yelp and the hounds closed on him. He twitched and screamed as the fangs took him. Some, trained to kill quickly, went for his throat, but Thyra used Sven’s sword to fend them off, and so the hounds killed Sven by chewing him from the groin upward. His screams pierced the rain like blades. His father heard it all and Thyra watched it and just laughed.
And still Kjartan lived. Thirty-four men stood with him and they knew they were dead men and they were ready to die as Danes, but then Ragnar walked toward them, the eagle wings on his helmet broken and wet, and he mutely pointed his sword at Kjartan and Kjartan nodded and stepped out of the shield wall. His son’s guts were being eaten by hounds and Thyra was dancing in Sven’s blood and crooning a victory song.
“I killed your father,” Kjartan sneered at Ragnar, “and I’ll kill you.”
Ragnar said nothing. The two men were six paces apart, judging each other.
“Your sister was a good whore,” Kjartan said, “before she went mad.” He darted forward, shield up, and Ragnar stepped right to let Kjartan go past him and Kjartan anticipated the move and swept his sword low to slice Ragnar’s ankles, but Ragnar had stepped back. The two men watched each other again.
“She was a good whore even after she went mad,” Kjartan said, “except we had to tie her down to stop her struggling. Made it easier, see?”
Ragnar attacked. Shield high, sword low, and the two shields cracked together and Kjartan’s sword parried the low strike, and both men heaved, trying to topple the other, and then Ragnar stepped back again. He had learned that Kjartan was fast and skillful.
“She’s not a good whore now, though,” Kjartan said. “She’s too raddled. Too filthy. Even a beggar won’t hump her now. I know. I offered her to one last week and he wouldn’t have her. Reckoned she was too dirty for him.” And suddenly he came forward fast and hacked at Ragnar. There was no great skill in his attack, just sheer strength and speed, and Ragnar retreated, letting his shield take the fury, and I feared for him and took a pace forward, but Steapa held me back.
“It’s his fight,” Steapa said.
“I killed your father,” Kjartan said, and his sword drove a splinter of wood from Ragnar’s shield. “I burned your mother,” he boasted, and another blow rang on the shield boss, “and I whored your sister,” he said, and the next sword blow drove Ragnar back two paces. “And I shall piss on your gutted body,” Kjartan shouted and he reversed a swing, took his blade low and swept it at Ragnar’s ankles again. This time he struck and Ragnar staggered. His crippled hand had instinctively dropped his shield low and Kjartan brought his own shield over the top to drive his enemy down, and Ragnar, who had said nothing throughout the fight, suddenly screamed. For a heartbeat I thought it was a doomed man’s scream, but instead it was rage. He drove his body under Kjartan’s shield, pushing the bigger man back by sheer strength, and then he stepped nimbly aside. I thought he had been lamed by the blow to his ankle, but he had iron strips on his boot and, though one strip was almost cut in two, and though he was bruised, he had not been injured and suddenly he was all anger and movement. It was as though he had woken up. He began to dance around Kjartan, and that was the secret of a duel. Keep moving. Ragnar moved, and he was filled with rage, and his speed almost matched Finan’s swiftness, and Kjartan, who thought he had found his enemy’s measure, was suddenly desperate. He had no more breath for insults, only enough to defend himself, and Ragnar was all ferocity and quickness. He hacked at Kjartan, turned him, hacked again, lunged, twisted away, feinted low, used his shield to knock away a parry and swept his sword, Heart-Breaker, to strike Kjartan’s helmet. He dented the iron, but did not pierce it, and Kjartan shook his head and Ragnar banged shield on shield to drive the big man back. His next blow shattered one of the limewood boards of Kjartan’s shield, the next took the shield’s edge, splitting the iron rim, and Kjartan stepped back and Ragnar was keening, a sound so horrible that the hounds around Thyra began yelping in sympathy.
Over two hundred men watched. We all knew what would happen now for the battle-fever had come to Ragnar. It was the rage of a sword-Dane. No man could resist such anger, and Kjartan did well to survive as long as he did, but at last he was driven back and he tripped on a hound’s corpse and fell on his back and Ragnar stepped over the frantic sweep of his enemy’s heavy sword and thrust down hard with Heart-Breaker. The blow broke through the mail-sleeve of Kjartan’s coat and severed the tendons of his sword arm. Kjartan tried to get up, but Ragnar kicked him in the face, then brought his heel hard down on Kjartan’s throat. Kjartan choked. Ragnar stepped back and let his battered shield slide off his left arm. Then he used his crippled left hand to take away Kjartan’s sword. He used his two good fingers to pull it from Kjartan’s nerveless hand and he threw it into the mud and then he killed his enemy.
It was a slow death, but Kjartan did not scream once. He tried to resist at first, using his shield to fend off Ragnar’s sword, but Ragnar bled him to death cut by cut. Kjartan said one thing as he died, a plea to be given back his sword so he could go to the corpse-hall with honor, but Ragnar shook his head. “No,” he said, and never spoke another word until the last blow. That blow was a two-handed downward thrust into Kjartan’s belly, a thrust that burst through the mail links and pierced Kjartan’s body, and went through the mail beneath Kjartan’s spine to stab the ground beneath, and Ragnar left Heart-Breaker there and stepped back as Kjartan writhed in his death pain. It was then that Ragnar looked up into the rain, his abandoned sword swaying where it pinned his enemy to the ground, and he shouted at the clouds. “Father!” he shouted, “Father!” He was telling Ragnar the Elder that his murder was avenged.
Thyra wanted vengeance as well. She had been crouching with her hounds to watch Kjartan’s death, but now she stood and called to the hounds who ran toward Ragnar. My first thought was that she was sending the beasts to eat Kjartan’s corpse, but instead they surrounded Ragnar. There were still twenty or more of the wolf-like beasts and they snarled at Ragnar, ringing him, and Thyra screamed at him. “You should have come before! Why didn’t you come before?”
He stared at her, astonished at her anger. “I came as soon…” he began.
“You went viking!” she screamed at him. “You left me here!” The dogs were anguished by her grief and they writhed around Ragnar, their hides blood-matted and their tongues lolling over blood-streaked fangs, just waiting for the word that would let them tear him to red ruin. “You left me here!” Thyra wailed, and she walked into the dogs to face her brother. Then she dropped to her knees and began to weep. I tried to reach her, but the dogs turned on me, teeth bared and eyes wild, and I stepped hurriedly away. Thyra wept on, her grief as great as the storm which raged over Dunholm. “I shall kill you!” she screamed at Ragnar.
“Thyra,” he said.
“You left me here!” she accused him. “You left me here!” She stood again, and suddenly her face looked sane once more, and I could see she was still a beauty beneath the filth and the scars. “The price of my life,” she said to her brother in a calm voice, “is your death.”
“No,” a new voice said, “no, it is not.”
It was Father Beocca who had spoken. He had been waiting under the high gate’s arch and now he limped through the carnage and spoke with a stern authority. Thyra snarled at him. “You’re dead, priest!” she said, and she gave one of her wordless yelps and the dogs turned on Beocca as Thyra began to twitch like a madwoman again. “Kill the priest!” she screamed at the dogs. “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”
I ran forward, then saw I had nothing to do.
The Christians often talk of miracles and I have always wanted to witness one such piece of magic. They claim the blind can be given their sight, the cripple made to walk, and the leper healed. I have heard them tell stories of men walking on water, and even of dead men raised alive from their graves, but I have never seen such things. If I had seen that great magic then I would be a Christian today, but the priests tell me we must have faith instead. But that day, in the relentless rain, I saw a thing which was as close to a miracle as ever I witnessed.
Father Beocca, the skirts of his priest’s robes filthy with mud, limped into the press of vicious hounds. They had been sent to attack him, and Thyra was screaming at them to kill, but he ignored the beasts and they simply shrank away from him. They whimpered as though they feared this squint-eyed cripple and he hobbled calmly through their fangs and did not take his eyes off Thyra whose screeching voice faded to a whimper and then to great sobs. Her cloak was open, showing her scarred nakedness, and Beocca took off his own rain-sodden cloak and draped it about her shoulders. She had her hands at her face. She was still weeping, and the hounds bayed in sympathy, and Ragnar just watched. I thought Beocca would lead Thyra away, but instead he took her head in his two hands and he suddenly shook her. He shook her hard, and as he did he cried to the clouds. “Lord,” he shouted, “take this demon from her! Take the evil one away! Spare her from Abaddon’s grip!” She screamed then and the hounds put their heads back and howled at the rain. Ragnar was motionless. Beocca shook Thyra’s head again, shook it so hard that I thought he might break her neck. “Take the fiend from her, Lord!” he called. “Release her to
