The Wizard And The Warlord (28 page)

When the day’s work was done, everyone walked toward the hall, where Ulfrun had cleaned up the mess in her kitchen, loudly lamenting the folly of her youth which had persuaded her to marry Kambi Coalbrow of the haunted Thufnavellir. Sigurd walked beside Rolfr, who also was too tired to talk. As they passed through the gate where the farmer’s horse had refused to pass, something struck Sigurd a staggering blow in the chest and knocked him over backward into Mikla, who had been at least five steps behind. Gasping like a beached fish, Sigurd sat up and looked around incredulously to see what he had run into, thinking vaguely that he had walked into the closed gate, but he could see it was standing open.

Chattering in concern, Kambi’s family gathered around him, but Mikla suddenly leaped through them with a great shout, brandishing his staff like a madman. The girls scuttled away in alarm, except Tofa, who was a large, stout girl and quite capable of hauling Sigurd to his feet and half-dragging him to the shelter of the cow house. Looking out the door, Sigurd saw Hross-Bjorn standing on the roof of the hay barn, shaking its heads in a haze of blue phosphorescence and pawing the air in an excess of pure evil spirits. It snarled and grunted, reaching down to snap at Mikla’s staff.

Mikla blasted it with a gout of fire, which caused it to sail across the intervening space to land on the roof of the cow house. The four girls cringed, too terrified to shriek, as the roof sagged and the cows bellowed and plunged around in their stalls. Kambi rushed into the barn from the small back door, narrowly avoiding being trampled by a huge bullock that crashed from its stall. The sending leaped off the roof in pursuit of the bullock and they both vanished into the ravine behind the hall.

Kambi sent the girls to the hall, but he beckoned Sigurd and Mikla and Rolfr to remain in the cow house. They helped him soothe the cows, and then he sat down beside his latern and slowly stuffed and lit his pipe. When his thoughts were sufficiently collected by the comforting puffs of fragrant smoke, he looked at Sigurd and said, “That’s a very annoying sending. It’s going to make your life wretched unless you do something about it.”

“That’s nothing exactly new to me,” Sigurd said impatiently. “But this is the first time it’s attacked me directly. I wonder if that means that Jotull is getting closer. You two are the wizards. Why don’t you do something about the sending? I thought magic was supposed to be much more useful than what I’ve seen. If you’re such a wizard, Kambi, why do you tolerate this walking burial ground you’re living in? And that Mori—“ He didn’t quite dare continue, for fear Mori might be somewhere near listening and grinning.

Kambi continued smoking his pipe. “I’ve been thinking about it for a few years, but I confess I’m rather slow in doing anything about the draugar of Thufnavellir. I’ve grown accustomed to them. The easiest way to live with draugar is simply to make the necessary allowances for them. Mori has lived on this farm more than a hundred years, and Vigbjodr was my own father, you recall.” He stroked his chin sadly. “But perhaps I could help you get rid of Bjarnhardr’s sending.”

Sigurd did not protest that he thought the sending was from Halfdane or Jotall. It no longer mattered to him who had made it, when each breath he drew caused such an ache in his chest from the wallop the sending had dealt him. “I’m all in favor of that. What can we do?” he asked.

Kambi rolled back, looking up with a laborious sigh. The sending tramped up and down on the roof turves, making the timbers underneath creak dangerously. “I shall think about it,” he finally said.

Throughout the evening Sigurd watched Kambi with great impatience, but the placid fellow showed no signs of recalling what he had said about turning back the sending. Sigurd hid his disappointment when Kambi and his family finally adjourned to their little hut for the night. Mikla tried to persuade Sigurd to sleep on the floor instead of Vigbjodr’s bed, but Sigurd smugly arranged his knives and pulled the eider up to his chin, pretending to go to sleep. Mikla paced up and down the hall, a model of vigilance, while Rolfr unashamedly went to sleep.

Sigurd lay awake for a long time, wondering where Mori was. The hall was silent. Mikla sat beside the door, nodding and yawning and futilely trying to keep himself awake. After a day of chasing sheep and throwing them on their backs to be sheared, staying awake half the night listening for ghosts was nearly impossible.

Vigbjodr’s first knock startled Sigurd bolt upright, but Mikla was sound asleep and scarcely twitched at the sound. Another single blow jolted the door after a long silence, and it startled Sigurd almost as much as the first one had. After a long time, the third knock startled him again. Then he heard another sound, a sliding of wood through metal braces, and the main bolt of the door slid to the floor with a clatter. The top and bottom bolts likewide eased themselves from their moorings and crashed to the floor without awakening Mikla and Rolfr. Then the fist of Vigbjodr struck the heavy door open, and Sigurd saw a dark shape so large that it blocked most of the doorway. The draug lurched forward with a muddy clump-clump of leaden feet, advancing upon Sigurd in the bed. Sigurd slowly shrank himself down to the smallest lump possible, unable to take his eyes off the towering shadow. It advanced to the foot of the bed and looked within at Sigurd, who didn’t dare blink his eyes for fear of the noise he might make. He felt like a rat trapped in a cupboard and swore he would never again sleep in an enclosed wall bed. The hulking shadow of the draug took another dragging step, and Sigurd felt it groping at the foot of the bed. He snatched his feet away in horror. Then he heard one of the knives catch in fabric or flesh, and the draug drew back with a rumbling growl. Still muttering, it turned its eyes upon Sigurd, two dull red lights in a face that seemed more bone than flesh, with matted tufts of beard hanging down on the draug’s breast like strands of filthy wool. Just when Sigurd thought he couldn’t stand another moment of staring into the creature’s eyes, it turned and shuffled away slowly to fumble around on the wall across from the bed. It lit a lamp after much jumbling and dropping things. By its light, Sigurd saw that the lamp base consisted of half a human skull. All he could see of the draug was its back, with its clothes earthy and half-rotten, as it opened a narrow door in the turf wall hidden behind a hanging. He heard the ring of gold pieces and ornaments as the draug counted them over.

“Isn’t this fun?” a voice whispered in his ear, causing him to straighten up so suddenly that he knocked his head against the top of the bed. Beside him in the bed, Mori grinned at him and pulled the eider up under his dirty chin. “In a moment you’ll see the sword. Would you like to know what you have to do to get it?”

Sigurd spared an instant from his fascinated study of the draug and the treasure. “Hadn’t we better keep quiet?”

“Oh no, there’s nothing to worry about. The old dolt isn’t going to get past those knives. How do you like the lamp? Very clever, isn’t it?” He nudged Sigurd and cackled. “It’s burning human belly fat, the best sort of fat for any kind of devilment. It always burns steady, but very dim, very dim. There now, look quick, he’s holding the sword.”

The draug slowly drew the sword and let it gleam a moment in the dull light. “Tomorrow night,” Mori whispered, “the sword shall be yours. Listen carefully and I’ll tell you how we’ll trick him.” He whispered into Sigurd’s ear, and Sigurd listened in growing dismay and revulsion.

“I can’t do that,” he exclaimed. “How will I explain it to Mikla? He won’t let me wander around outside alone after dark—and I don’t know if I want to do it myself, either.”

Mori grinned until his eyes were pulled almost shut. “You won’t be alone. Not at Thufnavellir. Besides, I’ll be right there with you. I think we can arrange to deceive Mikla. I can dispose of him completely, which might be the easiest.”

“Are you stronger than Mikla?” Sigurd asked, frowning. The draug had put away the sword and was counting its money again.

“Oh, bother Mikla! He’s nothing but an apprentice. You’d think he was your master. Don’t you trust yourself?” Mori tittered until he had to smother himself with a mouthful of eider. He chewed off a corner of fabric and spat out the feathers. “He’s a sly one, that Mikla, but Bjarnhardr will get him, too, just as he finally got Vigbjodr, and as he’ll get Kambi one day when he happens to die. You’ll die, too, presently, my dear friend, but you can postpone the horrible day if you can get Vigbjodr’s sword. Will you do as I have told you, or shall we stop being such good friends?” He took another ripping bite out of the eider and snorted among the feathers.

Sigurd watched Vigbjodr count the last of the gold and extinguish the gruesome lamp. “You’re positive it will work, Mori?”

Mori snapped his fingers. “Just like that. After everyone is asleep, I’ll come to get you.” He nodded five or six times for emphasis and rolled himself away in a small whirlwind of feathers, straw, and dried dung.

The draug slowly plodded through the hall again and out at the door, without bothering to shut it. Sigurd eyed the grave-mold on the floor and did not stir from his bed until morning, when he was awakened from some dreadfully unpleasant dreams by Kambi’s worried shout. Mikla awoke very stiff and chagrined, and Sigurd pretended to be upset that nobody had awakened him for his turn at watching, so it couldn’t really be his fault he had missed his shift.

“Mori must be responsible,” Kambi said, shaking his head gravely. “He likes nothing better than making more trouble for anyone he can. I have the feeling a very great mischief is afoot.” He looked straight at Sigurd as he said it, and Sigurd again had the uncomfortable sensation that old, slow Kambi knew far more than anyone gave him credit for.

No mention was made of turning back Hross-Bjorn until after noonday, when everyone had eaten and Kambi sat contentedly smoking his pipe and looking up at the blue sky. After making several peaceful remarks—that spring was not far away, it would be summer before any of them knew it, and lambing and shearing would soon be finished—he put away his pipe and looked soberly at Sigurd, Mikla, and Rolfr. In a lowered tone of voice, he said, with uneasy glances toward Ulfrun, ‘Tomorrow I’ll begin making preparations. I have certain things I need to gather first.“

Ulfrun soon divined his intentions despite his precautions. She was already in a quarrelsome mood after discovering that Hross-Bjorn had killed her best bullock in the ravine and had frightened the cows so badly that they gave scarcely any milk.

“Pooh, what sort of wizard do you think you are? Ever since Vigbjodr died, you’ve kept saying you’ll do something about him, but he’s still here haunting us. Not to mention the other draugar, of course, who are practically hoary with a long tradition of making Thufnavellir the most miserable spot in Skarpsey.” She continued to mutter throughout the day, finally summing up her dissatisfaction with a threat. “Coalbrow, if you foolishly attempt to turn back that sending, I shall be so angry that I’ll never speak to you again.”

Kambi brightened visibly at the prospect. Soon after supper that evening, he took a spade and a large sack and strode away by himself with a touch more purpose in his usual aimless, deliberating manner.

Sigurd arranged his bed on the platform as far as he could get from Vigbjodr’s bed and bore the playful taunts and jokes of his friends with the knowledge that he had earned them. He didn’t feel much like joking when he thought of the experience that awaited him tonight. Several times he almost decided it wasn’t worth it for any sword, but each time he resolutely reminded himself that a man was not a man without a sword. He rested his head on the little carved box for a pillow and told himself that Mikla would not dare attempt taking this sword away from him. If Mori was to be believed, Bjarnhardr had somehow divined Sigurd’s plight and was doing his best to help him through Mori. Or so it might seem. He could get himself killed by trusting a fylgjadraug.

He did not intend to sleep that night, but the next thing he knew, Mori was poking him awake and grinning horribly into his face.

“Shh! It’s almost time for Vigbjodr to knock,” the sending warned. “After I open the door for him, we’ll nip out and pay a visit to Vigbjodr’s barrow. You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” He glared closely into Sigurd’s face and began to laugh.

Sigurd glanced at Mikla and Rolfr, who were both sound asleep, in uncomfortable positions where the spell had caught them. Mikla looked as if he had just reached for his staff, and the intent scowl was still on his face.

“I haven’t changed my mind and I’m not afraid,” Sigurd lied, flinching at the first echoing thump on the door. He crouched in his dark corner as the bolts slid back and the draug shoved the door aside. It stalked stiffly into the hall, straight to the wall bed, where it looked in a moment and groped at the foot to be sure no one was there. Mori snickered and bumped Sigurd with his elbow, making all kinds of grimaces and contortions to convey his idea of a fine joke upon the other sending.

While Vigbjodr was occupied with counting treasure, Mori tugged Sigurd to his feet and prodded him out the open door with much grumbling and derision at Sigurd’s natural caution. “What an old worrier you are! They’re nothing but draugar. Come on, come on, it’s going to take us until dawn at this rate!”

He led Sigurd to a barrow mound not far up the ravine behind the hall. It was a fairly new mound, and someone had ringed it with stones to form the shape of a ship. Sigurd could see that the portal stood wide open, and every ounce of his common sense cried out a warning against Mori’s plan. In spite of the cold, frosty night, Sigurd felt the sweat trickling down his spine, as if something with icy breath were breathing behind him. He glanced back frequently and was not reassured when he saw nothing. For the first time he thought about Hross-Bjorn, instead of his shame at appearing as a coward. He stopped, suddenly much more sensible than he had been in a very long time.

“Listen here, Mori, this is the greatest piece of foolishness anyone has ever talked me into,” he began impatiently. “I don’t care what you do, I’m not going to crawl into that old barrow and wait for Vigbjodr. He can keep his sword; it’s not worth that much to me.”