Baltazar waited, as the wave of norsemen flew over the railings, gritting his teeth as the crewmen were cut down. He hadn't quite expected the deckhands to go down so easily - but then again, he had always considered himself an optimism. The marauders were tall, strong and desperate, but their battle frenzy also gave Baltazar the advantage he needed, as the brutes passed him by where he stood wreathed in shadow. He wasn't some burly marauder who could cleave a man's head from his shoulders in one swing, but even making it a third of the way through was good enough in a fight. A hamstring there, a hip sliced open there, and the norsemen barely noticed before they were trampled by their comrades. With the thunder and screaming drowning out any calls for help, and the slippery deck easily explaining their tumbles, Baltazar easily stayed hidden within his veil of magic as he tore through the rear ranks of the enemy.

But magic's power is fleeting, and the shadows soon pulled away - too soon, and the last few attackers had time to give him a surprised look before he ran his sword over their fingertips, sending them screaming into the waves. Though he was no novice to more mundane means of concealment, Baltazar none the less elected to run for his life, as more of the Norscan raiders began to realize someone was attacking them from behind. Ducking and half-swording his way around the edge of combat, he caught glimpses of where the others were at. Fortune's noble sacrifice had cost them a good warrior, and from what Baltazar could gather, half of the rest were preoccupied trying to keep the young knight alive.

For his own part, he maintained a death grip on his sword and tried to remember everything he'd been taught about fighting multiple opponents. The Norscans were an accommodating foe, their combination of axe and shield being clumsy at best for a cluttered shipboard fight. Simply step aside, wait until their shields bump into something, and strike. Even a towering Norscan couldn't parry a quick sword thrust with an axe, and whenever he found the time and space, he would stop his chase and go for another one of his attacker - by the time he had killed two, he realized he had made it all the way around the ship. Up ahead were his own "lines" such as they were, and a rapid slash against an unprotected back allowed him to rejoin his allies.

Baltazar found a place next to a couple of the fighting crewmen, using the respite to survey the battle. Overall, it seemed they had put quite a dent in the Norscan forces, even if some of their own fighters were getting winded. The elder Bretonnian stood surrounded by an impressive mound of corpses, all slain in open combat no less - Baltazar would have to remember to heave his own victims overboard later, before that mound of Norscans with mortal back wounds raised any eyebrows. Staring down what remained of the horde, he called out for the crew to rally and push the enemy off the ship, once and for all.