Leo’s men crowded forward. At least a dozen of them, but there was no way around. Just that narrow path of crooked wood, and the sea on either side. Was there anyone in the Circle of the World you’d want to face less on a wharf than Bremer dan Gorst?

“What do we do?” muttered Glaward, licking his lips.

Leo gave a frustrated growl. “I’ve nothing but respect for you as a swordsman! But we’re boarding that ship. In the name of King Harod, step aside!”

He’d never seen Gorst smile before. He’d seemed a man incapable of expressions. But he smiled now as he raised his steels, metal flashing in the sun. Like a man who feels a wonderful relief. “In the name of King Orso,” he piped, his boots grinding into the weathered wood as he lowered himself into a ready crouch, “no.”

“So be it,” snarled Leo. “Kill—”

Gorst moved before he even said the him. One Anglander toppled into the sea with his brains flying from his neatly split skull. Another sank to his knees, dropping his sword, trying to hold his guts in as Gorst ripped the short steel back out of his stomach. The man began to scream. Desperate, whooping screams.

“Damn it,” muttered Leo.

Gorst was already back in his fighting crouch, eyes shifting calmly between the Anglanders.

One jumped forward, swinging, but Gorst slipped aside and let his sword thud into the wharf. Something gleamed on the back of the man’s dark uniform for an instant. The point of Gorst’s long steel as it ran him through. A moment later he folded up, keeled forwards like a tent that’s suddenly had its guy-ropes cut. Gorst sprang at another Anglander with blinding speed. The man managed to parry the short steel but an instant later the long chopped into his neck, beneath the rim of his helmet, and sent him crashing into a pile of boxes, head flopping.

Glaward swallowed. “Bloody hell.”

“Ready your bows!” Leo snarled over his shoulder. “If you see an opening, shoot. You with the spears!” he shouted down the wharf. “Put him in the sea or in the ground!”

Two spearmen rushed forwards, points levelled. Gorst caught one on his buckler and it scraped past. He smashed the face of the man who held it with the pommel of his short steel and knocked him wailing into the water. He growled as the other spear grated against his breastplate, opening a cut up the side of his head, but his heavy long steel was already swinging in a great overhead arc that caught the spearman in the shoulder and split him open down to the chest with a meaty thud.

Blood sprayed over Gorst, speckled his face, flooded across the wharf. Men stepped back in shock, opening a path. Flatbows clicked and rattled. One man cried out as he was nailed in the back by a stray bolt. Another sank into Gorst’s meaty shoulder. A third bounced from his breastplate. A fourth caught him in the right arm, dangling from his sleeve. He whipped out of the way, behind some crates, as a fifth buried itself in the wood.