Sigurd Slembe about this time returned from the West, and made cruises against the pirates in Vendland, and occasionally harried the coasts of Norway. In the fall of 1139 Sigurd Slembe and Magnus the Blind came up to Norway from Denmark with thirty ships manned by Danes and Northmen. They met the fleet of kings Sigurd and Inge at Holmengraa (the gray holm), where a battle was fought. After the first assault, the Danes fled home to Denmark with eighteen ships, and thus Sigurd had to fight against a greatly superior force. One after another of his ships was cleared. The blind and crippled Magnus lay in his bed and could do nothing to defend himself. When his ship was almost entirely bare of men, his old and faithful court-man, Reidar Griotgardson, took King Magnus in his arms and tried to leap over to another ship with him. But just then he was struck between his shoulders by a spear, which went through him and also killed King Magnus. Reidar fell backward on the deck and Magnus upon him. Everybody afterward spoke of how honorably he had followed his master and rightful sovereign. "Happy are they who are given such praise after death," adds the writer of the saga. Sigurd Slembe leaped overboard and would probably have escaped, if he had not been betrayed by one of his own men. He was captured and put to death with the most horrible tortures. The men who took upon themselves to kill him, and who had personal grievances to avenge, broke his shin-bones and arms with an axe-hammer. Then they stripped him and flogged him, broke his back, and finally hanged him. He bore the tortures with great fortitude. He never moved and never altered his voice, but spoke in a natural tone until he gave up the ghost, occasionally singing hymns. Sigurd's friends afterward came from Denmark for his body, took it with them and interred it in Mary Church in Aalborg. When Sigurd was dead, it was acknowledged by all, both enemies and friends, that he was the most remarkable and most gifted man that had lived in Norway within memory of anybody living; "but in some respects he was an unlucky man," says the saga. Magnus the Blind was twenty-five years old when he fell. Thiostolf Aaleson transported his body to Oslo and buried it in St. Halvard's Church, beside King Sigurd, his father.