It parted the misty air and struck the mutie in the side of the throat, its blood spurting like crimson steam from the wound. The creature slid wordlessly to the deck, the weapon falling from limp fingers.

Sigurd didn't see it. Ryan doubted if the man could see anything at all, suspecting that the insides of his eyes were now coated red with insane, bloody rage.

"Ooooooooodin!"

If Ryan had been forced to face the charging man with a blaster, he'd have put six rounds through his head, just to be certain. If he'd only had a panga in his hand, then he might well have dived for the water.

Several of the muties were of the same opinion as Ryan.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan thought he glimpsed Doc trying to scramble over the side of the dragon-ship. When half a dozen of the attackers leaped for their lives, they knocked him back into the lake.

The berserker was magnificent. But he was also doomed.

Prevented from helping him by their own rules of combat, the rest of the Vikings could only watch as Sigurd Harefoot trod his own path toward the glories of Valhalla.

He took five of the muties with him, hacking them into tatters of torn flesh with his great war-ax. Arms, full-grown and residual, were lopped off. A head was parted from its neck, yet its body remained upright for several ghastly seconds, while arterial blood spurted high over the filling sail.

Once they realized that this was truly a solo charge, the muties gathered courage and united against the single warrior. The pale flesh became blotched with patches of smeared blood, red mouths dribbling away Sigurd's life. A long spear, hefted by a skinny, noseless woman, caught him in the groin, its barbed hook tearing at his genitals as the mutie twisted and wrenched at it. The Viking screamed then. Once. A thin cry, like a child wakened by a midnight horror.

The ending was swift after that. Sigurd managed once more to clear himself a space, but the muties surrounded him, their knives pecking out his flesh. He dropped to his knees, a last cry to Odin ringing the air. Then he vanished, and there was only the slaughterhouse sound of metal on bone and meat.

There was a moment of stillness on the long ship. Ryan saw Jak, crouched in the stern, heard the noise of men and women swimming for their lives through the fog-layered waters. The second vessel now seemed under the control of the Norsemen, its oars fanning out as she turned toward them.

The surviving warriors stood stricken by their comrade's death, not seizing the moment he had bought for them by his valiant passing.

"Come on!" Ryan shouted. "Now!"

J.B. was instantly at his elbow, as was Krysty. Mildred snatched a battered handmade .22 from the belt of one of the Vikings and was at his heels. Erik Stonebiter was first of the Norsemen to move, followed by the baron. Then the others.

As he charged, Ryan pumped all but one round from his pistol into the mass of muties, seeing several fall back, dead or wounded.

The final phase of the fight was very brief.

Led by Ryan, with Jak waging his own vicious war from the rear, the assault against the muties finally took its toll. The few who fled over the side were picked off by the other Viking ship, which was maneuvering skillfully across the lake.

Ryan was battling a pair of twins, who were joined at the hip, and each had a curved sickle in his hand. He stabbed one through the shoulder, but a flailing blow from the other struck his panga from his hand, sending it thunking into the deck planks.

"Drop, Ryan!" a voice screamed from somewhere behind him.

It wasn't a moment to agonize over the decision. He fell to one knee, hearing the whistle of the scythe as it nicked a lock of curly hair from the top of his head.

There was the sickly crack of an undercharged pistol, and he felt another tug at his hair. He saw the bullet strike home just below the mutie's breastbone, sending it backward, pulling its less wounded half with it.

"Sorry!" Mildred cried. "Goddamned gun fired way low."

This time there was no attempt to take any of the beaten muties prisoner to sacrifice back at the steading. Every man and woman — and some that could have been either — was slaughtered and tipped over into the reddening water.

Not a single one survived the raid.

Jorund Thoraldson spoke to the survivors, as the second long ship heaved alongside. "The losses have been severe, but we have beaten the enemy. It will be many long days ere they come at us again." There was a halfhearted, ragged cheer. He held up his hand, and his wrist and lower arm were sodden with dark, drying blood. "Against the winning cast of the dice, there must be measured the losing side. Many of our brothers sleep with Freya this night, and there is hardly a man among us without a wound."

That was true enough.

Ryan had a cut along the back of his right hand, and something had bitten him in the calf, drawing blood from the ragged wound. Krysty had dislocated a thumb, but Mildred had promptly but it back in place for her. Mildred herself had escaped without a scratch. J.B. had a bruise the size of a large egg across his chin, and more bruising around his ribs, where the tallest of the muties had gripped him in its several arms and hurled him to the deck. But Mildred had pronounced that no ribs had broken in the fall. Jak was furious because one of the muties had tumbled into the water and disappeared with one of his beloved knives still buried in its left eye. Other than that he was physically unharmed.

Doc had been hauled into the long ship, coughing and spluttering, having been pushed into the lake on three separate occasions. His dignity was a little dented, and he was shivering with cold. But he was very much alive.

The companions stood together under the figurehead, waiting to hear what the baron was going to say to them. Mildred was next to Ryan, apologizing yet again for nearly putting a .22 bullet through the top of his skull.

"Doesn't matter," he insisted. "You going to keep the blaster?"

"No way, Jose. Chucked it straight into Lake Superior, where it belongs."

At last, Jorund turned to them. He looked at each of them, though his eyes skated over Jak's pinched face and completely avoided Mildred. "It is sooth that we have won, partly through your aid, outlanders."

"Now I trust that you will abjure all your suspicions," Doc said in his rich, deep voice, "and allow us to go our way unhindered?"

"Let you go?" Jorund asked in tones of utter disbelief. "After this and these deaths? Oh, no, outlander. No!"

Chapter Thirty

It was late afternoon when they eventually reached Markland, and the sun had vanished behind fresh banks of swelling fog.

There were more funerals to arrange, and the keening of the women rose above the small ville. Since so many dead were warriors, Ryan wondered whether the Vikings would deplete their shrinking number of slaves still further by butchering thralls to accompany their free-born masters on their last journey.

As the six friends were being escorted ashore, Ryan made another effort to speak to the baron about their discoveries along the coast, and what that horror would inevitably mean to the survivors of the steading. But the big man resolutely turned his face away from him and marched up the beach toward his large hut.

Ryan beckoned to Erik Stonebiter. Glancing around at the other men, the youth moved a few reluctant steps closer. "What?"

"We found something very important."

"You broke faith. Nothing you can say is important to us."

"Wrong. We know what killed the children and the man who made the beer, and what's probably killed many others in the ville."

"We know, too."