e our onset." At that, the trumpets
blew so loud, that the ground trembled and shook.

Then did the rival hosts draw near each other with great shoutings; and
when they closed, no tongue can tell the fury of their smiting, and the
sore struggling, wounds, and slaughter. Then King Arthur, with his
mightiest knights, rode down into the thickest of the fight, and drew
Excalibur, and slew as lightning slays for swiftness and for force. And in
the midmost crowd he met a giant, Galapas by name, and struck off both his
legs at the knee-joints; then saying, "Now art thou a better size to deal
with!" smote his head off at a second blow: and the body killed six men in
falling down.

Anon, King Arthur spied where Lucius fought and worked great deeds of
prowess with his own hands. Forthwith he rode at him, and each attacked
the other passing fiercely; till at the last, Lucius struck King Arthur
with a fearful wound across the face, and Arthur, in return, lifting up
Excalibur on high, drove it with all his force upon the Emperor's head,
shivering his helmet, crashing his head in halves, and splitting his body
to the breast. And when the Romans saw their Emperor dead they fled in
hosts of thousands; and King Arthur and his knights, and all his army
followed them, and slew one hundred thousand men.

Then returning to the field, King Arthur rode to the place where Lucius
lay dead, and round him the kings of Egypt and Ethiopia, and seventeen
other kings, with sixty Roman senators, all noble men. All these he
ordered to be carefully embalmed with aromatic gums, and laid in leaden
coffins, covered with their shields and arms and banners. Then calling for
three senators who were taken prisoners, he said to them, "As the ransom
of your lives, I will that ye take these dead bodies and carry them to
Rome, and there present them for me, with these letters saying I will
myself be shortly there. And I suppose the Romans will beware how they
again ask tribute of me; for tell them, these dead bodies that I send them
are for the tribute they have dared to ask of me; and if they wish for
more, when I come I will pay them the rest."

So, with that charge, the three senators departed with the dead bodies,
and went to Rome; the body of the Emperor being carried in a chariot
blazoned with the arms of the empire, all alone, and the bodies of the
kings two and two in chariots following.

After the battle, King Arthur entered Lorraine, Brabant, and Fla