The Hammer and The Cross

Brand slowed to a walk as he saw Ivar standing, one foot on the gunwale of the Lindormr, with six feet of water between the ship and the bank. Ivar was fully dressed, wearing his grass-green breeches and tunic, his mail-coat and silver helmet. He had thrown his scarlet cloak aside, but the polished boss of his shield caught the red light of morning. By his side stood a small man in the black robe of a Christian cleric, a look of horror on his face.

As men on both sides saw the confrontation, fighting finally stopped. The Vikings on both sides, Waymen and Ragnarssons, looked at each other, nodded, accepted that the battle was won and lost. As the English halberdiers, less businesslike in their attitudes, closed in, those Ragnarsson troops still resisting began hastily to throw their weapons down, put themselves under the protection of their former enemies. Then all, English and Norse, Waymen and pirates, faced inward, to see how their leaders would behave. At the rear of the watching ring, Shef struggled and cursed to get through.

Brand checked for a moment, breathing hard with the exertion of ten minutes' desperate struggle. Then he strolled forward toward the gangplank. He raised his right hand, split between two fingers in King Edmund's battle the previous year. He moved the fingers to show how they had healed.

“We had words a while back, Ivar,” he remarked. “I told you you should look after your women better. You did not take my advice. Maybe you don't know how to. But you said when your shoulder was whole you would remember what I said. And I said when my hand was whole I would remind you of it. Well, I have kept my word. Will you keep yours? You look as if you are thinking of sailing away.”

Ivar grinned, showing his even teeth. Deliberately, he drew his sword and threw the decorated scabbard into the Ouse.

“Come and try me,” he said.

“Why don't you come to fight on firm ground? No one will help me. If you win, you will have free passage back to where you stand now.”

Ivar shook his head. “If you are so bold, fight on my ground. Here”—Ivar leapt forward onto the gangplank, took two steps forward—“I will take no advantage. We will both stand on the same plank. Then all can see who gives way first.”

A buzz of interested comment rose as the watching men grasped the situation. At first sight the outcome of the fight looked evident. Brand outweighed Ivar by seventy pounds at least, out-topped him by a head and more, was as skillful and experienced with his weapons. Yet everyone could see the plank flex with one man's weight on it. With two, and one as heavy as Brand, how would the footing feel? Would both men be awkward and clumsy? Or just one? Ivar stood braced, feet as far apart as the plank would allow, sword-arm forward like a fencer, not crouched behind his shield like a warrior in a battle-line.

Slowly Brand walked forward to the end of the plank. He had his great axe in one hand, a small round shield buckled to his forearm. Meditatively he unstrapped it, threw it to the ground, took his axe in both hands. As Shef finally wormed his way gasping to the front, Brand leapt onto the plank, took two paces forward, and lashed suddenly backhand and upward at Ivar's face.

Ivar swayed easily away, moving only the six inches necessary to avoid the blow. Instantly he was beneath the stroke, chopping at a thigh. The blow was beaten down with the metal-shod haft of Brand's axe, counterstroke slashing in the same movement at the wrist. For ten seconds the two men sent a rain of blows at each other, the cuts coming faster than the watchers could follow them: parrying, ducking, swaying their bodies to let thrust or slash go by. Neither man moved his feet.

Then Brand struck. Beating a blow from Ivar upward, he took half a pace forward, leapt high in the air, and came down with his full weight on the very center of the plank. It flexed, bounced upward, hurling both men off their feet. In the air, Brand swung the iron-shod butt of his axe at Ivar's head, connecting with a furious clang on his helmet's cheek-piece. In the same instant Ivar recovered blade and thrust with fierce dexterity through mail and leather, deep into Brand's belly.

Brand landed staggering, Ivar still in perfect balance. For a further instant both stood still, connected by the bar of iron between them. Then, just as Ivar tensed his grip for the savage twist that would rend gut and arteries forever, Brand hurled himself backward off the blade. He stood at the very end of the plank, groping with his left hand at the blood streaming through the torn steel.

With two hands Shef seized him by collar and waist and jerked him from the plank, thrust him staggering backward. The watchers roared disapproval, outrage, encouragement. Gripping his halberd in both hands, Shef stepped forward onto the plank. For the first time since the day he had been blinded, he looked full into Ivar's eyes. Tore his gaze away. If Ivar was a dragon, like the vision he had seen of Fafnir, then he might yet put on him the dragon-spell of terror and paralysis. A spell that could not be broken by steel.

Ivar's face split in a grin of triumph and contempt. “You come late to our meeting, boy,” he remarked. “Do you think you can succeed where champions fail?”

Shef raised his eye again, stared deliberately into Ivar's face. As he did so he filled his mind with the thought of Godive—of what this man, this creature, had meant to do with her. What he had done with so many slaves and captives. If there was a protection against Ivar's spell, it lay in justice.

“I have succeeded where you failed,” he said. “Most men can do what you cannot. That is why I sent you the capon.”

Ivar's grin had turned into a rictus, like the bared teeth of a skull. He flicked the tip of his sword slightly. “Come on,” he whispered. “Come on.”

Shef has already decided what to do. He had no chance at all toe to toe with Ivar. He must use other weapons. Drag him down. Use Ivar's open contempt against him.

Shuffling gingerly forward along the gangplank, Shef aimed a clumsy two-hand thrust with the spear-point on the end of his shaft. Ivar batted it aside without moving eyes or body, waiting for his incompetent enemy to move closer or lay himself open.

Swinging the halberd way up over his head, Shef prepared for a mighty stroke, a stroke that would split an armored man from nape to crotch. Ivar grinned more broadly as he saw it, caught the moan of disbelief from the bank. This was no holmgang, where the parties were bound to stand still. Such a mighty stroke could be avoided by an old grandfather. Who would then step over and stab for the throat while the wielder was off balance. Only a thrall-bred fool would try it: and that was what this Sigvarthsson was.

Shef swung down with all his force, aiming not at Ivar but at the plank at his feet. The great blade, swung in a drawing cut, slashed clean through the wood. As Ivar, surprised and off balance, tried to leap back the two steps to his ship, Shef dropped the halberd, threw himself forward, grappled Ivar round the body. Fell instantly with him down into the cold, muddy current of the Ouse.

As the two men hit the water Shef gasped reflexively. Instantly his mouth and windpipe filled. Choking, he struck out for the surface. Was held and forced below. He had dropped the halberd, but his loose-fitting helmet had filled with water, was dragging his head down. A hand like a strangling snake was crushing his throat, but the other hand was free, was groping toward the belt and the gutting-knife in it. Shef grasped Ivar's right wrist in his left hand with the force of desperation.

For an instant both men broke the surface, and Shef managed to blow his lungs clear. Then Ivar had him again, was forcing him down.

Suddenly the cold inner revulsion that had held Shef half-paralyzed since the fight had started—the dragon- fear—was gone. No scales, no armor, no dreadful eyes to look into. Just a man. Not even a man, shrilled some triumphant fragment of Shef's mind.

Twisting fiercely in the water like an eel, Shef grappled his enemy close. Ducked his head, butted forward with the rim of his helmet. The rim which he had filed again and again to razor-sharpness. A crunch, something giving way, Ivar trying for the first time to wrench back. From the bank above there came a great roar as the craning watchers saw blood spreading in the water. Shef butted again and again, realized suddenly that Ivar had shifted his grip, had caught him in a stranglehold, rolled him under. Now Ivar was on top, face in the air, grimly concentrating on holding his enemy under. And he was too strong, growing stronger with every breath.

Shef's right hand, thrashing wildly, caught Ivar's knee. There is no drengskapr in this, thought Shef. Brand would be ashamed of me. But he would have taken Godive and cut her in pieces like a hare.

He drove his right hand firmly under Ivar's tunic, seized him by the crotch. His convulsive, drowning grip closed round the roots of Ivar's manhood, squeezed and twisted with every ounce of the strength years at the forge