Then the barbarians took heart and turned, and some of them
set on to seize the body of the charioteer, and spoil his arms. But the
Wanderer leaped down and bestrode the corpse with shield up and spear
aloft.
Now among the press of the barbarians there was a stir, as of one
thrusting his way through them to the front. And above the plumes of
their helmets and the tossing of their shields the Wanderer saw the
golden head, unhelmeted, of a man, taller than the tallest there from
the shoulders upwards. Unhelmeted he came and unshielded, with no
body armour. His flesh was very fair and white, and on it were figures
pricked in blue, figures of men and horses, snakes and sea-beasts. The
skin of a white bear was buckled above his shoulder with a golden clasp,
fashioned in the semblance of a boar. His eyes were blue, fierce and
shining, and in his hand he held for a weapon the trunk of a young
pine-tree, in which was hafted a weighty axe-head of rough unpolished
stone.
"Give way!" he cried. "Give place, ye dusky dwarfs, and let a man see
this champion!"
So the barbarians made a circle about the Wanderer and the giant, and
stood silently to watch a great fight.
"Who art thou?" said the mighty man disdainfully, "and whence? Where is
thy city, and thy parents who begat thee?"
"Now I will avow that men call me Odysseus, Sacker of Cities, Laertes'
son, a Prince of the Achaeans," said the Wanderer.
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