The pirate smiled, and his eyes gleamed. “Captains, soldiers, and much better warriors than you have failed. I’m not in the least scared of you.”
“Well, you ought to be,” Viggo said, and his smile was confident. “You’ve never fought anyone like me, and you won’t ever again. Last chance. Do you surrender?”
“Of course, I don’t. I’m going to take away that arrogance of yours with one clean stroke.”
Viggo shrugged. “Let it not be said that I didn’t give you a chance. As for my heart, there are some who say I don’t have one.” He smiled ironically and attacked like lightning.
The pirate captain blocked Viggo’s knives with his sword and dagger. Viggo launched a second combined attack, aiming first at the pirate’s stomach and then at his heart, but his victim managed to avoid the first stroke and block the second. He was obviously experienced in combat, which was hardly surprising, given his profession and title. They exchanged rapid, skillful attacks and counterattacks, but both defended themselves well and managed to avoid being hit. The captain tried several feints with his sword, followed by a dagger-attack at Viggo’s neck, but he could not manage to overcome him.
Around them the boarding raid was dying out. The shouts were fading, and the silence which gradually fell was only broken by the moans of the wounded and dying. Lasgol and Gerd had their area secured by now, and those pirates who were still on their feet were yielding to them, dropping their weapons on the deck and raising their hands. Ingrid and Nilsa had cleaned their area of the last pirate. Eicewald, who was protecting a group of sailors at the stern, had finished off the last of those who had tried to reach him. They were now ice statues, their weapons raised, frozen alive in their attack.
Astrid ran to where Viggo and the pirate captain were fighting. She was about to intervene when Viggo saw her.
“No! Leave him to me!”
“Viggo … there’s no need …”
“It’s a duel, one to one, a matter of honor and all that sort of thing. You know how these things go.”
“As if you knew anything about honor and all that …” She got ready to attack.
Viggo was still defending himself from the captain’s attacks. “Come on, be a lady and don’t interfere.”
She shrugged. “As you like … it’s your life that’s at stake. But don’t take too much time over it, because the moment Lasgol arrives he’ll make us take a hand.”
Viggo nodded and speeded up his attacks. He was sliding from side to side as though the deck were an ice-rink. The captain tried to reach him with a sword-slash at his forehead, but he crouched, then instead of dodging the dagger that followed the sword, stepped forward and blocked it by crossing his own two daggers. He swiveled them sharply, and the pirate’s dagger flew out of his hand. The sword sought his heart, but he deflected it with his two daggers in parallel, then leapt on the captain like a cat. One knife stabbed his victim’s heart, the other his throat. He grunted in pain and collapsed. Viggo withdrew his two black knives and stepped back.
“You’ve …” But the pirate captain did not finish the sentence. He fell backwards, dead.
“Defeated you,” Viggo said, finishing the sentence for him. He put his own weapons away and picked up the captain’s sword and dagger, which he examined critically.
“What d’you want them for?” Astrid asked. “We fight with knives.”
Viggo smiled as he stared at the weapons. “For no reason. But you must admit, they’re really beautiful.”
Astrid laughed out loud. “Yes, they certainly are. They’ll look very nice in the armory of the nobleman’s chambers in that castle of yours.”
Viggo smiled from ear to ear. “One day I’ll have that armory.”
“And the castle as well, I suppose.”
“Of course.”
Eicewald meanwhile was finishing casting one last spell on the second pirate ship. He conjured Icy Waves, using his Ice Magic. The pirate ship was going down in the midst of the winter storm the Mage had created, and the captain was shouting to those of his men who were trying to reach the merchant ship to board it to find refuge from the storm. But his crew were either freezing to death or being thrown into the sea by the tremendous force of the wind and the huge waves that lashed the ship. The Mage’s second spell seemed to have stirred the icy sea around the pirate ship into fury.
The vessel, covered in frost and lashed by brutal waves and winds, was beginning to break in half. There came a terrible, chilling crack and it split down the middle. It took the storm only a moment for it to sink, taking with it the few pirates who were still alive on it and with the captain shouting curses at Eicewald from the bow. It vanished under the waves, leaving only the storm over the space where it had been only a moment before.
The rest of the team joined Viggo and Astrid at a run. Lasgol, worried, checked to see if any of them were wounded. “Everybody all right?” he asked.
“Looks that way,” Ingrid said.
Viggo brushed the dust of the fight from his shoulders, as if it had all been child’s play for him. “Not a scratch.”
“Don’t be a smartass!” Ingrid snapped.
“Were you worried about me?” he asked her, looking saintly.
“About the trouble you were going to get us in, not about you.”
“If that’s what you want to pretend …”
“I’m not pretending!”
Gerd waved at the deck. “You’d better keep the quarrel for later. We’ve got piles of wounded and some prisoners to worry
