ad not been learning all that the best men in the Frankish
armies could teach me of weapon craft for nothing, and hereafter I
learned that such praise from Jefan was worth having.

But as for my thanking them for this protection of us, they would
have it that the whole trouble was of their own making, since they
had stayed so near the border after a raid. Even now we must hence,
for the sheriff would gather a levy to follow them no doubt. It
needed no command from Offa for that; but he would be here anon, in
leisurely wise perhaps, but certainly.

"Wherefore we must go," said Kynan. "Then, as usual, he will find
no one to fight with, and naught but a few broken marrow bones to
remind him that last night we feasted on Mercian cattle up here."

Now I would that Erling might have been laid to rest in Fernlea,
near to Ethelbert, but that could not be. We set him in a place
near the gate which he had kept so well, raising a little mound
over him, and Jefan said that it should be a custom with every
warrior of the Cymro who entered the camp in the days to come that
he should salute him, and that the tale of his deed should be told
at the camp fire here from age to age, so long as harp was strung
and men should sing of deeds worth minding. Maybe that was the
resting and that the honour the viking would have chosen for
himself.

And he was set there with all the still rites of the ancient Church
of the Briton, in the way which he had learned to love.

Alone, unmarked Gymbert lies, out of sight of the warriors against
whom he came. The Mercians dared not touch him, and the Welsh would
not. But Jefan bade that man who had shot at him see to him, and
that was the punishment for his deed. Men say that when a storm
breaks round Dynedor hill fort it is ill to be there, for then he
wanders round the gate unquiet and wailing; and so he also is not
forgotten, nor the evil which he wrought.

That evening we were in some Welsh thane's house, far in the folds
of the Black Mountains, and there not even Offa could reach us. The
people had come with litters and hill ponies, and slowly and
somewhat painfully we had gone our way from the hill, gathering the
cattle, and leaving men to bring them after us still more slowly.

"Hurry no man's cattle," quoth Kynan, "except when they are by way
of becoming yours by right of haste homeward to the hills."

In this homestead, whose name I cannot write, we rested for a
fortnight or so, while Si