lade in burnished gold that outflashed
the gleam of the steel, was written in fantastic letters the word
'Westward.'

So Siur gazed till he heard footsteps coming; then he turned to meet
them. And Svend and his brethren sat silent in the council chamber, till
they heard a great noise and clamour of the people arise through all the
streets; and then they rose to see what it might be. Meanwhile on the
low marble tomb, under the dim sweeping vault sat, or rather lay, the
king; for, though his right arm still lay over her breast, his head had
fallen forward, and rested now on the shoulder of the marble queen. There
he lay, with strange confusion of his scarlet, gold-wrought robes;
silent, motionless, and dead. The seven brethren stood together on a
marble terrace of the royal palace, that was dotted about on the baluster
of it with white statues: they were helmetted, and armed to the teeth,
only over their armour great black cloaks were thrown.

Now the whole great terrace was a-sway with the crowd of nobles and
princes, and others that were neither nobles or princes, but true men
only; and these were helmetted and wrapped in black cloaks even as the
princes were, only the crests of the princes' helms were wrought
wonderfully with that bird, the phoenix, all flaming with new power,
dying because its old body is not strong enough for its new-found power:
and those on that terrace who were unarmed had anxious faces, some
fearful, some stormy with Devil's rage at disappointment; but among the
faces of those helmed ones, though here and there you might see a pale
face, there was no fear or rage, scarcely even any anxiety, but calm,
brave joy seemed to be on all.

Above the heads of all men on that terrace shone out Svend's brave face,
the golden hair flowing from out of his helmet: a smile of quiet
confidence overflowing from his mighty heart, in the depths of which it
was dwelling, just showed a very little on his eyes and lips.

While all the vast square, and all the windows and roofs even of the
houses over against the palace, were alive with an innumerable sea of
troubled raging faces, showing white, upturned from the under-sea of
their many-coloured raiment; the murmur from them was like the sough of
the first tempest-wind among the pines, and the gleam of spears here and
there like the last few gleams of the sun through the woods when the
black thunder-clouds come up over all, soon to be shone through, those
woods