Bjorn had lost count of how many times he'd cursed the wind and sea in the last minutes. He watched the waves with a possessive resentment. It rankled him that the tides moved to a rhythm he hadn't set.
The plan had worked and the fire trap had sprung perfectly. Nature had been his ally today.
He forced the thought aside and turned to the archers positioned across his ships as they closed the distance. The heat still radiated from the water where the flames had raged minutes before. Charred wood drifted past their hulls.
The air tasted of burnt oil and scorched flesh. Bodies floated face-down between the wreckage, some still trailing smoke from their clothes.
Sixty meters out now. Close enough for arrows to punch through leather and to see the whites of men's eyes.
"Archers!" Bjorn's voice cut through the groaning of wood and water. "Oarsmen and helmsmen only. Cripple their movement."
The archers had already used a portion of their shafts to ignite the sea. Now they nocked fresh arrows, fingers finding the familiar groove of the fletching.
Bjorn studied the enemy vessels as the gap closed. Fifty meters. Forty-five. They'd reformed faster than he'd expected; shield walls taking shape on the decks, men finding their positions despite having just watched the ocean catch fire. Not all of them, but enough. For warriors who'd seen their understanding of the world burn away, they were showing spine.
At forty meters, Bjorn raised both hands to the sky.
Then brought them down like an axe stroke.
One-Eyed Arne's voice boomed across the water. "Loose!"
The arrows climbed. Not enough to darken the sun—that was the kind of lie skalds told around fires. But they filled the air like a flock of ravens descending, dark shapes against gray sky, carrying death in their iron beaks.
The sound came in layers. First the whisper of shafts slicing wind. Then the thock of broadheads biting wood, the clatter against shields, the wet punch of iron finding meat. Men cried out sharp yelps of surprise, low groans as arrows opened their arms and legs. Not all fell, but those who took iron to the thigh or shoulder were done fighting.
The enemy archers returned fire, but their volleys came ragged. Every man loosed when he felt ready. No rhythm or order behind it.
Bjorn's men had drilled through nights and weeks and months and years now, to the point they can shoot six arrows per minute, per man. Fifty archers meant three hundred shafts in the air every sixty breaths.
The first minute passed and six volleys were released. Three hundred arrows were sent.
With each wave, Bjorn watched despair bloom on the enemy decks. Oarsmen slumped over their benches, shafts jutting from backs and necks. Helmsmen clutched at arrows in their sides, losing their grip on the tiller. Ships began to drift, rudderless and blind.
While his archers worked, Bjorn had his own labor.
His men brought forward a pile of spears—good ash shafts with leaf-bladed tips. Bjorn tested the first one's balance, feeling the weight distribution. Acceptable.
He drew back and threw.
The spear crossed thirty meters and took a man through the chest, lifting him off his feet before pinning him to the mast.
Bjorn reached for the next shaft before the first man hit the deck.
Spear after spear, each one found flesh. A helmsman through the throat. An oarsman through the eye. A warrior, maybe a Jarl or a King trying to rally his crew—the spear split his sternum and dropped him like a puppet with cut strings.
Ten throws. Ten bodies. Less than a minute.
Bjorn finally took his helmet, the mirror-polished iron gleaming as he settled the cheek guards against his jaw. The crest of horsehair was a violent, blood-crimson shock against his own hair; as it fell over his glistening white locks, it looked like a fresh wound opened upon a field of new snow.
The world narrowed to the view through the eye slits. The ships had drawn close now, but not at ramming speed. His knarrs, those fat-bellied cargo haulers he'd brought from Frankia, couldn't match the pace of his longships. They carried twenty men each and supplies now safely stored in Kaupang. But they were slow.
And ramming would shatter his own hulls, risk capsizing in these cold waters where a man lasted minutes before the sea claimed him, even if it's summer.
So they approached at a measured pace. Oars moving in controlled rhythm, keeping the ships aligned.
Fifteen meters out, the helmsmen eased back, angling the bows away from head-on collision. The ships would kiss, not crash.
Bjorn filled his lungs and let his voice carry across the water.
"Brothers!"
The word carried across the water, silencing the groans of the ships. His men turned. The enemy turned. Even the gulls seemed to pause mid-flight.
"The men on those decks thought their numbers would save them today. They were wrong! They forgot that only the Gods grant victory, and the Gods just set the sea on fire to show who they favor today!"
Bjorn stepped to the rail, his eyes scanning his ranks. "Our enemies call me a Beggar King. They say I lead an army of thieves and outcasts. If I am a beggar, then what does that make you?"
"NO!" The roar from five hundred throats shook the spray from the air.
"Then prove it! You have enough silver in your homes, today, you fight for your names! Fight so they echo in the halls of your ancestors! If you fall, fall with your teeth bared and your axe wet! Let the Valkyries look down and see that we have no shortage of heroes here!"
He drew Soft Death from its scabbard, the steel flickering like trapped lightning.
"The Allfather watches! Raise your shields! To the feast... or to Valhalla!"
"TO THE FEAST! TO VALHALLA!"
"ODIN!" Torstig's scream started in the rear, taken up by Floki and Rollo until the air itself seemed to vibrate with the name of the god.
The roar of over five hundred men erupted like a beast awakened from slumber. Shields went up, and grapnels and boarding hooks appeared in calloused hands, ready for the clash.
The ships met with a grinding crunch that sent men stumbling. Bjorn kept his feet. Grapnels bit into gunwales with metallic shrieks.
Warriors hauled on ropes, muscles straining, drawing the vessels together like lovers in an embrace, except this would end in blood.
Oars were already lifted clear to avoid entanglement and splintering.
"Arne—cover them!"
The archers sent another coordinated volley as boarding planks crashed down, creating bridges of death. Men fell with shafts in their necks and chests before they could even raise weapons.
"Do as you were drilled!" Bjorn didn't wait for the planks or his men.
He jumped—full armor, shield, weapons—and landed on the center enemy ship with a thud that reverberated through the hull.
A four-meter-wide deck, terrible for wide swings but perfect for spear work and close killing. Which is why he left 'Soft Death' on the Long Serpent.
The defenders had already formed a shield wall. Three men wide, filling the space from rail to rail. Behind them, three more waited to fill gaps.
Bjorn's eyes swept the deck. Bodies from the arrow volleys lay crumpled across benches and pooled in the bilge. Blood made the planks treacherous, so, his footing would need to be precise.
The shield wall wore helmets but no mail. Just leather, wood, and desperation now.
Bjorn shifted half a step left. Not toward the center but toward the outside man. He kept his shield high, spear held low, and watched their hips and feet instead of faces.
Faces lied. Hips would never dare.
He drove forward with a diagonal shield bash—not to knock the outside man back, but to rotate his torso. In the same motion, Bjorn stamped down on the man's lead foot, pinning it to a seam between planks slick with old blood.
The outside man's balance broke and the shield wall's alignment fractured.
Bjorn's spear shot upward through the gap created by the turn, finding the exposed flesh between neck and shoulder. He felt the blade punch through and pulled it free immediately without wasting motion or overextension.
The outside man collapsed into his own spreading blood, blocking his companions' advance. A three-man wall couldn't compensate instantly and step over a dying friend without losing formation.
Bjorn stepped into the gap, driving his shield edge into the center man's ribs forcing him to turn, to break contact with the third man.
Now the third man stood alone, rail at his back, corpses under his feet, no lateral support.
Bjorn hooked his spear shaft under the rim of the third man's shield and yanked upward while driving low with his own shield. The third man stumbled backward and one more shove sent him over the rail with a short scream that ended in a splash.
The second rank tried to step forward. Bjorn snapped the spear butt backward into the first one's helmet—a man of status, judging by the iron headgear. The helmet rang like a bell. While the man was still reeling, Bjorn dropped his shield and drew his seax with his left hand and delivered two quick thrusts to the thigh, just enough to open the big vessels. The man would bleed out in minutes.
Bjorn stepped over fallen bodies after he picked his shield again, keeping his center of gravity low on the blood-slicked planks. The remaining second-rank fighters hesitated, their formation shattered.
They glanced at their fallen comrades, trying to process what had happened. Not even a full minute had passed. Maybe thirty seconds. Bjorn operated on supernatural instinct and reflex reading and reacting in fractions of heartbeats.
He feinted forward and one man flinched. Bjorn slid the spear butt under his shield rim and levered upward, pushing him off balance. A short step, a twist of the wrist and the fighter tumbled toward the rail, grabbing for it too late.
Fear had a smell, Bjorn learned these past years, like copper and piss and sweat gone sour. It hung thick now. The remaining fighters backpedaled toward their own rail.
Bjorn switched fully to his seax, keeping the shield forward for control and protection.
One brave fool rushed him. Bjorn sidestepped with minimal movement and drove the seax downward into the man's shoulder where it met the neck. The blade went in at an angle, found the space between bones as the man dropped.
Another lunged with a scream. Bjorn pivoted on the ball of his foot, let his shield push the attack aside, and sliced across the man's thigh. The blade opened cloth and skin and muscle. The man's leg gave out beneath him.
The rest dropped their weapons, clattering to the deck. One by one, they removed their helmets; if they had any, hands trembling or deliberate, whatever courage they had left. Then, without hesitation, they leapt into the cold sea, the water swallowing them in a cascade of splashes.
Around him, his men were boarding and fighting, but slower. They advanced as they'd been taught—shield walls holding, pushing forward together, protecting flanks with overlapping shields. They traded blows to maintain the line. Three-man formations where the deck width allowed, sometimes four if they squeezed, though that limited movement.
Bjorn stood visible in the captured ship, blood dripping from his seax, his white-painted shield now spattered red. Men on other ships saw him, and he saw them seeing him and the hesitation bloom in their eyes.
But there were always brave men. Or ambitious ones.
A ship closed in front of Bjorn—approaching under controlled rowing, not a wild rush.
On that ship's deck stood a man in polished mail and a helmet that caught what little light filtered through the clouds. King Sulke. Bjorn recognized him from the Uppsala gathering four years ago. The man held an axe in one hand, shield in the other.
"Shoot him," Sulke said to his men. Three archers with longbows stepped forward, nocking arrows.
Bjorn threw his spear at the first archer just as the man released. Bjorn dropped behind his shield—the arrow hit with a solid thunk, punching through the first two layers of linden wood but not the third.
His spear took the first archer in the head. The man dropped like a sack of grain.
The second and third archer were drawing, fingers at their cheeks. Bjorn grabbed another spear from a dead man's grip and threw in one smooth motion. The second archer—by luck or by terror—threw himself sideways off the rail as the spear passed where his chest had been. He hit the water with a splash.
Bjorn stood, and his eyes met Sulke's across the gap.
He found no fear or hesitation in those eyes. Nothing but a grim acceptance.
Sulke's men brought forward grapnels. Two hooks flew, biting into Bjorn's captured ship—one on the rail, one at the mast base. They started hauling, trying to pull him off balance, drag him toward the gunwale where spears could reach.
Bjorn made his decision in the space between heartbeats.
Instead of bracing or cutting the lines, he ran toward the pull. Planted one foot on the rail, grabbed the taut rope and...jumped.
The rope, already under tension, guided him across the gap.
He landed in their forward section like a meteor, crashing into a man hauling the rope and crushing him backward into a bench. Another hauler went down under the impact.
Bjorn drove his shield boss into the closest spearman's face before the man could even react. The man's teeth shattered and he spun away, spitting blood and fragments of bone.
"Close shields! Spears forward!" Sulke's voice cracked.
But they were too slow. Bjorn's seax found the throat of a spearman still raising his shield. The blade opened the neck and blood sprayed in a fine mist. Bjorn took the dying man's spear and drove it through the chest of the first man he'd disabled, who was still trying to stand.
Then Bjorn stopped.
The three-man shield wall had formed at the front. Sulke stood in the center, his face twisted in a grimace—not of fear, but of understanding. He knew what stood before him now.
Some spear points wavered. Bjorn's eyes bore into theirs, unflinching, as if he could see their fear and their souls. These were no ordinary men, they were huskarls, and they knew it.
It didn't matter. Scared or confident, they'd all learn the same lesson today. The cost of standing against him.
Bjorn slowly wiped the spear blade on a dead man's tunic, then raised his shield and stepped toward the outside position again. Same strategy as before, for the outside man was always the weak point in a narrow formation.
He worked methodically now. Shield bash, foot pin, spear thrust. The outside man went down and the formation compressed. The center man turned to compensate. Bjorn drove his shield into the gap, forcing another rotation. The blood made the footing treacherous for everyone, but Bjorn wasn't everyone.
The last standing archer on Sulke's ship couldn't shoot, too much risk of hitting his own friends in the close press.
The spearmen couldn't coordinate. Bjorn never fought where they expected. He moved constantly—shove, kick, trip one man into another. Use the body under your feet as a ramp to change elevation. Hook a shield rim and pull, creating openings. Never stop moving and never let them set their stance.
Any man who stepped within reach received either fast death or fast wounding, depending on where the blade found them.
Less than four minutes.
Nineteen men.
The last one fell with a wet thud on the deck, his life leaving him in a long sigh that sounded almost relieved.
Bjorn looked at King Sulke through a curtain of his own breath, each exhale visible in the cold air. Sulke stood ten paces away, his polished helmet reflecting the dull sky, chainmail clean except where other men's blood had splattered it.
Between them, bodies lay in arrangements that would have been artistic if they weren't so terrible. The deck looked like someone had tried to paint a battle scene and spilled all the red.
"So it's come to this." Sulke's loud voice had lost its earlier confidence. Something in it had cracked and fallen away. "Go on then. Come strike me and take your glory."
"Glory?" Bjorn scoffed. "What's it going to be? The Viking way? Or the coward's way?"
Sulke didn't answer with words.
He removed his helmet—set it down carefully, almost reverently. Then the chainmail, unlacing it with steady fingers, letting it fall with a metallic whisper. He threw down his shield and axe. They clattered on the deck. He moved bodies aside with his feet, clearing a small space, and drew his seax from his belt.
He stood in just his tunic and trousers. No protection and no armor. Nothing between his skin and iron.
Bjorn sighed. "Seriously?"
But he did the same. Unlaced his armor and set down his helmet. He let his shield and spear fall, Keeping only the seax.
Unlike a longsword fight where distance provided a heartbeat to think, a seax duel was a suffocating affair. It happened at arm's length, within the reach of a man's foul breath. You couldn't trust a blade-parry; the steel would only slide and bite your own fingers. Here, the free hand was the real weapon.
Bjorn kept his left hand open and twitching, ready to catch a wrist or redirect a thrust. He didn't look at Sulke's eyes; he looked at the tension in his shoulder. One mistake meant a cold grave in the salt water, but Bjorn didn't plan on making any.
They circled in the limited space between bodies and benches. A strange calm settled over them, and for Bjorn, the world beyond the gunwales simply ceased to exist.
The roar of five hundred men, the clash of shields on the neighboring ships, and the screams of the dying all bled into a distant, muffled hum, like the sound of the sea trapped in a shell.
Seax fights ended in seconds. Just one small mistake and you are dead.
Sulke lunged with a thrust aimed at Bjorn's stomach, a serious strike if it landed. Bjorn could have sidestepped, letting the blade pass close enough to brush the wind against his tunic. Instead, his left hand shot out, clamping down on the man's weapon-bearing hand, feeling the tension of every muscle.
Up close, Sulke's face shifted in a way that hadn't been there before. Age and fear etched themselves into his features in an instant, as if the fight had drained years from him.
Bjorn then struck with an open palm to Sulke's jaw as the king's momentum carried him forward. The blow snapped Sulke's head to the side.
The world tilted as Bjorn let the seax drop to the deck, then drove a fist into Sulke's stomach, forcing the air out of him in a harsh whoosh. Sulke doubled over, gasping, every inch of him folding under the weight of Bjorn's power.
Bjorn looked down at him coldly. "A walk of shame first. Only then can you die."
He picked the seax in his grip and struck Sulke across the back of the head with the pommel. The king's eyes rolled up and he fell forward, almost embracing the deck as consciousness left him.
The moment Sulke's body hit the wood, the silence snapped. The world rushed back in—the frantic splashing of retreating oars, the triumphant shouts of his men, and the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of boarding axes clearing the decks nearby.
He felt something wet on his hand. He looked down at it, surprised to see a droplet.
Sweat? Had this fight actually made him sweat?
"You and your men really made me sweat," he said to the unconscious king, genuine admiration in his voice. "Not bad."
Then more droplets fell on his hand, so he looked up at the sky. Gray clouds had moved in while he fought, heavy and low.
Rain began to fall, light at first, then harder.
"Oh, it's raining," Bjorn said, laughing. "Of course. These fools would never make me sweat."
He stood amidst the carnage, watching the rain begin to scrub the crimson stains from the wood.
Nature once again did exactly what it wanted, ignoring the King who stood in the center of its storm.