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Hakon Jarl and these pirates, robbing Hakon's subjects and merchants that frequented him, were naturally in quarrel; and frequent fightings had fallen out, not generally to the profit of the Jomsburgers, who at last determined on revenge, and the rooting out of this obstructive Hakon Jarl.
Some twenty Jomsburgers had sallied from a house, and were fighting their way to the ships, for now one could see well enough. They were back to back and edging their way onward, while the boys and old men tried to stay them in vain. When they saw us, they broke and fled, and were pursued and slain at last, one by one. Then were no more of that crew left.
One by one from aft met us those who were left of the men who had fought their way to the stern. Well for us was it that the darkness had hindered the Jomsburgers from knowing how few we were and how divided. But shoulder to shoulder we had fought as vikings will, never giving back, but ever taking one step forward as our man went down before us.
And I fought on, dazed, and as in a dream I fancied that I was on the deck of my father's ship fighting the fight that I looked for in the fog that brought my friend Halfden. When my brain cleared, I knew not which way we faced. Only that Cyneward was yet with me, and that out of the dimness came against us Jomsburgers clad in outlandish armour, and with shouts to strange gods as they fell on me.
If the wild Letts, even the Jomsburgers, had got in, all was lost. He rushed to the door. It was not yet burst: but a bench, swung by strong arms, was battering it in fast. "Winter! Geri! Siwards! To me, Hereward's men! Stand back, fellows. Here are friends here inside. If you do not, I'll cut you down." But in vain. The door was burst, and in poured the savage mob.
An idle question sometimes rises on me, idle enough, for it never can be answered in the affirmative or the negative, Whether it was not these same refitted Jomsburgers who appeared some while after this at Red Head Point, on the shore of Angus, and sustained a new severe beating, in what the Scotch still faintly remember as their "Battle of Loncarty"? Beyond doubt a powerful Norse-pirate armament dropt anchor at the Red Head, to the alarm of peaceable mortals, about that time.
Now I called to Thormod, and his voice answered me from shoreward. "Here am I, Wulfric. How have you sped?" "Some of us are left, but no foemen," I answered. "Call your names," he said. And when we counted I had but sixteen left of my thirty, so heavy had been the fighting. Yet I thought that the Jomsburgers were two to our one as we fell on them, and of them was not one left.
Now I could see that men fought with the last of the Jomsburgers as they came down the street to their ship, and there were no houses burning, so that they could have been for no long time ashore. And that was good to know. We came into the channel abreast of her, and then Thormod roared to me: "Now I will ram her. Board her as we strike if we do not sink her!"
Yet we could hear no sound of them, and that seemed strange, so that we feared somewhat, drawing together lest a rush on us were planned. But beyond a few men slain in the street we saw nothing till we came to the gate of the stockade. And that was beaten down, while some Danes and Jomsburgers lay there as they had fallen when this was done.
Jarl Eric, Hakon's eldest son, without suspicion of art-magic, but already a distinguished viking, became thrice distinguished by his style of sea-fighting in this battle; and awakened great expectations in the viking public; of him we shall hear again. The Jomsburgers, one might fancy, after this sad clap went visibly down in the world; but the fact is not altogether so.
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