“Never seen the likes,” said Brand. “A blow on the metal will not crash into the skull. Still, it’s better not to get hit, I say.”

As they talked, the racket at the forge had ceased, and Shef had been seen diligently fitting small pieces together. Now he walked over to them, smiling and sweating.

Brand raised his voice. “I say, young waker-of-warriors-untimely, if you avoid the blow you don’t need the helmet. And what in the name of Thor is that you are holding?”

Shef grinned again, and held up the strange weapon from the forge. He held it out horizontally, balancing it after an instant on the edge of one hand, just where wood joined metal.

“And what do you call that?” asked Thorvin. “A hewing-spear? A haft-axe?”

“A beard-axe that’s had bastards by a ploughshare?” suggested Brand. “I don’t see the use of it.”

Shef picked up Brand’s still-bandaged hand and gently rolled back the sleeve. He put his own forearm next to his friend’s.

“How good a swordsman am I?” he asked.

“Poor. No training. Some talent.” –

“If I had the training, would I ever be fit to stand against a man like you? Never. Look at our arms. Is yours twice as thick round as mine? Or just half as thick again? And I am not a weak man. But I am a different shape from you, and yours is the shape for a swordsman, even more, an axeman. You swing a weapon as if it were a stick for a boy to slash thistles. I cannot do that. So if I were ever to face a champion like you … And one day I will have to face a champion like you. Muirtach maybe. Or worse.”

All five men nodded silently.

“So I have to even things up. With this, you see …” Shef began to twirl the weapon slowly. “I can thrust. I can cut forehand. I can strike backhand without reversing the weapon. I can change grip and strike with the butt. I can block a blow from any direction. I can use two hands. I need no shield. Most of all—a blow from this, even in my hands, is like a blow from Brand, which few survive.”

“But your hands are exposed,” said Brand.

Shef beckoned, and the Englishman in the forge nervously moved over. He held two more metal objects. Shef took them and passed them over.

They were gauntlets: leather-lined, leather-palmed, with long metal projections designed to fit halfway up the forearm. Yet the striking thing about them, the men saw as they peered more closely, was the way the metal moved. Each finger had five plates, each plate fitted to the next on small rivets. Larger plates fitted over the knuckles and the backs of the hands, but they too moved. Shef pulled them on, and slowly flexed his hands, opening and closing them round the shaft of his weapon.