"You two," shouted Mamercus, "guard the other door! Move that heavy chest against it. Pile the couch and cabinet on top. This door I will hold." There was the blow of a heavy mace on the portal, and the wood sprang out, and the pivots started. "Leave this alone," roared Mamercus, when his two helpers paused, as if to join him. "Guard your own doorway!" "Down with it!" bellowed the voice of the leaders without. "Don't let the game escape! Strike again!" Crash! And the door, beaten from its fastenings by a mighty stroke, tumbled inward on to the mosaic pavement of the peristylium. The light was streaming bright and free into that court, but the passageway from the atrium was shrouded in darkness. Mamercus, sword drawn, stood across the entrance. "By the god Tarann!"[115] shouted Dumnorix, who from the rear of his followers was directing the attack. "Here is a stout old game-cock! Out of the way, greybeard! We'll spare you for your spirit. Take him, some of you, alive!" [115] The Gallic thunder-god. Two gigantic, blond Germans thrust their prodigious bodies through the doorway. Mamercus was no small man, but slight he seemed before these mighty Northerners. The Germans had intended to seize him in their naked hands, but something made them swing their ponderous long swords and then, two flashes from the short blade in the hand of the veteran, and both the giants were weltering across the threshold, their breasts pierced and torn by the Roman's murderous thrusts. "_Habet!_" cried Mamercus. "A fair hit! Come on, you scum of the earth; come on, you German and Gallic dogs; do you think I haven't faced the like of you before? Do you think your great bulks and fierce mustaches will make a soldier of Marius quiver? Do you want to taste Roman steel again?" And then there was a strange sight. A phantasm seemed to have come before every member of that mad, murderous band; for they saw, as it were, in the single champion before them, a long, swaying line of men of slight stature like him; of men who dashed through their phalanxes and spear hedges; who beat down their chieftains; whom no arrow fire, no sword-play, no stress of numbers, might stop; but who charged home with pilum and short-sword, and defeated the most valorous enemy. "Ha! Dogs!" taunted Mamercus, "you have seen Romans fight before, else you were not all here, to make sport for our holiday!" "He is Tyr,[116] the 'one-armed,' who put his left hand in the jaws of Fenris-wolf!" cried a German, shrinking back in dread. "A god is fighting us!" [116] A Germanic war-god. "Fools!" shouted Gabinius from a distance. "At him, and cut him down!" "Cut him down!" roared Dumnorix, who had wits enough to realize that every instant's delay gave Drusus time to escape, or collect help.