Boycotted, and Other Stories

by Talbot Baines Reed

All that day he pressed onward, and towards evening came to a lonely part of the wood, where the trees for a short space all round closed thickly overhead and shut out the light. He had passed through this spot, and was once more emerging into the open, when three men suddenly sprang out of the thicket and faced him.

Two of them were in the garb of common peasants, and carried, the one a club, the other a knife. Sigurd guessed them at once to be two of the robbers of whom the woodman had warned him. Their companion was a powerful man in the dress of a soldier, and carried a sword. In him, though he knew not the man, Sigurd recognised a soldier of the army of the king, who, as he might guess, had deserted his lawful calling for the life of a bandit.

The party was plainly unprepared to meet a knight fully armed. They had expected rather to find some defenceless merchant, or even woodman, whom they might easily overcome and as easily rob.

They fell back an instant before the noble form of Sigurd, but the next, true to their calling, rushed upon him, shouting to him to surrender and yield up whatever of value he might possess on his person.

Sigurd wasted not a word in replying to this insolent challenge, but defended himself against the sudden assault. At the first onslaught the two bandits were foremost, who thought to bear him down by sheer weight. But Sigurd, stepping back a pace, caught the knife of the one on his shield, while with his own sword he ran his comrade through the body. So quickly was it done, that the soldier, advancing wildly to the attack, stumbled and fell over the body of the prostrate man; and before he could rise again to his feet, a second thrust from Sigurd’s sword had laid low the other bandit beside his comrade.

The soldier, therefore, was the only adversary that remained, and of him Sigurd thought to make short work; but in this he judged wrongly, for this robber proved to be a man of extraordinary strength and agility, while Sigurd himself was faint and jaded with his long and painful march.

For an hour that afternoon the woods resounded with the clash of swords. The two men spoke not a word, but fought with teeth set and lips closed. Once and again, by common consent, they halted, leaning on their swords for breath, but as often closed again more furiously than ever. It surprised Sigurd to find an adversary so resolute and dextrous. At another time it might have pleased him, for he loved courage even in an adversary; but now, when every hour lost meant peril to Ulf, his bosom swelled with wrath and disappointment. By force of superior weight he drove his adversary back inch by inch, till at the end of an hour the two stood some yards distant from the spot where the fight began.

Yet, though falling back, the soldier kept a bold guard, and while not inflicting any wound on his enemy, was able to ward off all blows aimed at himself.

At length, when for a moment Sigurd seemed to flag in the combat, the man gathered himself together for one mighty stroke at the hero’s head. It fell like a thunderbolt but Sigurd saw it in time and caught it on his uplifted sword, and with such force that the soldier’s weapon broke in two, and he himself, overbalanced by the shock, fell backwards to the ground.

Then Sigurd, with a glance of triumph, planted his foot on the body of his prostrate foe, and prepared to avenge the delay of that hour’s combat.