KOEMPE!
The monk and the two soldiers had barely stretched the Buckler Maiden
upon the slab-stones of the crypt, when an icy terror ran through their
frames. A noise, at first heard indistinctly, now smote their ears with
all its formidable meaning. It was the war-cry of the Northman pirates.
"_Koempe!" "Koempe!_" resounded from the court-yard of the abbey. The
cry grew louder; it invaded the church; it presently reached clear,
powerful, distinct into the underground recess of the crypt.
"Malediction upon us!" exclaimed the monk listening. "It is the war-cry
of the Northmans! They have invaded the abbey!"
"Where could they have entered by?" asked one of the soldiers with
chattering teeth. "The demons must have leaped out of hell!"
"To me, my virgins!" the warrior maid now cried with renewed vigor,
although still held pinioned to the ground under the knees of the monk
and the soldiers. "To me, my sisters! _Skoldmoë! Skoldmoë!_"
The last words of Shigne were answered by the sonorous voice of Gaëlo:
"Shigne, here I am!" and almost immediately the young pirate appeared at
the entrance of the crypt, followed by Simon Large-Ears, Robin Jaws and
Savinien, the serf who had driven the two wagons loaded with hay into
the abbey. All three shouted at the top of their voices: "_Koempe!_ To
death and to the sack! Pillage! Pillage!"
At the sight of the unexpected reinforcement that rushed to the aid of
their fair prisoner, Fultrade and his accomplices quitted their intended
victim. Shigne leaped to her feet, seized the sword of one of the
soldiers, plunged it into the breast of the monk, who dropped stone
dead, and, still trembling with rage and shame, rushed sword in hand
upon the young pirate.
"Either I shall kill you, or you will kill me, Gaëlo! You shall not be
allowed to say that you saw me exposed to extreme outrage!"
Stupefied at the sudden attack of a young woman to whose aid he had
hastened to come, Gaëlo at first contented himself with parrying
Shigne's blows, but wounded in the face by her weapon, he precipitated
himself upon her crying:
"Your will be done! Either you shall kill me, or I shall kill you!"
The combat between Gaëlo and Shigne was furious. Simon Large-Ears and
Robin Jaws, who had turned their first attention to the two soldiers
hidden in the remotest corner of the crypt under Clovis' mausoleum,
killed them both. As they stepped out, Simon Large-Ears said:
"These nuns who came whining to the gate of the abbey while we were
concealed under the hay of Savinien's wagons, turned to strategem like
ourselves in order to get in. Theirs was a feminine ruse!"
"Oh, Simon," answered Robin pointing to the Buckler Maiden and Gaëlo,
who were engaged in a deadly duel; "what a pity! To think of such a
magnificent lad and so beautiful a girl seeking to kill each other,
instead of making love!"
"And if they survive they will love each other but hobblingly. It is
clear that in their rage both will lose some member. Just watch the
blows that they deal to each other!"
Never had Gaëlo met more redoubtable an adversary than Shigne. To
inordinary strength she coupled skill, coolness and intrepidity. Carried
away by the ardor of the struggle, the pirate forgot his passionate
love. If he at all kept in mind that he was fighting with a woman, he
only felt all the more nettled at finding in her such indomitable powers
of resistance. After a long exchange of parried thrusts, Gaëlo succeeded
in dealing so violent a blow with his sword upon the virgin's skull that
neither her hair-net of linked iron, nor her thick head of hair, through
both of which the pirate's sword cut its way, could save her from a
severe scalp wound. The blood poured down Shigne's face, her weapon
slipped from her grasp, and she dropped down first upon both her knees
and then on her side.
"Unhappy me!" cried Gaëlo in despair. "I have killed her!" and kneeling
down beside the young woman, he raised her beautiful head, now pale,
bleeding and with eyes half closed.
"Gaëlo," murmured the Buckler Maiden in a fainting voice, "you were able
to vanquish me; I love you!" and her eyes closed.
Struck with sympathy, Simon and Robin approached Gaëlo to offer him
their services, when a new cry arose from the distance, and again
dominated the lingering clash of arms between the Northman pirates and
the small remnant of the rapidly diminishing garrison of the abbey. It
was the cry of "Berserk!" "Berserk!" warningly uttered by the pirates
themselves.
"Lodbrog the Giant is again in a fit of fury!" cried Simon Large-Ears in
terror. "The berserker is as terrible to his friends as to his enemies.
Gaëlo, the fray may roll this way; your sweetheart is perhaps not dead;
let us carry her into the crypt; she will be there safer than here."
Gaëlo hastened to follow Simon's advice. Raising the insensible warrior
maid in his arms, he laid her down gently in a remote corner of the
sepulchral recess.
A prodigious spectacle, a giant battle, was elsewhere taking place at
that moment. The Frankish soldiers posted on the ramparts had left their
posts to run to the assistance of their companions, first engaged by the
Buckler Maidens and subsequently attacked by the band under Gaëlo that
emerged out of Savinien's hay wagons. Until then, Lodbrog the berserker
had fought valiantly without his intellect being clouded. But the
intoxication of the battle, the odor of carnage, the sight of the
Frankish reinforcement that poured down from the ramparts and rushed
toward the main door of the basilica crying: "Death! Death! Kill the
Northmans!"--all this combined threw the giant into a new attack of
frenzy. Brandishing a spiked iron mace, the Northman, leaped forward
with a roar and dashed upon the compact group of Franks. Ten
blacksmiths' hammers beating upon ten anvils could not produce the
deafening sound produced by Lodbrog's mace falling, falling again,
rising only to fall again and again upon the casques and the armors of
the soldiers. Some sink to the earth, crushed under the thundering
blows, without uttering a sound: their skulls are ground into pulp
within their casques like nuts in their shells; others roll to the
ground emitting shrieks of pain and rage. The corpses are heaped up high
at the feet of Lodbrog. He mounts the heap. He mounts it as on a
pedestal, and his size assumes still more gigantic proportions. The tops
of the casques of the soldiers who still dare sustain the contest with
him, barely reach his belt. Gaëlo, who rushed out of the basilica,
thinking his aid needed in the general battle that he imagined was in
progress, arrived at the moment when the surviving soldiers were
surrounding the berserker, then at the climax of his fury. The spectacle
presented looked like assailants trying to scale a tower. Twenty arms
holding twenty swords rose at once to smite the giant. But towering
above those arms and swords appeared the cuirassed bust of the colossus,
and his iron mace rose and descended, splintering swords, cracking
heads, crushing limbs, pulverizing arms! Gaëlo, the others of his band
and the surviving Buckler Maidens precipitated themselves upon the rear
of the soldiers who besieged Lodbrog. Suddenly the berserker was heard
to emit a fresh roar, throw his mace into the air, stoop down and
immediately rise again holding a soldier by the hair and belt. Vainly
did the luckless Frank struggle to escape from the giant's clutch. He
was hurled wrathfully from on high against the handful of soldiers who
still assailed the Northman. Several of them rolled over the ground.
Lodbrog despatched them by trampling over their prostrate bodies with
his colossal feet like an enraged elephant that tramples upon and pounds
his victims to death. Thereupon, seeing no more enemies to fight, all
his opponents having been killed or wounded by himself or the other
pirates, but still a prey to his own vertigo of destruction, riddled
with wounds that he did not feel, but the gushing blood of which
reddened his armor that was broken through in twenty places, Lodbrog's
eyes fell upon a large black mausoleum just within the basilica. It was
the tomb of Fredegonde.[4] The giant rushed in headlong; he seized with
both his mighty hands one of the pillars that supported the entablature;
shook it; loosened it with an effort of superhuman strength; the pillar
yielded and carried down with it a portion of the architecture of the
mausoleum, which thereupon crumbled to the ground. The loud crash of the
ruin added fuel to the rage of the berserker. His eyes encountered the
sepulchral light that escaped from the crypt where the Beautiful Shigne
lay. The berserker rushed thither with the roar of a goaded bull, and
vanished from sight.