"The Hammerer! Kill the Hammerer!"
Shouting Jotuns leaped upon Thor's towering form like dogs trying to pull down a bear. Miolnir flashed in his hand, almost a thing alive. But two axes crashed on his helmet and he fell, stunned. I was seeking to cut the grapples of our first attacker. My sword slashed the hide ropes. As the Jotun ship was drawn away from us by the waves, I heard a choking cry of despair.
I swung around. Frey had cut the grapples of the other Jotun enemy. But the wild lurch of our ship as it was freed had thrown him into the black waters. He was helplessly sinking, weighted down by his heavy mail coat. Instantly I tore off my own mail coat, flung it away, and dived from the back rail into the sea. The icy shock of waters smashed the breath from my body. As my head broke the surface, I saw the battle that had been carried onward hundreds of yards. The Jotun ships were trying to get their grapples on the Aesir craft again. But the Aesir warriors were dismayed by the stunning of Thor and the loss of Frey. They had swung their ship around and were fleeing back toward Asgard.
I trod water amid the surging waves, looking for Frey. When I glimpsed him going down again, a dozen yards from me, I battled the raving wind and crashing sea until I reached his side. Diving deep, I caught him and pulled him to the surface. It was almost more than I could do to keep him afloat, weighed down as he was by his mail and sword. Now I began to regret taking along my own sword, for it was hampering me. The waves were running mountainously, bearing us in toward the looming cliffs that bulked ominously close.
"Leave me!" Frey choked above the roar of the sea. "Save yourself, Jarl Keith — or we'll both perish."
"Cling to my shoulder — kick hard with your feet," I panted.
His weight threatened to drag me under at any moment. I fought to swim away from the cliffs, but I was like a child in the relentless grip of those great waves.
Then I glimpsed a little beach that indented the cliffs. I recognized it at once. It was the beach where I had landed my plane!
"This way!" I cried to Frey. "We'll be shattered on the cliffs unless we can get to that beach."
The breakers threatened to drag us north of the little sandy indentation. I put my last ounce of strength into swimming obliquely across the thunderous waves. But those boiling breakers carried us resistlessly toward the looming cliff. We were going to be flung against it–