Free Oathsworn 2 - The Wolf Sea by Qaz Page A

tongue curve of blade darting swiftly, so that my axe swings looked even more clumsy by comparison. I shield-parried, axe-parried, swung, roared and nothing made any difference while, around me, men panted and grunted and shrieked and died.
    He had battled shielded men before, but ones of his own sort, with metalled shields, which was his undoing. His breath was ragged and he knew he was done for anyway, but he fought with the savage-grinned panic of a rat in a barrel —and stabbed at the lower half of my shield, which would force it forward and expose my neck.
    That tactic worked only on a wooden shield like mine if the point of the sword was rounded and almost blunt, like a good Norse sword. When his sharp point stuck in mine, the alarm showed briefly in those olive-dark eyes and he made another mistake — he tried to pull it out instead of letting go at once and finding another weapon.
    When I back-cut, under his outstretched sword-arm, the axe blade went in on the upstroke under his armpit and only the shoulder blade stopped it. He screeched, high and thin like a woman in childbirth, and jerked away, freeing the axe for a downstroke that, because I was clumsy and hasty with panic, did not take him neatly between neck and shoulder, but carved away his bearded jaw on the left side.
    Blood and teeth sprayed. One hit me in the eye, making me duck and turn away, which would have been fatal save that he was already gone, backwards and keening, on to the blood-slick flagstones.
    Then there was that moment of rasp-breathing, broken by moans of those who hurt so much they wished they were dead, the gurgles of those so near death they can no longer feel the pain. This time, there was also a deal of cursing from Arnor, who had had his nose split by a cut and was bleeding badly. Others moved purposefully among the whimpering Arabs, cutting throats and not being kind about it — the treatment of Starkad's men saw to that.
    Finn rolled his shoulders, as if he had just done some gentle exercise, and strolled over to look at the fallen leader, who was still gasping and gurgling, drowning in his own blood. `Messy,' he declared, shaking his head. 'I must show you some points of axe fighting, Orm Trader, for you seem to think you are chopping wood with it.'
    `You might be better with a good sword,' Brother John said and indicated the area beyond the litter of bodies. Finn's eyes grew as wide as his grin. Plunder.
    It was, too. I had expected the weapons and battle-gear of Starkad's men, perhaps some of the provisions from their vessel, and that would have been worth the death of Kol, even by his reckoning. I had not thought, of course, that these were seasoned pirates, who had been taking easy pickings for some time from merchants unlucky enough not to sail wider around Patmos.
    There were ells of cloth, from fine linen to wadmal, barrels and boxes packed with little packets of what appeared to be dust and earth.
    There was the yellow one called turmeric and the fine crimson crescents of the fire-plants that could raise blisters on the mouth of the unwary but, if cooked properly with meat, made dishes the Oathsworn could not get enough of.
    There were golden mountains of almonds, black, pungent spikes of cloves, great heaps of brown dust which we knew to be cumin and coriander and barrels of instantly recognisable chickpeas.

    We stared at it all open-mouthed for, in one moment, we had all become as rich as we had previously been poor, such a change as to leave us stunned — until the realisation of it struck home and we delighted in each fresh discovery.
    We laughed when Short Eldgrim unwrapped a packet from
    a barrel of them and sneezed so that it flew everywhere, filling the room with a golden dust that made everyone sneeze and weep.
    Cinnamon, Brother John told us sternly and Short Eldgrim had just sneezed away a fortune of it.
    That sobered us, so that we took more care and uncovered carefully packed and almost fresh produce