Vigfus stepped forward, splendid in gilded mail and a marvellous helmet that had been new for his great- grandfather, which covered the whole face save for the mouth and eyes and had gilded eyebrows and two huge raven feathers.
Behind and on either side were his men, desperate-grim and hefting their axes and swords and spears.
There was only one sure way out of that room and that was to go through us and there were not nearly enough of them for that.
Someone flitted past me, back up the stairs and I almost followed, thinking we were well out of it—then I saw it was Bagnose, heading back to the opening, which lay above the room, nocking an arrow as he went.
Steinthor, I presumed, was already there.
I suppose,' Vigfus said, scowling, 'there is no bargaining here.'
`None,' replied Einar with a twisted smile.
One to one to settle this, winner lets the others go?'
Einar shook his head, chuckling. 'What—and let all this planning go to waste? How does it feel, Quite the Dandy, ladies' man, to have been so trapped by my lady?'
Vigfus narrowed his eyes at the full import of what had been said. His men looked anxiously from one to the other.
If she is your lady,' Vigfus snarled, 'I wish you well of her. You pair are suited. Personally, I found her a poor, cold, dry hump but she seemed to want more, so I let my lads have a go. Most preferred to find a goat.'
Some of his men chuckled. Most, realising that that poor, cold, dry hump was what had led them to this wyrd, were less amused.
Enough talk,' said Einar coldly and snaked forward. An arrow hissed from the opening above and one of Vigfus's men screeched and plucked at the shaft through both sides of his neck. Men closed, steel crashed, shields whumped under blows.
I was cautious, I ganged up with old Wryneck on one man and, between us, we cut him down in a flurry of blows, me hacking deep scores in his arms and one calf, Wryneck battering lumps off his head and swearing.
Another hurtled out of the darkness at us and I twisted to face him. Pain sprang from my ankle and I grunted and stopped. Wryneck clashed with his man and I barely managed to deflect a blow meant for him.
An axe whirred out of nowhere and clattered off Gunnar Raudi's shield. My opponent, black-bearded, screaming, cut a vicious diagonal slash, which I sprang back from. His momentum carried the blow into one of the dead warriors, who exploded in a great eruption of dust and dead insects and toppled sideways. An arrow from above then smacked Black Beard between the shoulder blades, propelling him straight at me, so that he fell on his face and slid to my feet.
His shield smashed into my injured ankle and I went down, sick with the pain of it, dropping sword and shield to clutch the thing, howling. Wryneck, too busy with his own man, never spared me a glance.
Through the sparkling lights of pain in front of my eyes, I saw Einar cut his man down with a swift series of feints and strikes and vicious shield punches. He turned then, to where Gunnar Raudi was trading blows with Vigfus, who scorned a shield and had a boarding axe in one hand and a long seax in the other.
They cut and leaped and spun, elbowing Dengizik's dead men aside with curses. The chamber filled with the dust of old death, the fear-stink and blood of new.
Vigfus was good, too, and I remembered him spidering across rooftops, swinging in and out of shuttered openings, leaping to grab a rope in mid-air. Fast and limber, for all that he had no sense of dress at all.
Twice Gunnar Raudi had almost lost his sword to the boarding axe, Vigfus swirling it round to trap the sword in the curve of its beard, flicking his wrist to lock it, then trying to wrench it out of Gunnar's grasp.
But Vigfus's magnificent helmet was a hindrance and you could see why sensible warriors had given that type up for one with a simple nasal: you couldn't see anything out of the corner of your eye and, in a whirling fight like this, that was suicide.
Gunnar circled. Einar came up behind him and I thought he was moving to Gunnar's sword side, to make it two on one. As he did, Gunnar Raudi stiffened, half turned—and Vigfus's axe hurled round and took him between neck and shoulder, cleaving deep in a splinter of rings and bone and blood.
My scream was lost in the echoing shrieks and yells of the battle. Einar flung himself over Gunnar's body at Vigfus, roaring his challenge, spittle flying. I half stumbled to where Gunnar lay, blood pooling thickly on the dusty floor.
He was gone, already white, barely able to speak. His lips moved in the frosted berry beard, now bright with new, vicious red spilling from his mouth. If he had something to say other than with those frantic eyes, I never heard it. When they glazed over, I closed them.
Vigfus, fingers curling on the wire-wrapped handle of his axe, crabbed sideways, elbowing aside another fighting pair, one of whom aimed a brief, speculative cut at Vigfus as he did so.
In that helmet, he almost missed it, was left off balance and clattered into another of the Oathsworn, who then stumbled into another of those dead warriors, impaling himself on an age-blackened spear.
I have been asked by bright-eyed youngsters who have never fought for their lives with shield and steel what it's like. I never tell them that it is four or five minutes of mad fear and luck, of slashing cuts and savagery, of shit and blood and shrieking.
The sagas tell it better and the one about the battle between Einar and Vigfus would, no doubt, have been memorable for its superior, clever kennings and nobility. Reality was different and vicious.
Einar, snarling, his sword dripping blood, slashed at Vigfus in a flurry of steel and Vigfus danced sideways, raised himself on his toes and swung the axe downwards in a vicious arc, screaming as he did so.
It took Einar's shield just below the rim, a solid pine on pine wheel of wood, and split it lengthwise. With a swift shrug, Einar was out of the straps, both hands on the hilt of his sword and Vigfus, still holding the buried axe, was jerked sideways by the dead weight of the dropped shield.
Too late, he released his grip. Einar's two-handed blow spanged off one side of that helmet, took Vigfus on the top of the left shoulder with the splintering crack of bone and sheared down through mail, bone, flesh and sinew until it popped out of his armpit with a sucking sound and a spray of ruined iron rings.
Vigfus roared, spun away from his falling arm and clapped his remaining hand over the great rush of blood from the stump. The second blow crushed mail rings into his ribs. The third slashed a steak out of his thigh. He went down, bellowing as Einar hacked shreds off him until there was no more noise.
The others of his crew tried to give up, but Hild would not have that. Screeching, hair flying like a Valkyrie, she demanded they all die.
Two of the Dandy's men threw down their weapons and Einar cut them down where they stood with a few swift strokes. After that, the others fought on with the desperate ferocity of the cornered, but it was short and they were all chopped to bloody ruin by packs of Oathsworn.
Then there was silence, save for the pant and gasp of ravaged lungs. Someone was puking, hard and noisy, and the impaled man was growling and yelling as others tried to lever his arm off the spear-point. The iron stink of blood was everywhere; the floor of the tomb was slushed with viscous red mud.
And I sat there in a widening slick of Gunnar Raudi's blood, his head in my lap, watching the other sluggish pool form slowly from the stab wound in his back.
Eight men were dead; twenty-four more had wounds, some of them deep. In the 12 stunned twilight of battle, Ketil Crow and Illugi took me under the armpits and hauled me up and away from Gunnar Raudi.
I let them, numbed by what I thought I knew, never taking my eyes off Einar.
Had he stabbed Gunnar Raudi in the back, hard enough to wound, to distract him?
In that half-light and confusion I turned it over and over and still it vanished like smoke.
In the end, I knew, with a deep, sick feeling, that he had, but there was nothing I could do. He was, I thought with a flush of fear, as fetch-haunted as Hild. And had broken his oath yet again in that mad moment.
Then I kept hearing Gunnar Raudi's warnings and knew, with a nauseating certainty, that I would be next.
None of it would bring Gunnar Raudi back. Illugi and I, working without a word between us while the others bound up wounds and sorted out their gear, cleaned Gunnar Raudi as best we could and laid him out on his back,
