then, if you will, but through my body."

"Tear her away!" called a voice.

"Comrades," I went on, "be not so mad. To-night we have done that which
has earned us death, but while the Empress lives you have a hostage in
your hands with whom you can buy pardon. As a lump of clay what worth is
she to you? Hark! The regiments from the city!"

As I spoke, from the direction of the palace came a sound of many voices
and of the tread of five thousand feet.

"True enough," said Jodd, with composure. "They are on us, and now it is
too late to storm the palace. Olaf, like many another man, you have lost
your chance of glory for a woman, or, who knows, perhaps you've won it.
Well, comrades, as I take it you are not minded to fly and be hunted
down like rats, only one thing remains--to die in a fashion they will
remember in Byzantium. Olaf, you'd best mind the women; I will take
command. Ring round, comrades, ring round! 'Tis a good place for it. Set
the wounded in the middle. Keep that Empress living for the present, but
when all is done, kill her. We'll be her escort to the gates of hell,
for there she's bound if ever woman was."

Then, without murmur or complaint, almost in silence, indeed, they
formed Odin's Ring, that triple circle of the Northmen doomed to die;
the terrible circle that on many a battlefield has been hidden at last
beneath the heap of fallen foes.

The regiments moved up; there were three of them of full strength. Irene
stared about her, seeking some loophole of escape, and finding none.
Heliodore and I talked together in low tones, making our tryst beyond
the grave. The regiments halted within fifty paces of us. They liked not
the look of Odin's Ring, and the ground over which they had marched
and the fugitives with whom they had spoken told them that many of them
looked their last upon the moon.

Some mounted generals rode towards us and asked who was in command of
the Northmen. When they learned that it was Jodd, they invited him to a
parley. The end of it was that Jodd and two others stepped twenty paces
from our ranks, and met a councillor--it was Stauracius--and two of
the generals in the open, where no treachery could well be practised,
especially as Stauracius was not a man of war. Here they talked together
for a long while. Then Jodd and his companions returned, and Jodd said,
so that all might hear him:

"Hearken. These are the terms offered: That we return to our barracks in
peace, bearing