ABOVE: Two brethren take up arms and put their shoulders to the door, holding it shut against the raiders.
ABOVE: The infuriated Danes batter the door down and slaughter the two monks. Two more, preparing to persuade the raiders off the error of their ways, run for their lives.
ABOVE: Bishop Haggertius, his scribe, and several monks bearing the monastery's most impressive relics hope to overawe the pagans with the sacred items and the majesty of the bishop's vestments. Instead they face fleeing monks pursued by loot-hungry Danes. However Cenwig and his men have arrived and make their way into the vestibule.
ABOVE: The Danes fling open the door into the refectory; bishop Haggertius displays his bishop's ring and raises his crozier. The first raider through the door is Thorfinn of Dublin, who without a pause runs at the bishop and decapitates him with a single blow.
ABOVE: As Thorfinn and a few others ransack the monastery, breaking furniture and slaughtering monks, the other Danes hold off the Saxons in the vestibule. A fierce fight swings first one way then the other.
ABOVE: As the fallen pile up the leader of the raiders, one Brand Hallsson, and his son Ragni are in the thick of the fighting. Ragni is struck down and his father throws himself into the fight as if to seek death. He encounters the Saxon leader thegn Cenwig and knocks him to the ground; he then runs him through as he lies prone. The remaining Saxons flee. Ragni later recovers, having been struck on the head by the haft rather than the blade of a Saxon axe.
Editor's note:
There is no clear evidence as to whether Abbot Haggertius is related in any way to this much more recent man of the cloth:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/11948832.Minister_jailed_on_indecency_charges/
Chapter I, in which the Danes and Saxons clash in the streets of Eoferwic.
http://www.spodilicious.com/dark-ages-skirmish-chapter-1.html
Chapter II, in which despite the flight of their earl the Saxons slay jarl Ragnar.
http://www.spodilicious.com/dark-ages-skirmish-chapter-2.html
Chapter III, in which the Danes pillage the monastery of Saint John Thomas.
http://www.spodilicious.com/dark-ages-skirmish-chapter-3.html
