Ivar remembered who he was. In the same instant he realized who the draugr must be. It was the Irish king Maelguala, whom he had killed years before. Ivar remembered still his contorted face, glistening with sweat from rage and pain, but still cursing Ivar steadily and fearlessly as the wheels turned and the strongest men of the Army threw their weight on the levers. They had bent him back and back over the stone till suddenly—

As his mind registered the snap of broken spine, Ivar awoke fully. Something over his face; skin, cloth—had they wrapped him in his cloak already for burial? An instinctive movement checked a stab of agony from the right shoulder, but the pain burned away the mist from his head. He sat up instantly, more pain from his head, not the right side, the left side, the side opposite from where he had been hit. Concussion, then. He had felt that before. Get down and stay down. No time to do that now. He could tell where he was.

Ivar lurched slowly to his feet, the effort sending a wave of nausea and giddiness through him. His sword was still in his hand, and he tried to lift it. No strength there. He dropped the blade and leaned heavily on it, feeling the point sink into the close-packed earth. He stared to the west, between the ripped-open tents, toward an arena where still threescore of men fought desperately to buy time, or to annihilate their enemies, and saw doom approaching him.

No draugr, but a king. Heading straight toward him, evidently bent on escape, was the short, broad-shouldered figure in the war-mask. The English kinglet. Jatmund. Flanking and following him were a half dozen enormous men, big as Vikings, big as Viga-Brand, obviously the king’s own personal bodyguard—the very heart and soul of the king’s warriors, the chempan as the English called them. As they came they were stabbing carefully, economically, professionally, at every figure that still lay on the ground. They were doing it just right. One of them he would have squared off to, if he had been fighting fit and unwounded and the men had needed to be encouraged. Six. And he could hardly hold a weapon, still less could he wield it. Ivar tried to shuffle his feet round to face them, so that no one could say afterward that Ivar Ragnarsson, the champion of the North, had been caught unawares or trying to flee. As he did so, the war-mask turned toward him.

A cry of recognition broke from it, a wave, a pointing arm. All the English together broke into a run, charging toward him, swords raised, the bodyguards striving vainly to outstrip their king.

As Edmund attacked, Shef, dodging from dark space to dark space round the edges of the conflict, saw the gap between the tangled tents, pushed Godive violently into it, and tensed his muscles for the final dart to liberty.