The Hammer and The Cross by Harry Harrison. Jar1. Chapter 8, 9

Brand checked for a moment, breathing hard with the exertion of ten minutes’ desperate struggle. Then he strolled forward toward the gangplank. He raised his right hand, split between two fingers in King Edmund’s battle the previous year. He moved the fingers to show how they had healed.

“We had words a while back, Ivar,” he remarked. “I told you you should look after your women better. You did not take my advice. Maybe you don’t know how to. But you said when your shoulder was whole you would remember what I said. And I said when my hand was whole I would remind you of it. Well, I have kept my word. Will you keep yours? You look as if you are thinking of sailing away.”

Ivar grinned, showing his even teeth. Deliberately, he drew his sword and threw the decorated scabbard into the Ouse.

“Come and try me,” he said.

“Why don’t you come to fight on firm ground? No one will help me. If you win, you will have free passage back to where you stand now.”

Ivar shook his head. “If you are so bold, fight on my ground. Here”—Ivar leapt forward onto the gangplank, took two steps forward—”I will take no advantage. We will both stand on the same plank. Then all can see who gives way first.”

A buzz of interested comment rose as the watching men grasped the situation. At first sight the outcome of the fight looked evident. Brand outweighed Ivar by seventy pounds at least, out-topped him by a head and more, was as skillful and experienced with his weapons. Yet everyone could see the plank flex with one man’s weight on it. With two, and one as heavy as Brand, how would the footing feel? Would both men be awkward and clumsy? Or just one? Ivar stood braced, feet as far apart as the plank would allow, sword-arm forward like a fencer, not crouched behind his shield like a warrior in a battle-line.

Slowly Brand walked forward to the end of the plank. He had his great axe in one hand, a small round shield buckled to his forearm. Meditatively he unstrapped it, threw it to the ground, took his axe in both hands. As Shef finally wormed his way gasping to the front, Brand leapt onto the plank, took two paces forward, and lashed suddenly backhand and upward at Ivar’s face.

Ivar swayed easily away, moving only the six inches necessary to avoid the blow. Instantly he was beneath the stroke, chopping at a thigh. The blow was beaten down with the metal-shod haft of Brand’s axe, counterstroke slashing in the same movement at the wrist. For ten seconds the two men sent a rain of blows at each other, the cuts coming faster than the watchers could follow them: parrying, ducking, swaying their bodies to let thrust or slash go by. Neither man moved his feet.

Then Brand struck. Beating a blow from Ivar upward, he took half a pace forward, leapt high in the air, and came down with his full weight on the very center of the plank. It flexed, bounced upward, hurling both men off their feet. In the air, Brand swung the iron-shod butt of his axe at Ivar’s head, connecting with a furious clang on his helmet’s cheek-piece. In the same instant Ivar recovered blade and thrust with fierce dexterity through mail and leather, deep into Brand’s belly.

Brand landed staggering, Ivar still in perfect balance. For a further instant both stood still, connected by the bar of iron between them. Then, just as Ivar tensed his grip for the savage twist that would rend gut and arteries forever, Brand hurled himself backward off the blade. He stood at the very end of the plank, groping with his left hand at the blood streaming through the torn steel.

With two hands Shef seized him by collar and waist and jerked him from the plank, thrust him staggering backward. The watchers roared disapproval, outrage, encouragement. Gripping his halberd in both hands, Shef stepped forward onto the plank. For the first time since the day he had been blinded, he looked full into Ivar’s eyes. Tore his gaze away. If Ivar was a dragon, like the vision he had seen of Fafnir, then he might yet put on him the dragon-spell of terror and paralysis. A spell that could not be broken by steel.

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