Free The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson

top. Along the inside of the stockade there ran a wooden bridge, for bowmen to stand on. Krok and his followers jumped down on to this, encountering some men, armed with bows and spears and still drowsy with sleep, who ran out to intercept them, and cut them down. By this time they were being assailed with arrows from the ground, and two of them were hit, but Krok and the others ran along the bridge to the gate, and there dropped down to the ground, in the hope of being able to open it from within and thus admit the rest of their comrades. Hard fighting ensued, however, for many of the defenders of the fortress had already run to defend the gate, and reinforcements were coming to their aid with every minute that passed. One of the twenty men who had followed Krok up the ladder was hanging from the stockade with an arrow in his eye, and three others had been hit in their passage along the bridge; but all those who had managed to reach the ground safely packed themselves together in a tight phalanx and, raising their battle-cry, fought their way with spear and sword to the gate. Here it was very dark, and they found themselves hard pressed indeed, with enemies behind as well as in front of them.
    Then they heard their battle-cry answered from without, for the men waiting on the hillside had run forward to the rampart as soon as they had seen that the attempt to scale the stockade had succeeded, and many of them were hacking at the gate with their axes, while others clambered up Toke’s ladder and dropped down inside the fortress to assist their companions who were fighting within the gate. There the strife was fierce and chaotic, friends and foes hardly knowing which was which. Krok felled several men with his ax, but was himself then struck on the side of the neck with a club wielded by a huge man with a black, plaited beard, who appeared to be the defenders' chieftain. Krok’s helmet partially parried the force of the blow, but he staggered and fell on his knees. At length Toke and Orm succeeded in fighting their way through a tangle of men and shields, so tightly packed that it was impossible to use a spear, with the ground so greasy with blood that their feet several times all but went from under them, and managed to draw the bolts of the gate. Their comrades poured in to join them, and such of the defenders in the gateway as did not flee were overwhelmed and slaughtered.
    Then a terrible panic descended on the Christians, and they fled with death snarling at their heels. Solomon, who had been among the first to break in through the gate, charged ahead of the Vikings like a fanatic, stumbling over the bodies of the slain. Seizing a sword that lay on the ground and whirling it above his head, he shrieked to his companions through the uproar, bidding them all make haste to the citadel. Krok, who was still dazed from the blow that had felled him and was unable to regain his feet, cried to them from where he lay in the gateway to follow the Jew. Many of the Vikings ran into the houses that lined the inside of the rampart to slake their thirst or to look for women; but the majority of them pursued the fleeing defenders to the great citadel that stood in the center of the fortress. The gate of the citadel was crowded with Christians trying to get in, but before it could be closed, their pursuers swarmed in among them, so that fighting broke out again within the citadel; for the Christians saw that they had no option but to defend themselves. The big man with the plaited beard fought bravely, felling two men who attacked him, but at length he was forced into a corner and sustained blows that brought him to his knees, sorely wounded. On seeing him fall, Solomon rushed forward and threw himself upon him, seizing him by the beard and spitting on him and slobbering like a drunken man; but the bearded man stared at him as though uncomprehendingly, rolled over on his side, closed his eyes, and so died.
    Seeing this, Solomon broke into