sprawling on the ice. So soon as Sture could be extricated, he was found to have received an ugly wound upon the thigh. His followers bore him bleeding from the field, and hastened with his lacerated body to the north. But the battle was not yet over. Long and hot it raged about the fortress on the ice. Twice the Danish troops made a mad assault, and after heavy losses were repulsed. At last, however, their heavy catapults began to tell. The sides of the bulwark weakened, and the Danish army by a vigorous onslaught burst open a passage, and put the Swedish infantry to the sword. This victory was followed by a night of riot, the Swedes thus gaining time to collect the scattered remnants of their army. With a single impulse, though without a leader, they fled across the marshy meadows of Vestergötland to the north. Their goal was Tiveden, a dreary jungle of stunted pines and underbrush, through which it was expected the enemy would have to pass. Here after two days' march they gathered, and threw up a mighty barrier of felled trees and brushwood, thinking in that way to impede the passage of the Danes. All about them the land, though not mountainous, was rough and rugged in the extreme, huge bowlders and fragments of rock lying about on every side. In spots the undergrowth was wanting, but its place was generally filled by little lakes and bogs, quite as difficult to traverse as the forest. In this region the patriots collected, and with undaunted spirit once more awaited the coming of the Danes. Again they were not disappointed. The Danish army, recovering from its night of revelry, proceeded on the track of the fugitives, stormed their barrier, and on the 1st of February put them once more to flight. This done, the invaders pressed forward, burning, robbing, murdering, and affixing bans to every church door, till they arrived at Vesterås.[38]