and Hermunduri will leap into the boats. From left and right, from east
and west, they will float in the stillness and darkness of the night
against the high-decked galleys, and as soon as the first torch is
hurled into the Roman camp on the Idisenhang, our boats will attack the
Roman ships from the open lake and from left and right. Aha, do you
think our fishing boats will be like nutshells against those giants?
Probably: but have you never seen a flock of brave little swallows
put a sparrow hawk to flight? Our skiffs are small, it is true; but
more than two hundred against sixty. And the pitch and resin of the
pine-trees in the forests by the lake, blazing in a thousand faggots of
dry twigs, will burn merrily in the linen sails and the rigging of the
triremes."

CHAPTER XXXIX.

"You have planned all this alone?" asked the young noble.

"Ha, more, far more than this! Like the wolf of hell, this Rome opens
her jaws to swallow all Mittelgard. What? They are not willing to grant
us land enough on the northern shore of the lake to feed our growing
population? Well, let us see whether, in punishment to the insatiable
robbers for new and old crimes, the gods will not deprive them even of
the districts they have hitherto held by force,--the northern shore!"

Adalo's astonishment was increasing.

"Their proud giant ships will float against us from Arbor to-morrow;
those which escape the midnight conflagration will not, I hope, be
received again, when they fly homeward, in the eyrie whence these birds
of prey went forth."

"What! Arbor?"

"I have long tried to persuade our eastern districts also to make
common cause with us; they did not refuse reinforcements to the league,
as people here suppose because they did not see the men of the eastern
provinces. Besides,"--he smiled craftily,--"most of the eastern
districts have kings. It was not necessary to have all these kings
here, when Ebarbold's fate was to be decided. Meanwhile, they will help
where I sent them: on the southern shore. But not they alone.

"We wished to free the brothers of our race still enslaved by Rome. For
a long time the Alemanni and the other colonists--more slaves than free
men--have borne, grinding their teeth, the yoke which every year
pressed heavier. But they were held in check by the fortresses on the
other side, from the Linden Island behind Brigantium, beyond Arbor and
Constantia. They had long been ready t