The Wizard And The Warlord (32 page)

“I don’t know what good it will do, but I’ll chop him to pieces if he comes through the door,” he said, nodding toward the door in question, which wasn’t very strong. Only a handful of defenders waited inside the hall, listening apprehensively to the confused shouts of the men outside and the shuddering crashes at the door.

Behind Sigurd, Mikla lay in the grip of a shivering, sweating fever, flinching at the crashing and shouting outside. “Sigurd,” he whispered. “Give back the sword.”

“What sword?” Rolfr looked baffled as Sigurd hesitated.

Sigurd stood irresolute a moment, then he confessed, “I stole a sword while we were at Thufhavellir. It’s Vigbjodr’s and he wants it back.”

“Siggi. Whatever prompted you to do such a thing? Kambi was so kind to us, in spite of Hross-Bjom!”

Sigurd nodded unhappily. “I know, it was terrible of me to steal it, but all I could think of was getting my hands on another sword. That wretched Mori led me into it.”

“Well, you didn’t have to let him lead you. Give the thing back to him, Sigurd.” Rolfr cringed as the door made a splintering sound.

“It’s too late!” Sigurd fell back away from the door. “What’s done is done. It will take magic to turn the draug back now, and Mikla’s in no condition for it.” He glanced worriedly toward Mikla’s pallet, where Mikla lay scarcely aware of his surroundings. “I know now I shouldn’t have let Mori trick me. I’m sure they’re all in league with Jotull and Bjarnhardr, but what can I do now?”

He whirled as the door splintered again, this time revealing an ugly blunt axe chopping a hole in the door. Sigurd dived toward his own possessions in the corner, groping for Vigbjodr’s sword. In an instant, it was in his hand. Rolfr leaped aside as the door burst open in a shower of ice and splinters, and the hoary old draug of Vigbjodr lurched into the hall with a deafening bellow, swinging his axe like a scythe. His hooded head almost touched the rafters, and his arms were twice as long as Sigurd’s. When he saw Sigurd confronting him with the sword, he let out a powerful roar and lashed at Sigurd with the axe. His movements were ponderously slow.

Sigurd and the defenders darted out of the way, and Sigurd slashed at the draug’s leg as he dodged. The sharp metal met little resistance in the dried skin and rotten cloth and very nearly took the leg off at the knee. Sigurd boldly cut at the draug’s arm, severing it with a single whack. Vigbjodr roared more furiously and swung his axe wildly. Staying away from the axe, Sigurd hacked off the wounded leg, which did not greatly discomfit the draug, who scarcely noticed his losses until Rolfr chopped his other leg from under him.

With the draug down to their level, they soon made short work of him, despite their amazement when Vigbjodr still hacked at them with his axe without benefit of a head to guide it. Quickly, they finished chopping the draug to pieces. With difficulty, Sigurd pried the axe out of the dismembered hand, which still searched and grasped around as if it were alive.

In a fine state of horror, the defenders of the hall bundled up the pieces of the draug in a sack with a heavy stone in the bottom, which someone carried to the firth and dropped off the cliff into many fathoms of cold blue water. When Rolfr and Sigurd felt like speaking again, they did not congratulate each other and indulge in the usual boasting after such a victory. Sigurd told Rolfr about stealing the sword, rather dully and greatly ashamed of his folly. Rolfr solemnly agreed as Sigurd berated himself for his selfishness and stupidity, which had cost many farmers some of their best animals; and now Mikla was lying gravely ill because he hadn’t confessed his crime earlier.

“Let’s just be grateful that this is the end of Vigbjodr, at least,” Rolfr finally said. “And you’ve got yourself a decent sword now, although the cost was rather high. You should be content, Siggi.”

“I know I should, but I feel too guilty,” Sigurd replied.

“You wouldn’t, if you’d stop doing things you know are wrong,” Rolfr said.

Throughout the day as Sigurd worked, Gunnar stopped by frequently for a kind word with him, which restored his spirits greatly. Gunnar assured him that they might stay as long as they wished after Mikla was well again, and he would have his brother-in-law put his wits to work and get rid of Hross-Bjorn. Gunnar’s eyes shone at the mention of Hross-Bjorn, and Sigurd suspected with amusement that the rotund little farmer looked forward to another clash with the beast. Had his size matched his ferocity and love of battle, Gunnar would have been a perfect giant.

Sigurd was further encouraged that evening by the news that Mikla was much better. This, added to the growing assurance that the draug was truly destroyed, made Sigurd feel almost cheerful. If Hross-Bjorn returned that night, he would get more of the same ill usage before he had much of a chance to do any damage.

Little to Sigurd’s surprise, Hross-Bjorn did not approach the farm too closely that night, but preferred instead to lurk in the ravines and hills to the north, uttering plaintive bellows like a lost heifer in an attempt to lure someone to destruction. Gunnar, however, had accounted for all his cattle and warned everyone to stay within doors after dark, unless he required their services with their bows and arrows.

On the next day, Mikla was improved enough to want food and a little company. Sigurd went to him and told him about the sword. Mikla felt well enough to speak rather sharply, remarking, “It’s no surprise to me. I knew about it from the very instant you started to plan such treason with that mortified relic, Mori. I could have told you what the consequences would be, but I thought it would be better for you to suffer. You need to have your great unbridled arrogance humbled a little now and then.”

Sigurd swallowed an angry retort. “You’re quite right,” he said, forcing the words out. “In the future, I’ll try to think less of myself and how to get what I want, come weal or come woe. I can see where I’ve been stupid. Mikla, I want your advice more often. You’ll help me if I ask, won’t you?”

“You won’t ask, and if you do, you won’t follow it.” Mikla looked searchingly into Sigurd’s face and sighed gloomily. Relenting, Mikla shook Sigurd’s hand. “Of course I’ll help you, Sigurd, but it won’t always be pleasant advice, and you won’t want it when you hear it.”

Sigurd reflected a moment and thought that was probably true. “Well, remind me that I asked for it, then, and perhaps it won’t be so hard to take. By the way, Rolfr and I both thought we ought to make another attempt to bridle Hross-Bjorn when Snorri returns. He’s a ripping sort of a fellow, if you can believe the tales Gunnar tells.”

Mikla shook his head. “I think we’d better hurry on to Svartafell as soon as I’m strong enough to stay on a horse. Gunnar wouid be delighted to have us stay here a month or two, but the matter of the box weighs upon my mind.”

Sigurd tried to hide his disappointment. “It might not take very long,” he began. But Mikla’s weary, knowing look seemed to say, “You see, you don’t want anybody’s advice! What did I tell you?”

Sigurd departed, hating the taste of swallowed pride. He comforted himself by sharpening his sword a bit, admiring it, and telling himself that circumstances hadn’t really turned out too badly after all.

Gunnar called a celebration in honor of his guests that night, and it continued far into the late hours. Guards were set out for Hross-Bjorn, but all they had to report was sighting the creature roosting in the cliffs above the firth, making all manner of dreadful screams, but not daring to approach any nearer. The boldest of the guests offered suggestions for killing Hross-Bjorn and volunteered their services, if it ever came to that, but Sigurd didn’t doubt that they earnestly hoped it wouldn’t.

When all the guests had gone home, except for a few of the less-disposed who had fallen asleep under the tables, Sigurd and Rolfr banked the fire at their end of the hall and comfortably went to sleep on the platforms on either side. Mikla had gone early to a cozy hut where he could expect to get some sleep instead of roistering.

Sigurd had slept only a few moments, he thought, when he heard something thump rather heavily nearby. He listened a moment, but it wasn’t repeated, so he composed himself again for sleep. Almost at once, he heard another thump. Suspiciously, he stared around in the darkness, seeing nothing extraordinary in the dim moonlight sifting through the smoke holes in the roof. While he was looking, the hole overhead was suddenly darkened for an instant and something fell with a heavy thump into the ashes of the fire.

“What was that?” Rolfr whispered across the hall.

Sigurd stepped off the platform, skirting the area near the fire, and joined Rolfr on the other platform. He carried his sword with him, and didn’t like to admit to himself that he felt a huge lump of fear threatening to choke him.

“Can you make a light, Rolfr?” He tried to sound casual.

Obligingly Rolfr lit a small lamp and held it up. “Look at that!” he gasped, almost dropping the lamp.

A disembodied hand and two parts of a leg lay in the ashes. For a moment, they could do nothing but stare in shock. Sigurd felt his hair rise on end and his blood seemed to turn to ice.

Then Rolfr laughed shakily. “This must be Mikla’s idea of a joke,” he whispered. “He’s probably up there on the roof chucking down pieces of an old body, hoping to scare us.”

Sigurd smiled, relieved, but he couldn’t help flinching when another piece dropped through the hole. More pieces followed.

“I don’t think much of his joke,” Sigurd growled uneasily, taking the lamp to hold it closer. “Ugh, here’s a hand. It looks—” He suddenly uttered a yell and leaped back onto the platform, spilling the lamp and nearly setting Rolfr’s eider afire. “It moved, Rolfr!” he gasped. “I saw it, I swear it!”

Rolfr groped around for another lamp. “You must have imagined it, Siggi,” he said in a voice that had a distressing tendency to quaver. He found a lamp and lit it, holding it aloft. As he did so, something slithered across the floor from the other end of the hall. When they looked in that direction, they saw nothing but sleeping hulks of men, and Gunnar’s contented snores grumbled soothingly inside the panel bed. Then Sigurd saw a movement. “A rat,” he said in disgust, but in an instant, when he got a better look at it, he had to stifle another wild yell. It was Vigbjodr’s axe, which he had taken away and thrown in a corner several nights ago. Now it came hurrying along the ground toward them, first one end, then the other, jumping along as if someone were pulling it by a string.

Rolfr moaned thoughtfully at the sight of it and turned his light on the pieces of corpse. Skillfully, they sorted themselves out and fell into place. The right hand reached out for the axe. Even before the corpse sat up with a fiendish grin, Sigurd knew it was Vigbjodr. He yelled the news at the top of his lungs, awakening nothing but the echoes. Dogs and men slept heavily, without a twitch.

“Wake up, you fools! It’s the draug!” Sigurd implored as the ragged creature stood up and faced them, rumbling a challenge. Vigbjodr was so tall that he had to stoop, and his arms seemed like tree trunks. The axe whistled as it bit through a rafter that was in the draug’s way, and a bench crunched into splinters as he trod upon it. Sigurd and Rolfr retreated, watching the creature battering around in the rafters like some huge childhood nightmare, an impression enhanced by their inability to awaken anyone else in the hall. Finally they made a concerted rush and hacked away one leg with difficulty, but the parts scuttled back together almost instantly, and the draug was more savage than before.

The next time they parted the body from one of its limbs, Rolfr hurled the piece across the hall and positioned himself to prevent its return while Sigurd pressed the advantage. A hand or a foot or leg always managed to dart past Rolfr just as Sigurd had the creature down to a manageable size, so it seemed a never-ending battle to the exhausted warriors. They fought until their arms ached, realizing remotely that morning must be approaching because they could see more light filtering in through the holes in the roof and around the cracks in the door.

Someone was pounding and shouting at the door, but no one could reach it to open it. Sigurd thought he recognized Mikla’s voice. In another moment, the locks and bars began falling away, and suddenly the door burst open, letting a rectangle of sunlight into the dark and dust-filled hall. The light fell on Vigbjodr as he raised himself on one elbow to take a swing at Sigurd, who had successfully hewn his last leg from under him. The axe flew wide across the hall and buried itself to the haft in a thick timber. In years to come, Gunnar never tired of showing off this relic of the battle with the sending, although he never mentioned that he had slept through the entire fight.

The sending sank to the earth with a peculiar rocky clatter, the head, arm, and shoulders turned to stone in the sunlight. The remaining parts seemed to shrink back to mere bits of dead limbs in the shadowy light of the hall. Mikla stepped inside warily, with his staff poised. Gunnar and his family awoke from the spell at once; after a few moments of pure astonishment, they gathered around the remaining bits of the draug and peppered Sigurd and Rolfr with questions.

Sigurd jostled his way through the admiring, congratulating crowd and seized Mikla. He had only one question. “Is this the end of him, Mikla?”

Mikla politely detached himself from Gunnar, who seemed to think that some mighty spell had been worked, a spell even more wonderful than anything his brother-in-law Snorri could have conjured.

“I simply don’t know for sure,” he told Sigurd in a low voice. “Gather up all the remaining parts and the stones, also. We’ll put them in a bag and say some proper sending-laying spells over him and take him back to Thufnaveilir and hope for the best.”

Sigurd nodded and unbuckled the belt of the sword, not without regret. “I’ll put this with him, too, and maybe he’ll be content to stay in his barrow.” It was a mighty struggle, and very painful.

When all the pieces were collected and put into a bag, Sigurd quickly put the sword in without pausing to look at it. Mikla said his solemn spells and performed certain rituals, such as driving needles into the soles of the sending’s feet to prevent Vigbjodr from walking again. Thus reassured, Gunnar promised that he would have the bag delivered to Kambi at Thufnaveilir. At the mention of Kambi, Sigurd thoughtfully rubbed the small talisman the wizard had given him; a similar one hung around Rolfr’s neck, as if Kambi had known they would need protection against the walking dead. Sigurd felt ashamed of himself, realizing Kambi had known that he had taken Vigbjodr’s sword. What made Sigurd smart the worst was remembering Kambi’s unabated kindness to him despite his theft.