The Broken Sword (5 page)

“O you of the many names, Prince of Darkness, Evil Companion,” cried the witch, “I would that you grant my wish, and for that I will pay your old price.”

He whom she had called spoke, and his voice was slow and soft and patient: “Already you have gone far down my road, but you have not altogether become mine. The mercy from above is infinite, and only if you yourself reject it can you be lost.”

“What care I for mercy?” asked the witch. “It will not avenge my sons. I stand ready to give my soul unto you if you will deliver my enemies into my hands.”

“That I may not do,” said her guest, “but I may give you the means to entrap them if your cunning be greater than theirs.”

“That will be enough.”

“But bethink you, have you not had revenge on Orm already? ‘Tis your work that he has a changeling for eldest son, and the ill that that being will wreak on him can be great.”

“Yet Orm’s true son prospers in Alfheim, and his other children grow apace. I would wipe out his foul seed to the last of the lot, even as he wiped out mine. The heathen gods will not help me, nor surely will He whose name I had best not speak. Therefore you, Black Majesty, must be my friend.”

A gaze wherein were little flickering flames more cold than winter brooded long on her. “The gods are not out of this matter,” said the quiet, rustling voice, “as you may have heard. Odin, who foresees what dooms are laid on men, makes schemes that are long in the weaving … But you shall have my help. Power and knowledge will I give you, until you become a mighty witch. And I will tell you how to strike, by a way which is sure unless your enemies are wiser than you think.

“There are three Powers in the world which not gods nor demons nor men can stay, against which no magic shall prevail and no might shall stand, and they are the White Christ, Time, and Love.

“From the first you may await only thwarting of your desire, and you must be careful that He and His in no way enter the struggle. This you can do by remembering that Heaven leaves lesser beings their free will, and thus does not force them into its own ways; even the miracles have done no more than leave open a possibility to men.

“The second, which has more names than I myself-Fate, Destiny, Law, Wyrd, the Norns, Necessity, Brahm, and others beyond counting-is not to be appealed to, for it does not hear. Nor can you hope to understand how it exists together with the freedom whereof I spoke, any more than you can understand how there are both old gods and new. But for the wreaking of the greatest spells, you must ponder on this until you know in your inmost being that truth is a thing which bears as many shapes as there are minds which strive to see it.

“And the third of the Powers is a mortal thing, therefore it can harm as well as help, and this is the one you must use.”

Now the witch swore a certain oath, and was told where and how to drink the knowledge she needed, and there the council ended.

Save for this: that as her caller left the hut, she peered after him, and what she saw departing was not what she had seen within. Rather the shape was of a very tall man, who strode swiftly albeit his beard was long and wolf-grey. He was wrapped in a cloak and carried a spear, and beneath his wide-brimmed hat it seemed that he had but a single eye. She remembered who also was cunning, and often crooked of purpose, and given to disguise in his wanderings to and fro upon the earth; and a shiver went through her.

But then he was gone-and she had not really seen him clear-it could have been a trick of the starlight-she would not brood on such uneasy questions, but only on her loss and her coming revenge.

***

Save that the changeling was fierce and noisy, he could not be told from the true babe, and though Ailfrida puzzled over her little son’s ways she had no thought it was not him at all. She christened the child Valgard as Orm wished, and sang to him. and played with him and was gladdened. But he bit so hard that it was pain to nurse him.

Orm was delighted when he came home and saw such a fine strong boy. “A great warrior will he be,” cried the chief, “a swinger of weapons and a rider of ships and horses.” He looked about the yard. “But where are the dogs? Where is my trusty old Gram?”

“Gram is dead,” said Ailfrida tonelessly. “He sought to leap on Valgard and rend him, so I had the poor mad beast slain. But it must have given notions to the other dogs, who growl and slink away when I carry the child outside.”

“That is strange,” said Orm, “for my folk have ever been good with hounds and horses.”

But as Valgard grew it became plain that no beast liked to have him around; cattle ran off, horses snorted and shied, cats spat and climbed a tree, and the boy must early learn the use of a spear to ward himself against dogs. He in return was no friend to animals, but dealt kicks and curses, and became a relentless hunter.

He was sullen and close-mouthed, given to wild tricks and refusal of obedience. The thralls hated him for his ill will and the cruel jests he played on them. And slowly, fighting it the whole way, Ailfrida came to have no love for him.

But Orm was fond of Valgard even if they did not always agree. When he had to strike the boy, he could draw no cry of pain however hard his hand fell. And when he had sword-drill and his blade whined down as if to split the skull, Valgard never blinked. He grew up strong and swift, taking to weapons as if born with them, and showed no fear or softness whatever happened. He had no real friends, but they were not few who followed him.

Orm had more children by Ailfrida-two sons, red-haired Ketil and dark Asmund, who were both promising boys, and daughters Asgerd and Freda, of whom the last was nigh an image of her mother. These were like other youngsters, glad and sad by turns, playing about their mother and then later rambling over the whole land, and Ailfrida loved them with an abiding and aching love. Orm liked them too, but Valgard was his darling.

Strange, aloof, silent, Valgard neared his manhood. He was outwardly no different from Skafloc, save maybe that his hair was a shade darker and his skin whiter and that there was a flat hard shallowness to his eyes. But his mouth was sullen, he seldom smiled except when he drew blood or otherwise gave pain, and then it was a mere skinning of teeth. Taller and stronger than most boys of his age, he had small use for them aside from leading them in gangs to work mischief. He would rarely help with the farm unless it was butchering season, but instead went on long lonely walks.

Orm had never raised the church he once planned; however, the yeomen roundabout had joined to do this, and he did not forbid his folk to go to mass there. Ailfrida got the priest to come and talk to Valgard. The boy laughed in his face. “I will not bow to your snivelling god,” he said, “or any others for that matter. Insofar as appealing to them does make sense, my father’s sacrifices to the Aisir are of more help than whatever prayers he or you give to Christ. For if I were a god, I might well be bribed by blood offerings to send good luck, but a man so pinchpenny that he merely annoyed me with mealy-mouthed prayers I would stamp on-thus!” And he brought his heavy-shod foot down on the priest’s.

Orm chuckled when he heard of it, and Ailfrida’s tears were of no avail, so the priest got scant satisfaction.

***

Valgard liked best the night. Then he would often slip from his bed and steal outside. He could run till dawn with his loping wolfish gait, driven by some moon-magic glimmering in his head. He knew not what he wished, save that he felt a sadness and a yearning for which he lacked a name, a gloom lighting only when he slew or maimed or brought to ruin. Then he could laugh, with the troll blood beating in his temples!

But one day he took heed of the girls at work in the fields with their dresses clinging to their sweat-sweet bodies, and thereafter he had another sport. He owned strength and good looks and a glib elf tongue when he cared to unleash it. Soon Orm had to pay gild for thralls or daughters wronged.

This he did not care much about, but it was another matter when Valgard quarrelled in his cups with Olaf Sigmundsson and slew him. Orm paid the weregild but saw that his son was not safe to have around. Of late years he had spent most of his time at home, and what voyages he did make were for peaceful trade. But that summer he took Valgard in viking.

This was glorious to the boy, who soon won the respect of his shipmates by his skill and daring in battle, though they did not care for his needless killings of the helpless. But after a while the berserkergang began to come on Valgard, he trembled and frothed and gnawed the rim of his shield, he rushed forward howling and slaying. His sword was a red blur, he did not feel weapons biting on him, and sheer terror of his twisted face froze many men till he cut them down. When the fit was over he was weak for a time, but he had heaped corpses high.

Only rough and lawless men cared to have much to do with a berserker, and these were the only sort he cared to lead. He was out plundering every summer, whether or not Orm went; and Orm soon stopped. As his full strength came to him, Valgard won a frightful name. He likewise won gold wherewith to buy ships. These he manned with the worst of evildoers, until Orm forbade him to land his crews on the farm.

The other children of the house were liked by almost everyone. Ketil was akin to his father, big and merry, always ready for a fight or frolic, and often went to sea when he was old enough. But he only went once in viking, quarrelled bitterly with Valgard, and afterwards sailed his own way as a trader. Asmund was slender and quiet, a good archer but no lover of battle, and came to take over more and more the running of the farm. Asgerd was a big fair may with blue eyes and gold hair and cool strong hands; but Freda was growing into her mother’s beauty.

Thus matters stood when the witch decided it was time to draw the threads of the web together.

On a blustery fall day, with the smell of rain in the keen air and leaves turned to gold and copper and bronze, Ketil and a few comrades rode forth to hunt. They had not gone far into the woods when they saw a white stag so huge and noble they could scarce believe it.

“Ho, a beast for a king!” shouted Ketil, spurring his horse, and away they went over stock and stone, leaping logs and dodging trees, crashing through brush and crackling the fallen leaves, with wind roaring in their ears and the forest a blur of colour. Strangely, the hounds were not very eager in the chase, and though Ketil was not riding the best of horses he drew ahead of the dogs and the other hunters.

Before him in the evening glimmered the white stag, leaping and soaring, antlers treelike against the sky. For a time rain sluiced icily through the bare boughs ;in the blindness of the chase Ketil hardly felt it. Nor did he feel hours or miles or aught but the surge of his gallop and the eagerness of the hunt.

At last he burst into a little clearing, nigh caught up with the stag. The light was dim, but he launched his spear at the white shape. Even as he made his cast the stag seemed to shrink, to fade like a wind-blown mist, and then he was gone and there was only a rat scattering through the dead leaves.

Ketil grew aware that he had outstripped his companions and become lost from them. A thin chill wind whimpered through dusk. His horse trembled with weariness. Well it might, for they had come into a part of the forest unknown to him, which meant they were far west of Orm’s garth. He could not understand what had upborne the beast, that it had not foundered erenow. And the eeriness of what had happened ran coldly along his backbone.

But just on the edge of the clearing, a cottage stood beneath a great oak. Ketil wondered what manner of folk would live that lonely, and how they did it, for he saw no signs of farming. Yet at least here was shelter for himself and his horse, in a neat small house of wood and thatch with firelight cheery in the windows. He dismounted, picked up his spear, and rapped on the door.

It opened, to show a well-furnished room and an empty stable beyond. But it was on the woman that Ketil’s eyes rested, nor could he pull them away. And he felt his heart turn over and then slam within his ribs as a wildcat attacks its cage.

She was tall, and the low-cut dress she wore clung lovingly to each curve of her wondrous body. Dark unbound hair streamed to her knees, framing a perfect oval of a face white as sea foam. Her wide full mouth was blood red, her nose delicately arched, her eyes long-lashed under finely drawn brows. They were a fathomless green, those eyes, with golden flecks and they seemed to look into Ketil’s very soul. Never, he thought in his daze, never before had he known how a woman might look.

“Who are you?” she askeds softly and singingly. “What will you?”

The man’s mouth had gone dry and the pulsebeat nigh drowned out his hearing, but he made shift to reply: “I am-Ketil Ormsson … I lost my way hunting, and would ask a night’s shelter for my horse and … myself … “

“Be welcome, Ketil Ormsson,” she said, and gave him a smile at which his heart almost left his breast. “Few come here, and I am ever glad to see them.”

“Do you live-alone?” he asked.

“Aye. Though not tonight!” she laughed, and at that Ketil threw his arms about her.

Orm sent men to ask of all his neighbours, but none could say aught about his son. Thus after three days he became sure that something ill had happened to Ketil. “He may have broken a leg, or met robbers, or otherwise come to grief,” he said. “Tomorrow, Asmund, we will go search for him.”

Valgard sat sprawled on the bench with a horn of mead in his fist. He had ended a summer’s viking trip two days before, left his ships and men at a garth he had bought some ways from Onn’s, and come home for a while, more because of his father’s good food and drink than to greet his kinfolk. The firelight streamed like blood off his surly face. “Why do you say this only to Asmund?” he asked. “I am here too.”

“I did not think there was any deep love between you and Ketil,” said Orm.

Valgard grinned and emptied the horn. “Nor is there,” he said. “Nevertheless I will hunt for him, and I hope ‘tis I who find and bring him home. Few things would seem worse to him than being beholden to me.”