"I understand them not," he said to himself. "He bade us think of the gods, and that I do. Even now I am seeking their city and that I may get acquainted with my kindred. How shall I do so completely before I am slain? And he who dieth a cow's death, so say the sagas, shall not enter Valhalla, but shall find his place in Hel. I would join the heroes of the old time and dwell with Thor and Odin. I think I shall know more after I have seen the city Jerusalem, which Ben Ezra saith is like Asgard. At all events I will sacrifice horses and oxen and sheep in the temple of Jehovah as if he were Odin himself, for he is the chief god of this wonderful land."
More and more wonderful indeed did it seem to the Saxons as they rode onward all that day, for it swarmed with inhabitants and the villages and towns were many in number.
It was at the gate of Jezreel that their company halted, at the setting of the sun, and Ulric sat upon his horse looking toward Carmel. Behind the city arose Gilboa, wooded and craggy. Before it stretched Esdraelon.
"O Wulf the Skater," said the jarl, "do you bear in mind the things which were said of this city and plain by Ben Ezra and Abbas?"
"More was said to thee than to others," replied Wulf. "It is a city of sieges and a plain of many battles. I can see the blue ridge of Carmel and beyond is the Middle Sea. I would I might see waves this hour and smell the salt air. This is a woeful land, where never is good ice or deep snow. We go on into the winter and we may yet see a snow squall if we are fortunate. But Knud will need no bearskins and Wulf will need no skates—and I sicken when I think of such a winter."
"The great battle of the end of the world and the twilight of the gods!" exclaimed Ulric. "O ye! If Ben Ezra's Jewish sagas lie not, here shall we witness the greatest of all the feasts of swords. Here shall we have for our jarl a god, the son of a god, and there will be gods and heroes to fight with. I, the son of Odin, will be here! Hael, Odin!"
"I will be with thee, then," said Knud, "but if it is soon to come, it were better for some of us to go back to the Northland and return with many keels full of men like ourselves. This god will need Saxons if he is to fight Romans. These Jews will go down like wheat before the sickle, for I have been looking at them and at the legionaries."
"Thou art right!" exclaimed Tostig the Red. "But there is room on this plain for great armies to meet. They will come from many places, Abbas told me, and among them will also be black and yellow men, and there will be great beasts, and the eagles that are wide-winged, and creatures whereof he could not tell me the shape. They may be like the one we saw come up from under the ice to tear the whales, only that such as he do not come out upon the land."
"No man knoweth from whence these will come," said Knud, "but some of them are as great serpents with wings. I like not to think of them, for they are full of fire and sulphur, and who can fight well in a smoke that choketh him?"
After this they entered the city of Jezreel, and they wondered greatly at the strength of its walls and towers, but they saw not many soldiers.