Гарри Гаррисон - One King's Way

Too late. Cuthred's eyes had gone wide, he was breathing in with great gasps, slaver beginning to run from the corners of his mouth. He too had recognized the Snake-eye.

Shef shook him by the arm, was shrugged aside with a careless sweep from the shield, its spike missing his face by a fraction. “Cuthred,” he shouted. “We must run, for now. Kill them later.”

“Kill them now,” came a hoarse inhuman answer.

“Remember, you are my man! I released you from the mill. You swore allegiance.”

Cuthred turned to look Shef full in the eye, some fragment of intelligence still under his control despite the coming berserkergang. “I was someone's man before you, king. Those are the men who killed King Ella.” He struggled to form words, his face twisting. Shef thought he caught the word “sorry.” And then the berserk had thrust past him, running gleefully over the grass at the oncoming trio.

He stopped feet short of them, called out tauntingly, his voice clear and high, full of delight.

“Sons of Ragnar,” he shouted. “I killed your father. I tore out his fingernails to make him talk. Then I bound him and put him in the snake-pit, the ormgarthr . He died blue in the face with his hands tied. You will not meet him in Valhalla.”

He threw his head back, with a crow of triumphant laughter. Quick as a snake came the javelin from Sigurth. As quick the parry from the hardened shield that sent it flying high overhead. Then Cuthred had charged.

Sigurth stepped deftly away from him, dodging the first slash and ducking the back-stroke. Then Ubbi and Halvdan closed in, one from each side, swords swinging. The air was full of the clang of metal as Cuthred beat blows aside, swung and stabbed himself, pressing both men instantly back.

Yet he could not pursue three at once. Sigurth looked for a moment at the melee he had evaded, then turned from it, came on, sword drawn, shield up. Shef looked round. Karli stood by him, face pale, still clutching the reforged sword Shef had given him, taken from the unlucky Hrani. Shef had his lance. Neither had shields. Sigurth outnumbered them one to two. Yet he could not run now and leave Cuthred alone.

“No water between us this time, clever boy,” said Sigurth. As he jumped forward Shef stabbed at him with the lance, the first time he had ever tried to wield it in earnest. Sigurth slashed head from wooden shaft with one forehand blow, swung the backhand instantly at Shef's neck. He ducked, sprang back, dropping the useless shaft and pulling out the belt-knife with which he had killed Kjallak. He still felt numb, useless, unprepared. Now was the time he needed Hund's potion. But Hund was on the other side of the hill.

Karli stepped forward to protect his master, swung with the sword he had carried proudly since the day Shef gave it to him. With sick recognition Shef saw that he had forgotten once more everything that had ever been told him about how to wield it. He struck like a plowboy, like a churl, like a webfoot from the fen. Sigurth took the first blow easily on his blade, waited with something like disbelief for the slow second, caught it on his shield and swung with an adder's speed before Karli could recover. Karli had no shield, no helmet. Shef heard the butcher's chunk of cleaver into bone as sword bit deep into skull. The stocky man from the Ditmarsh dropped his weapon, sprawled at the Snake-eye's feet.

Downslope Cuthred was beating Halvdan to his knees with a furious assault. Ubbi, head slashed from shoulders, lay a few yards from him. Sigurth saw the scene out of the corner of his eye and turned again to Shef.

“I'd better make sure of you, then,” he said, stepping round Karli's body. Shef faced the veteran warrior with knife alone, too close to turn his back and run.

From far above Othin the one-eyed god looked down on his devotee, Sigurth son of Ragnar. “He is a great warrior,” he said ruefully.

“But he has lost the battle,” came the reply from the clever-faced god beside him.

“If it had been a fair match he would have won.”

“Take him for your Einheriar then.”

Othin paused in thought. Should he allow his worshiper one last victory? The words of his son Rig came back to him, and his own words too, the words he had whispered in the ear of his beloved son Balder on the funeral pyre. “Would that some god would bring you back to me, my son.” No god had, no hero had, not even his trusted Hermoth. Maybe they were right. Blood was not the cure, but tears. He would never draw tears from the Snake-eye. Regretfully, he made his decision. “Not for nothing do they call me Bölverk , doer of evil, betrayer of warriors,”. he muttered, heard only by Rig and the all-hearing ears of Heimdall.

He whistled a call to his Valkyriar, who fly unseen over every battlefield, choosing the slain and throwing over them their nets of weakness, paralysis, making weapons turn in the hand and eyes miss the flight of spear or arrow. With his great spear he pointed out the Snake-eye.

Sigurth came up the slight slope like a hunting beast, sword-point low, shield high, his white-rimmed eyes never leaving Shef's face. Shef backed away from him, short knife in hand, open to slash or thrust as soon as Sigurth could close the six bare feet between them. As he backed he felt, suddenly, the ground beneath him at a different angle. They had reached the top of the slope, were starting to cross it. In a few moments they would be among the abandoned catapults, in sight from the Fearnought . If he could delay a hundred heartbeats longer… The same thought came to Sigurth. He came on faster, determined to make sure work before anyone could intervene.

All day the lace on his rawhide shoe had worked looser and looser. Now it trailed in the short grass. As he took the pace forward that would set up the killing thrust, Sigurth trod on the lace, tried to step forward with the foot that was trapped, slipped and stumbled off balance. He dropped his shield-arm, bracing himself for a moment with his left hand on the grass.

Shef, backing away, stepped forward on pure reflex and stabbed forward with the Rogaland knife. It drove home through the beard and under the chin, exactly as it had done with Kjallak. For an instant Sigurth stared up at him, the strange eyes widening in shock. Then they seemed to see something behind Shef's back, a look of mingled recognition and disgust crossed the dying face. The sword lifted as if to stab at some shape, some betrayer in the sky.

Shef twisted the knife savagely once and leaped back, as Sigurth fell face down.

Cuthred was limping up the slope towards him. His face was gashed open, a long unbleeding split, like the wound a butcher makes in long-dead meat. His mail was hacked and torn in a dozen places. It seemed impossible that he could walk, one thigh seemingly half-severed again, the one slashed open by Vigdjarf.

“You got one, I got two,” he remarked. “I avenged King Ella. I will speak well of you to him.” As he stood swaying the crazy light died in his eyes. In a more normal voice he added, “I wish you could bury me whole. Send word to the trolls for me, to Miltastaray. I would have been her man.”

Suddenly blood began to flow from his wounds, as the strange auto-control of berserkergang left him. He sank down, rolled on to his back. When Shef felt for a pulse, there was none. He walked across the blood-stained grass to look to Karli, but without hope. Warriors like the Snake-eye did not miss their stroke. Not unless they were prevented. His guess was right. Karli was stone-dead as well, brains mixed with the blood around him, his cheerful expression faded for ever to one of surprise and dismay. Bad news for Edith, and a score of others. Bad news for Miltastaray.