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.