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eyebrows. Abruptly the booming fall stopped. The rain pattered away, and the sun broke through, glaring.
     
    He staggered back a step. The ship was full of hailstones and water; Raef, beside him, slumped down on the bench, gasping for breath. Blood streamed down his face, his shoulders. Conn wheeled to look past the bow, toward Hakon’s men.
     
    The Tronder fleet had backed off again, but they were not fleeing; they were letting Sigvaldi flee.
     
    Conn let out a howl of rage. Off toward the west, at the end of the Jomsviking line, Sigvaldi’s big dragon suddenly had broken out of line, was stroking fast away up the bay, and behind it, the other Jomsviking ships were peeling out of their formation and following.
     
    Conn leapt up onto the gunwale of Aslak’s ship, his hand on the dragon’s neck, and shouted, “Run! Run, Sigvaldi, you coward! Remember your vow? The Jomsviking way, is it—I’ll not run—not if I’m the last man here and he sends all the gods against me, I’ll not run!”
     
    From behind him came a howl from Aslak’s ship and the ships beyond. Conn pivoted his head to see them—back there all the other men shouted and shook their fists toward Sigvaldi and waved their swords at Hakon. Bui in their midst bellowed like a bull, red-faced. There were ten ships, he thought. Ten left, from sixty.
     
    Aslak stood before him and put his hand on Conn’s shoulder and met his eyes.
     
    “If it’s my doom here, I’ll meet it like a man. Let’s show them how true Jomsvikings fight!”
     
    Conn gripped his hand. “To the last man!”
     
    “It will be that,” Raef said, behind him.
     
    Bui shouted from the next dragon, “Aslak! Aslak! King of Norway! Lash the ships together!”
     
    Aslak’s head pivoted, looking toward Hakon. “He’s coming.”
     
    “Hurry,” Conn said.
     
    They drew all the ships together, gunwale to gunwale, and lashed them with the rigging through the oar holes; so all the men were free to fight, and the ships formed a sort of fighting floor. The Tronder fleet was spreading out to encircle them. Conn went back into the stern of Aslak’s dragon, where Finn lay, his eyes closed, still breathing, and pulled a shield across him. Then he went back up beside Raef.
     
    * * * *
     
    VII
     
    Horns blew in the Tronder fleet, the sound rolling around the bay, and then the ships all at once closed on the Jomsvikings on their floating ship-island. The air darkened; the cold wind blasted. The rain began to fall, and like icy rocks the hail descended on them again. Conn could barely stand against the wind and the pelting hailstones. Through the driving white, he saw a man with an axe heave up over the gunwale, another just behind, and he slashed out, and on the hailstrewn floor, he slipped and fell on his back. Raef strode across him. Raef slashed wildly side to side with his sword, battling two men at once, until Conn staggered up again and cut the first axeman across the knees and dropped him.
     
    The hail stopped. In the rain, they battered at a wall of axeblades trying to hack their way over the gunwale. Horns blew. The Tronders were falling back again. Conn stepped back, breathing hard, his hair in his eyes; his knee was swelling and hurt as if somebody were driving a knife into it. The sun came out again, blazing bright.
     
    On the next ship, Bui swayed back and forth, covered with blood. Both hands were gone. His face was hacked to the bone. He stooped, and looped his stumped arms through the handles of his chest of gold.
     
    “All Bui’s men overboard!” he shouted, and leapt into the bay, the gold in his arms. He sank at once into the deep.
     
    The sunlight slanted in under a roof of cloud. The long sundown had begun. Beneath the clouds, the air was already turning dark. Hakon’s horns blew their long booming notes, pulling his fleet off.
     
    Aslak sank down on a bench. The side of his face was mashed so that one eye was almost invisible. Raef sat next to him, slack