Part 42 (1/2)

”Hai, Wainomoinen! Swantewit, ho!”

Then I cast away my s.h.i.+eld, for I grew weary, and taking both hands to my axe, fought with a dull rage that I should have fallen, and that there were so many against me. And all alone we two seemed to fight by reason of the fog, though I heard the shouts of our crew to right and left unceasingly.

Then I felled a man, and one leapt back into mist and was gone, and a giant shape rose up against me out of the thickness, towering alone, and at this I smote fiercely. Yet it was not mail or hardened deerskin that I smote, but solid timber, and I could not free my axe again, so strongly had I smitten.

It was the high stem head of the vessel. For I and my men had cleared away the foe from amids.h.i.+ps to bows, and still the noise of fight went on behind us, while the fog was thick as ever.

Then Cyneward leaned against the stem head and laughed.

”Pity so good a stroke was wasted on timber, master,” he said.

”Pull it out for me,” I answered, ”my arm is tired.”

For now I began to know that my left shoulder was not yet so strong as once.

He tugged at the axe and freed it, not without trouble.

”What now?” said one of the men.

But a great shout came from aft, and then a silence that seemed strange. We were still, to hear what we might, and I think that others listened for us.

”Surely we have cleared the s.h.i.+p?” I said. ”Let us go and see.”

Then I hailed our men, asking how they fared--and half I feared to hear the howl and rush of pirates coming back on us. But it was a Danish voice that called back to me that the last foe was gone.

We stumbled back now along either gunwale, over the bodies of friend and foe that c.u.mbered all the deck, and most thickly and in heaps amids.h.i.+ps, where our first rush fell. One by one from aft met us those who were left of the men who had fought their way to the stern. Well for us was it that the darkness had hindered the Jomsburgers from knowing how few we were and how divided. But shoulder to shoulder we had fought as vikings will, never giving back, but ever taking one step forward as our man went down before us.

Now I called to Thormod, and his voice answered me from sh.o.r.eward.

”Here am I, Wulfric. How have you sped?”

”Some of us are left, but no foemen,” I answered.

”Call your names,” he said. And when we counted I had but sixteen left of my thirty, so heavy had been the fighting. Yet I thought that the Jomsburgers were two to our one as we fell on them, and of them was not one left.

”What now?” asked Thormod. ”There are more of these men in the town. Here have I been keeping them back from the s.h.i.+p.”

”Let us go up to the hall,” I answered. ”We could find our way in the dark, and they cannot tell where they are in this fog.”

So I and my men climbed on to the wharf, and there were the rest of the crew with Thormod, who had crossed the decks as we cleared a pa.s.sage, even as the fog came down, and had driven the rest of the Jomsburgers away from the landing place before they could join those in the s.h.i.+p. Well for us it was that he had done this, or we should have been overborne by numbers, for the s.h.i.+p was a large one, carrying maybe seven score men.

”We must leave your tired men with the s.h.i.+p and go carefully,” said Thormod. ”Likely enough we shall have another fight.”

We marched up the well-known street four abreast, and as we left the waterside the fog was thinner, so that we could see the houses on either side of the way well enough. And as we went we were joined by many of Ingvar's people, old men and boys mostly, who had been left at home when the fleet sailed. And they told us that the Jomsburg men were round the great house itself.

Yet we could hear no sound of them, and that seemed strange, so that we feared somewhat, drawing together lest a rush on us were planned. But beyond a few men slain in the street we saw nothing till we came to the gate of the stockade. And that was beaten down, while some Danes and Jomsburgers lay there as they had fallen when this was done.

Now when we saw this I know not which was the stronger, rage or surprise, and I called one of the old men.

”Where is the king?” I asked.