And these were an ill-favoured crew, I can tell you, past masters of robbery, pillage, and murder, such as it is not good to meet at too close quarters.
II. Of Dirk, called the Crow.
This family were issue by direct line of Dirk, the first of the Halewyns, to whom was given the name of the Crow, because he was as greedy of booty as a crow is of carrion.
And also because he was clad all in black, and his men with him.
This Dirk, who lived in the time of the great wars, was like a thunderbolt in battle, where, with his only weapon, a heavy club, furnished with a beak at one side, he broke javelins, splintered lances, and tore away mail as if it had been cloth; and no one could well resist his onslaught. And in this manner he so frightened his enemies that when they saw Dirk and his black soldiers bearing down upon them, shouting, yelling, without fear of any one, and in great number, they gave themselves up for dead before ever battle was joined.
When victory was won and the more important booty divided (whereof Dirk always secured the lion’s share and never came off badly), the other barons and their knights would leave the rest of the field to him and his followers, and would go off, saying: “The pieces are for the crow.”
No other man-at-arms would dare to stay behind then, or he would have been quickly taken and slain without waiting. And thereafter Dirk’s men would begin to play the crow in earnest; cutting off fingers to get the rings on them, even of those not yet dead, who cried out to them for succour; chopping off heads and arms so that they might pull away clothes the more easily. And they even fought amongst themselves, and sometimes killed one another, over the bodies of the dead, for the sake of neck-pieces, straps of hide, or more paltry stuff still.
And stayed sometimes on the battlefield over this business three days and three nights.
When all the dead were stark naked they piled up their gains into carts which they brought for this purpose.