"Some of them are big ones," he said, "but Lars and I are to ride ponies."
Vebba himself was very well mounted, and he was riding around, in full armour, giving orders to his men. These were several scores in number, and they were a ferocious-looking crew. Their arms and equipments were of all sorts, for each man had suited himself, and nothing like a uniform was called for by the army regulations. Most of them were tall fellows, but there were also a number of short, broad-shouldered, powerful-looking fighters, with dark skins and black hair, who almost seemed to belong to some other race.
"Who are those fellows?" replied Lars, when Ned asked about them. "Why, knowest thou not who they are? They belong to the old race that was here when Woden and Thor and our people came in here from the east. They are all miners. They live among the mountains, and some of them are wizards. They are good fighters, though, and they never spare an enemy."
Terrible, indeed, were their hard, cruel faces. One of them, in particular, had a kind of fascination for Ned, he was so tremendously broad-shouldered and long-armed, and seemed so strong. It was enough to make one shudder to look at him and see him move. There could not have been an ounce of fat on him, but he must have weighed over two hundred pounds. For all that, however, he stepped around as lightly as a fourteen-year-old catcher in a game of baseball.
"He is worth a hundred common men," explained Lars. "He is Sikend, the Berserker, and no spear can hit him. He can catch an arrow on his ax-edge and he can cleave a steel helmet as if it were made of pine. There isn't any Saxon that can stand before him."
Ned and his friends were quickly mounted, and were riding away in a southerly direction. Vebba remained behind to bring on the main body of his following, while a score of his best men went forward with his son. To him he said, at parting:
"Get speech with the king. Say to him that I and mine are coming. Say that I have sent on great store of provisions and three more good keels wherewith he may ferry his levies. Go!"
Everybody seemed in good spirits, but there was a kind of excitement which was in the way of conversation. Even the women at the house and in the village were cheerful.
"I suppose," he thought, "they may do some crying when the men go, but Lars says that the Norway women can fight. His mother killed a wolf once. I wouldn't like to have my mother go out for wolf-killing. Wouldn't she run! So would the girls or Aunt Sally. Oh!"