Russians except Olmar and Dag had fallen in battle. (b) He also ordered the Russians to conduct their warfare in imitation of the Danes, and never to marry a wife without buying her.  He thought that bought marriages would have more security, believing that the troth which was sealed with a price was the safest. (d) Moreover, anyone who durst attempt the violation of a virgin was to be punished with the severance of his bodily parts, or else to requite the wrong of his intercourse with a thousand talents. (e) He also enacted that any man that applied himself to war, who aspired to the title of tried soldier, should attack a single man, should stand the attack of two, should only withdraw his foot a little to avoid three, but should not blush to flee from four. (f) He also proclaimed that a new custom concerning the pay of the soldiers should be observed by the princes under his sway.  He ordered that each native soldier and housecarl should be presented in the winter season with three marks of silver, a common or hired soldier with two, a private soldier who had finished his service with only one.  By this law he did injustice to valour, reckoning the rank of the soldiers and not their courage; and he was open to the charge of error in the matter, because he set familiar acquaintance above desert.

After this the king asked Erik whether the army of the Huns was as large as the forces of Olmar, and Erik answered in the following song: 

“By Hercules, I came on a countless throng, a throng that neither earth nor wave could hold.  Thick flared all their camp-fires, and the whole wood blazed up; the flame betokened a numberless array.  The earth sank under the fraying of the horse-hoofs; creaking waggons rattled swiftly.  The wheels rumbled, the driver rode upon the winds, so that the chariots sounded like thunder.  The earth hardly bore the throngs of men-at-arms, speeding on confusedly; they trod it, but it could not bear their weight.  I thought that the air crashed and the earth was shaken, so mighty was the motion of the stranger army.  For I saw fifteen standards flickering at once; each of them had a hundred lesser standards, and after each of these could have been seen twenty; and the captains in their order were equal in number to the standards.”

Now when Frode asked wherewithal he was to resist so many, Erik instructed him that he must return home and suffer the enemy first to perish of their own hugeness.  His counsel was obeyed, the advice being approved as heartily as it was uttered.  But the Huns went on through pathless deserts, and, finding provisions nowhere, began to run the risk of general starvation; for it was a huge and swampy district, and nothing could be found to relieve their want.  At last, when the beasts of burden had been cut down and eaten, they began to scatter, lacking carriages as much as food.  Now their straying from the road was as perilous to them as their hunger.  Neither horses nor asses were spared, nor did they refrain