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Updated: May 7, 2025
Groan-Maker is aloft, he falls and neither shield nor axe may stay his stroke, both are cleft through, and the Halakazi lack a leader. The shield-ring wheels in upon itself. Fools! Galazi is upon you! What was that? Look, now! see how many bones are left unbroken in him whom the Watcher falls on full! What! another down! Close up, shield-men close up! Ai! are you fled?
On high days the tale of his descent would be sung in the hall not by Leif, who was low-born and of no account, but by one or other of the chiefs of the Shield-ring. Biorn was happy on such occasions, for he himself came into the songs, since it was right to honour the gentle lady, the Queen.
But even as he was thus uplifted the end came. Thorwald Thorwaldson tottered and went down, for a hurled axe had cleft him between helm and byrnie. With him fell the last hope of Hightown and the famished clan under Sunfell. The Shield-ring was no more. Biorn found himself swept back as the press of numbers overbore the little knot of sorely wounded men.
"I am Biorn, and my father is King," he repeated to himself, the spell he had so often used when on the fells or the firths he had met fear. Night came and a young moon, and still the fight continued. But the Shield-ring was growing ragged, for the men of Hightown were fighting one to eight, and these are odds that cannot last.
And Biorn shuddered, for they were the words spoken in her hut on that unforgotten midsummer night. The boy was in an agony lest he should be left behind. But his father decreed that he should go. "These are times when manhood must come fast," he said. "He can bide within the Shield-ring when blows are going. He will be safe enough if it holds.
There was barely time to form the Shield-ring ere their enemies were upon them a mass of wild men in wolves' skins and at their head mounted warriors in byrnies, with long swords that flashed and fell. Biorn saw little of the battle, wedged in the heart of the Shield-ring.
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