The thurs swung his club on high and back down. Hadding slacked the tightness in his left leg. The right pushed him barely fast enough. The club crashed on stones. Flinders flew. Hadding hewed at the arm behind. The iron bit. Blood welled from a gash, more black than red in this dusk.

Jarnskegg howled and swung anew. Again Hadding slipped free, though by inches. He had long since taught himself how to make the lesser use of his lame right foot, but was not as swift as once he had been.

He sprang close in against a calf whose knee was not much below his eyes. He slashed. Jarnskegg stooped. His left hand snatched. Hadding bounced back from it. His sword sliced across the fingers.

He knew of giants that their sheer weight made them slower than men. Most humans knew it not. They had naught to do with such beings. They had heard, or seen, how fast a giant walked. They seldom stopped to think that that was be. cause the stride was long, not quick.

Back and forth the battle went. Ragnhild stood offside as far as she could get without fleeing. Her eyes were wide, her fists held above a bosom that rose and fell.

Hadding ducked and wove, shifted and leaped. When he saw an opening he sprang in and cut. At once he bolted cleat If that club smote, he would die.

Bellowing his wrath, again and again Jarnskegg swung. The fight surged near the low-burnt fire. Hadding skittered along its edge. The heat from the coals laved him.

Suddenly he yelled in the Old Tongue that he had heard when he was a boy, “Maggot from Ymir’s rotten flesh, Hel herself shall spurn you!”

Never had the jotun thought to hear from a man words out of Jotunheim. Astounded as much as enraged, he blundered forward, brought down his weapon, and shrieked. Sparks and a last few reborn flames sheeted high. He had stepped in the coalbed. His boot smoked. The bare calf above it seared. The club fell from his grasp. As he lurched back, Hadding lunged after him and struck once more at the other ankle.

Half witless with pain, Jarnskegg nonetheless drew his sax. The crooked blade whistled. It caught Hadding’s shield and clove half through. Numbed, the king’s fingers lost the handgrip. What was left of the shield thudded to earth.

Jarnskegg came after him. The sax was harder to dodge than the club. Iron met iron. Clumsy though the giant now was, he knocked Hadding’s blade aside and nearly tore it loose from the man’s hand. Jarnskegg’s blow kept going. It laid Hadding’s own right calf open to the bone.