Mar simply grinned at the provocation. ‘It seems that your Prince Haraldr is the coward.’
‘He has been poisoned and bound and beaten in Neorion!’ shouted Halldor, so that everyone would hear. ‘And he has fought this morning, slime crawler! There is no shame in my appearing as his champion!’ Halldor shoved Mar again. ‘I do not need Odin’s favour to meet you, Hunrodarson.’
Mar shook his head and laughed. ‘He will want to fight me when he learns that I fucked his woman.’ Haraldr’s head snapped and the blood drained from his face. ‘You don’t believe me?’ said Mar. ‘Let me describe the bite I took from her soft breast. She begged me, little Prince. Ask her how she begged me.’ Mar pointed to Haraldr and snorted derisively. ‘He wants to make his woman Queen of Norway. But she is just my whore.’
Haraldr refused to lower his eyes. If he could see Maria again, he would forgive her a thousand men. But he could not forgive himself if he yielded to Mar’s challenge. Were he only Haraldr Nordbrikt, yes. But Haraldr Sigurdarson, King of Norway, could not turn away from this any more than Olaf could have walked away from Stiklestad. And for the first time in all his years of dreaming and yearning, he knew what it was to be a king: always to be in front; always to be the first to accept the consequence of decision, especially when he blundered, even when the men who served him blundered. A king had to be the one man in the world who could say to his people: ‘I hold myself accountable, for my honour and for yours. Always. Not merely when it is easy to do so.’
‘You are a small man, Mar,’ said Haraldr softly. ‘The weapons I choose are one sword, one shield, no replacements.’
Halldor turned to Haraldr. ‘No! We don’t need to do this. You have already won. Let us begin again until we have slaughtered them to a man.’
Haraldr shook his head. ‘I must do this. I fear running again more than any death. I owe the men who have been brave enough to follow Haraldr Nordbrikt at least this much.’ Ulfr stepped forward and nodded at Halldor. Halldor would not yield. Haraldr seized Halldor’s shoulders and looked between him and Ulfr. ‘The last time you seconded me I fought for the right to lead five hundred men. Today I must fight for the right to lead Norway.’
Halldor finally stepped away, his eyes wet. Then he turned and addressed all the Varangians with a flat, implacable statement. ‘The tale that Haraldr Sigurdarson was a coward is a lie.’
Mar unsheathed his magnificent engraved blade and examined it in the sun. Then he slammed his sword against his shield and Haraldr turned to meet him. Haraldr knew he would be able to make but one savage assault with all his remaining strength. He closed with no preliminaries and pounded Mar’s shield to kindling amid a gale of cheers. Mar countered deftly, and moments later Haraldr tossed aside the useless, rattling frame of his own shield. The energy-sapping, screeching quarrel of blade on blade quickly drained his exhausted shoulders, and yet Mar still could not overpower him. Haraldr had expected no reprieve from Odin, but he thanked the one-eyed god for today withholding his favour from the craven Mar.
Haraldr allowed Mar to drive him in a continuous, circling retreat; he hoped to tire him. Finally Haraldr broke and turned and leapt to the ell-wide wooden catwalk that ran along the ridge of the peaked roof of the Imperial seating pavilion. He walked steadily backwards, to the very end of the precarious walkway. The tiled roof sloped away to the stone seats fifty ells below. Mar looked down and hesitated. Then he advanced carefully. Haraldr swayed and looked over his shoulder at the drop. He was certain he was losing his balance and he deliberately lunged forward so that he would not topple backward to his death. His chest slapped to the catwalk and he clutched for his life. He realized he had lost both his nerve and his sword.
Haraldr’s sword distantly rang against the steps. Mar walked steadily forward, to the accompaniment of a gentle, evil laugh. He came close enough to sever the neck so neatly presented on this lofty scaffold. ‘Norway,’ said Mar, ‘this is a fitting end to you. Nose to the ground.’ He lifted his sword. ‘Odin spits on you, little coward. . . .’
Haraldr’s arm swiped out and caught Mar’s boot, and Mar’s blade whirred past his face. Mar lifted a leg and milled his arms in a desperate effort to adjust his balance. He pitched sideways and Haraldr was able to raise himself to a crouch.
He had time to nod knowingly to the astonished blue eyes before Mar fell on his back, onto the tiles, and began sliding to the cornice of the roof. Now Mar’s sword chinged against the stone below. His legs were already over the cornice before he was able to turn onto his stomach. His momentum continued to pull him down. His icy eyes glimmered as his head disappeared. His huge hands clutched for the cornice. His hands did not disappear. Mar clung to the lip of the cornice like a strange human banner, arms outstretched, his entire body suspended in the void.
Haraldr knelt on the catwalk and waited. He glanced to the north and saw that the Blue Star’s army had captured the highest tiers of the stadium; the seats beneath held an audience of corpses. Down on the track the guildsmen, in neat ranks, spear shafts held high, began entering to reinforce the push into the palace. They shouted their improvised oaths for a while and then grew silent as they turned their attention to the curious drama high above them. Haraldr could hear his own steady exhalations. Eventually every head in the stadium was directed to the roof of the Imperial seating pavilion. And still Mar’s hands did not move from the cornice.
The sound was like no human sound: the last dragon, its black entrails ripped out so that the corpses it had devoured could bellow their dying rage. Mar’s hands flexed and his knuckles surged. Haraldr watched as the head, no longer Mar’s but the wolf’s, the dragon’s, his complexion as dark as a dead man’s blood, rose slowly above the cornice. Mar’s mighty arms propelled his entire torso above the roof-line. He swung his leg over the cornice. The demon had climbed back from the abyss, and the favour of Odin was on his face.
Haraldr was beyond terror. Mar’s eyes had turned red, as if washed in blood. Haraldr was drawn to them with dreadful fascination, lured as he had been by Abelas. Mar was a destiny that could not be killed.
‘Jump!’ growled Mar in the spitting voice of the beast. ‘Jump before I tear out your throat with my teeth. Jump.’ Mar crawled slowly up the perilous tiled incline, as if now even gravity was subject to his Rage. He was almost able to reach out and grab the catwalk when he began to slip back again.
‘No! No!’ bellowed Halldor. He watched in horror as Haraldr extended his hand to Mar. Fighting broke out as Mar’s men blocked Halldor and Ulfr from reaching the catwalk.
Mar’s grip was like a thunderbolt, and Haraldr knew that Odin had sent Mar back to settle the question he could not live, or die, without answering. He pulled Mar up to the catwalk. They both rose from their crouch. Mar stood an ell away and his breath was as foul as the slime of a carrion eater. His entire face twitched, as if hundreds of strings had been attached to his skin by some demonic puppet master. His trembling hands reached for Haraldr’s neck.
At the coldest, infinite core of his being, Haraldr acknowledged the bargain he had long ago made with fate. He lunged for Mar, clutched his arms around his byrnnied girth, and lifted him off his feet. Mar’s hands clamped Haraldr’s throat and his windpipe collapsed, and he knew that he would not breathe again in the middle realm until he and Mar had settled what lay between them deep in the spirit world.
For an immeasurable heartbeat there was a profound-stillness as the two Berserks’ flesh met on a plane where flesh did not exist. Haraldr was in the darkness entirely; he could not even see the black flame blasting him to numbness. He only knew that he at last held the dragon in his arms, could feel the huge, scaled beast throttling the last surge of life from his desperate, pumping neck.
The Varangians watched in awe as the two giant Berserks danced death, their faces purple, their eyes blooded with Odin’s insane favour. Mar’s head arched back with the mad force of his grip, and Haraldr’s knees sagged. And then a crack, a hideous, muffled, mortal crack, the sound of will and bone breaking in concert. Mar’s face instantly blanched and his hands fell from Haraldr’s neck. His head lolled and he went limp. His back had been snapped like a twig.
Haraldr felt the dragon burst into pure light. He held that light for a moment, as if embracing a dead comrade, and then flung Mar out into the void. He watched the body fall away like some fading vision in a dream. Mar hit the stone seats far below with a wet, melon-splitting sound.
Haraldr walked off the catwalk. The faces of Halldor and Ulfr were as chalky and wondering as Mar’s dying visage. ‘Who is in command now?’ shouted Haraldr to Mar’s men. Gris Knutson came forward, his eyes frightened, vacant.
Haraldr jerked Knutson up by the collar of his byrnnie; Knutson’s feet barely grazed the pavement, and his legs fluttered like a hanged man’s. ‘This is over,’ growled Haraldr, his voice still from the spirit world. ‘Disarm your survivors and take them north on the next tide. And tell the Northlands that the King of Norway is coming home, and that he will sate the ravens with his vengeance.’
