"Axes will never ring on them," said Leif under his breath. He walked now
like a man who was fey and his face was that of another world.

He spoke truth, for as they moved towards the riverbank, just before the
darkening, in a glade between two forests Fate met them. There was barely
time to form the Shield-ring ere their enemies were upon them--a mass of
wild men in wolves' skins and at their head mounted warriors in byrnies,
with long swords that flashed and fell.

Biorn saw little of the battle, wedged in the heart of the Shield-ring. He
heard the shouts of the enemy, and the clangour of blows, and the sharp
intake of breath, but chiefly he heard the beating of his own heart. The
ring swayed and moved as it gave before the onset or pressed to an attack
of its own, and Biorn found himself stumbling over the dead. "I am Biorn,
and my father is King," he repeated to himself, the spell he had so often
used when on the fells or the firths he had met fear.

Night came and a young moon, and still the fight continued. But the
Shield-ring was growing ragged, for the men of Hightown were fighting one
to eight, and these are odds that cannot last. Sometimes it would waver,
and an enemy would slip inside, and before he sank dead would have sorely
wounded one of Ironbeard's company.

And now Biorn could see his father, larger than human, it seemed, in the
dim light, swinging his sword Tyrfing, and crooning to himself as he laid
low his antagonists. At the sight a madness rose in the boy's heart. Behind
in the sky clouds were banking, dark clouds like horses, with one ahead
white and moontipped, the very riders he had watched with Leif from the
firth shore. The Walkyries were come for the chosen, and he would fain be
one of them. All fear had gone from him. His passion was to be by his