again the arrows flew, and now it seemed to me that no more
arrows might find mark in the king's body without slaying him; and
before my eyes was a mist, and my mouth was dry and parched, yet I
could not turn away and look no more. But the men fitted arrows to
the bowstrings once more, while Ingvar stood still and silent with
his strong hands clasped together behind him, gazing at the king,
whose lips moved in prayer, the psalm being ended, and, as I think,
his strength ebbing fast from his many wounds.

Now they were about to shoot once more, unbidden, keeping up their
torture if they might; but there was one more merciful than the
rest. Forward before the bowmen strode Raud, with his sword drawn,
and he cried to Ingvar:

"Let me slay him, king, and end this for pity's sake!"

Ingvar turned his eyes gloomily on him for a moment, and then
answered:

"What know you of pity? Slay him if you will."

Then when he heard that, Eadmund looked at Raud, smiling on him
with a wondrous smile and saying:

"Thanks, good friend."

So Raud slew him in pity, and that was now the best deed that might
be done.

Thereat I cried out once, and my senses left me, and I knew no
more.

CHAPTER XIII. HOW BISHOP HUMBERT JOINED THE KING.

When I began to come to myself it was late afternoon. At first into
my mind came the fancy that I sat on the side of King Eadmund's bed
in the king's chambers at Reedham, and that he told me a wondrous
dream; how that--and then all of a sudden I knew that it was no
shadowy dream, but that I had seen all come to pass, and that
through the arrow storm Eadmund had passed to rest.

All round me the trees dripped with the damp November mist that
creeps from the river, and the smell of dead leaves was in my
nostrils, and for a while I lay still, hardly yet knowing true from
false, dream from deed. So quiet was I that a robin came and
perched close to me on a bramble, whose last leaves were the colour
of the bird's red breast, and there it sang a little, so that I
roused to life with the sound. Then swooped down a merlin with
flash of gray wings on the robin and took it, and that angered me
so that I rose on my elbow to fray it away; and with that the last
cloud left my mind and I knew where I was. Then, too, from where he
waited my waking came Vig, my great Danish dog, who had been tied
at the thane's house, and must have left the flying party to seek
me. And he bounded in gladness about me.