“We’ll try for it,” said Lysir, “though no man shuns his weird.”

He raised the horn slung at his shoulder and blew the battle call. A yell tore from both sides. In a ragged wave, the Kurlanders sped against the vikings.

A guardsman came at Hadding, armed and armored like him. Hadding’s left hand tightened on the grip of his shield while he swung at his foe’s. The sword bit into the wood. The guardsman leered and twisted it. Almost, he wrenched Hadding’s blade loose. Too late, the youth remembered how Braki had warned him about that trick. His strength surged. Somehow he kept hold of his weapon, pulled it free, and clashed it against the other blade. For heartbeats the two men strained. For the first time Hadding looked into the eyes of someone he meant to kill and who meant to kill him. It was an eerie closeness, well-nigh like love.

The swords slipped free and smote afresh. Hadding felt a blow on his shoulder as if from afar. Ringmail and the padding beneath stopped it. More swift than the older man, he saw an opening and struck for the leg. He felt steel bite into flesh and break bone. The warrior groaned and fell. His blood spouted wildly red. He writhed halfway up and chopped. Hadding knocked his blow aside and cut at his neck. More blood geysered. The man crumpled. He jerked once or twice and lay still, like a heap of rags. Through the reek of his own sweat Hadding caught a sharp stench as the deathling soiled himself.

Another was in on him, and another. He gave blows, he took them, seldom knowing what came of it, for the maelstrom of strife bore him away. He pushed, tried to stand fast, slipped and barely recovered, hewed and blocked and hewed again. The breath gusted in and out of him through a throat gone dry as a stone in a fire. There was no time for rage; he was too busy staying alive. Yet always a part of him kept aside, aware, glad of each stroke he dealt or thwarted. He grinned as he fought.