The Night Wolfs men turned and twisted, half-rising from their seats. I remembered Klerkon in the market square of Novgorod, as I came up on one side and Finn on the other. A fronte praeciptium, a tergo lupi he had said — cliffs in front, wolves behind. The wolf himself was now trapped.
Our prows were closer now, a man and a half apart, no more. Finn clenched his nail between his teeth and howled triumphantly and, like the wolf he claimed to be, Kveldulf bristled.
He was brave and strong and skilful was Kveldulf. He would have been a fine man to have fight with you if it were not for the fact that you could not trust him at your back. Yet he showed us the wolf-worth he had claimed that day.
He launched himself, in full mail and with his pelt flying, off his own prow and towards us, stretched out so that the snarling head came alive on his helmet and he seemed to be, just then, a real wolf pouncing on sheep.
He flew up to the thin pole of our prow, grabbed it with his one free hand and let himself whirl round it on to the little half-deck. One booted foot hit an astonished Finn on the beltline and he flew backwards with a sound like a grass-blown cow being pricked open, scattering men like so many tafl pieces.
I dropped into a half-crouch, but Crowbone was in the way; then Kveldulfs swordhand was round and I barely managed to get the axe in its path, so that his hilt alone smashed into the side of my helmet. I staggered back, slipped off the planking of the half-deck and crashed down alongside Finn, struggling like a black beetle with all its legs kicking.
Kveldulf, grinning his savage grin, grabbed Crowbone by the collar and threw back his head to howl out his own triumph. In one smooth, astonishing moment, he had defeated us and his men answered the howl with cries of their own, bending to the task of stroking their ship up to where they could board us before Sigurd got up to them and put a stop to it all.
I sat up, my head ringing and my mouth full of blood. Beside me, a frantic Finn was scrabbling to recover The Godi; Fish was screaming with fury, for Finn had crashed into him and had smashed his bow.
Kveldulf leered down at us, Crowbone held in one paw, Kvasir's sword in the other.
'Stone am I?' he thundered. 'Well, you have seen how I fight now, Finn Horsearse. And you Oathsworn fools — pitch this pair over the side and join me, for I have surrounded the kingpiece in this tafl game.'
He was right and we were finished, but I would go down with a blade in my hand and not sinking under black river water, bound and helpless. .
A hand snaked up and Crowbone looked down and saw it. A pale spider it was, white-gripped round a small pair of scissors that you used to trim hair, or the frayed cuff of a tunic — or the fingernails off your dead husband.
Thorgunna, with what strength she had left, brought it down, savage as a snarl, driving it deep into the foot that had kicked the new life out of her.
Kveldulf shrieked and tried to jerk away, but she had rammed it through boot and foot-bones and into the planks, so that he stumbled and had to let go of Crowbone. Thorgunna fell back weakly to the deck and.Crowbone fell into a crouching huddle as Kveldulf, blind with rage and pain, wrenched himself free and brought Kvasir's sword up in a whirling arc, to bring it down on Thorgunna's sprawled and helpless body.
It came as a shock to the Night Wolf, then, when Crowbone popped back up, his face a shrieking, vengeful mask of hate, leaping salmon-high as he had done once before in the market square of Kiev.
'For my mother,' he said, just loud enough for those around him to hear.
It would have sounded like thunder to Kveldulf. Like Klerkon, he suddenly found his worst nightmare staring him in the face, a brief eyeblink of a moment in which the sharp of my adze-axe, plucked by Crowbone from where I had dropped it, must have seemed as big as the edge of the world. Then it split Kveldulfs two faces, wolf and man both, straight across the forehead, side to side.
For a moment the Night Wolf hung there like a strange, one-horned beast, a look of astonishment freezing in the last moments of his eyes; the sword slipped from his fingers and clattered at my feet and the inside of his head leaked down his face in a wash of yellow-white gleet and black blood. He toppled backwards, hit the water with a splash and vanished.
After that was chaos; Kveldulf's crew, close enough to leap aboard, saw their leader fall overboard, dead as old mutton. The Oathsworn surged to the freeboard planks, tipping the whole strug dangerously sideways, but bringing it down to a level where spears and edges could cut and stab across the freeboard. All of this quailed Kveldulf's men; they scrambled for the oars and backed water.
Sigurd came up, his archers opened fire with a hiss like rain on the river and men died in that sleet. Some leaped overboard, tried to swim for the bank, but the arrow storm cut them down and, finally, none remained who could make a sound.
When the screams were done, Sigurd stood in the prow and saluted me with his sword, while his men closed with Kveldulf's stolen boat and clambered aboard to recover it, killing any who still showed signs of life.
'No work of the prince, this,' Sigurd growled. 'He sticks to his oath and sent me to keep your sky from falling, as you did his.'
'I see you, Sigurd Axebitten,' I answered and he nodded, then hesitated.
'Take care of my sister's son. It took a deal of time to find him in the first place.'
'Since I found him in the first place, I am unlikely to put him in harm's way,' I reminded him. I laid a hand on Crowbone's shoulder, as he trembled in the aftermath of what he had done. Less than before, I noted; killing got easier each time you did it and I had no doubt that, one day, little Crowbone would not tremble at all after a day's slaughter.
'An adventure in a strange place, some sweet things to eat and then home,' said another voice and I knew who it was before I saw him, remembered the same words, spoken by Short Eldgrim to soothe a boy wounded by an arrow on the shores of Cyprus and near death. Jon Asanes had the white scar of that on his ribs still, but now he was wrapped tight in a blue cloak, standing behind Sigurd.
'Heya, Goat. Boy,' yelled Short Eldgrim, as Jon Asanes came up to stand alongside Sigurd. 'You are on the wrong boat.'
'Am I?' asked Jon, but it was Thorgunna who answered, climbing unsteadily to her feet and held there by Thordis. She said nothing, simply spat in the water; Jon's pale face bowed between them and his cry of anguish was sharp.
'No mercy?' asked Finn softly.
Thorgunna's black eyes raked him. 'Mercy is between him and his White Christ,' she answered hoarsely. 'My only obligation to Jon Asanes is to arrange the meeting.' She handed me the hilt of Kvasir's sword with a hard, black-eyed look.
That was bleak enough to stop all conversation and Finn was hurting in his ribs too much to argue, while my head pounded and sickness welled in me.
I stood watching, all the same, Kvasir's sword dangling limp and accusing from one hand, the other on Crowbone's shoulder as we rowed away from his uncle and Jon Asanes, while Thordis led Finn away to strip off his mail and look at his ribs.
Left to herself, below us, Thorgunna held on to the prow planking to keep upright and stared at the swirling black water where we had loosed Kvasir to Ran's mercies.
'At least he has the best of offerings,' I said to her, 'for the enemy who killed him is now at his feet.'
She looked up, smiling radiantly, but I knew she could not see me through so many tears.
'There will always be a place for you at Hestreng,' I added, thinking to comfort her and she knuckled her eyes clear with a swift gesture.
'Ingrid has her feet so far under the high bench that I will never get my keys back, I suspect,' she answered, with a flash of the old fire that made me smile.