animals and growl and work up to it, believing they were sucking up the strength and speed of the skins they wore. It was said that others licked the strange slime off the backs of toads, or drank bog myrtle brews, but I had not seen any of that myself.
Let them do what they will, we had agreed, for every minute we held them at the bridge was a stride or two more for Botolf and Toki.
‘I say the boar will get to it first,’ Finn growled at me, without looking away from his man. ‘An ounce of silver says he will go piggy-eyed and charge before any of the others.’
I should have taken his bet, for it was the wolf-skin who reached his power first, throwing back his head and howling it out — then he came at me, all blinding hand-speed and fast shuffle, so that I fell back a little and heard the blades score down my shield and shriek off the boss. All I could manage in return was a half-hearted wave of my blade, then he was bounding back, crouching and boring in again.
Like a wolf, I thought. He attacks, low and fast, trying for the soft spots, trying to disable and bring me down like a bull elk…but you needed a pack for that. One was not enough and I cut him badly on his third attack and he bounced back, looked at his forearm and shook his head, grinning with foam-smoked lips. There was no blood and no pain — and no focus in his mad eyes when he came at me again.
There were clangs and grunts and yells from my left but I dared not look — but a flicker on my right made me half-turn my head; Stenvast slid past me and, for a moment, I thought he was going to take me from behind and felt a shriek of terror at the thought of two of them. Then Guthrum slithered in again, blades whirling and I had to block and cut and dance with him.
‘Finn…’
It was a stupid, desperate call and might have been the death of Finn if he had been a lesser fighter — but he did not turn his head, simply cursed and yelled back that he was a little busy at the moment. Stenvast vanished over the bridge and up the trail.
Guthrum howled and leaped and bounced and I cut back at him when I could, but knew the best I could do was hang on and not let him kill me. My breath rasped and wheezed loud in my ears under the helmet; a blade scored the ringmail sleeve of my sword-arm, another spanged off the hilt of my sword.
He bored in again, a high cut that I barely blocked with the shield; it sliced slivers off the edge and scored along under the rim of my helmet above one eye, so that I saw, for a glimmering moment, the pits in the blade- metal and the change in colour where core met cutting edge. I stumbled back, felt the coping stones of the parapet on the backs of my thighs and twisted desperately to one side, not wanting to go over.
There was a great, soft roaring in my ears and the world went black, then red. I felt a blow on my belly, thought to myself, well, there is the soup-wound, no pain yet but here it comes, the death and the offering to Odin, make it quick, One-Eye…
Light flashed, red-smeared. A great, filthy finger poked me in the eye and Finn’s face loomed, streaked with sweated rust from under his helmet. The hand came again, with a rag in it, and he wiped my face.
‘Nasty wee cut, Bear Slayer. Lots of blood, but no real damage. Good scar, though, which will make women swoon and men back off.’
I struggled upright. Finn handed me the blood-soaked rag and sank down on one knee; one sleeve was bloody at the forearm and three men were dead behind him.
‘What?’ I said, shaking the red mist from my eyes and the inside of my head.
‘Aye, all dead,’ Finn answered cheerfully. ‘That wolf man included, unless he can survive a long drop and a dookin in the river below us. Neat trick that, Bear Slayer — I thought he had you until you turned him off the bridge.’
I blinked and got up on shaky legs, looking round.
‘I did not turn him,’ I said. ‘At least, I did not mean to. At least, I do not think I meant to.’
‘Do not fash,’ Finn replied, getting off his knee and wincing as he did so, holding his ribs.
‘He got you one then,’ I noted and Finn snorted.
‘Not that bladder Ingimund — I killed him in a heartbeat, but then had to knock his legs out from under him, which is the way of these mouth-frothers. No, it was those goat-fucking spearmen who caused me trouble.’
I did not doubt it; two spearmen who knew the work, acting together on a single enemy, was the worst thing a warrior could face — other than an archer in a place too high to reach.
‘Aye,’ Finn agreed, scowling. ‘I took a poke which would have burst me if it had not been for that ringmail. Battle-luck that I was the same size as Red Njal — but, look you, I will have to pay him for it now.’
He stuck fingers in the shredded hole and waggled them; we grinned and then laughed and clasped each other.
Alive. Enemies dead and us alive — Odin had not claimed me yet. I had forgotten that he liked to play with his prey, like a cat does. I felt my legs shake then and had to sit; I did not know how Finn felt no fear and said so.
‘I was too afraid even to run,’ I added, half-ashamed, half-defiant, but Finn grinned and clapped me on the shoulder.
‘There,’ he grunted. ‘Now you have the secret of it.’
Too afraid even to run. I looked at him, wondering if it was true, or just Finn being Finn. Then the memory of what had happened on the bridge flooded in, leaping me to my feet.
‘Stenvast,’ I said and Finn scowled.
‘Aye.’
We hirpled off up the trail, leaving the bridge and the dead and the gathering crows. The cut started to bleed again, running with the sweat into my eye and stinging it, so that I had to shake it away in fat, scarlet drops.
It started to rain.
Toki told us what had happened, half-awed by it, half-shaking. We found him right at the top of the headland, where the trail ended on a scarp of rock, like the scalp of a bald man. Once, there had been trees here, but overcutting had taken them and the rain, without the bind of root, had washed away the top soil; what trees were left clung here like stray hairs, gnarled and stunted by the wind.
Beyond, the trail to safety led down into the last stands of thick pine on a slope too steep to cut trees, but it was clear that Botolf and Toki had just started down it when Stenvast came up on them. The way Toki told it, in his wide-eyed child’s way, this giant had appeared, waving a big axe and bellowed at Botolf to stop.
Botolf had handed the bairn to Toki, telling the boy to be fast on his way down. The giant, said Toki, made to cut him off, but Botolf moved to block it.
‘He only had a seax,’ Toki said, then half-sobbed. ‘It was not fair.’
‘What happened then?’ asked Finn, looking round; I knew he searched for bodies, but there were none, which was a puzzle. The rain fell, shroud-soft and silent and the slate-blue fjord was white-capped in the background. The bairn squalled in Toki’s arms and I took it from him.
‘I wanted to go,’ Toki said with a sniff. ‘But I could not move and the goat would not move and the wean was greetin’ fit to burst…’
‘What happened with Botolf and the giant?’ I asked gently, settling down beside him. I pulled the hood of his
‘The giant told Botolf to stand aside and that his name was Stenvast and that he had come for the bairn. Botolf said his name was Botolf and he would not get the bairn and then the giant looked at Botolf a little, sideways, the way Thorgunna looks at Finn sometimes when he has done something unexpected, like fetch the milk unasked. Then he asked if this was the same Botolf, the cripple who had broken the back of Thorbrand Hrafnsson and Botolf said he had snapped the spine of a man, but that Stenvast must be mistaken, for he was no cripple and then the giant…’
He stopped, hiccuped and shivered and I patted him while Finn prowled, scrubbing his beard furiously, which he did when things did not tally up for him.
‘What then?’
Toki scrubbed his red eyes.
‘The Giant Stenvast said to Botolf that he was a man who had come up leg short and blade short against a better one and that he had the brain of a beetle if he had the idea he was going to win this fight. But Botolf grinned
