Shouts mingled with shrieks.  Sword, battle-axe, and spear did their deadly work through and above the palisade; arrows rained down from the roof and windows on the assailants, women and boys doing their part in that manner, while the men did theirs with battle-axe and sword on the bulwarks.  In one or two places the palisade threatened to give way, and at last three or four stakes were dragged out in one spot, blow after blow of the axe was spent upon the yielding fabric, and a breach was effected.

The Etheling perceived it, and rushed to the scene just as two or three of the English, less used to arms, were yielding before the ponderous weapons of the Danes.  Throwing himself into the breach, his practised arm made a desert around him.  Of immense muscular strength, his blows came down like the fabled hammer of Thor, crushing helmet and breastplate alike before the well-tempered steel of his favourite weapon.  The foe were driven back, and for one moment he stood in the breach alone.

Then and then only was he recognised.

“The gleeman! the false gleeman the Etheling Edmund!” in various energetic cries, attested his fame, and the hatred of his foes.

“Yes, dogs, ye know me, and the prize ye have to win.  Back, drunkards and cannibals, back to your royal parricide with the gleeman’s greetings, and tell him Hela is waiting for him and his friend the accursed Edric.”

A shower of arrows was the only answer, but they missed the joints, and rattled harmlessly from the well-tempered armour which Edmund wore.  Still the position was critical, and Alfgar, with gentle violence, persuaded him to descend from his perilous position.

Here the attack was foiled, and foiled so decidedly, that the ditch was actually half filled with corpses.  Cries of distress arose from the opposite side, but Edmund’s arm restored the balance there, so great was the influence of one man, and so great the power of physical force in the desperate conflicts of that day.

Foiled at every point, the invaders were driven from the embankment.  It was evident that they had miscalculated the forces of the defenders, and that they had advanced beyond their main body in insufficient strength to take the place by assault.  Could they have supplied the place of the fallen by fresh men, until they had wearied the defenders out, they would have succeeded, but they were evidently not in strength to do this so they slowly yielded, until the deadly struggle ceased, and silence resumed her empire, while the besieged repaired the damage the defences had sustained.

“They have retired,” said Herstan, wiping the sweat from his brow and the blood from his axe.

“Ay,” said Edmund, “they will not now take the place by assault—­they are not more than two to one, considering the losses they have sustained.  They have lost twice as many as we.  If we were a little stronger I would head a sally.