e.
without armor.] you will buy it dear--Guard my back, Winter!"
And he ran right at the press of knights; and the fight began.
"He gored them like a wood-wild boar,
As long as that lance might endure,"
says Gaimar.
"And when that lance did break in hand,
Full fell enough he smote with brand."
And as he hewed on silently, with grinding teeth and hard, glittering
eyes, of whom did he think? Of Alftruda?
Not so. But of that pale ghost, with great black hollow eyes, who sat in
Crowland, with thin bare feet, and sackcloth on her tender limbs,
watching, praying, longing, loving, uncomplaining. That ghost had been for
many a month the background of all his thoughts and dreams. It was so
clear before his mind's eye now, that, unawares to himself, he shouted
"Torfrida!" as he struck, and struck the harder at the sound of his old
battle-cry.
And now he is all wounded and be-bled; and Winter, who has fought back to
back with him, has fallen on his face; and Hereward stands alone, turning
from side to side, as he sweeps his sword right and left till the forest
rings with the blows, but staggering as he turns. Within a ring of eleven
corpses he stands. Who will go in and make the twelfth?
A knight rushes in, to fall headlong down, cloven through the helm: but
Hereward's blade snaps short, and he hurls it away as his foes rush in
with a shout of joy.
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