f smiting, or
thrusting, or clinging or shielding, turned and fled, and the whoop of
victory rang around us, and the earth shook, and past the place of the
slaughter rushed the riders of the Goths; for they had sent horsemen to
us, and the paths were grown easier for our much treading of them. Then
I beheld Thiodolf, that he had just slain a foe, and clear was the space
around him, and he rushed sideways and caught hold of the stirrup of
Angantyr of the Bearings, and ran ten strides beside him, and then
bounded on afoot swifter than the red horses of the Bearings, urging on
the chase, as his wont was.

"But we who were wearier, when we had done our work, stood still between
the living and the dead, between the freemen of the Mark and their war-
thralls. And in no long while there came back to us Thiodolf and the
chasers, and we made a great ring on the field of the slain, and sang the
Song of Triumph; and it was the Wolfing Song that we sang.

"Thus then ended Thiodolf's Storm."

When he held his peace there was but little noise among the
stay-at-homes, for still were they thinking about the deaths of their
kindred and their lovers. But Egil spoke again.

"Yet within that ring lay the sorrow of our hearts; for Odin had called a
many home, and there lay their bodies; and the mightiest was Heriulf; and
the Romans had taken him up from where he fell, and cast him down out of
the way, but they had not stripped him, and his hand still gripped the
Wolf's-sister. His shield was full of shafts of arrows and spears; his
byrny was rent in many places, his helm battered out of form. He had
been grievously hurt in the side and in the thigh by cast-spears or ever
he came to hand-blows with the Romans, but moreover he had three great
wounds from the point of the sax, in the throat, in the side, in the
belly, each enough for his bane. His face was yet fair to look on, and
we deemed that he had died smiling.

"At his feet lay a young man of the Beamings in a gay green coat, and
beside him was the head of another of his House, but his green-clad body
lay some yards aloof. There lay of the Elkings a many. Well may ye
weep, maidens, for them that loved you. Now fare they to the Gods a
goodly company, but a goodly company is with them.

"Seventy and seven of the Sons of the Goths lay dead within the Roman
battle, and fifty-four on the slope before it; and to boot there were
twenty-four of us slain by the arrows and plummets