The Loki Sword by Angus Donald

Author:Angus Donald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

A place filled with enemies

At the second brutal spearing of an unarmed man, Lief moved. Out of the corner of his eye, Bjarki saw the young man haul his long sword from its scabbard and take a step forwards, covering Inge with his body. An instant later, three arrows thudded into his chest. He coughed gore and collapsed.

Bjarki moved. He was aware Tor and Valtyr were also in motion.

He hurled his Dane axe – a very unconventional move. The weapon was a broad-bladed wedge of sharp, heavy steel on a five-foot-long pole, and designed for chopping through shields and lopping heads in battle.

Bjarki threw the weapon laterally, the long instrument spinning round and round through the air, flying parallel with the beaten-earth floor. And, astonishingly, the axe struck its intended mark. The steel head thunked hard into the belly of the black-plumed officer just as he was shouting something, some order, to his men gathered outside the tent. The axe cut him off abruptly, the blade burying itself deep in his guts. He was knocked over and, an instant later, the tent was full of arrows.

Bjarki rolled forwards fast, coming up at the left-hand end of the long pinewood counting table. He saw Valtyr there, too, snatching at the big iron-bound strong box, contesting it, briefly, with the young priest Clovis.

The one-eyed old man lashed out with his walking staff, a yard and a half length of ancient knotted blackthorn. He thwacked the priest smartly around the side of his white face with the staff, causing the Christian to stumble blindly backwards and fall. And Tor, he saw, had her shield on her left arm, limb through the leather loops, and she was covering Inge’s cowering body as the wicked shafts flew thick and fast around them both. Two arrows were already embedded in the shield’s leather-faced surface.

All this Bjarki took in, in the blink of an eye, he also saw that two of the Wave Serpent crew were already down, bleeding, cursing, and curled around the arrows that had punctured their bodies.

One of the tent guards was slashing his sword down at little Halvar, who dodged the blow, somehow, and pulled out his seax. The Frankish sword missed the bowman by an inch, and Halvar bobbed up and in return jammed his seax into the outside of the guard’s upper thigh.

The Black Cloak howled and Halvar shoved him away hard, then whirled and slashed another Scholares right in the face, just as that fellow was coming forwards. Rangvar, too, was wrestling with one of the nearer Black Cloaks, both struggling with the Frank’s long spear. He let go one hand, swung his elbow, a tight fast forward arc, cracked the soldier in the nose, then ripped the spear free, flipped it and buried it in the man’s belly.

Bjarki took a grip on the end of the wooden counting table and, summoning all his considerable strength, he lifted the heavy slab of pine, twisted his body, wrenching the table

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