We stumbled back now along either gunwale, over the bodies of friend and foe that cumbered all the deck, and most thickly and in heaps amidships, where our first rush fell.  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.

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.

“What now?” asked Thormod.  “There are more of these men in the town.  Here have I been keeping them back from the ship.”

“Let us go up to the hall,” I answered.  “We could find our way in the dark, and they cannot tell where they are in this fog.”

So I and my men climbed on to the wharf, and there were the rest of the crew with Thormod, who had crossed the decks as we cleared a passage, even as the fog came down, and had driven the rest of the Jomsburgers away from the landing place before they could join those in the ship.  Well for us it was that he had done this, or we should have been overborne by numbers, for the ship was a large one, carrying maybe seven score men.

“We must leave your tired men with the ship and go carefully,” said Thormod.  “Likely enough we shall have another fight.”

We marched up the well-known street four abreast, and as we left the waterside the fog was thinner, so that we could see the houses on either side of the way well enough.  And as we went we were joined by many of Ingvar’s people, old men and boys mostly, who had been left at home when the fleet sailed.  And they told us that the Jomsburg men were round the great house itself.

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.

Now when we saw this I know not which was the stronger, rage or surprise, and I called one of the old men.

“Where is the king?” I asked.

“He is not in the town,” he said; “he is away with his own courtmen, fighting against these pirates for Jarl Swend, who is beset by them.”

Now it was plain that this ship came from that place; either beaten off, or knowing that Ingvar’s haven lay open to attack while his men were away thus.  And a greater fear than any came over me.