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the bow.
    A wooden dragon head, crudely carved, with its tongue sticking out, loomed above the rail of his barge. The two craft drifted together. Wood crunched against wood. The barge captain shouted furiously, but the deep voice of Brian, Sigurd's son, cut through his complaining.
    "I see well that you have come armed for weapon-play, lordling."
    It was all absurd, the Caesar thought. That clumsy dragon head that should have been well on its way into the Marmora under the starlight by now. Those twoscore wild figures leaping from the rail of the Viking's ship to the foredeck of his barge-so swiftly that the Bulgarian archers had no time to string and raise their weapons. Absurd, the way the unarmed slaves slid under the rowers' benches or dropped into the water to cling to the oars.
    "Shield wall-shield wall!" cried a grotesque bearded man. Roaring their glee, the Vikings pressed into double ranks, shield overlapping shield, stretching from rail to rail of the barge. The shield wall, topped by iron helms, moved forward swiftly over the benches.
    The Bulgarians took to their axes, and hewed at it. Steel clanged against iron, as the long swords flicked out among the axes. Several of the Bulgarian mercenaries leaped into the water, and more were trodden down by the Vikings. Blood flecked their arms and heads, but when a man went down the warrior behind him stepped forward to his place.
    John Dukas looked to right and left. Far off shone the lights of Con stantinople; no vessels except fishing craft were afloat in the darkness. Over his head, hugging the long wooden neck of the dragon, he made out the slender figure of a girl.
    "Stand fast!" John Dukas cried at his men. "Stand-for aid is coming."
    Leaning down he snatched a spear from an officer. Rising in his stirrups he hurled it fair at Brian, in the center of the shield wall. The Viking swayed his head aside and the spear went by.
    Brian had changed. His eyes were shining. He sang as his sword whirled. The muscles rippled along his bare arm. Here, in the weapon-play, he tasted his joy.
    John Dukas flung himself from the saddle of the white horse-for the trembling charger was useless in a boat. In the boat he must fight, for in armor he could not swim through the water. With his nobles he rushed forward.
    "Now," cried Brian, "there is little between us, Caesar."
    Absurd that John Dukas should be fighting sword in hand, under the last of the guttering torches, under the dragon's head and the eyes of the girl he had put there to make an end of her.
    But Brian thrust the boss of his shield into the face of a Byzantine captain; he drove the pommel of his sword into the jaw of another. "Make way," he said between his teeth, and came at Dukas.
    The Caesar slashed wide at his head, and Brian's iron cap clanged off, leaving blood flowing down. The Viking's sword crashed full upon the Caesar's unlifted shield, cracking it and driving it back on his arm. And Dukas felt sick, at the power that numbed his arm and drove the links of his mail into his chest. Raising his sword again, he was only in time to parry a second terrible blow that beat down his blade and wrenched his right arm from wrist to shoulder.
    He staggered, his crippled arms flapping at his side. A voice was screaming in his ears, and it was his own voice. His jaws snapped together and fell apart, while the Viking's sword was sweeping toward him a third time out of the air.
    John Dukas's body lay on the boards of the deck, the knees moving slowly. Apart from it, still fast in the goldplated helmet with the Caesar's crest, lay his head. Above it the Vikings were stripping gear and jewels from the nobles who had thrown down their arms at his fall.
    "Well, it cannot be said that he was a great man with his weapons."
    Brian leaned on his long sword, staring down at the body, puzzled. It had been a brave encounter, he thought-that of the two boats on the water. But this Caesar had brought with him too many niddering fighters to