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Updated: May 4, 2025
"Lady," answered Jodd, "you are mistaken. Yesterday you were an empress, to-day you are well, whatever your son, the Emperor, chooses to name you. As to what has been and is happening in this palace, I scarcely know where to begin the tale.
"Never!" she cried back. "The only thing I give to you is death. On to these rebels, soldiers!" Now, seeing what must come, I strove to speak, but Jodd shouted again, "Be silent, Olaf. For this hour you are not our general; you are a prisoner whom it pleases us to rescue. Ring him round, Northmen, ring him round. Bring the Empress, too; she will serve as hostage." Now some of them drew behind us.
"A small boon that you might have taken without asking, if you can find a dog to lead you, like other blind wretches. And you, Captain Jodd, and your men, what do you ask?" "Such donation as it may please the Augustus to bestow, and after that permission to follow wherever our General Olaf goes, since he is our care. Here we have made so many enemies that we cannot sleep at night."
Some mounted generals rode towards us and asked who was in command of the Northmen. When they learned that it was Jodd, they invited him to a parley. The end of it was that Jodd and two others stepped twenty paces from our ranks, and met a councillor it was Stauracius and two of the generals in the open, where no treachery could well be practised, especially as Stauracius was not a man of war.
You have changed but little, and I rejoice to see that your health is good and that the rank and prosperity which I gave have not been taken from you." Read them, Captain Jodd. Nay, I forgot, you cannot. Give the copy of the letter to the Lady Irene; the original she can see afterwards if she wills." So the paper was given to her by Jodd, and she read it aloud, weighing each word carefully.
"Just such a command as you gave to those who blinded your son Constantine," muttered Jodd beneath his breath. "That is what is meant. You are to murder me, and, Olaf, I'm not fit to die. Great place brings great temptations, and I admit that I have greatly sinned; I need time upon the earth to make my peace with Heaven, and if you slay my body now, you will slay my soul as well. Oh! be pitiful!
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.
Irene!" in a formation of companies ranged one behind the other, for their object was to break in our centre by their weight. Jodd saw, and gave some orders; very good orders, I thought them. Then he sheathed his short-sword, seized the great battle-axe which was his favourite weapon, and placed himself in front of our triple line that waited in dead silence.
"Well," she said when I had finished, "you should give thanks to God, Olaf, since without doubt this ghost is the lady Heliodore. So should Jodd," I heard her add beneath her breath, for in my blindness my ears had grown very quick. Martina and I had made a plan. Palka, after much coaxing, took us with her one evening when she went to place the accustomed offerings in the Valley of the Dead.
As in a dream, I watched the giant Jodd cut down a gorgeous captain, the axe shearing through his golden armour as though it were but silk. I watched a comrade of my own fall beneath a spear-thrust. I gazed at the face of Heliodore, who stared wide-eyed at the red scene, and at the white-lipped Irene, who was clinging to my arm.
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