That gallant stand of King Harold saved his English from flight; and now, as they saw him almost lost in the throng, yet still cleaving his way--on, on--to the raven standard, they rallied with one heart, and shouting forth, "Out, out! Holy Crosse!" forced their way to his side, and the fight now waged hot and equal, hand to hand. Meanwhile Hardrada, borne a little apart, and relieved from his dinted helmet, recovered the shock of the weightiest blow that had ever dimmed his eye and numbed his hand. Tossing the helmet on the ground, his bright locks glittering like sun-beams, he rushed back to the melee. Again helm and mail went down before him; again through the crowd he saw the arm that had smitten him; again he sprang forwards to finish the war with a blow,--when a shaft from some distant bow pierced the throat which the casque now left bare; a sound like the wail of a death-song murmured brokenly from his lips, which then gushed out with blood, and tossing up his arms wildly, he fell to the ground, a corpse. At that sight, a yell of such terror, and woe, and wrath all commingled, broke from the Norsemen, that it hushed the very war for the moment!
"On!" cried the Saxon King; "let our earth take its spoiler! On to the standard, and the day is our own!"
"On to the standard!" cried Haco, who, his horse slain under him, all bloody with wounds not his own, now came to the King's side. Grim and tall rose the standard, and the streamer shrieked and flapped in the wind as if the raven had voice, when, right before Harold, right between him and the banner, stood Tostig his brother, known by the splendour of his mail, the gold work on his mantle--known by the fierce laugh, and the defying voice.
"What matters!" cried Haco; "strike, O King, for thy crown!"
Harold's hand griped Haco's arm convulsively; he lowered his axe, turned round, and passed shudderingly away.
Both armies now paused from the attack; for both were thrown into great disorder, and each gladly gave respite to the other, to re-form its own shattered array.
The Norsemen were not the soldiers to yield because their leader was slain--rather the more resolute to fight, since revenge was now added to valour; yet, but for the daring and promptness with which Tostig had cut his way to the standard, the day had been already decided.
During the pause, Harold summoning Gurth, said to him in great emotion, "For the sake of Nature, for the love of God, go, O Gurth,-- go to Tostig; urge him, now Hardrada is dead, urge him to peace. All that we can proffer with honour, proffer--quarter and free retreat to every Norseman [248]. Oh, save me, save us, from a brother's blood!"
Gurth lifted his helmet, and kissed the mailed hand that grasped his own.
"I go," said he. And so, bareheaded, and with a single trumpeter, he went to the hostile lines.
Harold awaited him in great agitation; nor could any man have guessed what bitter and awful thoughts lay in that heart, from which, in the way to power, tie after tie had been wrenched away. He did not wait long; and even before Gurth rejoined him, he knew by an unanimous shout of fury, to which the clash of countless shields chimed in, that the mission had been in vain.
Tostig had refused to hear Gurth, save in presence of the Norwegian chiefs; and when the message had been delivered, they all cried, "We would rather fall one across the corpse of the other [249], than leave a field in which our King was slain."
"Ye hear them," said Tostig; "as they speak, speak I"
"Not mine this guilt, too, O God!" said Harold, solemnly lifting his hand on high. "Now, then, to duty."
By this time the Norwegian reinforcements had arrived from the ships, and this for a short time rendered the conflict, that immediately ensued, uncertain and critical. But Harold's generalship was now as consummate as his valour had been daring. He kept his men true to their irrefragable line. Even if fragments splintered off, each fragment threw itself into the form of the resistless wedge. One Norwegian, standing on the bridge of Stanford, long guarded that pass; and no less than forty Saxons are said to have perished by his arm. To him the English King sent a generous pledge, not only of safety for the life, but honour for the valour. The viking refused to surrender, and fell at last by a javelin from the hand of Haco. As if in him had been embodied the unyielding war-god of the Norsemen, in that death died the last hope of the vikings. They fell literally where they stood; many, from sheer exhaustion and the weight of their mail, died without a blow [250]. And in the shades of nightfall, Harold stood amidst the shattered rampart of shields, his foot on the corpse of the standard-bearer, his hand on the Ravager of the World.
"Thy brother's corpse is borne yonder," said Haco in the ear of the King, as wiping the blood from his sword, he plunged it back into the sheath.
CHAPTER XII.
Young Olave, the son of Hardrada, had happily escaped the slaughter. A strong detachment of the Norwegians had still remained with the vessels, and amongst them some prudent old chiefs, who foreseeing the probable results of the day, and knowing that Hardrada would never quit, save as a conqueror or a corpse, the field on which he had planted the Ravager of the World, had detained the prince almost by force from sharing the fate of his father.