The Wizard And The Warlord (34 page)

Sigurd felt his power give him a nudge forward. He approached the trap and looked at it. Grisnir raised his wizened face from his paws hopefully, gritting his teeth in pain as Sigurd examined the trap.

“I fear your leg is broken,” Sigurd said. “There’ll be no hunting for you for quite a while. I suppose you have a chieftain who won’t be pleased to feed a useless troll.”

Grisnir straightened his shoulders. “I am a solitary troll, not an animal who hunts in a pack. I earn my food and gold by selling my advice, knowledge, and spells to the farming and fishing folk who live near my mountain. Thus it is that I am particularly aggrieved that the Alfar I have trusted so long have turned against me and commenced setting traps for me. It puts me in a very low frame of mind, I assure you.“

“Where is this contraption’s trigger?” Sigurd wrestled the trap around and finally got both feet placed on it to exert the necessary pressure to open its vicious jaws. With a whimper of relief, Grisnir pulled his broken and badly lacerated leg from the trap and crawled toward the water which he hadn’t been able to reach for three days. Sigurd offered him his drinking cup, after a moment’s consideration. He helped Grisnir wash his wounded leg. They bound it up in some fragrant leaves the troll directed him to pick from the damp walls of the ravine and wrapped the whole business in a large piece of the long, frayed cloak the troll wore over one shoulder. Then Sigurd helped him to his feet, directing him to lean on his rescuer’s shoulder, which was a good ways lower than that of Grisnir. The troll grimaced and moaned with each painful step, stopping often to catch his breath and mop his hairy face, which was sweating profusely.

“I shall reward you with gold and jewels for your help,” he said. “It’s not much farther now. You’ll see a great rock lying over two others like doorposts and a lintel. My door is directly underneath.”

In a short while, Sigurd saw Grisnir’s landmark. With a last staggering effort, they crept up the steep path and collapsed under the huge porch, puffing, gasping, and grinning at one another in triumph. “I have a couple of friends who would be greatly amazed to see me now,” Sigurd said with a laugh, shaking his head. “This must be one of the more insane things I’ve done yet.”

“Humane, not insane,” Grisnir said with a faint chuckle. He separated a key on a chain from his furry chest. “Shall we go inside? There won’t be a fire nor much to eat, I fear, but I trust we shall find something to suit us.”

Sigurd helped push open the heavy door; a small hallway led to a short flight of wide steps upward. Grisnir pointed out a lamp and a tinderbox. In a moment, the soft glow of whale oil showed Sigurd a big, comfortable room hewn from the native stone, complete with a hearth. A large pedestal table and chairs, carved from stone, faced a tremendous pillared bed, which Grisnir crept into with thankful groans. Sigurd looked around with increasing delight, seeing all manner of fine little figures carved out of the stone, placed on shelves and niches around the room. He lit a crackling fire in the hearth, and Grisnir directed him to a beautifully carved trunk which held the food supplies. The first thing Sigurd cooked was a huge panful of eggs, with bread toasted over the coals.

When their hunger was slightly relieved, he set about cooking some meat. His eyes kept drifting back to the trunk. “I have a little carved box which you’d like,” he said, knowing that Grisnir must be the craftsman who had done all this carving. “It was done by a dwarf, Bergthor of Svartafell, and it’s very nearly as fine as the work you do.”

Grisnir sat up straight. “Bergthor, eh? It’s not surprising you think my work looks almost as fine as his. He was my teacher many years ago, and it was he who convinced me that life alone inside a mountain is very pleasant indeed. I sustain myself by my crafts and skills—at least I did until three days ago. I don’t know if I shall ever trust any of those Alfar again.” He frowned and fugged at his long, pointed ears by their pendulous lobes. “Well, never mind about them. Give the meat a last turn and go look inside that small chest on the shelf. You can take from it whatever you wish, or take all of it and be welcome. Gold and valuables are things that mean very little to me, except as a means of barter for what I want. Yesterday at this time, I very much wanted someone to come along as you did to free me from that trap.“

Sigurd’s heart thumped as he looked into the little chest. It was almost full of gold pieces and gold jewelry, as well as precious gems. He wondered how much of it he should take, then he wondered how he would carry it. Even a small amount of gold was very heavy. He looked back at Grisnir, reclining on his stone bed with a huge cup of mead, which he was slowly draining, looking at Sigurd kindly between sips.

Sigurd chose only one stone, a large, twinkling red one that reminded him of Ragnhild. It would look splendid fastened around her pale throat, if he could manage to give it to her somehow without letting his presence be known. Probably she hated him, but he took the stone anyway.

“Nothing more?” Grisnir exclaimed.

“I can’t really carry it very well,” Sigurd said. “Not where I have to go. I’d like this red stone to give to a girl I know, if I ever see her again.” He glanced at her ring on his least finger and thought gloomily of his past misdeeds.

“Yes, I thought you wouldn’t stay long,” Grisnir said. “Not with that thing following you. I don’t know what it is, nor do I particularly wish to get better acquainted. But I owe you a favor; before you leave, I would like to repay you, if there’s any way I can. You mentioned Bergthor.” He continued no further, too polite to ask any inquisitive questions of his guest.

Sigurd sat down on a stool near the troll. “My friends and I are traveling to see Bergthor on a peaceful mission. All we want is for him to open the small, carven box I mentioned before, and we wish him no harm. I’m sure you know how difficult Svartafell will be to find; but if you were his student at one time, perhaps you could draw us a map. Also, if you’ve encountered a pair of Alfar and six horses who seem to be searching for someone, well, the someone is me, and I’d greatly appreciate finding my friends again.”

Grisnir rubbed his scratchy chin with one paw. Almost without appearing to think about it, he picked up a knife and a wand of wood. His awkward-seeming paws suddenly became quick and dextrous. He carved a few faces and some runes as he thought. “Well, I hope there’s no harm in you,” he said at last. “It seems that any one of almost any species is good-natured enough, taken individually; it’s only in numbers that any of us are bad. I believe you are honest and won’t do any harm to Bergthor, so I shall give you a map in gratitude for saving one miserable old troll against your better judgment. If you should ever need my help again, you’ll know you can find me here.”

Sigurd accepted the carved wand, thinking at first it was a gift, but in a moment he realized it was the map, naming mountains and peaks as landmarks. He smiled gratefully at the old troll. “Then you’ve decided to trust your farming and fishing folk again, after the nasty trick someone played you?”

Grisnir waved a paw and shut his eyes. “Oh, I can find out who set the trap and why he did it. Someone must have a grudge against me, but I’m not the sort to run away from a confrontation. This mountain and these valleys belong to me, too. I’m a tough old rogue, and it will take more than troll traps to discourage me from dealing with my old friends. I still like them, although someone wishes me evil. You needn’t worry about me—no, indeed. It’s more important that we find your friends before they decide to give up searching for you. While I was lying in the ravine, hiding by day as best I might for fear of the sun, I thought I heard a number of horses pass by overhead. In my delirium, I assumed it was a band of draugar or a wild hunt or sheer imagination, but now I think it might have been your friends. Tomorrow, if I were you, I would go back and look for their tracks near the place where I was trapped.” He showed his large, broken teeth in a friendly smile. “Now then, is the meat done? It looks exactly perfect. One’s stomach revolts from overcooked meat, as I’m certain you are aware.”

On the morrow, Sigurd took his leave from Grisnir with pleasant regret, after many assurances of lasting gratitude and promises that he would stop again on his return journey from Svartafell. Grisnir showed him where he hid an extra key under a stone inside the porch, if Sigurd should happen to arrive when Grisnir was not at home. Sigurd promised that he would make himself at home, find something to eat, and dry his clothing, if he had been rained upon.

“Nothing is more unhealthy than sitting in wet clothes,” Grisnir admonished him, raising one large paw in farewell. “I wouldn’t recommend getting one’s feet wet in early-morning dew, either, not even at your young age. Good luck to you on your journey, Sigurd.”

Sigurd thanked him again, and the door in the mountain was quickly closed as the sun showed a sliver of itself over the mountainside. Feeling warmed and hopeful from Grisnir’s news of Mikla and Rolfr passing near him, he hurried back to the place and searched around until he found the tracks. They were probably about two days old, he decided, but he didn’t let that discourage him. He set off in the same direction, certain that Mikla would search each ravine thoroughly until he found him.

By midday, he was beginning to wonder if Mikla and Rolfr hadn’t secretly coveted the box all along and were glad for an excuse to be rid of him. Tiredly, he sat down on a moss-blotched boulder to eat the lunch Grisnir had insisted on packing for him, assuring him that his digestion would suffer if he got into the insalubrious habit of missing his dinner. He smiled at the thought of the old troll lecturing him about keeping his feet dry and not sleeping on the damp earth if he could help it. When he was finished with his meal, Sigurd stretched out on the moss to rest, look back on the valleys where Grisnir’s farming and fishing folk lived, and wonder if they were loyal or defiant to Bjarnhardr.

He fell into a light doze, induced by the softness of the fragrant moss, the songs of the birds building nests in the ravine beside the chuckling water, the soft sunlight, and the feeling that he was completely alone and safe lying on the side of the fell.

His power suddenly awakened him in the form of an angrily buzzing bee making dives at his face. He looked around quickly to see where the danger lay before announcing himself with a movement. Above him, outlined against the sky, stood a horseman. Sigurd eased himself into the shelter of a small bush and watched the fellow, who was too far away to recognize. Although he hoped desperately it was Rolfr or Mikla, his common sense told him it might well be someone from the nearby settlements who might think he ought to be killed or hauled before the chieftain and priests. When the horseman finally turned and disappeared behind the hillside, Sigurd felt intensely disappointed, and his power was so annoyed with him that it kept shoving his hood into his eyes and dropping rocks into his boots as he walked carefully away in the opposite direction.

After sitting down for the fourth time to dig a rock out of his boot and grumble aloud at the rash of tricks his power was tormenting him with, it suddenly occurred to him in a burst of revelation that it was trying to tell him he was going the wrong way. After a moment of intense consultation with himself, he decided he probably had seen Mikla or Rolfr. He rushed back to the place where he had seen the horseman. Two fells away, tiny with distance, a procession of six horses and two riders plodded along the black gash of the ravine. Sigurd gave a great whoop and waved. In a moment, they all turned around and came cantering toward him like a beautiful dream, sinking out of sight into the swales and appearing suddenly much closer, the horses’ manes and tails catching the light like pale plumes. When he heard the thud of hooves on the soft earth and the creak of leather, the dream became reality and he rushed forward to meet them. The horses jolted to stiff-legged halts all around him, and Rolfr leaped on him joyously with a welcoming yell.