The Broken Sword (22 page)

Stately and beautiful were the women of the Tuatha De Danaan, for they were goddesses born. There were no words to tell of their radiance. And in that company Fand stood out.

Her silken hair, golden as sunlight at summer evening, fell in waves from her coronet to her feet. Her robe shimmered with rainbow hues, her round white arms flashed with jewelled rings, yet she herself outshone any attire.

Her wise violet eyes looked through Skafloc’s, into him. Her low voice was music. “Would you have trekked to Jotunheim alone?”

“Of course, my lady,” said Skafloc.

“No living human has gone there and returned, save Thjalfi and Roskva, and they went in company with Thor. You are either very brave or very reckless.”

“What difference? If I die in Jotunheim, it is the same as anywhere else.”

“And if you live-” She seemed more in pain than afraid.

“If you live, will you indeed bring back the sword and unleash it … knowing that in the end it must turn on you?”

He nodded indifferently.

“I think you look on death as your friend,” she murmured. “That is a strange friend for a young man to have.”

“The only faithful friend in this world,” he said. “Death is always sure to be at your side.”

“I think you are fey, Skafloc Elven-Fosterling, and that is a sorrow to me. Not since Cu Chulain-” for a moment her eyes blurred “-not since him has such a man as you might become lived among mortals. Also, it grieves me to see the merry mad boy I remember grown so dark and inward. A worm gnaws in your breast, and the hurt drives you to seek death.”

He answered naught, folded his arms and looked beyond her.

“Yet grief dies too,” she said. “You can outlive it. And I will seek by my arts to shield you, Skafloc.”

“That is fine!” he growled, unable to stand more. “You magicking for my body and she praying for my soul!”

He swung away towards the winecups. Fand sighed.

“You sail with sorrow, Mananaan,” she told her husband.

The sea king shrugged. “Let him mope as he wishes. I will enjoy the trip anyway.”

Three days later, Skafloc stood on a shore and watched Mananaan’s boat sculled forth by a leprechaun from the grotto where she was berthed. She was a small slender craft, her silvery hull seeming too frail for deep water. The mast was inlaid with ivory, the sail and tackle interwoven with dyed silk. A gallant golden image of Fand as a dancer stood on prow for figurehead.

The lady herself saw them off. Otherwise the Tuatha had said their farewells and no one was about in the cool grey mists of morning. The fog glittered like dewdrops in her braided hair, and her eyes were a brighter and deeper violet than before, as she bade Mananaan goodspeed.

“Luck be with you in your faring,” she said to him, “and may you soon return to the green hills of Erin and the golden streets of the Land of Youth. My look shall be bent seaward by day and my listening to the waves by night, for news of Mananaan’s homecoming.”

Skafloc stood apart. He thought about how he might have been seen off by Freda. Quoth he to himself:

Luckless is the lad

who leaves without his dearest

Sweetheart there and speaking

softly, in the morning.

Colder than her kisses

comes the blowing spindrift.

Heavy is my heart-

but how could I forget her?

“Let us away,” said Mananaan. He and Skafloc stepped into the boat from the small dock and raised the glowing sail. The man took the steering oar while the godling struck a chord on his harp and sang:

Wind, I call you, old, unresting,

from the deeps of sea and sky.

Blow me outward on my questing,

answer me with eager cry.

From the hills of home behind you,

out through shifting leagues of sea,

blow, wind, blow! My song shall bind you.

South wind, sea wind, come to me.

Come to set my vessel free.

At his music, a strong breeze sprang up and the boat surged forth into waves cold and green that threw salt spray onto the lips. Swift as elf craft were those of Mananaan, and erelong the grey land was not to be told from grey clouds on the world’s rim.

“Meseems that finding Jotunheim will mean more than just sailing north,” said Skafloc.

“True,” replied Mananaan. “It will need certain spells. Still more will it need stout hearts and arms.”

He squinted ahead. The wind tossed his hair about the countenance that was at once majestic and merry, keen and cool. “The first phantom breath of spring goes over the lands of men,” he said. “This has been the worst winter in centuries, and I think the reason is that Jotun powers were abroad. We sail into the everlasting ice of their home.”

His gaze swung back to Skafloc. “It is past time that I should voyage to the edge of creation. Am I not a king of the Ocean Sea? Yet I should not have waited so long, but gone when the Tuatha De Danaan were gods and had their full might.” He shook his head. “Even the Aisir, who are still gods, came not unscathed back from their few ventures into Jotunheim. As for us two-I know not. I know not.”

Then boldly: “But I sail where I will! There shall be no water in the Nine Worlds unploughed by the keels of Mananaan Mac Lir.”

Skafloc made no answer, wrapped as he was in himself. The boat handled like a live thing. Wind harped in the rigging and spray sheeted in a rainbowed veil about the beautiful image of Fand. The air was chill but the sun had come blindingly forth, drunk up the mists and scattered diamond dust on the waves. Those romped and shouted, under a blueness filled with scudding white clouds. The rudder sent a thrum into Skafloc’s arm. He could not but feel the freshness of this morning. Quoth he, low:

Clear the day is, coldly calling with a wind-voice to the sea, where tumbles titan play of billows. Stood you by my side now, sweetheart, on the deck-planks, life were full of laughter. (Long you for me, Freda?)

Mananaan regarded him closely. “This quest will need all that a man has to give,” he said. “Leave nothing back on shore.”

Skafloc flushed in anger. “I bade no one come who feared death,” he snapped.

“The man who has naught to live for is not the most dangerous to his foes,” said Mananaan. And then quickly he took his harp and sang one of the old war-songs of the Sidhe. Strangely did it ring in the vastness of waves and sky and wind. For a while Skafloc thought he saw cloudy hosts bound to battle, the sun aflame on plumed helmets and ranked forests of spears, banners flying and horns shouting and scythe-bladed chariot wheels rumbling over heaven.

They sailed steadily for three days and nights. Ever the wind blew behind them, and the boat rode the waves as a swallow does the air. They stood watch and watch, sleeping in their bags under the little foredeck, and lived on stockfish and cheese and hardtack and whatever else was aboard, with spells to get fresh water out of salt. Few words passed between them, for Skafloc was in no mood for chatter and Mananaan had an immortal’s satisfaction in his own thoughts. But respect and friendliness, each for the other, grew with hard work; and they joined in singing the powerful songs that got them across the marches of Jotunheim.

And swiftly went the boat. They felt the cold and gloom deepen almost by the hour as they sped north into the heart of winter.

The sun lowered until it was a far pale disc on a sullen horizon, briefly seen through hurried stormclouds. The cold grew relentless, gnawing through clothes and flesh and bone into the soul. Spray hung in icicles on the rigging, and golden Fand on the prow was clad in rime. To touch metal was to peel skin from fingers, and breath froze in the moustache.

More and more did it become a world of night, where they sailed over black, dimly silver-sparked seas between moon-ghostly mountains that were icebergs. The sky was an utter murk holding uncounted bitter-bright stars, among which leaped northern lights that brought the howe-fire back to Skafloc’s mind. Only the drone of wind and rush of sea were heard in that stupendous lifelessness.

They did not come into Jotunheim as into some kingdom on Midgard. It was just that they sailed farther than mortal ship would have gone ere sighting land, into waters that grew ever more chill and dead and pitchy, until at last they had nothing but stars and moon and shuddering aurora for light. Skafloc thought this realm could not lie on earth at all, but in strange dimensions near the edge of everything, where creation plunged back into the Gap whence it had arisen. He had the notion that this was the Sea of Death on which he sailed, outward bound from the world of the living.

Now, after those three days when they saw the sun, they lost track of time. Somehow moon and stars were wheeling awry; and there was no time in wind and waves and deepening cold. Mananaan’s spells began to fail .He had gone beyond the realm where his powers held good. Foul winds came, against which few craft other than his could have sailed. Snow and sleet blew blindingly. The boat rolled and pitched in the gales, shipped water of numbing chill, flapped her sail and fought her rudder. Icebergs loomed monstrous out of blackness, and barely did the travellers save themselves from shipwreck.

Belike the fogs were most terrible-windless, soundless grey damp that dripped and froze, cut off eyesight half an arm away, soaked through clothes to skin and ran down into boots until teeth clattered. The boat would lie moveless, rocking ever so little to unseen wavelets, and the only sounds were their muffled slap and the fog dripping from ice-sheathed tackle. Groping, cursing, shivering, Skafloc and Mananaan sought to break such weather with charms-to scant avail. They had the feeling that Powers crept through the blindness overside and stared hungrily inboard.

Then a storm might come, like as not from the wrong direction, and unease would be lost in struggle. Mast groaned, sheets ripped hands, combers brawled under rails, and the boat mounted a wave toward the raving sky merely to slide down its trough as if into hell.

Quoth Skafloc:

Black and cold, the breakers bellow, thunder inboard. 

Ropes and helm turn rebel.

Roaring winds are sleet-cloaked.

Seamen curse and stumble, sorry they upped anchor.

Bitter is the brew here: beer of waves is salty.

But he did not stop working. Mananaan, who thought a grumble betokened better health than a lament, smiled into the crazy skies.

And the time came at last when they raised land. They saw it by unwinking stars and by northern lights that leaped and flickered high over gaunt mountains and greenly flashing glaciers. Surf boomed on cliffs behind which the land climbed steeply, a dead huge world of crags and ice-fields and wind screaming over ancient snow.

Mananaan nodded. “Yonder is Jotunheim,” he said, his words already half lost in those noises. “Utgard, nigh which you say the giant bides, should by my reckoning lie to the east of here.”

“As you say,” muttered Skafloc. He had long since lost his way, nor did any elf know much more than frightened rumours about these coasts.

He felt weariness no longer, he was past that. It was as if he went on like a ship with the steering oar lashed, because there was nothing else to do and no one to care if it foundered.

But it came to him, as he stood there looking on the terrible face of Giant Land, that Freda could not be less unhappy than he. More so, perhaps; for he could lose himself in the quest of the sword and know she was safe, while she knew only that he was on a deadly search and must have little to do but think about it.

“That had not struck me before,” he whispered in astonishment, and of a sudden he felt tears freezing on his cheeks. Quoth he:

Late will I the lovely lost one be forgetting.

Ways that I must wander will be cold and lonely.

Heavy is my heart now, where she sang aforetime.

Greatest of the griefs that she gave me is her sorrow.

And he fell again to brooding. Mananaan let him be, having learned it was no use trying to hasten his arousal from such fits, and the boat ran eastward on the harrying wind.

Naught seemed to stir in this waste of rock and ice, save the tumbling breakers and the snow-devils awhirl in the mountains and the flapping auroral fires. But he felt there were presences not far off. Here was the spawning ground of those who threatened the viking gods-Asa-Loki, Utgard-Loki, Hel, Fenris, Jormungandr, Garm who at the end of the world will devour the moon.

By the time Skafloc had shaken off his glumness, the boat had sailed a long ways, and Mananaan was steering dose to every fjord in search of their goal. The sea king had grown uneasy, for he could almost smell the lairs of Utgard, and not he himself cared to come near that dark town.

“Bolverk dwells in a mountain, I was told,” Skafloc said. “That would mean a cave.”

“Aye, but this cursed land is riddled with caves.”

“A big one, I should think. With signs of smithery about.”

Mananaan nodded and made for the next inlet. As he neared the sea-cliffs, Skafloc began to understand the size of them. Up they went, in such a cataract of height that he grew dizzy trying to see their tops. A few aurora-lit clouds sailed over them, and he had the feeling that those walls of rock were toppling on him-now the sides of the world fell asunder as it sank beneath the sea!

Antlike, the boat crawled under the cliffs and peered into the fjord. It ran past sight, a maze of holms and skerries and crags jutting high enough to block out stars. But Skafloc’s nostrils tingled to a faint scent borne on the wind-smoke, hot iron-and he heard the far-off banging of a hammer.

There was no need for words. Mananaan headed into the fjord. Soon the cliffs had shouldered all wind aside and the sailors must scull. They went right swiftly, but so long was the fjord that they scarce seemed to move.

Deeper grew the stillness, as if sound had frozen to death and the northlights danced on its grave. Some dry snowflakes drifted out of the great starry sky. The cold ate and ate. It seemed to Skafloc that the quiet was that of a beast of prey waiting to pounce, with greedy eyes and switching tail. He knew somehow that he was being watched.