Shef looked round. He had not planned this. It was the recklessness born from Hund’s potion that had done this: left him facing a fully-armed hero himself, instead of sending forward his champion Cuthred. Impossible to ask for a substitution. The day was up now, he saw, and by some chance the rain had stopped. All eyes were on him, up there on the stone, at the center of a natural amphitheater. The priests of the temple had ceased their chanting, stood there in a grisly group, next to their herded captives. Round him in a great ring of spears stood the assembly of the Swedish nation. But they made no move to interfere. They stood, waiting for the judgment of the gods. He could never expect a better chance than this. And the potion was still strong within him.
Shef threw his head back and laughed, lifted the lance and threw it point-first into the wet turf. He raised his voice so that it would carry not to Kjallak but to the rearmost row of the spectators.
“I have no sword and shield,” he shouted. “But I have this!” He pulled from his belt the long single-edged knife he carried. “I will fight you Rogaland style! We need no bull’s hide. We have the holy stone. I will fight you here, wrist tied to wrist, and he who steps down from the stone, he is king of the Swedes.”
A slow rumble came from the crowd as they caught the words, and Kjallak, hearing it, tightened his lips. He had seen duels like that before. They took away the advantage of skill. But the crowd would not let anyone back out now. He still had strength and reach. He reached down, unbuckled his sword-belt, threw it from the stone, hearing the Swedes begin to cheer and clash spear on shield as they realized he had taken the dare.
“Dunghill cock!” he said, keeping his voice low. “You should have stuck to your own midden.”
Cwicca, holding his broken arm up by the sleeve, muttered to the battered and bleeding Thorvin, “There’s something funny going on. He would never have planned this. Nor he hasn’t been levered into it either. This isn’t like him.”
“Maybe the gods have taken control of him,” said Thorvin.
“Let’s hope they keep it up,” said Hama.
Bruno, still watching the arrangements being made from his unnoticed vantage-point, looked round thoughtfully. All eyes were on the center, where men were helping Kjallak out of his mail as Shef stripped to his tunic as well. A rope had appeared, cut from the hangman’s coil, and they were preparing to lash the two men together, each man with two seconds now to see fair play. One of the temple priests had insisted on singing an invocation to Othin, and Herjolf, pushing out of the crowd, had begun a counter to it.
“We can’t even get at them now,” said Bruno. “The crowd’s too close-packed. See here, what we’ll do is this.” He pointed out to his men a circuit they could make. To the right, round behind the temple and the slave-yard, to appear between the temple and the oak, where a gap had been left for the prisoners. “Come out there behind them,” he concluded. “Ride forward and make a wedge. That way we’ll get our people away at least.”
“What’s that banner they’ve broken out down there?” asked one of his men.
“It is a cross,” cried the weak-eyed Erkenbert. “God has sent a sign!”
“Not a cross,” said Bruno slowly. “It is a lance. Like the one the young man just threw down. A lance with something I can’t see across it. I don’t deny it may be a sign for all that.”
Breathing deeply and slowly, Shef waited for the signal to begin. He wore only his breeches, shoes kicked off as well for a surer grip on the wet stone. He had no idea what to do. It did not seem to matter. Hund’s potion filled him with rage and ecstasy. The calculating part of him that lived on somewhere below the potion had given up its protests, was telling him instead to keep his eye on his enemy, not just luxuriate in feelings of power.