Some
few, who had mighty kinsmen in the North,
fled and spread the evil tidings. Only one
neither fled nor was baptized, and that one was
Lage Ulfson Kvaerk, the ancestor of the present
Lage. He slew his best steed before Asathor's
altar, and promised to give him whatever he
should ask, even to his own life, if he would
save him from the vengeance of the king. Asathor
heard his prayer. As the sun set, a storm
sprung up with thick darkness and gloom, the
earth shook, Asathor drove his chariot over the
heavens with deafening thunder and swung his
hammer right and left, and the crackling lightning
flew through the air like a hail-storm of
fire. Then the peasants trembled, for they knew
that Asathor was wroth. Only the king sat
calm and fearless with his bishop and priests,
quaffing the nut-brown mead. The tempest
raged until morn. When the sun rose, Saint
Olaf called his hundred swains, sprang into the
saddle and rode down toward the river. Few
men who saw the angry fire in his eye, and the
frown on his royal brow, doubted whither he
was bound. But having reached the ford, a
wondrous sight met his eye. Where on the day
before the highway had wound itself up the
slope toward Lage Kvaerk's mansion, lay now a
wild ravine; the rock was shattered into a
thousand pieces, and a deep gorge, as if made
by a single stroke of a huge hammer, separated
the king from his enemy. Then Saint Olaf
made the sign of the cross, and mumbled the
name of Christ the White; but his hundred
swains made the sign of the hammer under their
cloaks, and thought, Still is Asathor alive.
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