Stéfan and Geirard

The robbers were more like savage beasts than men, and lived somewhere on the mountainside in caves and holes in the ground. The robbers' band was called 'Hankur' and their chief was known as Hankur the Tall. All this and more rushed into the minds of the two young men as they saw the flash of swords in the moonlight.

"It's impossible to fight them - they are twelve to two!" whispered Geirald, stopping his horse in the path. "'We had better ride back and take the lower road. It would be stupid to throw away our lives like this."

"Oh, we can't turn back," answered St�fan, "we would be ashamed to look anyone in the face again! And, besides, imagine if we could teach those robbers a lesson. Let's tie our horses here, and climb up the rocks so that we can roll stones down on them."

"Well, we might try that, and then we could always return to our horses," said Geirald. Silently and carefully, they climbed the rocks.

The robbers were indeed waiting, expecting every moment to see their victims coming round the corner a few yards away. Suddenly, a shower of huge stones fell on their heads. Dazed, the Hankur band was not difficult for St�fan and Geirald to defeat. St�fan wrestled in hand-to-hand combat with chief Hankur the Tall himself, finally defeating him, too. Then St�fan took from Hankur the Tall a beautiful ring set with a large stone, and put it on his own finger.

The fame of this wonderful deed soon spread through the country.

In a few days, they left that kingdom and rode on to another, where they thought they would stop through the remainder of the winter, for Geirald liked to be comfortable and did not care for traveling about through ice and snow. But the king would only grant them permission to stay on one condition: Before the winter was ended, that they should give him some fresh proof of the courage of which he had heard so much. St�fan's heart was glad at the king's message.