“Halt!” cried Havelok, but they did not stay. “Stand clear!” he shouted in the sailor’s way.
And then he swung the stone and let it go, while those who watched fled back as if it was cast at them. Down is crashed on the attackers, felling the man whom it struck, and dashing the timber from the grasp of the others, so that one fell with it across his leg and lay howling, while the rest gathered themselves up and got away from under the tower as soon as they might.
Now no man dared to come forward, and that angered Havelok.
“Are you going to let these two bide there?” he said. “Pick the poor knaves from under the stone and timber, and see to them.”
But they hung back yet, and he called them “nidring.”
Thereat two or three made a step forward, and one said, “Lord, let us do as you bid us, and harm us not.”
“You are safe,” he answered, and Biorn laughed and said that this was the most wholesome word that he had heard tonight.
“Lord, forsooth! Mighty little of that was there five minutes ago.”
But it was not the terrible stone throwing only that wrung this from them, as I think. They had seen Havelok in his arms, with the light of battle on his face in the broad moonlight, and knew him for a king among men.
They took the hurt men from under the tower, and then crowded together, watching us. And some man must needs loose an arrow at us, and it rang on my mail, and that let loose the crowd again. Soon we had to shelter under the battlement, but they were not able to lodge any arrows among us, for that is a bit of skill that needs daylight. Then they dared to get to the timber once more, and we saw them coming.