asping the
hilt of his high-flung sword.

It was a mighty blow, but it fell harmless. A sudden surge in the tide
of struggling bodies swept the Ironside out of reach and engulfed him in
a whirlpool of Danish swords. He laid about him like mad, and was
like to have cleared a passage back, when a second wave carried him
completely from view.

Canute cursed at the anxious faces that surrounded him. "What means it,
this swaying? What is herding them? Who are flying? Fools! Can you not
tell a retreat? Bid the horns blow--"

"The English!" bellowed Rothgar. "The English are flying--Edmund's head!
Yonder!"

Frode's daughter had Viking blood, but she hid her face with a cry.
There it was, high upon a spear-point, dripping, ghastly. Could the sun
shine upon such a thing?

Ay, and men could rejoice at it. Above the panic scream she heard cries
of savage joy. But Canute sat motionless, on the new horse they had
brought him. "It is not possible," he muttered. "The flight began while
he still faced me. It was their crowding that saved him."

To stare before him, Rothgar let the blood pour unheeded from his
wounded arm. "Yonder Edmund rides now!" he gasped. "You can tell him
by his size--Yonder! Now he is tearing off his helmet--" Nor was he
mistaken; within spear-throw the mighty frame of the Ironside towered
above his struggling guard. As he bared his head, they could even
distinguish his face with its large elegantly-formed features and
Ethelred's prominent chin. Brandishing his sword, shouting words of
reassurance, exposing his person without a thought of the darts aimed
at him, he was making a heroic effort to check the rush of his
panic-stricken host. There was no question both that he was alive and
that he knew who was belying him; even as they looked he hurled his
spear, with a cry of rage, at the form of Edric Jarl.

Missing the Mercian, it struck down a man at his side; and high above
the voice of the ill-fated King rose the shrill alarms of the traitor's
heralds.

"Fly, ye men of Dorsetshire and Devon! Fly and save yourselves! Here is
your Edmund's head!"

Randalin stared about her, doubting her senses. But light had begun to
dawn on Canute. He wheeled sharply, as Thorkel pushed his horse to their
sides.

"Whose head was that?" he demanded.

Thorkel's face was a lineless mask. "I believe his name was Osmaer," he
answered without emotion.

"It was unheard-of good fortune that he should be so like Edmund in