The Broken Sword (17 page)

However, Grum could do no less than hold feast for him and place him at the right of the high seat. The elf women served the trolls, and Leea came to Valgard with horn after horn of strong wine.

“To our hero, chief among warriors in lands of men or Faerie,” she drank. The silver light gleamed through her thin silks to her skin, and Valgard’s head spun with more than the drink.

“You can give me better thanks than that,” he cried, and pulled her on to his lap. Fiercely he kissed her, and she responded with the same eagerness.

Grum, who had slumped in his seat and drained his horns without a word, stirred in anger. “Back to your work, faithless bitch!” he snarled, and to Valgard: “Leave my woman be. You have your own.”

“But I like this one better,” said Valgard. “I will give you three others for her.”

“Ha, I can take your three if I like-I, your earl. What I choose is mine. Leave her be.”

“The loot should go to him who can best use it,” taunted Leea, not moving from Valgard’s lap. “And you have only one hand.”

The troll sprang from his seat, blind with rage and clawing after his sword; for trolls ate with weapons on. “Help me!” cried Leea.

Valgard’s axe seemed to leap of itself into his grasp. Ere Grum, awkward with his left hand, could draw blade, the changeling’s weapon sank into his neck.

He fell at Valgard’s feet with blood spurting and looked up into the twisted white face. “You are an evil man,” said Grum, “but she is worse.” And he died.

Uproar arose in the hall, metal flashed forth and the trolls surged against the high seat. Some cried for Valgard’s death, others swore they would defend him. For a moment it was about to become a battle.

Then Valgard snatched the blood-smeared coronet, which had been Imric’s, from Grum’s head and set it on his own. He sprang on to the high seat and overrode the din with his shout for silence.

Slowly that stillness came, until naught but heavy breathing was heard. The bared weapons gleamed, the smell of fear was rank, and every eye rested on Valgard where he stood haughty in his strength.

He spoke, with iron in his tones: “This came somewhat sooner than I looked for, but it was bound to come. For what use to Trollheim was a cripple like Grum, unfit for battle, for anything save gobbling and bousing and sleeping with women that might have gone to better men? I, who come of blood as good as any in Trollheim, and who have shown I can win victory, am more fit to be your earl. Furthermore, I am now earl, by the will of my father King Illrede. Good will this be for all trolls, foremost those of England. I promise you victory, riches, high living and glory, if you hail me your earl.”

He pulled the axe out of Grum and lifted it. “Whoever gainsays my right must do it on my body-now,” he told them. “Whoever stands true will be repaid a thousandfold.”

At this, the men who had followed him to the siege let forth a cheer. Others, who wished not to fight, joined them one by one, so it ended with Valgard’s taking the high seat and the feast going on. Grum had not been very well liked, and what few kinfolk he had there were not close and were willing to take weregild.

Later, alone in his bedchamber with Leea, the changeling sat staring darkly at her. “This is the second time a woman has driven me to murder,” he said. “Were I wise, I would chop your body in three.”

“I cannot stop you, lord,” she purred, and laid her white arms about his neck.

“You know I cannot do it,” he said hoarsely. “Tis idle talk. My life is black enough without such peace as I can find in you.”

Still later he asked her: “Were you thus with the elves-with Skafloc?”

She lifted her head over his so that the sweet-scented net of her hair covered both. “Let it suffice that I am thus with you, lord,” she whispered, and kissed him.

***

Now Valgard ruled Elfheugh for some time. Through the early winter he was often afield, breaking down elf strongholds and hunting the fugitives with hounds and men. Few garths remained unburnt, and when elves sought to make a stand he led his troops roaring over them. Some of those men whom he took alive he threw into dungeons or put to slave work, but most he killed, and he divided their women among his trolls. He himself took none, having lust for none but Leea.

Word came from the south that Illrede’s armies were driving the elves there before them. All Faerie parts of Valland and Flanders were held by the trolls. In the north, only the elves of Scania still were free; and they were hemmed in, and were being pawed away as fast as their deep woodlands allowed. Erelong the trolls would be entering the middle lands where the Elfking lay.

Men had some glimpse of these doings-distant fires, galloping shadows, storm-winds bearing a brazen clangor. And the loosed magic wrought much havoc, murrains on the livestock and spoilt grain and bad luck in families. Sometimes a hunter would come on a trampled, bloody field and half-see ravens tearing at corpses which had not the look of men. Folk huddled in lonely houses, laid iron beneath the thresholds, and called on their various gods for help.

But as the weeks wore on, Valgard came to sit more and more in Elfheugh. For he had been to every castle and hill-town he could find, he had harried from Orkney to Cornwall, and such elves as had escaped him were well hidden-striking out of cover at his men, so that not a few trolls never came home; sneaking poison into food and water; hamstringing horses; corroding arms and armour; calling up blizzards as if the very land rose against the invader.

The trolls held England, no doubt of that, and daily their grip tightened. Yet never had Valgard longed for spring as now he did.

Skafloc and Freda took shelter in a cave. It was a deep hole in a cliff that slanted back from the seashore, well north of the elf-hills. Behind it was a forest of ice-sheathed trees which grew thicker towards the south and faded into moor and highland toward the north. Dark and drear was that land, unpeopled by men or Faerie folk, and thus about as safe as any place from which to carry on the war.

They could use little magic, for fear of being sensed by the trolls, but Skafloc did a good deal of hunting in guise of the wolf or otter or eagle whose skins Freda had brought, and he conjured ale from seawater. It was hard work merely to keep alive in that wintery world-the hardest winter that England remembered since almost the time of the Great Ice-and he spent most of his days ranging for game.

Dank and chill was the cave. Winds whittered in its mouth and surf pounded on the rocks at its foot. But when Skafloc came back from his first long hunt, he thought for a moment he had found the wrong place.

A fire blazed cheerily on a hearthstone, with smoke guided out a rude pipe of wicker and green hides. Other skins made a warm covering on floor and walls, and one hung in the cave mouth against the wind. The horses were tethered in the rear, chewing hay that Skafloc had magicked from kelp, and the spare weapons were polished and stacked in a row as if this were a feasting hall. And behind each weapon was a little spray of red winter berries.

Crouched over the fire and turning meat on a spit was Freda. Skafloc stopped in midstride. His heart stumbled at sight of her. She wore only a brief tunic, and her slim long-legged body, with its gentle curves of thigh and waist and breast, seemed poised in the gloom like a bird ready for flight.

She saw him come in, and from under tousled ruddy hair, in the flushed and smoke-smudged face, her great grey eyes kindled with gladness. Wordlessly she sped to him, with her dear coltish gait, and they held each other close for a while.

He asked wonderingly: “How did you ever do this, my sweet?”

She laughed softly. “I am no bear, or man, to make a heap of leaves and call that home for the winter. Some of these skins and so on we had, the rest I got for myself. Oh, I am a good housewife.” Pressing against him, shivering: “You were so long away, and time was so empty. I had to pass the days, and make myself weary enough to sleep at night.”

His own hands shook as he fondled her. “This is no stead for you. Hard and dangerous is the outlaw life. I should take you to a human garth, to await our victory or forget our defeat.”

“No-no, never shall you do that!” She grasped his ears and pulled till his mouth lay on hers. Presently, half laughing and half sobbing: “I have said I will not leave you. No, Skafloc, ‘twill be harder than that to get rid of me.”

“Truth to tell,” he admitted after a while, “I do not know what I would do without you. Naught would seem worth the trouble any more.”

“Then do not leave me, ever again.”

“I must hunt, dearest one.”

“I will hunt with you.” She waved at the hides and the roasting meat. “I am not unskilled at that.”

“Nor at other things,” he laughed. Turned grim again: “It is not game alone I will be stalking, Freda, but also trolls.”

“There too will I be.” The girl’s countenance grew hard as his own. “Think you I have no vengeance to take?” His head lifted in pride, until he bent to kiss her anew like an osprey stooping on its catch. “Then so be it! And Orm the warrior could be glad of such a daughter.” Her fingers traced the lines of his cheekbone and jaw.

“Know you not who your father was?” she asked.

“No.” He grew uneasy, remembering Tyr’s words. “I never did.”

“No matter,” she smiled, “save that he too could be proud. I think Orm the Strong would have given all his wealth for a son like you-not that Ketil and Asmund were weaklings. And failing that, he must be glad indeed to see you joined with his daughter.”

As the winter deepened, life grew yet harder. Hunger was often a guest in the cave, and chill crept in past the hide door and the fire until only huddled together in bearskins could Skafloc and Freda find warmth. For days on end they would be afield, riding the swift elf horses which sank not into the snow, seeking game in a vast white emptiness.

Now and again they would come on the blackened ruins of an elf garth. At such times Skafloc grew white about the nostrils and said nothing for many hours. Once in a while a living elf would appear, gaunt and ragged, but the man did not try to build up a band. It would only draw the enemy’s heed without being able to stand before him. Could help be gotten from outside, then there might be sense in leagues like that.

Always he was on the lookout for trolls. If he found their tracks, he and the girl would be off at a wild gallop. At a large group they would shoot arrows from afar, then wheel and race away; or Skafloc might wait for daylight, then creep into whatever the shelter was wherein the trolls slept and cut throats. Were there no more than two or three, he would be on them with a sword whose whine, together with Freda’s arrow-buzz, was the last sound they heard.

Relentless was that hunt, on both sides. Often they crouched in cave or beneath windfall while troll pursuit went before their eyes, and naught but a thin screen of wizardry wrought by the rune staves, hardly hiding them from a straight-on glance, covered their spoor. Arrows and spears and slung stones hissed after them when they fled from shooting down two or three of a company. From their home cave they saw troll longships row past, near enough for them to count the rivets in the warriors’ shields.

And it was cold, cold.

Yet in that life they truly found each other. They learned that their bodies were the least of what there was to love. Skafloc wondered how he could have had the heart to wage his fight without Freda. Her arrows had brought down trolls, and her daring schemes of ambush still more-but the kisses she gave him in their dear moments of peace were what drove him to his own deeds, and the help and comfort she gave every hour were what upheld his strength. And to her, he was the greatest and bravest and kindest of men, her sword and shield at once, lover and oath-brother.

She even owned to herself, feeling a little guilty that she did not feel very guilty, that she did not much miss her Faith. Skafloc had explained that its words and signs would upset the magic he needed. For her part, she decided it would be blasphemous to use them for mere advantage in a war between two soulless tribes; better, even safer maybe, to leave prayers unspoken. As for that war, since it was Skafloc’s it was hers. Someday after it was won she would get him to listen to a priest, and surely God would not withhold belief from a man like this.

Harsh was the outlaw life, but she felt her body respond, in keenness of sense and tautness of sinew and endurance of spirit. The wind flogged the blood in her veins till it tingled; the stars lent their brightness to her eyes. When life balanced on a sword-edge, she learned to taste each moment of it with a fullness she had not dreamed before.

Strange, she thought, how even when hungry and cold and afraid they had no hard words between them. They thought and acted like one, as if they had come from the same mould. Their differences were merely those in which each filled the need of the other.

“I bragged once to Imric that I had never known fear, or defeat, or love-sickness,” said Skafloc. He lay in the cave with his head on her lap, letting her comb his wind-tangled hair. “He said those were the three ends and beginnings of human life. At that time I understood him not. Now I see he was wise.”

“How should he know?” she asked.

“I cannot say, for elves know defeat only sometimes, fear seldom, and love never. But since meeting you, dear, I have found all three in myself. I was becoming more elf than man. You are making me human again, and elfhood fades within me.”

“And somewhat of elf has entered my blood. I fear that less and less do I think of what is right and holy, more and more of what is useful and pleasant. My sins grow heavy-”

Skafloc hauled her face down to his. “In that you do well. This muttering of duty and law and sin brings no good.”

“You speak profanely-” she began. He stopped her words with a kiss. She sought to pull free, and it ended in a laughing, tumbling wrestling match. By the time they were done, she had forgotten her forebodings.

But after the trolls finished wasting the elf lands, they withdrew into their strongholds, rarely venturing out except in troops too big to attack. Skafloc, who by killing a number of deer had laid in ample frozen meat, grew moody in idleness. His banter dropped off and he spent days at a time hunched surly in the cave.