The Broken Sword (15 page)

“Ha!” cried the berserker; but ere he could follow up his chance Firespear was at him like an angry cat, and others of Alfheim besides. The elves held the ship.

“You leave me no reason to stay here,” said Valgard, “though I hope to see you again, brotherling.” And he sprang overboard.

He had meant to get free of his byrnie before it dragged him too far under, but there was no need. Many ships had been wrecked by ramming or the sheer press of battle. The mast of one was floating by and he caught it with his left hand. His right still held the axe Brotherslayer and for a little he wondered if he should not let it go.

But no-accursed or not, it was a good weapon.

Others, who had had a moment to lighten their loads before fleeing the ship, also dung to the mast. “Kick out, brothers/’ shouted Valgard, “and we will reach a keel of ouf own-and win this battle yet.”

Aboard the troll flagship, the elves yelled their glee. Skafloc asked: “Where is Illrede? He should have been aboard, yet I saw him not.”

“Belike he is flying about, overseeing his fleet, even as Imric is doing in the form of a sea-mew,” Firespear answered. “Let’s chop a hole in this damned hulk and be back to the other.”

There they found Imric waiting for them. “How goes the battle, foster father?” called Skafloc gaily.

The elf-earl’s voice fell bleak on his ears: “Badly goes it, for however well the elves fight, the trolls throw two to one against them. And parts of the enemy are landing unopposed.”

“Bad news in truth,” cried Golric of Cornwall, “and we must fight like veryNdemons or we are lost.”

“I fear we are lost already,” said Imric.

Skafloc could not at once grasp this. Looking around, he saw that the flagship drifted alone. Both fleets were breaking asunder as the linking ropes were cut by foemen; but the troll craft suffered less of this. And too often the trolls were laying one vessel on either side of an elf hull.

“To oars!” shouted Skafloc. “They need help. To oars!”

“Well spoke,” fleered Imric.

The longship moved to the closest knot of battle. Arrows fell on it.

“Shoot back!” cried Skafloc. “In the name of hell, why don’t you shoot back?”

“Our quivers are nigh empty, lord,” said an elf. Hunching low behind their shields, the elves rowed into the fight. Two of their fellow ships were at bay between three hireling craft and one troll dragon. As Imric’s vessel neared, the bat-winged demons of Baikal descended on her.

The elves hewed manfully, but it was hard to fight enemies that struck from above with lances. They spent their last arrows, and still the swooping death smote.

Nonetheless they laid alongside a goblin ship, and it was from here that the arrows had come. Skafloc sprang across the rails and struck out with the elf sword he now carried. These small folk could not withstand dose combat. One he chopped in two, a second he sent screaming with belly gashed open, the head of a third went bouncing from its shoulders. Firespear’s pike transfixed two while he kicked in the breastbone of another. More elves boarded. The goblins fell back.

Skafloc reached their arrow chests and threw the heavy boxes across to his ship. Rather than lead a butchery into the stern, he blew retreat; the goblins here made no further difference to anyone but themselves. Elf bows twanged anew and the hovering demons toppled out of the sky.

The trolls closed in. Skafloc saw that the other two elf ships were rallying against the goblins. Oni, and imps. “If they can handle those, I suppose we can take care of the trolls,” he said.

The green-skinned warriors grappled, boomed their cry, and came over the rail of the elf dragon. Skafloc ran to meet them, slipped on the bloody catwalk, and fell between the benches. A spear whizzed where his breast had been, with force to pierce ringmail. Golric of Cornwall toppled, the point in his heart.

“Thanks,” muttered Skafloc, rising. The trolls were on him. From above, their blows hailed on his shield and helm. He slashed at ankles, and a foeman went down. Before he could get his sword back into play, another troll was stooping over, thrusting for his face. He shoved up his iron-plated shield. The troll screamed and staggered back, endlessly screaming, half his own face seared away. Skafloc got back on to the catwalk and rejoined his elves.

Shock and thunder of blows sounded through ever more thickly drifting snow. The wind rose too, making the linked ships roll and pitch and bang hull against hull. Fighters lurched, fell off upper decks, catwalks, and benches, on to the lower deck, and rose to fight on. Erelong Skafloc’s shield was beaten into uselessness. He cast it at the troll with whom he was trading blows, and thrust his edge-blunted sword into the heart.

Then he was seized from behind. He pushed his steel helmet backward. Naught happened save that the oak-branch arms tightened their grip. Twisting his head around, he saw that this troll was fully clad in leather, with hood and gloves. Skafloc used an elven wrestling break to get free, snapping his arms out between thumb and forefinger of the foeman. But at once he was caught in a bear hug. The ship rocked and cast them both down between the benches.

Skafloc could not squirm loose. He knew grimly that the creature could break his ribs like arrow shafts. He got his knees against the troll’s belly, his hands around the thick throat, and braced himself.

Belike no other mortal man could have held his back arched against that frightful drag. Skafloc felt the strength drain from him like wine from an overturned cup. He poured all muscle and will and heart into his back and legs, and into the hands he clamped on the troll’s windpipe. It seemed for ever that they rolled with the ship, and he knew he could not hold out much longer.

Then the troll let go and clawed at Skafloc’s wrists, wild for air. The man rammed his enemy’s head against the mast partner, once, twice, thrice, with a fury that sang in the wood and split the leather-clad skull.

Skafloc lay over the body, gasping, his heart nigh to bursting loose from his breast and a roar of blood in his ears. After a while he dimly saw Firespear bent over him and heard the guardsman’s awed voice:

“Not elf nor human was yet known to have slain a troll in barehanded combat. Your deed is worthy of a Beowulf and will be unforgotten while the world stands. And now we have won.”

He helped Skafloc up to the foredeck. Looking over the nearby waters, through the wind-slanted snowfall, the man saw that the outland mercenary ships had likewise been cleared.

But at what a cost-not a score of elves on their three craft remained whole; most who lived were grievously hurt. The ships drifted shoreward, manned with corpses and a few warriors too weary to lift a sword.

And straining through the murk, Skafloc saw yet another troll longship, fully crewed, bearing down on them.

“I fear we have lost,” he groaned. “Naught is left but to save what we can.”

The ships rolled helplessly toward tumbling surf. And on the strand waited a line of trolls, mounted on their great black horses.

A sea-mew dived out of the snow, shook himself and was Imric. “We have done well,” said the elf-earl grimly. “Nigh half the troll fleet will not sail again. But that half is mostly their allies, and we-we are broken. Such of our craft as can still be worked are in full flight, while others like this await their doom.” Sudden tears, perhaps the first in centuries, glimmered in his chill blank eyes. “England is lost. I fear me is lost.”

Firespear gripped the shaft of his pike. “We will go out fighting,” he vowed; his voice was hollow with tiredness.

Skafloc shook his head, and as he thought of Freda waiting in Elfheugh a little strength flowed back into him. “We will go on fighting,” he said. “First, though, we must save our lives.”

” Tis a good trick if you can do it,” said Firespear doubtfully.

Skafloc doffed his helmet. The locks beneath were matted with sweat. “We begin by taking off our armour,” he said.

The elves could barely row enough to bring their three ships together within boathook reach. They gathered in one of these and raised mast and sail. Still their chances looked poor, for the approaching trolls were downwind, and both craft were quite near the lee shore.

Skafloc fought the steering oar, some of his folk poled out the sail, and they went quartering landward. The trolls dug in oars, seeking either to catch the elf vessel or drive it on to a skerry up ahead.

”Twill be a tight squeeze,” said Imric.

“Tighter than they think!” Skafloc grinned without mirth and squinted through the driving snowflakes. He saw surf spume on the reef, heard it roar through the squealing of wind. Beyond were the shallows.

The trolls cut over the starboard quarter. Skafloc shouted a command to let the sail go, and put up his helm. The ship swung around and leaped before the wind. Too late, the trolls saw what he meant and tried to get out of the way. Skafloc rammed them amidships with a shock at which timbers groaned. The enemy vessel was pushed ahead of it, into the surf, on to the skerry-trapped and smashed!

Skafloc’s elves worked the sail like madmen to his orders. Troll oars snapped as they slid past the other hull. The man had no hope of saving his own craft, but by using the foe’s both as fender and as pivot, he could hit more easily, and at the far end of the reef where the sea was less angry. When his ship struck and hung fast, only a narrow spine of rock lay between it and the shallows.

“Save himself who can!” cried Skafloc. He leaped out on to the slippery stone and over into a neck-deep water. Seal-swift he darted for the beach. His comrades were with him, except those too badly hurt to move. They must stay in the breaking hull and drown in sight of land.

The rest waded ashore, and they were well past the troll line. Some of the riders saw them and galloped off to kill.

“Scatter!” shouted Skafloc. “Most can escape!”

Running into the snowstorm, he saw elves spitted on lances or trampled under hoofs. But the bulk of his little band were getting away. High swung the sea-mew.

And down on the bird stooped a mighty erne. Skafloc groaned. Crouched behind a rock, he saw the erne bear the mew to earth, and there they became Illrede and Imric.

Troll clubs thudded on to the elf-earl. He lay limp in a pool of his blood while they bound him.

If Imric was dead, Alfheim had lost one of its best leaders. If he lived-woe for him! Skafloc slithered off through the snow-covered ling. He scarcely felt weariness, or cold, or his stiffening wounds. The elves were beaten, and now he had but one goal: to reach Elfheugh and Freda ahead of the trolls.

Illrede’s folk took sun-shelter and rested through a couple of days, for the struggle had worn them down too. Thereafter they set south, half by land and half by sea. The ships reached Elfheugh harbour the same night. Their crews went ashore, plundered what buildings they found in the open, and waited around the castle for their fellows.

The land troops, with Grum and Valgard at the head, went more slowly. Horsemen scoured the countryside, and whatever small bands of elf warriors sought to fight were slain-not without loss to the trolls. Outlying garths were looted and burned, their folk chained into long lines that stumbled neck linked to neck and wrists lashed together, with Imric in the lead. The trolls made merry with food and drink and women of Alfheim, and did not unduly hasten to reach Elfheugh.

But by their arts, or by the mere lack of word from their men, the castle dwellers knew at dawn of the battle night that Imric had lost. Later, looking down from their high parapets to the campfires that ringed them in, to the black ships drawn up on the strand or riding at anchor in the bay, they knew it had been no double loss but a dear victory for the invaders.

As Freda stood thus staring out of a window in her bedchamber, she heard the faintest rustle of silken garments. She turned and saw Leea behind her. In the elf woman’s hand gleamed a knife.

Pain and malice were on Leea’s face, making it no longer the face of an idol carved in ivory by an ancient southland master. She said in human speech: “You weep dry tears for one whose love is raven food.”

“I will weep when I know he is dead,” answered Freda tonelessly. “But there was too much life in him for me to believe that he is now lying stark.”

“Where then might he be, and what use is a skulking outcast?” Leea’s pale full lips curved upward. “See you this dagger, Freda? The trolls are camped around Elfheugh, and your law forbids you to take your own life. But if you wish escape, I will gladly give you it.”

“No. I will wait for Skafloc,” said Freda. “And have we not spears and arrows and engines of war? Is there not ample meat and drink, and are the walls not high and the gates strong? Let such as had to remain in the castle hold it for those who went forth.”

Leea’s knife sank. She looked long at the slim grey-eyed girl. “Good is ypur spirit,” she said at last, “and methinks I begin to see what Skafloc found in you. However, your rede is a mortal’s-foolish and impatient. Can women hold a fort against storm when their men are fallen?”

“They can try-or fall like their men.”

“Not so. They have other weapons.” A cruel mirth flickered across Leea’s countenance. “Women’s weapons; but to use them we must open the gates. Would you avenge your lover?”

“Aye-with arrow and dagger, and poison if need be!”

“Then give the trolls your kisses: swift as arrows, sharp as knives, bitter and deadly as poison in the cup. Such is the way of the elf women.”

“Sooner would I break the great law of Him above and be my own murderer than whore of my man’s slayers!” flared the girl.

“Mortal chatter,” scoffed Leea. She smiled her cat-smile. “I will find the caresses of trolls interesting, for a time. They are something new, at least, and hard it is to find anything fresh after many centuries. We open the gates of Elfheugh when our new earl arrives.”

Freda sank on to the bed and buried her face in her hands. Leea said: “If you wish to follow out your human brainless-ness, I will be quite glad to get rid of you. Tomorrow after daybreak, when the trolls sleep, I will let you from the castle with whatever you want to take. Thereafter you can do as you please-flee to lands of men, I suppose, and join your voice to the shrill whine of nuns whose Heavenly groom somehow never comes for them. I wish you joy of that!”