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.
Shef mechanically retrieved Cuthred’s sword, started to trudge back to the ship, shoulders bowed. As he reached the abandoned catapults, to his surprise he saw Bruno the German standing in front of him. Behind him, Shef saw that Hagbarth had noticed as well, was calling men from their work on the Fearnought and directing them over the side. But for the moment they were alone.
“I saw your duel,” said Bruno. “Now you have killed two Ragnarssons. But I don’t know how you do it. It seemed that he should kill you easily. Any one of my men could have done it. I doubt you would be any match for me.”
“Why should we be a match?”
“You have something I want. Where is your lance?”
Shef waved over one shoulder. “Back there. What is it to you?”
As if in answer Bruno aimed a blow at him with his long horseman’s sword. Shef parried automatically with the sword he had taken from Cuthred, parried again and again, found the sword spinning from his hand and the point of Bruno’s resting in the hollow of his throat, exactly where he had stabbed Sigurth the Snake-eye.
“What is it to me?” repeated Bruno. “It is the Holy Lance with which Jesus Christ was slain. By a German centurion. The Lance that shed the Holy Blood.”
Shef remembered the vision he had seen of a crucifixion, the man in the red-crested helmet speaking German words. “Yes,” he said, speaking carefully with the cold point pricking his skin. “I believe you.”
“He who holds it will be the Emperor. True Emperor of the West, successor of Charlemagne, uniter once more of the Roman Empire. The German Roman Empire.”
Shef felt immense pressure bearing down on him, pressure greater than the fear of the sharp steel point at his throat. Twice men had tried to make him release the lance, twice he had resisted them. If he handed it over now he might be condemning the whole world to a new domination, a new tyranny from a new Rome, stronger than the old Rome and the old Pope. If he refused he would die. Had he the right to save his life at such a price? With Karli and Cuthred dead in the grass beside him?