A sudden silence as the rival chantings stopped, a blare of horns, and Kjallak stepped forward over the stone platform like a panther and slashed. Shef leapt away almost too late, felt a line of fire across his ribs, heard from some far distance the roar of acclaim. He began to move, pulling with one hand on the rope both men held, feinting to thrust with the other. Kjallak ignored the feints, waited for the real stab. When it came, the one-eye would have to step close. When he missed, Kjallak would strike again for the body. He circled always to the right, crowding the knife-hand, making his opponent back away to keep him off his blind side. Every few seconds he slashed quickly, professionally, at Shef’s exposed left arm, enough to make the blood run, the strength go.
“How’s it going?” asked Thorvin, his left eye swollen shut.
“He’s cutting our man to bits,” answered Cwicca.
He’s cutting me to bits, thought Shef. He felt no pain, no physical fear, but there was an undercurrent of panic rising, as if he were out on a stage in front of thousands of people, and had forgotten what he was supposed to say. He tried a sudden sweep with one leg, a wrestling trick. Kjallak evaded it economically, and sliced him across the knee. Shef slashed back at Kjallak’s rope-arm, drawing blood for the first time. Kjallak grinned and thrust suddenly over their joined arms, forcing Shef to jerk his head aside and leap back, dropping the rope, to avoid the instant second thrust for the heart.
“Learning, eh?” panted Kjallak. “But not fast enough. You should have stayed with your mother.”
The thought of his mother, her life destroyed by the Vikings, stabbed Shef into a flurry of thrusts, coming forward recklessly. Kjallak dodged them, caught a couple with his own knife in a clang of metal, waited for the surge to die down. Like a berserker, he thought. Don’t take them head on. Keep out of their way and wait for them to tire. He could feel it already, the spasmodic strength draining.
“Stayed with your mother,” he repeated. “Maybe had a nice game of knucklebones.”
Knucklebones, thought Shef. He remembered the lessons from Karli in the marsh, remembered Hedeby market. Seizing the trailing rope again, he jerked it taut, slashed it suddenly through. A groan from the crowd, a look of surprise, disgust in Kjallak’s eyes.
Shef threw his knife high in the air, spinning end over end. Kjallak, whose eyes had never left it, looked up, followed it automatically for an instant, his head rising. Shef stepped forward, pivoting from the waist as Karli had taught him, and threw a clenched left fist in a sweeping hook. He felt the blow run up his arm, felt the crunch of fist on beard and bone. Kjallak staggered. But he was a man with a neck like a bull’s, knocked off balance but not down.
The spinning knife came down. As if he had practiced the catch for a dozen years, Shef caught it left-handed by the hilt, thrust upwards at the raised chin. The blade skewered through beard and chin, mouth and palate, drove on till the point wedged hard in the roof of the skull.
Shef felt the dead weight fall forward, twisted the blade, jerked it free. He turned in a slow semi-circle towards the crowd, raising the bloody knife. A roar of applause from his own men, confused cries from the rest.
“Foul!” cried one of Kjallak’s seconds, stepping towards the stone. “He cut the rope! That’s against the rules.”
“What rules?” said Cuthred. Without further words he slashed at the second, half-severing his head. From the stone Shef saw spears poised, crossbows leveled.
A ray of sunshine broke through the clouds, fell on the bloody stone. This time a groan from the crowd, of awe. And in the same moment, a clash of metal. Shef looked up, saw between the oak and the temple a solid line of armored horsemen, driving between the prisoners and their guards, hustling the temple priests towards him. He did not know who they were, but they gave him a chance. The potion filled him with one more inspiration, a surge of fury.