass of the Saxons. Pierced through their half-mailed war-jerkins of wolf and boar hide, scores of the forest-men fell dead or wounded, and the wedge hurled forward to strike the line where weakened by their fall.

"Thor aid! Thor aid!" roared out the viking battle-shout, and then, with a frightful rending crash, the wedge smashed in among the Saxons. Fiercely as the forest-men leaped to meet the attack, they were like children before the mailed vikings, who numbered in their midst many of the most famous champions of the North. Through the rift opened by Olvir and Floki, the Northmen followed hotly, roaring in grim delight as they hewed wider the battle-path.

To the very heart of the Saxon host the wedge charged without a check in its terrible course, and the ground behind it was covered with fallen warriors. Here and there a steel-mailed figure lay among the trampled corpses, but for every such one there was to be counted a dozen of slain Saxons. Even the savage Nordalbingians were appalled by such slaughter, and sought to give way before the vikings, thinking that they would swerve and pass through to the Frankish lines, where Worad and Amalwin were bending every effort to hold their own. But the Norse wedge crashed on its way straight for the rear of the Danish shieldburg.

A few more brief moments of bloody slaughter, and then Northman was face to face with Northman. Here was no longer the formless horde of half-armed berserks, to be hewn down like cattle by the viking blades, but Danes trained in shieldburg and armed like their assailants in scale-hauberks or mail-serks.

As the Danes faced about to meet the rear attack, Olvir thrust forward through the last ranks of the Saxons, smiling like a guest newly come to the feast. Protected alike against point and edge by his threefold mail, the blue steel of his helmet, and the little blade-glancing shield, he had come through the midst of the Saxons without a wound.

At either flank of their earl, Floki and Liutrad swung their great weapons with unflagging vigor. At every stroke of the young giant's axe, a man went down, cleft through shield and helmet; while the long-shafted blade of the strutting Crane rose and fell with still more deadly effect. Floki did not strike downwards, but whirled his halberd with a peculiar backhanded stroke, as erratic as the man's nature.

Unlike their earl, neither had come scatheless from amongst the Saxons, nor had Gerold. The young Swabian was gashed in the shoulder and thigh by thrusting spears, and the bell-like rim of his casque had been broken by a sling-stone, which, had it been aimed a handsbreadth lower, would have beaten in his face. Liutrad's serk beneath his axe-arm showed a long rent, where a sword had bitten through to the bone,--the blow of a berserk-mad Nordalbingian. But the look of Floki was most terrible of all. His cheek had been laid open by a glancing sword-stroke, and the wound gave to his long wry face an aspect of ghastly grotesqueness. As yet, however, none of the three felt his wounds, and all alike sprang eagerly after Olvir, as he rushed upon the Danish shieldwall.