The Wizard And The Warlord (5 page)

“My grandmother never lied to me,” Sigurd replied angrily. “You can’t change my mind. I know you’re the warlord she spoke of, the one who caused all the misery of Thongullsfjord out of your spite against us. You’re an evil being, and I challenge you to a holmgang.” He made a menacing move with his axe.

“And you’re a hasty, ignorant being, but I’m always glad to oblige a fool in throwing away his life,” Halfdane answered. He allowed Sigurd to take the first swing at him, deflecting the blow with ease. After that, he took command of the fight, allowing Sigurd to expend himself in desperate and futile attempts to get past his enemy’s defenses. Sigurd fought like an army of one, but his fury was no match for Halfdane’s cool, collected skill in parrying his rushes. Each of the warlord’s moves proved to Sigurd that he was capable of ending the fight quickly at any time he chose, which only made Sigurd the more furious.

“Now you’ve lost your common sense,” Halfdane said and felled Sigurd with a single sharp rap with the handle of his axe. “You’re not a bad fighter, but you need teaching and practice. I can see you’ve had some experience. No, don’t look for your axe, the fight is finished for now.” He put his foot on Sigurd’s axe. “Dagrun, we can’t leave him here for the trolls. We’ll put him up behind Skeifr. You see to it while I look inside the house.”

Sigurd sat up unsteadily. His skull felt absolutely split, and they had taken away his axe, but he was still defiant. “I don’t like this talk of being carried off. I’d rather take my chances with the trolls than with outlaws. This is my house, and I intend to defend it and the ashes of my grandmother.” He rose and clenched his fists as Halfdane returned from his inspection of the house.

“Don’t be absurd,” Halfdane replied. “You won’t last another night. It was fortunate for you that we arrived when we did to frighten off the trolls, or they would have had you by now. I suggest you gather the possessions you’ll require, so you’ll delay us no longer. Dagrun, accompany him and be watchful, in case he’s got a sword hidden somewhere.” The warlord turned away, dismissing Sigurd with a last glance of his contemptuous, fox-colored eyes.

Dagrun stepped forward with a crusty glower. “Come along. We can always use a good man with an axe. Do be a sensible fellow. Only a fool would deliberately prefer to become supper for a pack of stinking trolls. You won’t be needing much; Halfdane provides us with everything we need.”

“There’s only one thing I must have, if I’m forced to come with you,” Sigurd growled, stalking into the ruins of his house. He knelt beside the hearth and reached into the secret hiding place dug into the earth under one of the stones where he had hidden the small, carved box. He ignored the curious stares of the men as he accompanied Dagrun to the horses and glared resentfully at the fellow who had taken his axe.

“We’ll be keeping your weapons for just a short while,” Dagrun said. “That’s Skeifr, the one you’ll be riding behind. You can’t be sorry to leave this desolated place, can you?” He spoke grudgingly, as if he were hopeful Sigurd wouldn’t embarrass him. With a sigh, Sigurd put on his cloak and took a last look around at the house and the fells.

“It isn’t so bad at Hrafnborg,” Dagrun continued. “I think you’ll like it, if you like to fight. As soon as Halfdane thinks you’re good enough, you’ll be able to ride with us, hunting trolls and raiding the hill forts of our enemies, it shouldn’t be long; you’re well begun with an axe. Roifr isn’t nearly as good with an axe and he’s an endless nuisance besides.”

“What’s that?” a strident young voice cried out. “I’m not an endless nuisance! Expecting as I do to be murdered at any moment by Bjarnhardr’s Alfar, I certainly wouldn’t say I’m an endless nuisance. The end is definitely foreseeable. By the way, that was a splendid fight, Sigurd. My name is Rolfr, and I’m much looked down upon as the youngest and least experienced and I’m always being thrust into the background, holding the horses and fetching the firewood, but I’m more than pleased to make your acquaintance, anyway. You don’t have to ride behind that old drone Skeifr when you can ride with me. Come, give me your hand.”

“Do be quiet, Rolfr. Halfdane’s instructions were to—”

Rolfr leaned down from his horse, sticking out his hand with a friendly grin. “I foresee we’ll become fast friends, Sigurd. Let’s shake hands.”

Sigurd extended his hand reluctantly. “Pleased to meet—” he began, just as Rolfr gave him a terrific haul upward and onto the horse behind him.

“I think I shall call you Siggi, if you don’t mind,” Rolfr said. “I’ve got great plans for you.”

“No one except my grandmother ever called me Siggi in my life without repenting of it,” Sigurd declared hotly, but it was all he could do to hang on as Rolfr whirled his horse around and jabbed its ribs with his spurs. The beast crouched for a mighty spring, launching itself into a breakneck gallop over rocks and underbrush in pursuit of the solitary dark figure of Halfdane, who was riding ahead, outlined against the silver morning sky.

Sigurd didn’t feel much like talking, but Rolfr kept up a lively conversation without much input from Sigurd. Rolfr possessed the gift of endless speech—with himself, the horse, or the terrain. Finally Sigurd broke in with a question.

“Where is Hrafnborg? I’ve never heard of it.”

Rolfr laughed, letting the horse slow to a bone-rattling trot. “I’d be surprised if you had, you know. But of course you can’t help being a Scipling. I’d almost forgotten it. This promises to be great fun, if you’re as uninformed as other Sciplings I’ve heard of. Just tell me who you think we are. I’ve told you all our names, so that doesn’t count.”

Sigurd scowled at Rolfr, who was looking over his shoulder with a sly grin. “I don’t know what you mean, you fool. Outlaws, I suppose. Perhaps you’ve been hiding inland, preying upon travelers and isolated houses—”

Rolfr interrupted with a delighted roar of mirth, causing several of his companions riding nearby to glare at him and motion for silence. “Then you have no idea who we are and where we are going. How delightful. I hope you won’t be frightened, Siggi. Have you ever heard of the Ljosalfar and Dokkalfar?”

“Well, of course I have. We have hundreds of legends—”

“Legends! That’s some consolation, I suppose. But you don’t really believe there were already people on this island when the first settlers heaved their doorposts overboard and arrived on these fair shores?”

“There may have been; but if there were, where did they go? I hadn’t noticed any of them still lingering,” Sigurd replied testily.

Rolfr laughed again. “Where indeed, Siggi? Where indeed! They had to go somewhere. Where do you suppose they all went?”

“I don’t know and I don’t particularly care,”Sigurd snapped. “I’m in no mood for games. I’ve been beaten and kidnapped by strangers or outlaws already, so I don’t need to be tortured by your stupid riddles. If you’ve got something to say to me, say it and then be silent!”

“You’ve had a rough time of it, and I’m sorry for it,” Rolfr said soothingly. “But we’re all you’ve got now, since your people have abandoned the settlement, and the nearest Scipling habitation is far to the south, a good long ways in a boat. We’ll be at Hrafnborg in less than two hours. You never suspected you had neighbors so close, did you now? I see by that scowl on your face that you’re still trying to puzzle it out. Look up ahead where Halfdane is waiting for us. I believe that will begin to explain who we are and where we have come from.”

Halfdane waited alone on a windy hilltop, surrounded by a circle of ancient, staggering stones. Sigurd had seen such places before, and Thorarna had warned him away from them, saying they were places of great evil and misfortune. As Sigurd watched, Halfdane beckoned impatiently to his men. They rode up the hill in pairs and threes, passed through the circie of stones, and seemed to vanish into a wall of mist on the far side. Sigurd blinked his eyes, thinking it was a trick of the sun and the fog. They did indeed vanish right while he was looking at their stalwart backs, quivers, and bows.

“Wait,” he muttered as they approached with the last group of three, but Rolfronly laughed, assuring him there was nothing to fear, as if disappearing were a commonplace event with him.

Halfdane fell into the rear position and followed them through the ring of stones. Sigurd turned to watch him warily, not trusting at all to have him at his back, and thus missed the instant when he and Rolfr passed through the circle. Although he looked back quickly for the weathered stones, he saw nothing of them—only a barren hilltop covered with a rubble of stones and moss. Attentively, Sigurd looked around at the landscape, realizing it was different from what he was accustomed to. It had a rugged, blasted look, as if the sparse covering of earth and grass had been clawed away, leaving only the bits of green turf and stunted trees that could scrabble out a meager living in small sheltered nooks. The high fells were capped with ice and veiled with waterfalls. Streams and small lakes made a silvery lacework of the black, rocky earth.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Rolfr demanded cheerfully. “I’m always glad for this first sight of it whenever I have occasion to leave it for a while.”

“Leave what?” Sigurd asked suspiciously.

“Why, the Alfar realm, of course. It isn’t the moon, you fool. Your people might have called it the hidden realm, so that makes us the hidden people—hulderfolk, elves, whatever you call us—but we are properly called the Alfar. Ljosalfar and Dokkalfar; we, of course, are Ljosalfar, or we wouldn’t be out here in the bright sunlight and we wouldn’t be troubling ourselves with you, for certain. We’d have left you to the trolls.” Rolfr favored Sigurd with a wide grin and a devilish wink. He was about the same age as Sigurd, with a sharp, ferrety face and deep-set, twinkling eyes, a sparse rusty beard, and a bony, elongated frame. Sigurd couldn’t help staring at him, capable of thinking only that here was a genuine elf, alive and substantial.

“Can you do magic?” he inquired, awed in spite of himself.

“Magic? To be sure! I was born with magic in my blood,” Rolfr declared. “Life would be terribly awkward without it. You must suffer dreadfully, blundering on blindly as you Sciplings do.”

“We manage just fine,” Sigurd snapped, “until someone starts making sendings against us and bestirring the trolls to attack us and all manner of evil tricks. I can’t imagine a man or an Alfar following so willingly in the course of a monster like Halfdane.”

Rolfr chuckled nervously and darted a quick glance at the warlord, who was riding not far ahead. “Warlords are a different species, I’ll be the first to confess,” he said in a low tone. “Halfdane is as fair as you could ask, as long as you don’t cross him, but he won’t tolerate insubordination. It’s very strange, this business of Thongullsfjord; I don’t understand why such an insignificant place has become such a bone of contention between Halfdane and Bjarnhardr, and why in particular they are both so keen about you and your grandmother. I know nothing about it. I’m only a warrior, but somehow I understand that something important for Halfdane has happened tonight.”

“My grandmother told me that a warlord was my enemy,” Sigurd said bitterly, “and I’ve seen the havoc he caused in his search for me. I’ll not rest until I’ve finished my holmgang with him.”

“But Halfdane wouldn’t destroy Thongullsfjord. That’s more the style of Bjarnhardr, the Dokkalfar warlord. At least I don’t think he would—” Before Rolfr could continue, Dagrun rode alongside with a threatening expression on his face.

“Don’t chatter, Rolfr,” he said. “We don’t know yet if this Scipling should be a guest or a prisoner. You know you should learn to be cautious.”

“No, I don’t know it,” Rolfr returned airily. “Dagrun, you are such a great toad of a fellow sometimes! I intend to befriend Sigurd, since he has lost everything familiar to him, except that little box he carries under his arm. That carving is too elegant to be done by a Scipling hand, Siggi. Wherever did you get a box so obviously carved in the Alfar realm?”

Sigurd looked at the box suspiciously, but before he could demand an explanation from Rolfr, Halfdane suddenly brought his horse sharply alongside and thrust his lowering face into Rolfr’s and said in a threatening tone, “Rolfr, you talk far more than is good for you—or Hrafnborg. If you don’t keep silent, I’ll make you walk the rest of the way home.”

With a final glower, Halfdane moved his horse away, but not out of earshot. Rolfr heaved a martyred sigh and hunched his shoulders; but whenever he thought Halfdane wasn’t looking, he threw Sigurd a wink, and the expression in his eye was not daunted. Dagrun kept close, muttering worriedly to himself and shaking his head.

“I ought to have known better than to permit a stranger anywhere near Rolfr’s jabbering,” he lamented to Skeifr. “Halfdane will blame me for it. I wouldn’t mind, if it weren’t my fault.”

Rolfr was hard put to remain silent for long, so he hummed bits of songs and would have whistled, but Dagrun silenced him after the first two notes.

“What a magpie you are, Rolfr,” Dagrun said. “If you weren’t the best bowman in the entire hill fort, Halfdane wouldn’t tolerate you for half a day.”

Rolfr grinned and preened himself proudly, keeping one eye on Halfdane all the while. Sigurd almost smiled, glad for the distraction Rolfr offered from his worries about his future.

When they finally came into view of Hrafnborg, Sigurd would not have recognized it as a hill fort if Dagrun hadn’t pointed it out to him. A cluster of longhouses blended into the rocky knob of a windswept hill. Steep crags protected the hill on two sides, and an extensive earthwork encircled it on the other sides. Plumes of smoke curled lazily into the sky, and Sigurd heard an infrequent and faint bit of conversation or the clarik of metal as the wind blew the sounds to them. It was like any Scipling settlement, he told himself, sternly refusing to confess to a sharp twinge of homesickness, mingled with the glad expectation of food and a safe place to rest.

Halfdane led the way through the earthwork, halting the procession at the doors of the firehall. Sigurd observed more men who looked like warriors and a large number of horses grazing on and around the earthwork. The wives and children of the warriors were waving from doorways, plucking geese and doing other homely chores, while the children did their best to get under the horses’ hooves, and all the dogs came out to bark a welcome.