The Broken Sword Read online

  ‘It would not be good to die without calling on – Him above,’ said Asgerd. ‘But we will obey you in this.’

  Skafloc laughed and laid a hand on Freda’s shoulder. ‘Why, how can we but win when such beauty is to be fought for?’ he asked gaily.

  He told off two elves to carry the girls, and others to form a shield-burg about them. Then, at the head of a wedge formation, he proceeded over the ridge toward the sea.

  Lightly went the elves, springing from rock to crag like cats, hauberk scales singing their silver tones and weapons agleam in the moonlight. When they saw the trolls black against the stars, waiting for them, they set up a fierce shout, clashed swords on shields, and leaped to battle.

  But Skafloc drew a sharp breath as he saw the size of the troll force. The elves were outnumbered some six to one – and if Illrede could raise that horde so quickly, what might not his full strength be?

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we will just have to kill six trolls apiece.’

  Now the elf archers loosed their shafts, and the trolls had naught to match the moon-darkening cloud which sighed over them. Many sank on the spot. But most of the arrows rattled harmlessly off rocks, or stuck in shields, and all were soon spent.

  The elves rushed forward, and battle clamored in the night. Roaring troll horns and yelling elf lurs, wolf-howling troll cries and hawk-shrieking elf challenges, thunder of troll axes on elf shields and clash of elf swords falling on troll helmets stormed up to the far stars and the wavering northern lights.

  Ax and sword! Spear and club! Cloven shield and sundered helm and ripped byrnie! Red gush of elf blood meeting cold green flow of troll’s! Auroras dancing death-dances overhead!

  Two tall figures, scarce to be told from each other, loomed over the battle. Valgard’s thundering ax and Skafloc’s flying sword hewed a bloody way through the battle. The berserker was foaming in his madness, howling and smiting at all before him; Skafloc was silent, but scarcely less wild as he moved speed-blurred in the fight.

  But the trolls were hemming in the elves, seeking to cramp them – for in close quarters, where the swiftness and agility of the elves were hampered, the sheer strength of the trolls counted heavily. It seemed to Skafloc that for each gaping grinning face that sank before him, two more rose out of the blood-steaming snow. He had to stand his ground, with sweat rivering off him to freeze on his face, and hew, hew at the enemy.

  Thus it was Valgard who came up to him, Valgard mad with the berserkergang and hate for all things elfly – most of all for Imric’s foster. They met almost breast to breast, glaring into each other’s eyes in the uncertain moonlight.

  Skafloc’s blade clanged on Valgard’s helm, and the mighty blow dented the metal – could have shorn through had the sword not been blunted by use. Valgard’s ax bit an edge from Skafloc’s new shield, which cried out in metal pain.

  Skafloc thrust for Valgard’s neck, and laid open his cheek so that the teeth grinned forth. The berserker howled anew and pressed in with a thunderous hail of blows, banging on Skafloc’s helm and shield till the man reeled from the blows.

  But he thrust again, and as Valgard sought to parry with his ax handle, Skafloc changed in mid-motion to a downward arc that bit deep into the berserker’s leg. Howling, Valgard fell back, and Skafloc pressed in on him.

  A blow as of a thunderbolt dinned on his helm, and he fell forward to hands and knees. Illrede Troll-King had loomed up beside him and swung his huge stone-headed club. Valgard snarled, and rushed forward with ax descending. Elf-swift, Skafloc rolled aside. The weapon clove where he had been, into the neck of an elf in the shield-burg. As that one fell, Valgard smote a second time, at the one behind, but it was into the burden he bore that the ax sank.

  The elf sprang away, being weaponless, and the shield-burg moved after Skafloc, who was now fighting elsewhere. Valgard was alone.

  Swaying on his feet and pouring blood, the berserker stood over Asgerd’s body. ‘I had not meant that,’ he muttered. ‘But indeed my ax is accursed – or is it me?’ He passed a hand over his eyes, puzzledly. ‘Only – they are not my kin, are they?’

  Weak with the passing of the berserkergang, he sat down beside Asgerd. The battle moved away from him. ‘Now there are only Skafloc and Freda to kill, then all the blood I once thought my own is gone,’ he said, stroking her heavy golden braids. He took the ax from her side. ‘And it might be well to do it with you, Brother-slayer. Aelfrida too, if she still lives, I could kill – why not? She is not my mother, my mother is a great hideous monster chained in Imric’s dungeons. Aelfrida, who sang me to sleep, is not my mother—’

  Ill went it with the elves, but they fought valiantly. In their van, Skafloc shouted to them, rallying them, summoning them, and his blade yelled death to the trolls. None could stand before the whirling steel, and with his men he slowly hewed a dreadful seaward way.

  Once he faltered, when Goltan fell with a spear through him. ‘Now I am one comrade poorer,’ he said, ‘and it is a wealth not won back.’ Then his shout rose again: ‘Hai, Alfheim! Forward, forward!’

  And so at last a remnant of the elves broke through the trolls and retreated to the beach. Valka the Wise, Flam of Orkney, Hlokkan Redspear, and other great elf warriors fell in the rearguard, but the rest won down to the ships which waited for them, invisible save to the greater warlocks among the trolls.

  Half their ships they burned, there on the beach in Finnmark, for they would be empty. The others were all undermanned, and none of the crews but had grievous wounds, but still they made shift to get under way ere the trolls came down to the shore.

  Freda, huddled in the bottom of Skafloc’s dragon, saw him standing tall and bloody against the sinking moon, and she saw him making rune signs in the air and speaking strange words. A wind sprang up behind the elf fleet, a gale, a storm, and with iron-taut sails and bow-bent masts and groaning wind-harped rigging the ships leaped forward. Faster and ever faster they fled, like the flying spindrift, like the howling storm, like dream and sorcery and moonlight running over the water. Skafloc stood in the spray-sheeting bows, singing his warlock song, with unhelmed hair flying and ragged byrnie chiming, a figure out of myth and worlds beyond man.

  Darkness came to Freda.

  11

  She awoke on a couch of carved ivory, spread with furs and silks. She had been bathed and dressed in a white samite shift. By her bedside stood a curiously wrought table bearing clustered grapes and other fruits of the southland. But save for this she could only see an endless deep-blue twilight all about her, as if she floated in the womb of infinity.

  For a time she could not remember where she might be or what had happened to her, then recollection rushed back and she fell to wild sobbing. Endlessly she wept, alone in the vast blue peace, until she had wept herself out, and then she fell asleep.

  Awakening again, she felt marvelous rested, but the silence and loneliness weighed heavily on her. Then looking around, she saw Skafloc approaching, seeming to stride through the blue spaciousness toward her.

  No sign of his wounds remained, and he smiled eagerly at her. He wore only a brief, richly broidered tunic and kilt, and the great muscles could be seen rippling under his skin. He sat down on the side of the couch and took her hands and looked into her eyes.

  ‘Do you feel better now?’ he asked. ‘You have slept long.’

  ‘I feel well, only – only where am I—?’ she answered dazedly.

  ‘In Imric’s castle of Elfheugh, in the elf-hills of the northern marshes,’ said Skafloc, and as her eyes grew wide with fear: ‘No harm shall come to you here, and all shall be as you wish.’

  ‘I thank you,’ she said, ‘as well as God Who—’

  ‘Nay, speak not holy names here,’ said Skafloc, ‘for elves must flee the sound. But else you are free to do as you wish.’

  ‘But you are not an elf,’ protested Freda.

  ‘No, I am human, but raised among the elves. I am foster to Imric the Guileful, and feel more akin to him
than to whoever my real father is.’

  ‘How came you to save us? We had despaired—’

  Skafloc told briefly of the war and his raid, then smiled and said, ‘But it is better to speak of you. Who could have had so fair a daughter?’

  Freda flushed, but told him of what had happened. He nodded. The name of Orm meant naught to him, for Imric, to break his fosterling’s human ties, had brought him up not be curious about his parentage. As for Valgard, Freda knew not save that he was her brother gone mad; Skafloc had sensed an inhumanness about the berserker, but with so much else to think over – especially Freda – did not stop to wonder at its reason or why the two of them should be almost twins. Belike, he thought, Valgard was a man who had become devil-possessed.

  Nor did Freda think much about the likeness of the two men, for she could never have mistaken them. Eyes and lips and play of features, manner and touch and thought, were so different in them that she scarce noticed the sameness of height and bone structure and cast of face.

  She had not finished her tale ere she was weeping again on Skafloc’s breast. He sought to comfort her, for it seemed wrong to him that she should ever know unhappiness, and he whispered certain charms which lifted woe sooner than nature could.

  ‘Dead!’ cried Freda. ‘Dead, all dead, all slain save Valgard and myself. I – I saw him slay Father and Asmund when Ketil was already dead, I saw Mother stretched stark and moveless at his feet, I saw him strike down Asgerd – now only I am left, Skafloc, alone – Oh, Mother, Mother!’

  ‘Be of good cheer,’ said the man awkwardly. ‘You are unharmed, and I shall seek out Valgard and revenge you and your folk on him.’

  ‘Little good will that do. Orm’s garth is an ash heap and all his kin dead save one gone mad and one left homeless and alone.’ She clung to him, shivering. ‘I am afraid, Skafloc, I am afraid of the loneliness—’

  He ruffled her hair with one hand, while the other tipped her chin back so she looked into his eyes. ‘You are not alone,’ he said, smiling, and kissed her. Her lips quivered under his, soft and warm and salty with tears.

  ‘Now ’tis time you broke your fast,’ he said. There was a dress laid out for her, of the filmy flowing spider silk worn by elf women. Freda blushed hotly as she donned it, for it hid little from Skafloc’s frank blue eyes. But she could not but laugh with sheer admiration of the heavy gold rings he put on her slender arms and the diamond-twinkling coronet he set on her flowing locks.

  They crossed the invisible floor and came into a long hallway which did not appear at once but grew like a mist about them into solidity. Shining colonnades went down its marbled length, and the richly colored figurings of rugs and tapestries moved in fantastic dances.

  Here and there scurried goblin thralls, a race halfway between elf and troll, green-skinned and squat but of not unpleasing aspect. Once Freda shrank against Skafloc with a little cry as a huge yellow demon stalked down the corridor bearing a massive chandelier. Ahead of him scuttled a dwarf with a big shield.

  ‘What was that?’ whispered Freda.

  Skafloc chuckled. ‘One of the Shen, Cathayan devils whom we took captive in a raid,’ he said. ‘He is strong and makes a good slave, but as his kind can only move in straight lines unless deflected by a wall, we must have the dwarf with the shield off which he can rebound at corners.’

  She laughed with him, and he stood listening in wonder to the clear peal of it. Always in the silvery mirth of the elf women was a hint of malicious mockery, but Freda’s laughter came fresh and artless as a spring morning.

  The two ate of the rare viands, alone at a small table with music sighing from the air around them. Skafloc quoth:

  Food is good for friendship,

  fairest one, and wine-cups.

  Good it is to gladden

  gullets in the morning.

  But my eyes, bewildered

  by the sight of Freda,

  sate themselves on sun-bright

  southern maiden’s beauty.

  She dropped her eyes, feeling her cheeks burn, yet she could not but smile.

  Remorse came to her. ‘How can I laugh so soon after my kin are dead? Broken is the mighty tree whose branches sheltered the land, and now the wind blows cold across the barrens—’ She ceased looking for words, saying merely, ‘Ill is it when good folk die.’

  ‘Why, if they were good you need not mourn for them,’ said Skafloc glibly, ‘for they are safe from this world’s sorrows, come home to Him above. I should think, in truth, that only the sound of your weeping could trouble their bliss.’

  Freda clung to his arm as they left the room. ‘I cannot help it,’ she said, tears filming her gray eyes. ‘I loved them, and now they are gone and I am left alone.’

  Skafloc kissed her. ‘Not while I live,’ he murmured.

  As they entered another great room, whose vaulted ceil was hidden in its own awesome height, Freda saw a woman so lovely she had never imagined the like. Elf she was, with an unearthly beauty that was cold and subtle and resistless. Beside that white goddess, Freda felt small and plain and afraid.

  ‘You see I came back, Leea,’ Skafloc hailed her in the elf tongue.

  ‘Aye,’ she replied, ‘but with little booty, and over half your men dead. It was a fruitless quest.’

  ‘Not all fruitless.’ Skafloc laid an arm about Freda’s waist. She crept close to him out of fear of the cold white witch who watched her with a deep sullen anger.

  ‘What do you want with mortal women?’ taunted Leea. ‘Unless your own human blood is calling in your veins.’

  ‘Belike so.’ Skafloc was unmoved by her contempt.

  She came close to him and laid a cool hand on his arm, searching his face with her eyes of blue dusk and moonlight. ‘Skafloc,’ she said urgently, ‘get rid of this girl. Send her home if you will not slay her.’

  ‘She has no home, and I will not let her wander the roads.’ Skafloc jeered at Leea: ‘What do you care what two mortals do?’

  ‘I care,’ she said sorrowfully, ‘and I see my prophecy was right. Like calls to like – but not her, Skafloc! Take any mortal maid save this one. There is doom in her – I can feel it, deep within myself. ’Twas not mere chance you found her, and she will wreak ill on you.’

  ‘Not Freda,’ said Skafloc stoutly, and then to change the discourse: ‘When will Imric return? He had been summoned to council with the Erlking when I came back from Trollheim.’

  ‘He will be back soon. Wait until then, Skafloc, and it may well be he can sense the doom I feel over this may and warn you.’

  ‘Should I, who have fought trolls and demons and men, care aught for danger a woman brings?’ snorted Skafloc. ‘Go to!’ And he led Freda away.

  Leea looked wildly after them, then fled through the long halls with tears aglimmer in her eyes.

  Skafloc and Freda wandered through the mighty castle, talking eagerly. At last he said: ‘Now come outside and I will show you something I made for you.’

  ‘For me?’ she cried.

  ‘For you – and perhaps, if the Norns be kind, me too,’ he laughed.

  They went through the great brazen gates into the snow-decked hills. There was bright sunlight, dazzling on the blue-shadowed whiteness, and no elves were abroad. They walked into the ice-flashing forest, Skafloc’s great cloak wrapped around them both. Breath smoked whitely into the frosty blue sky and breathing was a sharp clear sting. The sea thundered grayly on eastern cliffs, and a breeze soughed through the darkling firs.

  ‘It is cold,’ shivered Freda. The hot ruddy-bronze color of her hair was the only warmth in all that frozen world. ‘Outside your cloak it is cold.’

  ‘Too cold for you to wander begging on the roads.’

  ‘There are those who would take me in. We had many friends.’

  ‘Indeed, but why go forth to find them when you have them here? And now – see.’

  They topped a high hill, one of a ring about a little vale. And down there Skafloc had created summer. Green
were the trees about a little dancing waterfall, and flowers nodded in the fragrant grass. Birds sang in the glen, fish leaped in the clear cool river, and a doe and her fawn stood watching the humans with trustful eyes.

  Freda clapped her hands and cried out. Skafloc smiled. ‘I made it for you,’ he said, ‘because you are of summer and life and joy. Forget the winter and its death and hardness, Freda – here we have our own summer.’

  They went down into the dale, casting off the broad cloak, and sat close by the waterfall. Breezes ruffled their hair and berries clustered heavily about them. At Skafloc’s command, the flowers wove themselves into a chain which he hung about Freda’s neck.

  She could not fear him or his arts. She lay dreamily back on the grass as he quoth:

  Laughter from your lips, dear,

  lures me like a war-cry.

  Bronze-red locks have bound me:

  bonds more strong than iron.

  Never have I nodded

  neck beneath a yoke, but

  wish I now the welcome

  warmth of your arms’ prison.

  Life was made for laughter,

  love, and eager heartbeat.

  Could I but caress you,

  came I to my heaven.

  Sorceress, you see me

  seek your love with pleading:

  how can Skafloc help it

  when you have ensnared him?

  ‘It is not meet—’ she protested feebly, unable to keep from smiling.

  ‘Why, how can it but be meet? There is nothing else so right and proper.’

  ‘You are a heathen, and I—’

  ‘I told you not to speak of such matters. Now you must pay the penalty.’ And Skafloc kissed her, long and lingeringly. She sought for a moment to fend him off, but she seemed to have no strength, and in the end she gave him back his kiss.

  ‘Now, was that so bad?’ he laughed.

  ‘No—’ she whispered.

  The day ended and night came to the vale of summer. They lay by the rushing waterfall and listened to the nightingale.

  Suddenly Skafloc knew that the snare that he had laid for Freda, mostly in idle jest, had caught him too. He did not care, and lay drowsily back on the cool soft moss. Never had he had much feeling for an elf woman, but Freda—