“
“Then if you won't—let one of your men fight him. Pick the youngest. Let a boy fight a boy. If your man wins I'll give him this.” Ivar plucked a silver ring from his arm, threw it in the air, replaced it. “Step back and give them room. Let the women watch as well. No rules, no surrender,” he added, teeth flashing in a chill and humorless smile. “To the death.”
Seconds later Shef found himself staring once more into Godive's eyes, round now with terror. She stood at the front of a ring, two-deep, women's clothes intermixed with bright saffron plaids, and scattered through them also the scarlet cloaks and gold armrings of jarls and champions, the aristocracy of the Viking army. In the midst of them Shef caught sight of a familiar figure, the giant frame of Killer-Brand. On impulse Shef stepped over to him as the others prepared his opponent for battle on the far side of the ring.
“Sir. Lend me your amulet. I will return it—if I can.”
Impassively the champion pulled it over his head and handed it over. “Kick your shoes off, lad. Ground's slippery.”
Shef took the advice. He was beginning, consciously, to breathe hard. He had been in many wrestling matches and had learned that it would prevent that momentary stillness, the unreadiness to fight that looked like fear. He peeled his shirt off too, donned the hammer amulet, drew his sword and threw the sheath and belt aside. It was a big ring, he thought. Speed would have to do it.
His enemy was coming out of his corner, plaid also thrown aside, stripped like Shef to his breeches. In one hand he held the longsword of the Gaddgedlar, thinner than the usual broadsword but a foot longer. In the other hand he had the same spiked targe as his fellows. A helmet was pulled down over his braided hair. He did not look much older than Shef, and in a wrestle Shef would not have feared him. But he had the longsword, the shield, a weapon in each hand. He was a warrior who had seen battle, fought in a dozen skirmishes.
From somewhere outside him, an image formed in Shef's mind. He heard again the solemn voice of Thorvin chanting. He stooped, picked a twig from the ground, threw it over his adversary's head like a javelin. “I give you to Hell,” he called. “I give you to Dead Man's Strand.”
A buzz of interest rose from the crowd, cries of encouragement: “Go on, Flann boy!” “Get him with your buckler!”
No voice encouraged Shef.
The Irish Norseman padded forward—then attacked swiftly. He feinted a thrust at Shef's face, turned it into a sideways backhand slash, aimed at the neck. Shef ducked under it, stepped away to his right, dodged the thrust with the spiked buckler. The Viking paced forward, swung again, backhand up, forehand down. Again Shef stepped back, feinted to step right, stepped left again. For an instant he was to his adversary's side, with a thrust possible at the bare right shoulder. He leapt back instead and moved rapidly to the center of the ring. He had already decided what to do, and he felt his body answering perfectly, light as a feather, buoyed up by a force that swelled his lungs and raced the blood through his veins. He remembered for an instant the way that Sigvarth's sword had broken and the fierce joy that had filled him.
Flann the Irishman came in again, swinging the sword faster and faster, trying to box Shef in against the bodies of the ring. He was quick. But he was used to men standing up to him to trade blows and catching them on blade or buckler. He did not know how to deal with an opponent who simply tried to avoid him. Shef jumped a wide sweep at knee level and saw that the Irishman was beginning to pant already. The Viking Army was made of sailors and horsemen, strong in the arm and shoulder, but men who walked little, and ran even less.
The shouting in the background was getting angry as the watchers grasped Shef's tactic. They might start to close in and narrow the ring. As Flann tried his favorite backhand sweep downward—a little slower now, a little too predictable—Shef stepped forward for the first time and parried fiercely, aiming the base of his thick blade at the tip of the longsword. No snap. But as the Irishman hesitated, Shef slashed out of the parry at the back of the other man's arm—a quick spurt of blood.
Shef was out of reach again, refusing to follow up his advantage, circling to his right, changing step as the other man advanced and then moving to his left again. He had seen the momentary shock in the warrior's eyes. Now there was blood running down over Flann's sword-hand, quite a lot of it, enough to weaken him in a few minutes if he did not finish things quickly.
For a hundred heartbeats they stood close to the center of the ring, Flann trying now to thrust as well as cut, stabbing out with his buckler; Shef parrying as well as dodging, trying to knock the sword from his enemy's blood-smeared hand.
Then Shef felt, suddenly, the confidence draining from his enemy's blows. Shef began to move again, springing on tireless feet, circling his opponent, moving always to the left, trying to get behind the other's sword- arm, careless of the energy he expended.
Flann's breath came almost as a sob. He hurled the buckler at Shef's face and followed it with a ripping upward stab. But Shef was in a crouch, knuckles of his sword-hand on the ground. His parry deflected the thrust far over his left shoulder. In an instant Shef straightened and drove his own sword deep beneath the naked, sweating ribs. As the stricken man shuddered and staggered away, Shef seized him in a wrestler's grip round the neck and poised his sword again.
Shef heard through the yelling the voice of Killer-Brand. “You gave him to Nastrond,” it shouted. “You must finish him.”
Shef looked down at the pallid, terror-stricken, still-living face in the crook of his arm, and felt a surge of fury. He drove the sword deeply home through the chest and felt the pain of death leap through Flann's body. Slowly, he dropped the corpse, retrieved his sword. Saw Muirtach's face, pale with rage. He stepped over to Ivar, where he stood with Godive now at his side.
“Most instructive,” said Ivar. “I like to see someone who can fight with his head as well as his sword-arm. You have saved me a silver ring too. But you have cost me a man. How are you going to pay me back?”
“I am a man as well, lord.”
“Join my ships, then. You will do as a rower. But not with Muirtach. Come to my tent this evening and my marshal will find you a place.”
Ivar looked down for a moment, considering. “There is a notch on your blade. I did not see Flann put it there. Whose blade was it?”
Shef hesitated an instant. But with these men the bold course was always wisest. He spoke loudly, challengingly. “It was the sword of Sigvarth Jarl!”
Ivar's face tightened. “Well,” he said, “this is no way to wash women or sheets. Let us be on our way.” He turned, pulling Godive with him, though for an instant her face remained fixed, looking agonizedly at Shef.
Shef found himself staring up at the bulk of Viga-Brand. He slowly pulled off the amulet.
Brand weighed it in his hand. “Normally I would say keep it, boy, you earned it. If you live you will be a champion one day; I say it, Brand, champion of the men of Halogaland.
“But something tells me the hammer of Thor is not the right sign for you, smith though you are. I think you are a man of Othin, who is called also Bileyg, and Baleyg, and Bolverk.”
“Bolverk?” said Shef. “And am I a doer of evil, a bale-worker?”
“Not yet. But you may be the instrument of one who is. Bale follows you.” The big man shook his head. “But you did well today, for a beginner. Your first kill, I believe, and I am talking like a spaewife. Look, they have taken his body, but they have left the sword and shield and helmet. They are yours. It is the custom.” He spoke like one setting a test.
Slowly Shef shook his head. “I cannot profit from one I gave to Nastrond, to Dead Man's Strand.” He picked up the helmet, threw it into the muddy water of the stream, hurled the buckler up into a bush, put his foot on the long thin sword, bent it once, twice, into unusability, left it lying.
“You see,” said Brand. “Thorvin never taught you to do that. That is the sign of Othin.”
Chapter Seven
Thorvin showed no surprise when Shef returned to the smithy and told him what had happened. He grunted a little wearily when Shef finally told him that he would be joining the contingent of Ivar, but said only, “Well, you'd
