“ … combatants must strike alternately. If you try to strike twice, even if your enemy is off guard, you forfeit the holmgang and become liable to the judgement of the umpires. And it will not be light! So, begin. Magnus, as injured party, shall be the first to strike.”

Halvdan stepped back, eyes wary, sword drawn to strike up any illegal blow. Shef found himself in the midst of a great silence, face-to-face with his two enemies.

He swung his halberd forward and trained the point on Magnus’s face, left hand gripping the weapon just below its massive and complex head. His right hand down by his right side, ready to seize the haft to block or parry in any direction. Magnus frowned, realizing he must now step to one side or the other and signal his direction. He stepped forward and right, to the very edge of the line Halvdan had drawn in the mud to separate the combatants. His sword swung down, forehand, aimed at the head, the most elementary stroke possible. He wants to get this over with, thought Shef. The blow was merciless and lightning-quick. He swung up his left arm to catch it squarely in the center of the iron buckler.

A clang, a recoil. The blow left a dull line and a dent the length of the buckler. What it had done to the edge of the sword-blade, Shef, as a smith, did not like to think.

Magnus was back behind his line now, Kolbein stepping forward with the shield to cover him. Shef raised the halberd with both hands over his right shoulder, stepped forward to the edge of the line and stabbed point-first straight forward at Magnus’s heart, ignoring the covering of the shield. The triangular lance-head drove through the lindenwood as if it were cheese, but as it did so, Kolbein jerked it up, so that the point stabbed past Magnus’s cheek. Shef jerked back, twisted, jerked again, freeing the weapon with a crunch of broken wood. Now there was a gaping hole in the gay blue paint of the shield, and Kolbein and Magnus looked at each other with grave expressions.

Magnus came forward again, and realized that he must not strike on the buckler side. He swung backhand, but still at the head, still thinking that a man without proper sword and shield must needs be at a disadvantage. Without shifting grip, Shef swung the head of his halberd eighteen inches sideways at the descending sword, catching it not with the axe-side but with the reverse, the thumb-wide iron spike.