第53章

When Hother heard this from Gewar, he complained long to Helgi of Balder's insolence.Both were in doubt as to what should be done, and beat their brains over divers plans; for converse with a friend in the day of trouble, though it removeth not the peril, yet maketh the heart less sick.Amid all the desires of their souls the passion of valour prevailed, and a naval battle was fought with Balder.One would have thought it a contest of men against gods, for Odin and Thor and the holy array of the gods fought for Balder.There one could have beheld a war in which divine and human might were mingled.But Hother was clad in his steel-defying tunic, and charged the closest bands of the gods, assailing them as vehemently as a son of earth could assail the powers above.However, Thor was swinging his club with marvellous might, and shattered all interposing shields, calling as loudly on his foes to attack him as upon his friends to back him up.No kind of armour withstood his onset, no man could receive his stroke and live.Whatsoever his blow fended off it crushed; neither shield nor helm endured the weight of its dint;no greatness of body or of strength could serve.Thus the victory would have passed to the gods, but that Hother, though his line had already fallen back, darted up, hewed off the club at the haft, and made it useless.And the gods, when they had lost this weapon, fled incontinently.But that antiquity vouches for it, it were quite against common belief to think that men prevailed against gods.(We call them gods in a supposititious rather than in a real sense; for to such we give the title of deity by the custom of nations, not because of their nature.)As for Balder, he took to flight and was saved.The conquerors either hacked his ships with their swords or sunk them in the sea; not content to have defeated gods, they pursued the wrecks of the fleet with such rage, as if they would destroy them to satiate their deadly passion for war.Thus doth prosperity commonly whet the edge of licence.The haven, recalling by its name Balder's flight, bears witness to the war.Gelder, the King of Saxony, who met his end in the same war, was set by Hother upon the corpses of his oarsmen, and then laid on a pyre built of vessels, and magnificently honoured in his funeral by Hother, who not only put his ashes in a noble barrow, treating them as the remains of a king, but also graced them with most reverent obsequies.Then, to prevent any more troublesome business delaying his hopes of marriage, he went back to Gewar and enjoyed the coveted embraces of Nanna.Next, having treated Helgi and Thora very generously, he brought his new queen back to Sweden, being as much honoured by all for his victory as Balder was laughed at for his flight.

At this time the nobles of the Swedes repaired to Demnark to pay their tribute; but Hother, who had been honoured as a king by his countrymen for the splendid deeds of his father, experienced what a lying pander Fortune is.For he was conquered in the field by Balder, whom a little before he had crushed, and was forced to flee to Gewar, thus losing while a king that victory which he had won as a common man.The conquering Balder, in order to slake his soldiers, who were parched with thirst, with the blessing of a timely draught, pierced the earth deep and disclosed a fresh spring.The thirsty ranks made with gaping lips for the water that gushed forth everywhere.The traces of these springs, eternised by the name, are thought not quite to have dried up yet, though they have ceased to well so freely as of old.Balder was continually harassed by night phantoms feigning the likeness of Nanna, and fell into such ill health that he could not so much as walk, and began the habit of going his journeys in a two horse car or a four-wheeled carriage.So great was the love that had steeped his heart and now had brought him down almost to the extremity of decline.For he thought that his victory had brought him nothing if Nanna was not his prize.Also Frey, the regent of the gods, took his abode not far from Upsala, where he exchanged for a ghastly and infamous sin-offering the old custom of prayer by sacrifice, which had been used by so many ages and generations.For he paid to the gods abominable offerings, by beginning to slaughter human victims.

Meantime Hother (1) learned that Denmark lacked leaders, and that Hiartuar had swiftly expiated the death of Rolf; and he used to say that chance had thrown into his hands that to which he could scarce have aspired.For first, Rolf, whom he ought to have killed, since he remembered that Rolf's father had slain his own, had been punished by the help of another; and also, by the unexpected bounty of events, a chance had been opened to him of winning Denmark.In truth, if the pedigree of his forefathers were rightly traced, that realm was his by ancestral right!

Thereupon he took possession, with a very great fleet, of Isefjord, a haven of Zealand, so as to make use of his impending fortune.There the people of the Danes met him and appointed him king; and a little after, on hearing of the death of his brother Athisl, whom he had bidden rule the Swedes, he joined the Swedish empire to that of Denmark.But Athisl was cut off by an ignominious death.For whilst, in great jubilation of spirit, he was honouring the funeral rites of Rolf with a feast, he drank too greedily, and paid for his filthy intemperance by his sudden end.And so, while he was celebrating the death of another with immoderate joviality, he forced on his own apace.

While Hother was in Sweden, Balder also came to Zealand with a fleet; and since he was thought to be rich in arms and of singular majesty, the Danes accorded him with the readiest of voices whatever he asked concerning the supreme power.With such wavering judgment was the opinion of our forefathers divided.