Then came a herdsman's call from the woods beyond the village, and
the smith said:

"That is the thane. Fall on, master, and fear nought."

Whereat I laughed, and the men sprang up. The smith led us for a
hundred paces through the beech trees and then across the brook,
and the steep slope up to the village was before us. There was a
little, ancient earthwork of no account round the place, but if
there had been a stockade on it, it was gone.

Then came a roar of yells and shouts from the far side, and we knew
that the work had begun, and ran up the hillside. Then fled a man
in chain mail out of the place, leaping over the earthworks
straight at us, unknowing.

Spray the smith swung his hammer, not heeding at all the sword in
the man's hands. Sword and helm alike shivered under the blow, and
the man rolled over and over down the hillside.

"That is the first Dane I ever slew," said Spray to me as we topped
the ridge.

Then we were in the village and among a crowd of wild-looking,
half-armed forest men, who fled and yelled, and smote and cried for
quarter in a strange and ghastly medley. There was no order, and
seemingly no leader among them, and an end was soon made. Before I
had struck down two men they scattered and fled for hiding, and we
followed them. Wulfnoth would have no mercy shown to these wretches
who would harry the peaceful villagers--their own kin. They would