Eodan heard the angry bee-buzz and ducked his head. Tjorr's whirling hammer was released. It struck a face behind one of the shields. The shield went down, its man upon it. Eodan sprang between the two spears, into the gap. Over the rail! He stood upon the fallen man and thrust at a pike wielder. The sailor, with no metal to ward his belly, fell backward to escape. Eodan stabbed his mate. The other shield-bearer turned and attacked from the right. Tjorr reached around Eodan and put a sword in the man's neck. Then Eodan and Tjorr were back to back upon the high deck, holding off the crew. A tall blond man, a German of some kind, ran at Eodan with a longsword uplifted. "I want that blade!" said the Cimbrian. He fell to one knee, holding the shield over his head. The German's glaive smashed down on it. Eodan cut at the German's legs, and the man staggered back. Eodan got up again and battered loose. It was no way to use a shortsword. The German limped out of reach and swung his great weapon up for a cleaving. Eodan raised his own, faster, and threw it. The German sat down, holding death in himself. Eodan darted forward, snatched up the longsword and came back to Tjorr. The Alan, shieldless, had picked up his hammer again. He smote right-handed with it, a ringing and belling and sundering, while his left wielded his Roman blade. "Ha!" he bellowed down the boarding plank. "Are you never coming? Must I do all the work here?" His crew hung back, seeing how whetted steel flashed around those two and blood dripped into the sea. Eodan shrieked at them over the din: "If we lose this fight, you will all go to Rome!" A man down there hefted an ax, set his teeth and ran up the plank. The others poured after him. Quintus alone remained, with a spear. When two of the former slaves turned back, he grinned and prodded them. Only when all his shipmates were caught up in the battle did he himself come. Eodan, looking over a wall of helmets, considered the youth's face. By the Bull, he had just made himself second mate! Their line split, the galley's crew surged away in clumps of men. The pirates yelped about, rushed in and out, broke past the defenders here or were hurled back there. Eodan struck down a man with a disabling blow--it was good to have a sword he really understood--and looked over the combat. It was fiercest near the mast. "There we must go, Tjorr," he said.