"Have they no watch kept?" asked Olaf wondering.
"None, master."
"Are there Danes with them?"
"Aye; half are Danes. But I met one of them last night and spoke to him peacefully, being stronger than he, and I said that vikings had come to Pevensea, and that the earl was minding them. So they fear no one."
Then came a herdsman's call from the woods beyond the village, and the smith said:
"That is the thane. Fall on, master, and fear nought."
Whereat I laughed, and the men sprang up. The smith led us for a hundred paces through the beech trees and then across the brook, and the steep slope up to the village was before us. There was a little, ancient earthwork of no account round the place, but if there had been a stockade on it, it was gone.
Then came a roar of yells and shouts from the far side, and we knew that the work had begun, and ran up the hillside. Then fled a man in chain mail out of the place, leaping over the earthworks straight at us, unknowing.
Spray the smith swung his hammer, not heeding at all the sword in the man's hands. Sword and helm alike shivered under the blow, and the man rolled over and over down the hillside.
"That is the first Dane I ever slew," said Spray to me as we topped the ridge.