Orm felt strangely weary after this experience and stood where he was for a moment looking about him. The village presented a scene of wild confusion. Women were shrieking, men were chasing one another throughout the houses, cattle and hogs ran terrified through the streets, and most of the bandits who were still alive had taken to their heels and were fleeing toward the lake. Toke and Blackhair appeared out of a doorway. Toke’s sword was dripping redly, and he cried to Orm that he had not enjoyed better sport than this since his youthful days. But he had no time to say more and rushed furiously after the fleeing men, shouting to his men to follow him. Blackhair, however, remained with Orm, calling his men down from the housetop.
Then a great howl was heard, and a black-bearded man came running toward them with an ax in his hand and Olof Summer-bird at his heels. As the man caught sight of Orm, he changed his course, leaped over a low wall, and ran on. But Blackhair, turning, ran after him and struck him over the head so that he fell.
“He is mine! He is mine!” cried Olof breathlessly.
The man was twisting on the ground. Olof went up to him, gripped his sword with both hands, and drove it through the chain shirt and the man’s body beneath so that it stood fast in the ground.
“God! God!” screamed the nailed man, in a voice filled with pain and terror, and said no more.
“I have kept my vow,” said Olof.
“Is that the man?” said Orm. “It is difficult to recognize him beneath that beard.”
“It is an ill thing to wear stolen goods in a battle, so that they can be seen,” said Olof, bending over the dead body. “Look at this!”
Above the neck of the man’s chain shirt shone the glint of gold. Olof reached his hand inside and pulled something out. It was Almansur’s chain.
“It is he,” said Orm. “And, now that I think of it, there is another proof. Who in this place but he could have called to God? I wonder what he can have wanted of Him?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CONCERNING THE GREAT HOUNDS’ CHASE
SOME of the crazy magister’s men escaped in boats; but not many, for they were hunted by men and dogs along the shore. Their wounded were killed, since they were all miscreants. Twenty-three of Orm’s men had been killed and many wounded; and all agreed that this had been a good fight, and one that would be much talked about in the years to come.
In the village they found a great qauntity of ale, and many hogs were slaughtered; then the men buried their dead together and raised a mound over them and drank to their death voyage. As they had expected, they found a number of stolen women in the village. Each of these was given a cow and allowed to go whither she pleased, with as much booty as she could carry. Among these were Ylva’s two servant-girls, who were both young and were greatly delighted at being thus liberated. They had been forced, they said, to endure great indignities and had been kept indoors, closely guarded, ever since Torgunn had run away. They now wished to be wedded to reliable men.
The hounds were much praised for their part in the battle; only two of them had been killed. When all the cattle had been rounded up as booty, Orm said that the work of driving them back to Gröning could safely be left to the hounds, since they were used to this. Horses were found for all the wounded; then, as soon as these had recovered sufficiently to be able to sit on horseback, Orm rode forth from the bandits’ village and headed homewards by the shortest route, which led southwards along the shore of the lake.
Ludmilla rode with the rest, and Olof kept his horse close to hers. He had begged Orm and Toke not to mention the two women who had kept him warm at the Dregovites’ village, lest she should take the matter amiss. They had both laughed at this and had replied that he must be sick in the head with wounds or love if he supposed that they would do any such thing. But Olof had shaken his head doubtfully, saying that he was a good deal older than she and so could not be too careful.
They rode slowly, for the sake of the wounded. Ahead of them the hounds drove their herd at leisure; no disputes broke out between them and their charges, though when any cow tried to change her direction or escape from the rest, they were quick to show her her mistake.
They camped early that evening and saw to the wounded; then next morning they proceeded alongside the lake toward the place that old folk called Tyr’s Meadows. In former times men had lived there, and the meadows had been the scene of great battles, from which they had won their name. Men said that so much blood had been spilled on Tyr’s Meadows that the grass flourished more richly there than elsewhere. But neither man nor house was to be seen there now.
As they approached these meadows, the hounds grew restless, so that the men wondered whether they had scented bear, or the smell of the old blood. Leaving their herd, they roamed into the woods and ranged this way and that, until, of a sudden, two or three of them began to bay. Others joined them, and soon the whole pack of them was snarling savagely and driving deeper into the woods, as though they had once more been slipped for battle. Orm could not understand what the cause of this might be, for none of the bandits had fled in this direction; and he and all the men ran up to the top of a heathered hill beside the track to see what was afoot.
Away on their right hand, beyond the woods, there lay open grassland. Across it the hounds were running, driving before them a great herd of cattle, but cattle such as few of the men had seen before.
Suddenly one of Toke’s men cried: “The wild ox! They are driving the wild ox!”
The hounds seemed to have taken it into their heads that these beasts belonged to their herd and were to be driven home with the rest. They spared no efforts to see that none escaped, and from the hill the men could see how they fought with the more obstinate animals to drive them along with the others. The wild oxen resented this treatment, and their bellowing could be heard even above the baying of the hounds; but at last all but a few ceased their resistance, and the herd disappeared southwards into the wooded hills, with the hounds still gamboling behind and about them.
Realizing there was nothing they could do to stop them, the men proceeded on their way, driving the tame cattle themselves. Toke’s men, who knew the ways of wild oxen, said that sometimes, in the beginning of winter, they came down from West Guteland to pasture in Tyr’s Meadows. While they grazed on the war-god’s land, they were held by old folk to be under his protection and so were never disturbed there. In former times, as was well known, they had been far more numerous in these parts, but nowadays they were only to be seen in Tyr’s Meadows, and that but seldom.
They found traces of the wild oxen’s flight in the country east of the Kraka Stone; but in the dense forests farther south, it was clear that the hounds had found their task beyond them, for the tracks of the herd showed it to have diminished in strength mile by mile. They had, nevertheless, succeeded in keeping some of them together; and when Orm reached home, he learned that the hounds had arrived there driving two bulls, five cows, and a number of calves. The men had done their best to halt them, but had been unable to do so; and when the hounds saw the beasts proceeding into the country beyond their home, they appeared to have felt that they had done enough for honor and went to their food-troughs, very weary and sore-footed.