or Egypt, filling the world with the sound of their swords and the
sky with the smoke of their burnings. For they feared neither God
nor man nor ghost, and were no less cruel than brave; the best of
soldiers, laughing at death and torture, like the Zulus, who are a
kind of black Vikings of Africa. On some of them "Bersark's gang"
would fall--that is, they would become in a way mad, slaying all and
sundry, biting their shields, and possessed with a furious strength
beyond that of men, which left them as weak as children when it
passed away. These Bersarks were outlaws, all men's enemies, and to
kill them was reckoned a great adventure, and a good deed. The
women were worthy of the men--bold, quarrelsome, revengeful. Some
were loyal, like Bergthora, who foresaw how all her sons and her
husband were to be burned; but who would not leave them, and
perished in the burning without a cry. Some were as brave as
Howard's wife, who enabled her husband, old and childless, to
overthrow the wealthy bully, the slayer of his only son. Some were
treacherous, as Halgerda the Fair. Three husbands she had, and was
the death of every man of them. Her last lord was Gunnar of
Lithend, the bravest and most peaceful of men. Once she did a mean
thing, and he slapped her face. She never forgave him. At last
enemies besieged him in his house. The doors were locked--all was
quiet within. One of the enemies climbed up to a window slit, and
Gunnar thrust him through with his lance. "Is Gunnar at home?" said
the besiegers. "I know not--but his lance is," said the wounded
man, and died with that last jest on his lips. For long Gunnar kept
them at bay with his arrows, but at last one of them cut the arrow
string. "Twist me a string with thy hair," he said to his wife,
Halgerda, whose yellow hair was very long and beautiful. "Is it a
matter of thy life or death?" she asked. "Ay," he said. "Then I
remember that blow thou gavest me, and I will see thy death." So