ly and steadily; and others
gathered to them, till they began to be something like a host again, and
the Romans might not break them into knots of desperate men any more.

Thus they fought their way, Arinbiorn of the Bearings leading them now,
with a mind to make a stand for life or death on some vantage-ground; and
so, often turning upon the Romans, they came in array ever growing more
solid to the rising ground looking one way over the ford and the other to
the slopes where the battle had just been. There they faced the foe as
men who may be slain, but will be driven no further; and what bowmen they
had got spread out from their flanks and shot on the Romans, who had with
them no light-armed, or slingers or bowmen, for they had left them at
Wolf-stead. So the Romans stood a while, and gave breathing-space to the
Markmen, which indeed was the saving of them: for if they had fallen on
hotly and held to it steadily, it is like that they would have passed
over all the bodies of the Markmen: for these had lost their leader,
either slain, as some thought, or, as others thought, banned from
leadership by the Gods; and their host was heavy-hearted; and though it
is like that they would have stood there till each had fallen over other,
yet was their hope grown dim, and the whole folk brought to a perilous
and fearful pass, for if these were slain or scattered there were no more
but they, and nought between fire and the sword and the people of the
Mark.

But once again the faint-heart folly of the Roman Captain saved his foes:
for whereas he once thought that the whole power of the Markmen lay in
Otter and his company, and deemed them too little to meddle with, so now
he ran his head into the other hedge, and deemed that Thiodolf's company
was but a part of the succour that was at hand for the Goths, and that
they were over-big for him to meddle with.

True it is also that now dark night was coming on, and the land was
unknown to the Romans, who moreover trusted not wholly to the dastards of
the Goths who were their guides and scouts: furthermore the wood was at
hand, and they knew not what it held; and with all this and above it all,
it is to be said that over them also had fallen a dread of some doom
anear; for those habitations amidst of the wild-woods were terrible to
them as they were dear to the Goths; and the Gods of their foemen seemed
to be lying in wait to fall upon them, even if they should slay every man
of the