The Broken Sword (18 page)

Freda sought to cheer him. “Now are we in less danger,” she said.

“What good is that, when we cannot fight?” he answered. “We only wait for the end. Alfheim is dying. Soon every realm in Faerie will belong to the trolls. And I-I sit here!”

Another day he went out and saw a raven beating upwind under the lowering sky. The sea dashed on rocks at his feet, rattled and roared back for a new leap, and spindrift froze where it struck.

“What news?” called Skafloc in the raven tongue. It was not in such words that he spoke or was spoken to, for beasts and birds have different sorts of language from men, but the meaning is near enough.

“I come from south beyond the channel to fetch my kindred,” replied the raven. “Valland and Wendland have fallen to the trolls, Scania totters, and the Elfking’s armies go back and back towards his middle domains. Good is the feasting, but ravens had best hurry thither, for the war cannot last much longer.”

At this such anger blazed up in Skafloc that he put an arrow to his bow and shot the bird. But when it lay dead at his feet the wrath drained from him, leaving an emptiness which sorrow rose slowly to fill.

“It was wicked to slay you, brother,” he said low, “who have done no harm, who rather do good by clearing the stinking clutter of the past from this world. Friendly you were to me, and defenseless, yet I slew you and let my foes sit in peace.”

He turned back into the cave, and of a sudden he was weeping. The sobs nigh shook his ribs apart. Freda held him, murmuring to him as to a child, and he wept himself out on her breast.

***

That night he could not sleep. “Alfheim is falling,” he mumbled. “Before the snows melt, Alfheim will be a memory. Naught is left but for me to ride against the trolls and take as many as may be down hell-road with me.”

“Say not that,” she answered. “It would be a stupid betrayal of your trust-and of me too. Better and braver to live, fighting.”

“Fighting with what?” he asked bitterly. “The elf ships are sunken or scattered, the warriors dead or in chains or hunted like us. Wind, snow, and wolves dwell in the proud castles, and the foe sits in the high seat of our olden lords. Alone are the elves, naked, starving, weaponless-”

She kissed him. As it were a lightning bolt, he seemed to see before his eyes the gleam of a sword lifted high across darkness.

For a long moment she felt him stiff as an iron bar but trembling as if that bar were hammerstruck; and then he breathed into the gloom: “The sword-the naming-gift of the Aisir-aye, the sword-”

A formless fear sprang high in her. “What do you mean? What sword is this?”

So as they lay in the dark, close together against the frost, he whispered it to her, soft in her ears as if afraid the night would listen. He told how Skirnir brought the broken glaive, how Imric hid it in the wall of Elfheugh’s dungeons, and how Tyr had warned that the time was nigh when he would have need of it.

In the end he felt her shiver in his clutch, she who had hunted armed trolls. Her voice came small and unsteady: “I like it not, Skafloc. It is no good thing.”

“Not good?” he cried. “Why, it is the one last great hope we have left. Odin, who reads the morrow, must have foreseen this day of Alfheim’s undoing-must have given us the sword against it. Weaponless? Ha, we will show them otherwise !”

“It is wrong to deal with heathen things, most of all when the heathen gods offer them,” she pleaded. “Evil must come of it. Oh, my beloved, forget the sword!”

“True, the gods doubtless have their own ends,” he said “but those need not be at odds with ours, I think Faerie is a chessboard on which Aisir and Jötuns move elves and trolls, in some game beyond our understanding. Yet the wise chessplayer takes care of his pieces.”

“But the sword is buried in Elfheugh.”

“I will get in somehow. I have an idea already.”

“The sword is broken. How shall you-we-find that giant who it is said can mend it? How make him forge it anew to be used against his kin the trolls?”

“There will be a way.” Skafloc’s tone rang like metal. “Even now I know one means to find out how, though it is dangerous. We may well fail, aye, but the gods’ gift is our last chance.”

“The gods’ gift.” She began to weep in her turn. “I tell you, naught but harm can come of this. I feel it in me, cold and heavy. If you embark on this search, Skafloc, our days together are numbered.”

“Would you leave me on that account?” he asked, aghast.

“No-no, my darling-” She clung to him, blind with darkness and tears. “It is but a whisper in my soul-yet I know-”

He drew her closer still. Wildly he kissed her, until her head swam, and he laughed and was joyous; finally she could do no else than drive the fears from her awareness, for they were unworthy of Skafloc’s bride, and be glad with him.

But there was a yearning in her love which had not been there before. In her inmost deeps, she felt that they would not have many more times like this.

A few hours before the next night ended, after a blinding elf-gallop from the cave, they reined in their horses. Skafloc could not wait, when Alfheim was dying. The half moon rode in a cloudy sky, its wan light filtering through icicled trees to sheen on the snow. Breath smoked upwards in the still, cold air, to glimmer like ghosts that fled the lips of dying men.

“We dare go no nearer Elfheugh together.” Skafloc’s whisper sounded unnaturally loud in that quiet, in the shadowiness of that thicket which hid them. “But I can make it alone, on wolf foot, ere dawn.”

“What is your haste?” Freda clung to his arm and he tasted salt on her cheek. “Why not, at least, go by day, when they will be asleep?”

“The skinturning cannot be done in sunlight,” he told her. “And once inside the castle walls, day or night are the same; most of the trolls are as likely to be sleeping as wakeful at any hour. When I am in, there are those who can help me. I think chiefly of Leea.”

“Leea-” Freda bit her lip. “I like it not, this whole crazy doing. Have we no other way at all?”

“None that come to my mind. You, my sweet, have the hardest task-that I admit-waiting here, alone until I return.” He looked at her shadowed face as if to learn every line of it. “Remember, now, make a tent of those hides we brought, before sunrise, to shelter the horses from it. And remember I will have to come back in man shape, with the burden I shall be carrying. Thus I can go by day, safe till dusk, but slower, so I will not get here until sometime tomorrow night. Be not reckless, princess. If trolls come near, or if I am not back by the third evening, be off. Fly to the world of men and sunlight!”

“I can endure waiting,” she said tonelessly, “but to leave this place, not knowing whether you lived or-” she choked “-or died, that may be past my strength.”

Skafloc swung from his saddle into the snow, which crunched underfoot. Quickly he stripped himself naked. Shivering, he fastened the otter skin about his loins and the eagle skin over his shoulders, and flung the wolf skin cloak-like over both.

Freda dismounted too. Hungrily, they kissed. “Farewell, dearest one,” he said. “Until J bring the sword, farewell.”

He turned away, not daring to linger by the quietly crying girl, and drew the grey pelt tighter about him. He dropped on all fours and said the needful words. Then he felt his body shift and recast itself, felt his senses blurred with change. And Freda saw him alter, swiftly as if he melted, until a great wolf stood beside her with eyes glowing green in the dark.

Briefly the cold nose nuzzled her palm, and she rumpled the rough coat. He padded away.

Over the snow he went, weaving between trees and among bushes, loping faster and more tireless than a man. It was strange, being a wolf. The interplay of bone, muscle, and sinew was something else from what it had been. The air ruffled his fur. His sight was dim, flat, and colourless. But he heard every faintest sound, every sigh and whisper, the night’s huge stillness had turned murmurous-many of those tones too high for men ever to hear. And he smelled the air as if it were a living thing, uncounted subtle odours, hints and traces swirling in his nostrils. And there were sensations for which men had no words.

It was like being in a new world, a world which in every way felt different. And he himself was changed, not alone in body but in nerve and brain. His mind moved in wolfish tracks, narrower though somehow keener. He was not able in beast shape to think all the thoughts he did as a man, nor, on becoming man again, to remember all he had sensed and thought as a beast.

On and on! The night and the miles fled beneath his feet. The woods stirred with their secret life. He caught the scent of hare-frightened hare, crouched nearby with big eyes upon him-and his wolf mouth drooled in greed. But his man soul drove the gaunt grey frame ahead. An owl hooted. Trees and hills and ice-scabbarded rivers went by in a blur, the moon trudged across heaven, and still he ran.

And at last, looming against silver-tinged clouds but its towertops crusted with frosty winter stars, he saw Elfheugh. Elfheugh, Elfheugh, the lovely and fallen, now a menace bulking black across the sky!

He flattened himself on his hairy belly and slid up the hill towards those walls. Every wolf-sense reached out, searching around him … were enemies nigh?

The snaky troll smell came to him. He lowered his tail and bared his fangs. The castle reeked of troll-and of worse, fear and pain and throttled wrath.

With his dim wolf-eyes he could not well see the top of the wall under which he crouched. He heard the guardsmen pace above him, and winded them, and trembled with the longing to rip out their throats.

Easy, easy, he told himself. There they went, they were past him, now to turn his skin again.

Already beast, he needed but to will the change. He writhed, felt the shifting and shrinking, and his brain swam. Then he beat the broad wings of the eagle and rose heavenward.

His sight was sharp now, inhumanly so; and the glory of flight, of wind and skyey endlessness, sang through every feather of him. Yet the austere eagle brain had will to refuse that magnificent drunkenness. His eyes were not an owl’s, and aloft he was a target for troll arrows.

Over the wall he went and soared across the courtyard, braking himself with the air awhistle in his pinions. He landed by the keep, in the shadow of a thickly ivied tower, and again he shuddered with change. There, otter, he waited a while.

He could not smell in this shape quite so well as a wolf, though better than a man, but his eye saw further and his ears were as good. Also, his body had a wiry alertness wherein every hair and whisker tip tingled with sensations indescribable to man; and his swiftness and suppleness, the luster of his pelt, were a joy to the vain, cocky, frolicsome otter brain.

Tense and still he lay, straining every sense. He heard startled halloos from the battlements. Someone must have had a glimpse of the eagle and he had best not dawdle here.

He slipped lithe along the wall, keeping to the shadows. An otter was too big to be safe-better had he been weasel or rat-but was the best he could do. Glad he was that Freda had brought those three magic skins. A tenderness welled up in him, but he could not stop to think about her, not yet.

A door stood ajar, and through this he sneaked. It was in the back of the building. However, he knew each corner and cranny of that labyrinth. His whiskers twitched as he snuffed the air. Though the place stank of troll, it was also heavy with the smell of sleep. In that much he was lucky. He could make out some few who moved around, but they would be easy to avoid.

He padded by the feasting hall. Trolls sprawled throughout, snoring drunkenly. The tapestries hung in rags, the furnishings were scarred and stained, and the ornaments of gold and silver and gems, the work of centuries, had been stolen. It would have been better, thought Skafloc, to be overrun by goblins. They were at least a mannered people. These filthy swine-

Up the stairs towards Imric’s chambers he wound. Whoever was now earl would most likely sleep there … and have Leea beside him.

The otter flattened against the wall. His soundless snarl showed needle teeth. His yellow eyes blazed. Around the curve he smelled troll. The earl had posted a guard and-

Like a grey thunderbolt the wolf was on the troll. Drowsy, the warrior could not know what struck until fangs closed in his throat. He fell in a clatter of mail, clawing at the beast on his breast, and thus he died.

Skanoc crouched. Blood dripped from his jaws. It had a sour taste. That had been quite a racket … no, no sound of alarm or awareness … the castle was so big, after all-He would have to risk the body being found ere he was away. Indeed, it almost surely would be come upon-no, wait-

Quickly, as a man, Skafloc used the dead troll’s sword to hack that throat until it could not be seen that teeth rather than blade had torn out life. They might think the guard had been slain in some drunken quarrel. They had better! The thought was grim in him while he wiped and spat the blood from his mouth.

Otter again, he raced onward. At the head of the stairs, the door to Imric’s rooms stood closed, but he knew the secret hiss and whistle that would compel the lock. Softly he gave them, nosed the door open a crack, and entered.

Two slept in Imric’s bed. If the earl awoke, that would be the end of Skafloc’s quest. He crawled on his lissome otter stomach towards the bed, and every movement seemed doomsday loud.

Reaching there, he braced himself on his hind legs. Leea’s goddess face lay on one pillow in a cloud of silvery-gold hair. Beyond her was a tawny-maned head with a countenance harsh even in slumber-but in every blunt, sinewy line it was his own.

So Valgard the evil-worker was the new earl. Barely could Skafloc hold himself from sinking wolf teeth in that throat, tearing with eagle beak at the eyes, nuzzling with otter tongue among the ripped-out guts.

But those were beast wishes. Fulfilling them would too likely make a noise and thus cost him the sword.

He touched the smoothness of Leea’s cheek with his nose. Her long lashes fluttered, and recognition flared in her eyes.