The Wizard And The Warlord (29 page)

Mori grinned unpleasantly and hugged his sides with both arms, which were far too long for his body. “But the barrow mound is closer than the hall now, and it looks to me as if you’re going to need a bit of protection.” He waved a paw at a huge black shadow that detached itself from the dark ravine, trotting slowly toward them with all six ears pricked forward attentively. After a few more paces, Hross-Bjorn assured itself that it really was Sigurd, and broke into a gallop, lashing its tail over its back in delight and uttering three tones of savage little grunts. The bluish nimbus encircled its head like a cloud of gnats, causing its eyes to gleam as if in anticipation.

Sigurd raced for the barrow without another moment’s thought. Mori yapped at his heels in the form of a scruffy little black dog, and together they tumbled into the open barrow, which was muddy from the spring rains. Hross-Bjorn arrived a moment later and lowered its three heads to peer inside. When it saw Sigurd, it lifted its lips and snarled like a mad dog. Mori, still in his dog form, leaped forward with all the bravery and tenacity of a small mongrel defending its property. For a moment the two sendings lunged and snapped at each other with a horrible wrangling, snarling war cry, and Sigurd expected to see Mori snatched away and shaken to shreds. But it was Hross-Bjorn who finally backed away, snorting phosphorescent clouds and raking its huge, hairy hooves in frustration.

Mori changed himself back to his own form and taunted Hross-Bjorn triumphantly. “Now we’ll see whom this Scipling really belongs to! I’ve taken him for myself, Hross-Bjorn, so you may as well go back to whatever bog you came out of and let the maggots finish eating you, or put yourself to a truly useful purpose and let Ulfrun burn you for firewood.”

Hross-Bjorn plunged at the barrow opening a few more times to bellow and growl and make a show of digging them out with its hooves. In the midst of all its fury, it stopped and tossed up its head to listen intently. In the sudden silence, Sigurd heard the dragging steps of the draug approaching the barrow. With a snort, Hross-Bjorn arched its tail and trotted away contemptuously, darting its glowing eyes over its shoulders several times to look at Vigbjodr.

Mori clapped both hands over his mouth and turned a few backflips in his excitement. “He’s coming, he’s coming! Remember what I told you to say? Don’t forget a word of it!”

The slow footsteps of the draug halted outside the barrow. Sigurd wondered if Vigbjodr was listening to the hammering of his heart. He didn’t know what sort of outburst to expect, so after the ranting and roaring of Hross-Bjorn, the draug’s low, wretched groan stood his hair on end. The groan rose into a rending howl of such misery and despair that Sigurd covered his ears in an attempt to silence it. Mori punched him viciously until he regained his composure to the extent that he unplugged his ears and slapped Mori out of the way.

“Say it, say it, you fool!” Mori snapped, kicking him.

“What do you want?” Sigurd roared out at the draug.

“My barrow,” the draug moaned. “Get out of my barrow.”

“I won’t get out until cockcrow,” Sigurd replied, after a vicious gouging by Mori’s sharp elbows.

The draug uttered another chilling cry and Sigurd clapped his hands to his ears, certain it would drive him mad if he heard it again. Mori pounded him with both fists until he uncovered his ears. “I won’t get out! You can’t have your barrow back!” he shouted, despite the fact he was more than willing to let the draug have it.

“Gold,” the draug whispered. “I’ll give you gold. It’s almost time for cockcrow. I can’t bear the light of day. Take my gold and let me get back into my grave.”

“I don’t want your gold,” Sigurd answered, truthfully enough. “What else do you have?”

The draug muttered to itself, as if trying to remember. “Jewels. Armor. Magic tokens. Weapons.”

“Weapons? Give me a sword and you can have back your barrow,” Sigurd said, with Mori to prompt him.

The draug moaned again and shuffled away, returning to the hall. Mori leaped up and down, hugged himself, and hugged Sigurd with such strength that it left him breathless and disgusted. “Mori, I don’t see what you’ll get from all this nonsense,” Sigurd said suddenly. “I’ll be leaving Thufnavellir next week when the shearing is done, and I’ll take the sword away with me. You’ll have nothing you didn’t have before.”

Mori put his face close to Sigurd’s. They could see each other quite well in the half-dark of the early-spring night. “Oh, I’ll have my reward,” the sending replied with a leer. “There’s nothing I enjoy like doing someone a favor.” He chattered other nonsense which Sigurd couldn’t really pay attention to while listening for Vigbjodr’s return. Finally he heard the slow, dragging steps. He looked out the portal anxiously and saw the bulky shadow approaching, bearing a sword in its arms.

“It’s nearly time,” moaned the draug. “Here’s your sword. Now let me get back into my barrow.” It dropped the sword at the entrance and Mori snatched it inside immediately.

“Make him beg,” Mori whispered. “Make him crawl on his hands and knees!”

Sigurd wrestled the sword away from Mori. “There’s no time for that. I won’t make him beg; even a draug has its dignity. Vigbjodr! Thank you for the sword. Now withdraw to the next barrow while we leave this one.”

“You forgot something,” Mori said tauntingly, folding his arms. “But I’m not going to tell you what it is. You’ll just have to discover it for yourself.”

Sigurd unsheathed the sword to look at it in the dim starlight. Having a sword in his hands again was very good. “I don’t care, Mori, and I don’t care much for you, now I’ve got myself a sword. A man with a sword in his hands can’t make very many mistakes.” He admired the cool slimness of the sword and put it away in its sheath. With a wary glance around to make sure Vigbjodr had retreated to the next barrow, he stepped outside the mound to hurry back to the hall. Already he was thinking of Mikla and Rolfr and how he was going to explain the acquisition of a fine sword overnight, without anyone’s by-your-leave. He resolved the dilemma with a shrug and decided to hide the sword until they were well away from Thufnavellir.

Mori accompanied him back to the hall, in a fine fettle with the secret he supposed he was keeping from Sigurd. “Farewell, my dear friend, my dear, dear friend! I do hope you’ll enjoy using that sword,” Mori called to him from the peak of a roof, saluting him facetiously. “I shall expect you to let me in tonight to ruin Ulfrun’s kitchen again. I hope you won’t be sleeping too soundly.”

Sigurd hid the sword in the wall bed, correctly supposing that nobody would want to do much prowling around a sending’s bed. He had scarcely lain down after carefully barring the door again, when suddenly the voice of Kambi was hallooing them awake. Mikla awakened instantly. “The door is still shut,” he said in triumph, but then his eye fell on the grave-mold and he stifled a groan. “I fell asleep anyway. There’s something peculiar about that, when 1 was so determined not to. Sigurd, did you see anything strange last night?”

Sigurd did not have to pretend being still tired and very annoyed with Kambi, who still knocked and hallooed outside the door. Rolfr stood up to let him in, and Sigurd called out sharply, “Watch out for the grave-dirt, Rolfr!”

Mikla stood up to look at the dirt and the locked door. “Now our draug is learning to lock the door behind himself,” he said grimly, “There’s more than draugar prowling around this hall at night.”

Alarmed, Sigurd sat up. “You should know that sendings can do almost anything they please. Mori must have locked the door.”

When Kambi was let in, all the same questions and answers had to be given again, and Kambi did an unprecedented thing by sitting down to smoke a pipeful before breakfast. While he was thus occupied, Sigurd picked up his muddy boots and tried to creep outside unnoticed to clean them off, but Rolfr bawled out, “My, what a mess you’re making, Sigurd. You should have cleaned your boots off better last night. You’re as muddy as old Vigbjodr.“

To Sigurd’s relief no one seemed to notice that the mud on his boots was barrow-mold instead of black, healthy bog mud. He hurried outside to scrape the stuff off, already beginning to hate himself for tricking his friends.

He felt even more guilty and ungrateful that day when Kambi gave him a fine little amulet to hang around his neck. Even Mikla spoke to him cordially, and Rolfr’s steady loyalty never wavered. All during the day, as he clipped the heavy coats from the sheep, safe and dry in the barn, Sigurd felt guilty about the sword hidden in the sending’s bed.

As the gloom of evening deepened, his fearful anticipation was heightened by the approach of a storm. Later that night, when the storm was lashing Thufnavellir in full force, Kambi knocked at the door of the hall and Mikla hurried to let him in, along with a fierce gust of wind and rain that swept the fire up the chimney in a guttering roar.

“Tonight is a good night for working magic,” Kambi said to Mikla, his usually dull gaze bright with excitement and his ponderous manner was definitely brisk. “The forces that we harness are the liveliest on a stormy night.”

“But so is Hross-Bjorn,” Sigurd added. Before the door closed, he pointed toward the barrow mounds, and they all saw Hross-Bjorn in the lightning flashes atop a barrow, standing on its hind legs to defy the elements crashing around it.

Kambi barred the door. “We shall soon be rid of Hross-Bjorn. Mikla, take this bag and put it in a safe place.”

He gave Mikla a large sack and took his place beside the fire. After making several appropriate gestures to summon the attention of the magical powers he called upon, he assembled an array of magical objects on a small silver tray— a bit of gray fleece, an axe amulet, a fishhook with the barb pointed outward, a dead mouse, and a bloody handful of chicken gizzards. Kambi threaded everything onto the hook and cast the whole mess into the fire, which blazed brighter and higher. He gazed into the fire until he seemed to be in a trance, muttering long incantations as if he were talking in his sleep.

“The elements are very propitious,” Kambi droned, his eyes on the fire. His distant and preoccupied manner was enlivened by a sudden “Ah!” as if he had seen something significant and unexpected. Sigurd thought of the sword with a guilty burst of apprehension. He glanced toward the wall bed where the sword was hidden, wondering what exactly Kambi could see in his trance. Maybe he knew what Sigurd had hidden in the wall bed. Nobody else might look there, but Kambi might, and it was the first place Vigbjodr would look. As he gazed at the bed in the panels, his capricious power left off pothering among the hangings on the walls and clattered the doors of the bed violently back and forth with an appalling racket.

“Stop it!” Sigurd whispered furiously and the uproar subsided, leaving him alternately hot and cold with his guilty secret. He even considered giving it back, but it was a brief consideration. Hastily he poked more peat into the fire to cover his mortification, hardly noticing the human bones entangled in the fuel. The peat began to steam and dry, and Kambi’s eyes rolled upward in his head as he muttered and mumbled in his trance.

Outside, the storm descended on the valley of Thufnavellir with terrifying ferocity. The hall trembled under the onslaught of wind and rain. After a particularly heavy crash of thunder, Kambi’s eyes flicked open. “Now we’re ready to begin work,” he said. “Mikla, open that bag I brought. I hope you know somewhat of the construction of witches’ bridles.”