As the Romans neared the land, avoiding as best they could the sharpened stakes which had been set against them, their onrush was almost hidden by the cloud of spears and arrows falling upon them, and many were slain and carried downward by the glad current of the British river, but there was no checking them. Some struggled through and others followed as the first were slain, and soon the ranks had gained a footing, their front being lopped off as it came, but ever heaved forward by the tremendous mass behind. As in the surges of a growing storm, each succeeding wave crept further up the shore and the fight was soon on land. Though hate is in my heart for them, let none speak lightly of the dauntless courage or the stern hardihood and discipline of the Roman soldiers. Those ranks of iron pressed forward, though we raged among them with our chariots and met them manfully on foot with blows as fierce as their own and thrusts as deadly. But what could avail such ragged and open charge as made the wild Britons against an advancing wall which ever renewed itself as it was broken here and there? I, myself, fought side by side with chieftains of the Iceni, kinsmen of Goneril, with whom I had made friendship, and well they bore themselves. High up the slope were the Romans now, and there was at the front much intermingling of the opposing forces. My charioteer had fallen, and the horses had been slain, and I, on foot, was making red my heavy Viking battle-axe, but in dire peril, for we were driven backward step by step and soon I was half surrounded and felt a wound or two and began to breathe too heavily. Then came to my ears a woman’s cry. Circling downward and at one side from the slope above where were the onlooking multitude, had come Goneril, driven by grizzled Leir, her charioteer, and swinging to the front and very centre where she knew I would be found. There had been none who could restrain her. Mad with her fear for me, wild as a she-bear for her bayed mate, she had come storming on the battlefield, her dark hair streaming and the love flame in her eyes, seeking only to be with me, even in death together. And timely was her coming, for I had been beaten to my knee and was in sore strait. Surely the gods guided, for the chariot came to me through the mêlée as the wild bull through brush, and I was lifted to it by Leir’s strong arm as, scarcely slacking in its course, it passed athwart the raging lines and so away toward safety. And, even at that moment, as Goneril bent down toward me tenderly, there came a Roman javelin which drove deep into her side and, as it lurched out and away with the chariot’s surge, left, following it, a rush of her dear heart’s blood, drenching her robe with red. Into my arms she sank, and so I held her until, flying, we reached the wood, then laid her gently down on the greensward. [Illustration: “I am weakening and dying. The Valkyrie are circling in the sky”]