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woven for himself. Instead the blood-lust was on him and maybe too much mead was in him for he brought the axe round in another big loop but this time the shaft hit
Sea-Eagle
’s prow beast, snagged on the creature’s pointed ear perhaps, and before Styrbiorn could correct the swing a man at the other prow reached out and thrust a spear into his belly.
    Styrbiorn doubled over and his comrades managed to pull him back into the thwarts and Svein’s hands clawed into his flaming red hair.
    ‘Damned whoresons,’ the greybeard muttered, shaking his head, and Sigurd wanted to tell Svein that perhaps it was not a serious wound and he looked at Aslak who shook his head. For there had been enough muscle and fear in that spear thrust to stop a charging boar. That had been clear even from the top of the bluff and from the giant’s grunt that had carried across the water even above the battle din. Besides which, Styrbiorn did not wear a brynja because he could not afford to have one made that would fit his massive frame.
    Perhaps that was the raven’s omen, Sigurd thought, for the bird had stopped its croaking now. Styrbiorn had woven his last piece of fame as he came to the end which the Norns had spun for him. Either way it was a savage blow for
Sea-Eagle
whose men were stunned at losing their prow man so early in the fight. Wielding Styrbiorn’s big axe, a fearsome fighter named Erlend muscled up to the prow and looked good for it, cleaving an arm off at the shoulder and doing Styrbiorn proud until an arrow took him in the face and he tipped over the side before the others could grab hold of him.
    Randver’s men were like hounds with the blood scent in their noses now and they surged forward and Sigurd knew that trouble was coming because the men of the other enemy ship, lashed to
Sea-Eagle
’s steerboard side, had seen their fellows doing well at the prow and success begets success.
    ‘Jarl Harald must send men to help
Sea-Eagle
,’ Aslak said.
    Sigurd shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he muttered.
    ‘Why not? And why don’t the king’s ships help?’ Runa asked, teeth worrying at her bottom lip, fingers of one hand peeling the white bark from the birch she clung to, and it was a good question, so good that Sigurd did not know the answer. Yet the fear in his sister’s eyes compelled him to say something.
    ‘Those two ships are waiting either until all Randver’s men are committed to the fight with
Sea-Eagle
or until the first of them spill onto
Sea-Eagle
’s deck, for that will leave the enemy’s ship spear-light and Biflindi’s men will take it easily.’ Runa nodded and Aslak pursed his lips because it was almost a good answer. But Sigurd knew it was an answer as thin as mist and would dissipate at any moment when one of them asked why King Gorm’s five other ships further off had not fully engaged with Randver’s remaining two. Those held their formations in the strait off the port side of
Little-Elk
and Harald’s raft of boats, raining arrows on each other but holding their distance. Sigurd could think of no reason why Biflindi’s five had not overrun those two ships by now, or why he had not sent one of his dragons to savage the longship alongside
Little-Elk
.
    Harald sent a knot of men over to
Little-Elk
perhaps at Solveig’s request, perhaps not. Then the jarl gestured at a man beside him who Sigurd knew to be Yngvar because of his black-painted shield and Yngvar went over to
Reinen
’s side, took up his horn and blew a long note north up the strait towards Avaldsnes.
    ‘The king must come now,’ Svein said, those jaw-tight words his first since seeing his father fall.
    Sigurd nodded, though in his mind he still heard the rising croak of the raven in the pine wood, the sound like a mockery of the horn which Yngvar was blowing repeatedly.
    And King Gorm did not come.
    ‘Look!’ one of the youths from Kopervik exclaimed, pointing down to the two longships Shield-Shaker had sent round Jarl Harald’s