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.