Howard Robert Ervin. Gods of the North

Across the red drifts and mail-clad forms, two figures glared at each other. In that utter desolation only
they moved. The frosty sky was over them, the white illimitable plain around them, the dead men at their
feet. Slowly through the corpses they came, as ghosts might come to a tryst through the shambles of a
dead world. In the brooding silence they stood face to face.
Both were tall men, built like tigers. Their shields were gone, their corselets battered and dinted. Blood
dried on their mail; their swords were stained red. Their horned helmets showed the marks of fierce
strokes. One was beardless and blackÂmaned.
The locks and beard of the other were red as the blood
on the sunlit snow.
"Man," said he, "tell me your name, so that my brothers in Vanaheim may know who was the last of
Wulfhere's band to fall before the sword of Heimdul."
"Not in Vanaheim," growled the black-haired warrior, "but in Valhalla will you tell your brothers that you
met Conan of Cimmeria."
Heimdul roared and leaped, and his sword flashed in deathly arc. Conan staggered and his vision was
filled with red sparks as the singing blade crashed on his helmet, shivering into bits of blue fire. But as he
reeled he thrust with all the power of his broad shoulders behind the humming blade. The sharp point tore
through brass scales and bones and heart, and the red-haired warrior died at Conan's feet.
The Cimmerian stood upright, trailing his sword, a sudden sick weariness assailing him. The glare of the
sun on the snow cut his eyes like a knife and the sky seemed shrunken and strangely apart...