wrenched her eyes back to the figure of the doctor, small, compact, and natty in leatheret bandolier. Pity, she thought with professional coldness, must not interfere with her operative functions. However, the sight of Stevens could not help but make her think of pictures she had seen of...

[The text continues]There were screams from the city, and much blowing of horns. Arrows began to smack into the clayey soil about them, and Roald raised his buckler. He saw the gates of the city swinging shut; yelling inarticulately he tore a blazing torch from the fist of a companion and hurled it into the knot of porters and marketmen that was struggling with the heavy bar and hinges; they scattered in terror, only a second before the red demons were within the gates, slashing and clubbing with keen swords and murderous axes.

Roald was the spearhead of the attack, and as he and his men plowed contemptuously through the rabble ... tradesmen and shopkeepers ... he laughed wildly. "Guard ho!" he yelled. "Who will come to do battle with the chosen of Odin. The curse of Cornwall and the damned, stinking Isle of Britain? Guard ho!" Slash! through the shoulder of a boy with a pike. He drove a mailed fist into the face of a gammer who was struggling aside, unwilling to leave her heavy basket of turnips behind.

Roald grinned savagely in the eyes of an archer. "Draw," he shouted, and as the Englishman reached he spitted him on the curve of Al Azaaf. A new blade crossed his, and with dirk and sword he ranged up and down the length of a square with his foe, a dark-eyed young man who fought precisely and quietly. Behind him he felt the spearhead break into bits and the body of the guard charged the Norse. The youth extended his body in a strange thrust, and Roald cursed the queer, slim weapon he used--a thing like a dart with a hilt. The Viking slashed once, and the youth parried. Roald slashed again, and there was the shock known to swordsmen as steel clashed steel. The youth was weaponless, and Roald cut him down where he stood, kicked the body in the ribs, then spun to defend himself against an assault from a clumsy pike.

The Viking grinned savagely, and swept aside his beard. "With this draught," he roared to his men, "I name this city fief to the Vikings and to Roald, and all its values, be they goods or women or children, fief also to their conquerors." He glared about him from the eminence in the walled city's central square, on the scene of desolation and butchery. He stood among his Norse having left not one of the hundred and eighty defenders. "Skoal!" he roared, and drank.

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