The man who had held back earlier to allow his leader to slay Declan was running at him from one side while the other one was rounding the fire to attack from the opposite flank. The wagon and tinkers were out of sight behind him and he couldn't risk looking back to see what the pikeman was doing to them. He ran at the nearest of the two attackers swinging the axe around his head but, he realized at once, not to good effect. The other was able to fend off the blow with his shorter weapon, duck forward and under and slash at his lower body with the knife that he also carried. Frantically, Declan bent forward at the waist so that the blade tore a long rent in his already-torn garments but not in him. He jumped back and swung around to see what the other attacker was doing.

At first it seemed that the man was standing still at about ten paces distant and doing nothing at all. Then he saw that the other had dropped his short sword to the ground and was holding, not a knife but a vicious looking gae bolga, a throwing weapon with forward-angled spikes along both sides of its short blade, behind and below his waist, and with his arm stretched back to hurl it at Declan. Without a stout shield to deflect the thrown blade, there was only one defense possible and that was another attack.

He changed quickly to a one-handed grip on the thick shaft of his axe and with a great effort raised the blade to the level of the other's face. He began to run toward the man sideways so as to present the thinnest possible target against the dark background of the trees but, he felt sure, awkwardly and far too slowly. His hope, a truly desperate one, was that the sharp, advancing point of his axehead would worry the other enough to put him off his aim.