He spotted Ryan holding the pistol, and waved his ax in acknowledgment of his help.

The next four or five minutes were a maelstrom of fog and death, screams and blood-slippery earth, hacked limbs and occasional gunfire.

The attackers, mostly men, with a few women, were among the most severely mutated that Ryan had ever seen in Deathlands. The faces were grotesquely distorted, with eyes or noses missing, noses where there should have been ears, a single eye, low on the cheek, near the twisted corner of a misplaced jaw. Arms, legs, hands and feet were present in varying numbers and proportions. One capering man had a length of leather bound across the top of his head. It had come loose in the fighting and flapped to and fro, revealing a hole in his skull as large as a man's fist.

Because of the patchy mist it was impossible to make out the number of the attackers. Ryan's fighting instinct told him there were more than a dozen in the group that had circled around and come straight at the heart of the ville. And he accepted J.B.'s informed guess of eight in the other party that had ambushed them down at the beach.

The Norsemen had overwhelming numbers on their side, but the muties had the surprise of their shock attack on theirs. Several huts had been set on fire, and Ryan himself had seen the hacked bodies of nine or ten of the Norse women and children. And several of the Viking warriors were either down or dead.

But the arrival of the outlanders, with their superior weaponry, quickly tipped the balance in favor of the Markland people. Ryan heard the unmistakable boom of Doc's Le Mat, finding, moments later, the dying figure of a mutie with half its belly blown away by the huge scattergun round.

He saw J. B., crouched like a gunfighter in an old vid, blasting from the hip at a trio of haggard women armed with cleavers. His Steyr handgun put all three down in the dirt in as many seconds.

In combat like this, Jak Lauren was absolutely supreme, the best that Ryan had ever seen or ever expected to see. Wherever Ryan moved in the chaos of the ville, Jak's dancing, wild-haired dervish figure was there, a short-bladed knife in each hand, blood streaked to the elbows, like a maniac butcher on the run from the nearest abattoir. Crimson dappled his pale face and dripped from the steel points of his blades. Where he stepped, men and women died.

Ryan paid his own entry charge to parade the killing floor.

A totally bald, skeletal figure came lurching out of the fog toward him, holding a burning torch of resined wood. In the other hand it held a single-edged ax with a long handle. The mutie was naked apart from a belt of broad leather with an enormous brass buckle. A woman's severed head hung from the belt, its face dangling against the creature's groin.

It saw Ryan and began to swing the ax. Its mouth opened, and its cry of rage and menace was absurdly thin and piping, like a trapped bird's.

But the bloodied steel was coldly real.

Ryan fired once as the axman charged him, but by one of life's viciously freakish accidents, the whirling blade of the ax caught the bullet and sent it howling into the fog-bound sky. The impact made the ax ring, and the mutie paused, fighting to keep hold of it. Had the creature carried on, Ryan would have been in serious difficulties. As it was he snatched the microsecond to snap off another round.

The bullet hit the blond head hung at its belt, smashing it apart. The jagged splinters of bone tore into the mutie's naked abdomen and crotch, shredding its genitals to scarlet rags of torn flesh.

The scream of agony and despair rose so high that it became inaudible to Ryan, though every dog in the ville began to howl in terror at the same moment.

Ultimately it would have been a killing shot, but Ryan figured it might take too long. He quickly put a third round through the center of the mutely screaming mouth. The skull bounced once with the impact and then was still.

It turned out to be the last death of the raid on Markland.

Jorund showed his generalship in the aftermath of the attack. There were fires to be extinguished; livestock to be retrieved; Viking wounded to be tended and their dead to be readied for burial; the corpses of the muties to be dragged away by the heels, hauled into shallow pits by teams of thralls.

And the mutie wounded were to be dealt with.

"Egil, take four of our wisest men and place a circle patrol about the steading. I think the enemy will not return, but..." He shook his head and looked around, seeing the devastation of Markland.

A tiny, wizened woman pushed her way through the crowd of watchers, stopping, eyes bird-bright, in front of the karl. Behind her Ryan could see Krysty and Mildred, both smoke-stained but looking unharmed.

"The bad that has come is from the outlanders and the black woman," the stooped crone croaked, "yet the good is from the outlanders and the white boy."

Sigurd Harefoot clapped his hands in approval. "Well said, wisewoman. Without the blasters of the outlanders the evil ones could have harried us toward destruction."

She shook her head and waved a warning hand at the Norseman, a sapphire ring flashing on her wrinkled first finger. "More than the tools of Odin, Sigurd Harefoot. I tell you that it is the balance brought by the outlanders. The wrong of the black and the right of the white. Cherish the one and remove the other. Or the steading is doomed."

Ryan looked at her, holding her veiled eyes, steady, until she broke and turned away. "Anyone harms any one of us, the shit breaks the air lock. Y'all better remember that." He glanced at Jorund.

"You are with us, One-Eye, and we have agreed the women can live here, with the others. The evil ones have attacked us before, from up the coast. They have not come in the day behind the cloak of the fog before. But we turned them, and they have paid a heavy blood price."

As he finished speaking, Jorund stared at the wise-woman, who spit on the ground in front of him and turned away. She threw her last words over her hunched shoulder. "The day will come when you will search your heart for a way to change what has happened. And Freya herself will not aid you. Nor will any man, Jorund Thoraldson, Karl of Markland."

Chapter Twenty-Four

Bjarni Earthmover and two of the other warriors were ready to begin the journey to Valhalla, and the three wounded mutie prisoners were to accompany them.

One of the boats, fallen into some disrepair, was to be used for the funeral ceremony. Ryan and his companions passed the afternoon in their hut, resting, eating and cleaning and reloading their weapons. Erik Stonebiter had come by and explained what was to happen and to invite them, on behalf of the karl, to join the ritual of death.

"It will all take place as the fire-sun touches our sister earth, and the water and night close the eyes of the world."

Now, dusk had come.

Other than the men who stood watch around the perimeter of the ville, everyone was there, including the women and children, free-born as well as thralls. Krysty and Mildred, like the rest of the nonmen, had their heads covered with shawls of dyed wool, a mark of respect for the passing of Bjarni and the others.

Ryan guessed that the slaves and the women and children who'd been butchered would be buried somewhere quietly. This funeral was only for the warriors of Markland.

Ryan led Doc, J.B. and Jak out into the calm gentle evening. The main fire of the steading had been built up and blazed so brightly that no one could stand within twenty feet of it. A number of smaller fires had been lit, some on the beach, some on a low headland where the trees grew close to the shingle.

Jorund beckoned the four to stand near him. "This will not take long. We do not grieve much over one of our brothers fallen in battle."