“Screw him, Doc!” Mildred shouted, her voice rising into the startled stillness.
Doc made it to his feet and advanced remorselessly on the blinded man. “Foul fighting!” someone called.
“No rules,” Ryan retorted. “You said no rules.”
Odo waved his blade in a whirling mill of frantic defense, trying to hold Doc at bay. But the older man didn’t rush in. He took his time, occasionally lifting his own rapier to flick at the other man’s sword. There was only Crookback’s labored, harsh breathing, and the clang of steel on steel.
Tears streamed down Odo’s face, caking it with gray streaks from the ash. His retreat was taking him down the gently sloping beach, toward the edge of the lake.
Doc, his mouth set in a grim line of deadly intent, pursued him. He began to use his swordstick with increasing aggression, thrusting and making the Viking struggle to parry the blows.
“Lunge, riposte and lunge and riposte,” Doc recited, as if he were at some Victorian fencing school.
Both men were knee-deep in the water.
“Now, Doc,” Ryan breathed.
It was almost as if the old man heard his whispered words. With an easy cut of the wrist he caught Odo’s flailing blade on his, turning it away. Half turning so that his shoulder dropped, Doc swung his rapier up and to the right, ripping the Norseman’s steel from his hand.
There was a soft sigh from Odo’s watching companions. Ryan holstered his pistol.
Odo Crookback stood and waited for his end, arms spread. His sword seemed to hang high in the air, the red sun bouncing bloodily off the steel. It finally fell with a surprisingly small splash, twenty yards away from the two men.
“Strike, outlander,” he said to Doc. “Hard and clean.”
“Yes.”
Doc thrust his left leg forward, right arm and wrist extended. The point entered the body of the Viking a hand’s span above his belt and a couple of inches to the left of his breastbone. It slid between the guarding ribs, slicing through the outer muscles of the heart, cutting open the lungs. The power of the blow brought Doc up close against the doomed man, the point of his weapon standing out under the shoulder blade by a good six inches of blood-slick steel.
Odo lurched away, ripping himself clear of the rapier. His fists punched at the sky and he screamed the single word “Odin!” and toppled sideways, falling in a flurry of foam, landing facedown.
“Looks like Mildred stays alive, Baron,” Ryan said.
Jorund Thoraldson looked at him, his face betraying no emotion whatsoever. “The gods will it so. You must be hungered. We shall feed you. Come.”
Chapter Twenty-One
RYAN AND HIS COMPANIONS were given a hut that had belonged to a family that had died recently. Harald Verillision, who had been the brewer of ale in the ville of Markland, his wife and both sons had fallen sick of a wasting illness after they’d returned from an expedition to fetch mountain spring water some miles along the coast.
The young woman who brought food to the outlanders told them about it in whispers, looking over her shoulder to make sure nobody overheard her.
“Great buboes grew in their armpits and between their legs. Blisters sprang up around their cracked lips. The nails dropped from their finger ends, and their teeth fell from their bleeding gums.”
Mildred glanced across at Ryan, as though she were about to say something. But she chose to keep her own counsel.
“I’ve been in Markland all my life….” The girl laughed. “Stupid. Everyone in the steading has been here all their lives. Nobody ever leaves, and hardly anyone ever comes.”
As she spoke she was fingering the neck of her dress, scratching at a small red spot at the side of her throat.
When she pulled down the woven material, the girl revealed the top of an iron collar, locked in place.
“What’s that?” J.B. asked, pointing. “Some kinda punishment?”
The young woman looked puzzled. “My thrall ring? Is that what you mean, outlander?”
“Yeah. The iron collar.”
“All thralls wear it.”
“What’s thrall?” Jak asked.
She turned to the boy, then glanced hastily away, making a strange sign with her fingers, almost as if she were averting some sort of evil.