He lumbered toward Holger. The Dane knew a moment’s blind wish to bolt. But there was no place to go. He spat on the ground and lifted his sword. As the troll reached for him, he swung with all the might he had.
Through and through that oak-branch arm the blade went. Iron belled in the dark. Ice-green blood spurted, turning black in the smoke of unnatural flesh. The sword seemed to glow. The arm sprang off at the shoulder. It rolled into a pile of leaves, flopped about, and began hunching its way back.
Carahue smote from the right side. His saber carved a slab off the troll’s ribs. Greasily, with a sucking noise, that chunk crawled toward its master. Papillon reared and smote with his forefeet. Half the troll’s face was torn off. The jaws landed under the stallion and clenched about his ankle. He neighed and bucked. The troll raked his haunches with the remaining hand. Blood welled forth. Carahue got in the way of another buffet, took it in the armored belly, went down with a clatter and did not rise.
Unkillable indeed!
Holger thought.
What a place to die.
“Get out, Alianora!”
“Nay.” She grabbed the torch and neared Papillon, who was going mad with the grip on his leg. “I’ll get it from ye,” she shouted. “Hold still and I’ll free ye.”
The troll scooped up his left arm and put it in place. His half a face seemed still to laugh. Holger struck again and again, he opened deep wounds, but they closed at once. Back he stumbled. Over the troll’s shoulder he saw Alianora duck under Papillon’s flailing hoofs, seize the stallion’s bridle and somehow bring him to a halt. She knelt to try and pry the jaws loose.
As her torch came near, they let go. Startled, she flinched aside. “Ho-o-o,” said the troll. Turning from Holger, he scuttled toward the bones, picked them up and put them in his head. Teeth clashed as he went back to meet the Dane.
Alianora cried aloud. She struck his back with the torch. He hooted and went on all fours. A charred welt across his skin did not heal.
The knowledge burst open in Holger. “Fire!” he roared. “Light a fire! Burn the beast!”
Alianora plunged the faggot into a heap of straw. It flared up. Smoke stung Holger’s nose... clean smoke, he thought crazily, clean flames, burning out the tomb stench around him. He braced himself and hewed.
A hand flew off its wrist, halfway across the cavern. Alianora pounced on it. The thing writhed in her grasp. Fingers like green worms sought to claw free. She hurled it into the fire. For a moment the hand twisted about, even crawled from the flames. But it was already blackened. As it sank down dead, the fire moved out to engulf it.
The troll yammered. He swung the mutilated arm like a club. The sword was knocked from Holger’s grasp. He scrambled after it. The troll overfell him. A moment he lay under that mass and could not breathe. Papillon attacked. The monster retreated.
Carahue staggered erect and went to battle. Papillon had the troll down. Carahue chopped at a leg, again and yet again. When he got it off, Alianora seized it in both arms. The fire was catching in wood now. Its crackle had become a bellow; it filled the cave with light. She needed her entire strength, but she pushed the kicking leg in among the coals.
Holger came back. A hand closed on his ankle... the other hand cut off by Carahue. He tore it loose and threw it at the fire. Somehow it landed in the clear and pulled itself toward safety under a log. Hugi dove upon it. They rolled over together, dwarf and hand.
The troll’s head was off. It snapped and slobbered as Holger spitted it on his sword. He tossed it into the blaze. It rolled back, burning, spreading the flames, toward Alianora. Holger stabbed it again. Heedless of what would happen to the temper of his blade, he pinned the troll’s head in the fire till it was consumed.
The torso remained. Worst was that task, when Holger and Carahue rolled a thing as heavy as the world toward the furnace heart of the cave, while it fought them with snakes of gut. Afterward he could not remember clearly what had happened. But they burned it.
A last glimmer caught his eye. Red and ragged as the flames themselves, Hugi cast the troll’s hand into destruction. Then he sank to the floor and lay still.
Alianora flung herself above him. “He’s bad hurt,” she cried. Holger could scarcely hear her through the conflagration. Heat and fumes made him too dizzy to think. “Hugi, Hugi!”
“We’d best escape before this whole place becomes a cauldron,” Carahue panted in Holger’s ear. “See how the smoke rushes out yonder tunnel. That must be our way. Let her carry the dwarf. Help me with this idiot horse of mine!”
Somehow they quieted the animal. Somehow they groped their way down a passage where each breath was pain. And they came into the open air.
23
THEY WERE ABOVE the cliffs, Holger realized with a dull surprise. How long they had been underground he didn’t know, but the moon was westering.
The moon? Oh, yes. Yes, the clouds were breaking up, weren’t they? Too much wind for them. The wind went shrieking across a plain of whins and stiff grass, here and there a leafless tree, everything gray under hurried moonlight and unmercifully sharp stars. Holger couldn’t see the smoke from the troll’s bolthole; the wind scattered it too fast. Southward, close at hand, the wold was bounded by the cliff brink, beyond which he saw nothing save darkness, as if he stood at the edge of creation. Northward he thought mountains shouldered the sky, a blink of glaciers, but he wasn’t sure. The chill struck into his marrow.
Carahue limped to join him. Holger wondered if he looked as bad as the Saracen, torn, smeared with blood, black with smoke, in dented helmet and ripped clothes, carrying a ruined sword. Just as well the light was dim. A cloud engulfed the moon and he could not see at all.
“Is everyone here?” he croaked.
Carahue answered so low that the rushing in the grass nearly buried his voice. “I fear the little man came off badly.”
“Nay,” said the remnant of a bass growl. “I gave’s guid as I got.”
The moon broke free again. Holger knelt down beside Alianora. She cradled Hugi’s shaggy head in her lap. Blood pulsed from the dwarf’s side, but the flow ebbed even as Holger watched.
“Hugi,” she whispered. “Ye canna die. I’ll no believe it.”
“Nay, lass, dinna fash yersel’,” he mumbled. “Yon great galoon paid top price for me.”
Holger bent close. In the white unreal moonlight the face below him was like a carving in old dark wood. Only the beard, wind-blown, and a few bubbles of blood on the lips, still moved. He saw the wound could not be staunched. It was too big for so small a body.
Hugi reached around and patted Alianora’s hand. “Och, dinna weep,” he sighed. “’Tis aboot fifty females o’ ma ain race wha’ ha’ cause to mourn. Yet ’twas ever ye who we loved best.” He snapped after air. “I’d gi’ ye guid counsel if I could. But the noise in ma head’s too great.”
Holger took off his helmet. “
Ave Maria
,” he began. There was nothing else he could do, and perhaps nothing better, here on this windy cold mountain. He asked that there be gentleness for the soul of Hugi. And when the dwarf was dead, Holger closed his eyes and signed him with the cross.
Rising, he left Alianora alone for the while that he and Carahue took to dig a shallow grave with their swords. Afterward they heaped rocks above, and stabbed Hugi’s dagger into the cairn with the hilt up. Wolves howled, miles away on the wold. Holger hoped they wouldn’t find the grave.
Finally the humans bound their own wounds as best they could. “We’ve had heavy losses,” said Carahue. His gaiety was flattened out by weariness. “Not alone our friend, but a horse and the pack mule with its gear. Our swords are no more than edgeless iron clubs, our mail nearly beaten to pieces. Nor can Alianora fly until her wing... her arm heals.”
Holger looked across the tumbled gray land. The wind struck him in the face. “This was my job,” he said. “I don’t feel right about anyone else getting hurt.”
The Saracen regarded him steadily. “Methinks ’tis the task of all honorable men,” he said.
“Look, Carahue, I may as well tell you we’re being opposed by Queen Morgan Le Fay herself. She’ll know we came this far. I think she’s already off to the Middle World to get those who can stop us.”
“They travel fast, the Middle Worlders,” said Carahue, “We’d best not stay to rest. But when we get to the church, what then?”
“Then my search is ended... perhaps... and maybe we’ll be safe. Or maybe not. I don’t know.”
It was on Holger’s tongue to tell Carahue the whole story, but the Saracen had already swung about and caught his horse. No time, no time.
Alianora sprang up behind Holger on Papillon. Her arms closed about his waist with a desperate tightness. Once only she turned, to wave at him who lay buried.
Even the stallion was worn out, and the mare shambled in her exhaustion. Hoofs rang on stone, grass parted with dry whisperings, the gorse rattled and the dead trees creaked. Low above the horizon, the crooked moon dazzled Holger’s eyes as if trying to blind him.
After a long while Alianora said, “Did the foe come on us by accident, below the pass?”
“No.” Holger threw a glance across the colorless, shadow-stippled earth. Carahue was a silhouette against stars and clouds-probably sleeping in the saddle, for he made no response as Holger went on, “Morgan came first. She sent the tribesmen after we’d spoken.”
“Wha’ did she say to ye, yon witch?”
“She... nothing. She just wanted me to surrender.”
“I think she hankered after more,” said the girl. “She was your leman once, no?”
“Yes,” said Holger dully.
“She could gi’ ye a proud life.”
“I told her I’d rather stay with you.”
“Oh, my darling!” she whispered. “I—I—”
He heard her trying not to weep. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Och, I dinna know. I shouldna be so happy now, should I, so soon? And, and, and yet I canna help it—” She wiped her eyes on the remnant of his cloak.
“But,” he stuttered. “But. I mean you and Carahue.”
“Him? A pleasant one, aye. Did ye really think, though, Holger, could ye really believe I wanted to do more than keep his mind off ye and your secret? And maybe make ye a wee bit jealous? How could-any lass want any man save ye?”
He gaped at the Pole Star.
She caught her breath and laid her hands on his shoulders. “Now we’ll gabble no more o’ that,” she said firmly. “But if ever I catch ye pawing at some wench again, Holger, ’twill go ill with ye.” She paused. “Some wench beside me, ’tis.”
He jerked his horse to a stop. “Carahue!” he called. “Wake up!”
“Ah?” The Saracen reached for his saber.
“Our animals,” Holger said, not altogether speciously. “If we don’t give them a rest, they’ll keel over. We’ll make better speed in the long run if we take an hour’s break now.”
The other man’s face was an oval blur, his armor a dull sheen, but he could be seen to ponder. “I know not. Once Morgan rouses the pursuit against us, such horses go like a gale. And yet—” He shrugged. “As you wish.”
They slid to the grass. Alianora tugged eagerly at Holger’s hand. He nodded to Carahue, hoping his gesture wasn’t too smug. The Saracen looked startled for a moment, until he laughed. “Good fortune to you, my friend,” he said. He stretched himself full length on the ground and whistled a tune at the sky.
Holger followed Alianora a ways off. He had forgotten his own weariness and pain. The heart beat in him, not violently, a strong glad tone through his whole body. When they stopped, they clasped hands and stood looking at each other. Moonlight flowed over the wold, gray, shadow-barred, glinting on rime. Such clouds as remained were luminous-edged; the stars shone between them. The wind was still loud, but Holger paid no heed. He saw Alianora as a shape of quicksilver, of sliding shadow and cool white light. Dewdrops sparkled in her hair and there was moonlight in her eyes.
“We may no ha’ a chance to talk again,” she said quietly.
“Maybe not,” he answered. “So let me say now I love ye.”
“And I love you.”
“Oh, my dearest—” She came to him and he held her close.
“I’ve been a fool,” he said presently, wishing he could find better words. “I didn’t know what I wanted. I thought when this was over I could go off and leave you. I was wrong.”
She forgave him with her hands and lips and eyes.
“If we do come through, somehow,” he said, “we’ll never be apart again. This is where I belong. Here, with you.” Her tears caught the moonlight but her laugh was low and happy. “’Tis enough, she said.
He kissed her again.
Carahue’s shout pulled them away. The noise flew torn in the wind, ringing and dying away across that lake of moonlight. “Quickly, come quickly, the huntsmen!”
24
FAR AND FAINT, at the very edge of hearing, the horns blew. They had the noise of wind and sea and great beating wings, a hawk voice, a raven voice. And Holger knew that the Wild Hunt was out and after him.
He vaulted up on Papillon. As the stallion burst into movement, he raised Alianora to her place behind. Carahue was already off. The white mare and the tattered white clothes of her rider flew ghostly in the low moonlight. Hoofs rang and thundered. They bent down to the long fleeing.