“At them, comrades! Death to those vile cowards! Death!” cried the officers of the musketeers.
And both parties rushed forward with drawn swords, the two contending columns meeting directly over the body of the unfortunate officer, with a fearful din of arms.
The broken ranks were soon inextricably confounded. Rebel chiefs, king’s officers, soldiers, mountaineers, all pell-mell ran their heads together, seized one another, grappled like two bands of famished tigers meeting in the desert. Their long pikes, bayonets, and partisans were now useless; swords and hatchets alone gleamed above their heads, and many of the combatants, in their hand-to-hand struggle, could use no other weapon than their dagger or their teeth.
The same rage and fury inspired both mountaineers and musketeers; the common cry of “Treason! Vengeance!” sprang from every mouth. The fray had reached a point when every heart was full of brutal ferocity, when men walked with utter indifference over heaps of wounded and dead, amid which the dying revive only to make one last attack on him who tramples them under foot.
At this moment a short man, whom several combatants, amid the smoke and streaming blood, took for a wild beast, in his dress of skins, flung himself into the thick of the carnage, with awful laughter and yells of joy. None knew whence he came, nor upon which side he fought; for his stone axe did not choose its victims, but smote alike the skull of a rebel and the head of a musketeer. He seemed, however, to prefer slaying the Munkholm troops. All gave way before him; he rushed through the fray like a disembodied spirit; and his bloody axe whirled about him without a pause, scattering fragments of flesh, lacerated limbs, and shattered bones on every side.
He shrieked “Vengeance!” as did all the rest, and uttered strange words, the name of “Gill” recurring frequently. This fearful stranger seemed to regard the slaughter as a feast.
A mountaineer upon whom his murderous glance fell threw himself at the feet of the giant in whom Kennybol had placed such vain trust, crying: “Hans of Iceland, save me!”
“Hans of Iceland!” repeated the little man.
He approached the giant.
“Are you Hans of Iceland?” he asked.