His enemy was coming out of his corner, plaid also thrown aside, stripped like Shef to his breeches. In one hand he held the longsword of the Gaddgedlar, thinner than the usual broadsword but a foot longer. In the other hand he had the same spiked targe as his fellows. A helmet was pulled down over his braided hair. He did not look much older than Shef, and in a wrestle Shef would not have feared him. But he had the longsword, the shield, a weapon in each hand. He was a warrior who had seen battle, fought in a dozen skirmishes.

From somewhere outside him, an image formed in Shef’s mind. He heard again the solemn voice of Thorvin chanting. He stooped, picked a twig from the ground, threw it over his adversary’s head like a javelin. “I give you to Hell,” he called. “I give you to Dead Man’s Strand.”

A buzz of interest rose from the crowd, cries of encouragement: “Go on, Flann boy!” “Get him with your buckler!”

No voice encouraged Shef.

The Irish Norseman padded forward—then attacked swiftly. He feinted a thrust at Shef’s face, turned it into a sideways backhand slash, aimed at the neck. Shef ducked under it, stepped away to his right, dodged the thrust with the spiked buckler. The Viking paced forward, swung again, backhand up, forehand down. Again Shef stepped back, feinted to step right, stepped left again. For an instant he was to his adversary’s side, with a thrust possible at the bare right shoulder. He leapt back instead and moved rapidly to the center of the ring. He had already decided what to do, and he felt his body answering perfectly, light as a feather, buoyed up by a force that swelled his lungs and raced the blood through his veins. He remembered for an instant the way that Sigvarth’s sword had broken and the fierce joy that had filled him.

Flann the Irishman came in again, swinging the sword faster and faster, trying to box Shef in against the bodies of the ring. He was quick. But he was used to men standing up to him to trade blows and catching them on blade or buckler. He did not know how to deal with an opponent who simply tried to avoid him. Shef jumped a wide sweep at knee level and saw that the Irishman was beginning to pant already. The Viking Army was made of sailors and horsemen, strong in the arm and shoulder, but men who walked little, and ran even less.