Standing with his housecarles, the Dane-king had often wielded his bill. Again and again they cast back an onslaught. But each one cost them. Meanwhile, looking from his height over the heads of most, he saw the rest of his troops driven apart from each other and piecemeal whittled away. As Asmund’s human landslide bore down on him, he knew that unless help came swiftly, he was done. None was anywhere in sight. His mind flew back to the wilderness of his boyhood. Little of witchcraft had he learned there. One spell, though, was his to use once.

He turned his eyes northward, braced himself, and loosed it. Men heard his throat give forth unknown words and saw his finger draw runes on the wind. They shivered, thinking he had gone mad.

A smokiness sprang up on the field. It whirled, whistled, thickened. It became the jotun Vagnhöfdi.

In all his hugeness he stood before them. He blocked out the sun; his shadow stretched far over the trampled, blood-muddied earth and the sprawled slain. Shaggy, hide-clad, he gripped a giant ax in his right hand and an iron-shod club in his left. The stone-rough face swung about as he glared to and fro from beneath the shelf of brow. Men stared, frozen.

“Hold!” cried Hadding to his warriors. “That’s my foster father! He is with us!”

An earthquake rumble sounded from Vagnhöfdi’s breast. He stalked forward. Bones crunched, guts spurted beneath his feet. To the nearest band of Swedes he strode. As they broke and ran, he began killing them.

Fear blazed up and spread, wildfire. Men cast their weapons aside and ran blind, wailing. Danes were among them, the war forgotten. But many more beheld Hadding’s banner still aloft. They recalled what they had heard about his beginnings. It was an eldritch tale. Yet they stammered to each other that they must not lose heart, but rally to him.

Asmund also overrode the horror in his nearest followers. By then they were close indeed to the Dane-king. Hadding stuck his bill into the ground and took shield to hand for the attack. Asmund saw. Bitterly he screamed:

Why bear you here so boldly

Your bill, as crooked as you are?

A sword or flying spearhead

Shall slay you all the sooner.

Your will is not for weapons

To weight the scales of battle.

You trust yourself to tonguecraft,

To trolls and blackest magic.

How dare you act undaunted,

Whose deeds are all unmanly,

The shield against your shoulder

Ashamed of him who holds it?

The name you shall be known by

Is nithing, now and always,

And from your mouth the foulness

That fills it reeks to heaven.

No man could brook words like that. Wrath stormed up through Hadding. He snatched back the bill and hurled it. Drawing blade, he dashed forward before his amazed guards could stir.