"The Empress has offered to share her crown with me, Jodd, but, friends, it cannot be, because of this lady to whom I am affianced."
"Marry them both," shouted a rude voice, but Jodd replied: "Then that is soon settled. Out of our path, Olaf, and look the other way. When you turn your head again there will be no Empress to trouble you, except one of your own choosing."
On hearing these words, and seeing the swords draw near, Irene clutched hold of me, for always she feared death above everything.
"You will not see me butchered?" she gasped.
"Not while I live," I answered. "Hearken, friends. I am the general of the Augusta's guard, and if she dies, for honour's sake I must die first. Strike, then, if you will, but through my body."
"Tear her away!" called a voice.
"Comrades," I went on, "be not so mad. To-night we have done that which has earned us death, but while the Empress lives you have a hostage in your hands with whom you can buy pardon. As a lump of clay what worth is she to you? Hark! The regiments from the city!"
As I spoke, from the direction of the palace came a sound of many voices and of the tread of five thousand feet.
"True enough," said Jodd, with composure. "They are on us, and now it is too late to storm the palace. Olaf, like many another man, you have lost your chance of glory for a woman, or, who knows, perhaps you've won it. Well, comrades, as I take it you are not minded to fly and be hunted down like rats, only one thing remains--to die in a fashion they will remember in Byzantium. Olaf, you'd best mind the women; I will take command. Ring round, comrades, ring round! 'Tis a good place for it. Set the wounded in the middle. Keep that Empress living for the present, but when all is done, kill her. We'll be her escort to the gates of hell, for there she's bound if ever woman was."
Then, without murmur or complaint, almost in silence, indeed, they formed Odin's Ring, that triple circle of the Northmen doomed to die; the terrible circle that on many a battlefield has been hidden at last beneath the heap of fallen foes.
The regiments moved up; there were three of them of full strength. Irene stared about her, seeking some loophole of escape, and finding none. Heliodore and I talked together in low tones, making our tryst beyond the grave. The regiments halted within fifty paces of us. They liked not the look of Odin's Ring, and the ground over which they had marched and the fugitives with whom they had spoken told them that many of them looked their last upon the moon.