Krysty stared out into the blank wall of fog, her eyes slightly closed, her head a little on one side. Ryan had been with her long enough to know something was happening.

"What?" he said, straining his own eyes. But it was impossible.

"I can hear... could be a big fish. Fog blurs the way I know things. But..." She stood up, like a questing hunter. "Gaia! Ryan, they're almost on top of..."

She was interrupted by a jolting crash as the first of the muties' boats rammed into them.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The rocking, shifting deck and the clinging, choking fog made combat lethally surreal. Blasters were of little use when a target more than ten feet away couldn't be seen. The wood quickly became slick with blood, and bodies jostled, screamed and fell to the deck.

Ryan held his 9 mm SIG-Sauer pistol in his left hand, grabbed from the stern in that first moment of the attack, his panga in his right. He blasted and hacked at anything that came within range that wasn't either a friend or one of the Vikings. Despite being a captive of the Norsemen, he had no doubt whatsoever that to be taken prisoner by the gibbering muties would be far, far worse.

Like so many similar battles that Ryan had lived through, this one was a series of desperate moments, strung together in a jerking, chaotic succession of half memories.

There was no doubt from the first seconds that the attackers had come from the same ville as the muties who had sneaked into Markland. They poured over the side of the Viking dragon-ship, one or two with primitive firearms, most of them hefting a weird variety of edged weapons.

The Norse defenders were taken badly by surprise. Many of them were hacked down to the boards before they had a chance to protect themselves.

It was no small guerrilla raid.

Ryan spotted at least four of the muties' boats, hooked with grapnels to the long ships, and he guessed there had to be one more on the far side of the second of Jorund's tethered vessels. As far as numbers went, it was impossible to make a guess. He knew only his own fights, isolated in the clutching hands of the fog.

His first clash was against a mutie who had two heads. One was red-bearded and wild-eyed, but the other lolled on the wide shoulders, mouth sagging open and a thread of mucus crawling over the smooth chin. The man was wielding a large ax that looked as if it had been made from a honed-down shovel. Ryan was able to stoop under the first wild swing and deliver a vicious cut across the side of the knee. Bone cracked. The mutie gave a gobbling shriek of pain and fell sideways, dropping the ax. Ryan braced himself against the pitching of the long ship and shot left-handed, putting a bullet through the more active of the heads.

As it began to die, he saw that the other, passive head had come to life. The tongue, gray-blue, was darting between the scummed lips and the eyes were rolling with a wild malice.

It was unusual for Ryan Cawdor, but he used another round on the dying creature. He put a bullet neatly between the eyes of the auxiliary head. "Make sure," Ryan muttered.

Screams of bloody anger filled the air all around him. Someone stumbled into him, and he started to swing the panga.

"It's me, Ryan!" Mildred screamed. "Give me a fucking gun."

"Get someplace safe."

"Where?"

He looked around, seeing the steep prow and the invisible figurehead above it. "There. Can you climb up?"

"If you won't give me a gun, the least you can do is give me a hand up."

Ryan cupped his hands and let her step into them. Grunting with the effort, he heaved her into the air. He felt her take her own weight, her feet scrabbling for a purchase on the wet, slippery wood.

Something plucked at his sleeve and Ryan spun around, hearing a sound like an angered hornet. A crossbow quarrel quivered in the figurehead, inches below Mildred's white sneakers. But when he stared into the fog, there was no sign of who'd fired the bolt.

A squat figure came staggering out of the gray wall, clutching a deep gash in its shoulder. Since it wasn't one of the Vikings, Ryan flicked out the blade of his panga and opened up its throat into a pair of raw, crimson lips. The mutie fell at his boots, long nails gouging splinters of white wood from the greasy deck.

"A stand! A stand! Come to the bow!" The bellow was unmistakably that of Jorund Thoraldson. "By Odin, tome!"

Suddenly there was some little order out of the murderous shambles. The rising wind was beginning to peel tendrils off the surrounding fog, making it possible to see more of what was going on.

The second dragon-ship had been cut clear and was drifting to the north, with two of the muties' boats attached. But the crew had been given a few heartbeats of extra time to repel their boarders. The Vikings were defending solidly, beating the muties back and tipping any dead or wounded straight over the side. Already the slate waters were overlaid with spreading patches of scarlet.

But on Jorund's vessel, the battle was slipping the other way.

The baron, blood streaming from a half dozen gashes, waved his smeared war-ax over his head. To his relief, Ryan saw that Krysty and J.B. were also fighting their way to the bow, back to back. The Armorer used a slim-bladed flensing knife, darting it out at the muties with the precision of a surgeon. Krysty had obtained a short sword with a wide blade, and was using it to keep the enemy at bay.

There was no sign of either Doc or Jak. Ryan glanced around and saw Mildred perched snugly now on the head of the dragon.

The mist came and went, but during a momentary clearing, it was possible to calculate how much the odds favored the muties.

The first wave of attackers had taken a dreadful toll among the Norsemen. Other than Jorund, fewer than ten warriors — including Erik Stonebiter and Sigurd Harefoot — gathered in the bow of the long ship to stand against at least thirty muties, who were mostly toward the stern. The muties controlled all the deck area around the mainmast.

Ryan wished he'd been able to snatch up his rifle as well as the pistol. The cache of their blasters had been his first target when the boats came ramming in. He would have put the Heckler & Koch on full-auto and sprayed the living hell out of the cluster of attackers.

But Ryan had never found spilled milk much worth thinking about. Let alone crying over.

The muties started to edge toward them, grinning confidently, when Sigurd Harefoot, crooning a wordless chant to himself, began to remove his clothes.

"Fireblast!" Ryan exclaimed. "What the..."

"He goes baresark," Erik said at his side. "The frenzy of battle takes over the spirit of a warrior and he fights naked against the foe."

"Berserk," J.B. echoed. "Heard of it. Best stop him, or they'll cut him down."

The young Viking turned to grin through the blood that masked his face. "He would cut down any man who tried to stop him. He does what he must."

Mildred had dropped agilely to the deck once more. "He ain't just talking," she said.

Sigurd had built himself into a frothing anger, and he whirled his ax above his head. He had cast aside the horned helmet he'd been wearing and began to shuffle toward the muties, wearing only his high, laced boots. His chant had become a wild shriek of surging rage. Ryan saw one of the muties at the back of the crowd frantically trying to cock an antiquated crossbow. He leveled the pistol, but Erik gently pushed it down with the tip of his sword. "No. No man must aid a baresarker."

Nobody told Jak that. Invisible to the muties, the boy had suddenly come creeping up over the side of the ship, his lank hair dripping lake water. He saw the man readying the crossbow and reached for one of his own slim throwing-knives. Gripping it underhanded by the hilt, he aimed it with a lightning flick of the wrist.