Helheimr

by Fynn F Gunnarson

  Despite having resided in Álfheimr for more than two years, Sharp Axe still had difficulty comprehending the Light Elves’ irrational obsession with putting their fighting skills to the test; it was not as if they ever went to war or, as far as he could ascertain, ever actually fought in anger. Perhaps, he mused, the advantage his real-life combat experience had given him was why he had been victorious in every one of the contests he had entered.

  Sharp Axe thought back to the swordsmanship contest, earlier that day. He recalled the frightened looks on the faces of his defeated opponents as, just for the briefest moment, they appeared to believe he was actually going to kill them. He recalled the now-familiar announcement, from the contest arbitrator: ‘And the winner is… Erik Sharp Axe... again.’ He recalled the polite (though rather grudging) applause afforded him, following his victory, as the audience displayed the usual signs of longing for one of their own to be able to match their long-term guest’s combat skills... all of which brought Sharp Axe a feeling of not inconsiderable satisfaction.

  All in all, Sharp Axe concluded, it had been a most rewarding morning’s work and, for once, he resisted the temptation to chide himself for his growing sense of smugness and self-congratulation. Why should he? He had more than deserved his latest victory.

  It had occurred to Sharp Axe on more than one occasion that his father, Harald Wolf Wrestler, would have been much happier as a Light Elf than he was as a human. Harald’s devotion to weapons practice would have set him in very good stead in Álfheimr; although he rarely picked up a bow and Light Elves never used battle axes, the Wolf Wrester’s ability to use a sword (in either hand – it mattered little to Harald) would have left Álfheimr’s inhabitants not only gasping in disbelief but, quite justifiably, fearing for their lives.

  Sharp Axe tried to picture Harald Wolf Wrestler asking an opponent to yield. Would that have been likely? He could not see it, somehow. No; his father was something of a Viking traditionalist, where hand-to-hand combat was concerned. It was, in reality, most unlikely that the Harald would have played by the Light Elves’ absurdly-chivalrous rules of competition and, whilst his conduct would almost certainly have earned him a disqualification, that would have provided very limited comfort to any opponent whose head he had just removed with his sword.

  Sharp Axe found himself, surprisingly, thinking of his father with something close to affection; the feeling soon passed, however and he turned his thoughts to his own, rather frustrating, predicament.

  In the time that had passed since Sharp Axe’s near-successful search for Mjøllnir, he had honed his skills as swordsman, bowman and horseman in Álfheimr but had, so far, fought an unsuccessful battle to persuade the Elven Elders to grant him permission to marry the elf maiden, Mithrén, whom he had met on his first visit to their world and with whom he had fallen, very quickly and very helplessly, in love.

  Mithrén had assisted Sharp Axe more than once during his quest to find Mjøllnir, in particular by healing what he suspected had been a fractured skull and many very badly-damaged vertebrae, sustained during his unsuccessful attempt to pass the Elven Elders’ three challenges and by sending him cryptic dreams, in which Sharp Axe discovered clues to help him bring Kolfinna, the Crimson Witch, the things she claimed to require in order to divulge Mjøllnir’s whereabouts to Sharp Axe and his men. Mithrén had even-handed Sharp Axe one of those things personally: a vessel of milk from Freyr’s Sacred Goat, which the Light Elves looked after: the object of Kolfinna’s third task and the reason for Sharp Axe’s first visit to Álfheimr. All in all, Sharp Axe knew he had much for which to thank Mithrén and that made him all the more angry with the Elven Elders for their ongoing stubbornness.

  As Sharp Axe saw it, there was no reason for the elders not to bestow their blessing upon a union between Mithrén and him. For the elders’ part, however, they considered him unsuitable for her: she was, after all, a young – though, despite her youth, well-known – healer in the Elven community and she came from good Elven stock: the daughter of a highly-respected healer and an Elven Elder, both of whom had died tragically, some years previously (under circumstances which Sharp Axe had not yet managed to establish in detail, because the memory of her parents’ passing still appeared painful to Mithrén, every time it or they were mentioned). Had they been alive, Sharp Axe reasoned privately, things might well have been different, for they could have given their own blessing and the marriage could therefore have gone ahead, as he and their daughter wished. He had suggested to Mithrén, more than once, that the two of them run away from Álfheimr and find someone from outside the Light Elf community to perform the wedding ceremony but Mithrén, being an old-fashioned kind of elf maiden, could not bring herself to comply. Out of love and respect for his intended, Sharp Axe had never pressed the point further.

  The Elven Elders’ objection to the union was quite straightforward: Sharp Axe was still married, albeit through no fault of his own, to the Frost Giantess Rind. The elders would allow him to marry Mithrén only if he managed to obtain an annulment to his first marriage and this (given that it would require Sharp Axe to travel back to the Frost Giants’ home, Jøtunheimr, to confront the fearsome Frost Giants whom he had managed to insult profoundly by allowing himself to be married to one of their kind, then running away before he and the bride had so much as started to discuss setting up home) certainly did not figure highly on Sharp Axe’s current ‘to-do’ list.

  An impasse had therefore been reached: Sharp Axe’s presence in Álfheimr was tolerated (reluctantly) by the Elven Elders but, while he remained someone else’s husband, he would not be accepted by them as one of their kind. This, then, drove Sharp Axe unrelentingly to achieve his victories in the Light Elves’ frequent weaponry contests: if he could not join them he could, at least, beat them and, better still, he could beat them using their chosen weapon of combat.

  Apart from Mithrén, the only person who helped to keep Sharp Axe sane in Álfheimr was Fynn the Fortunate, veteran of the campaign to retrieve Mjøllnir and now a close friend. Fynn had accompanied Sharp Axe to Álfheimr, following the eventual discovery of Thor’s hammer in Sharp Axe’s home town of Grimstad by Erik the Fearless, Sharp Axe’s bitter, treacherous and far less-than-fearless twin brother.

  These days, Sharp Axe’s thoughts often wandered back to the day when Mjøllnir had almost been in his grasp, only to have been found, instead, by Fearless and his two equally-treacherous accomplices, Hedin Dogbiter and Hamdir the Halfling. The three of them had, however, immediately had Mjøllnir forcibly removed from their possession (deservedly, in Sharp Axe’s opinion) by the hammer’s original owner, Thor, who then generously (though with little enthusiasm) spared the lives of Sharp Axe and his men for helping to reunite him with his beloved Mjøllnir, rather than killing them as a punishment for trying to prolong the separation period and claim the hammer as their own.

  With nothing left for which to stay in Grimstad, Sharp Axe had set out, with Fynn in tow, for Álfheimr and Mithrén, passing his stranded brother on the way: Fearless was trapped upside down in a leafy tree, as a result of his having been hurled skywards by the God of thunder, in much the same manner as the latter had discarded several empty barrels of Harald Wolf Wrestler’s finest mead, the taste of which Thor had found so agreeable.

  Sharp Axe had not known what manner of reception to expect from the Light Elves, on reaching Álfheimr. By the terms under which he had accepted the Elven Elders’ three challenges (which they had set him to determine his worthiness to be provided with a sample of the Sacred Goat’s milk), he ought never to have shown his face again in their home. Sharp Axe’s love for Mithrén, however, had meant he was prepared to face whatever consequences his arrival back in Álfheimr might bring.

  The Elven Elders had been true to their word. Aldaron, Mithrén’s brother, had warmly welcomed Sharp Axe and Fynn on their re-appearance in Álfheimr and had taken news of their arrival to the elders. By way of response, they had instructed Aldaron to remind Sharp Axe
that he was not welcome in Álfheimr and that he should take his leave immediately, or his very presence would be taken as an act of aggression against the whole of Light Elfdom.

  Undeterred, Sharp Axe had stood his ground with Fynn beside him, announcing that he would stay put until the elders granted him an audience. Mithrén had, by this time, heard of the visit and had rushed to see the elders, in order to plead Sharp Axe’s case. This had softened the elders’ hearts somewhat and they had agreed to listen to what Sharp Axe had had to say for himself.

  Sharp Axe was open and honest with the Elven Elders and they listened respectfully to him, as he declared his love for Mithrén and his burning desire for her hand in marriage. They listened respectfully to Sharp Axe, until his openness and honesty caught up with him and he happened to mention, quite casually, that he had unwittingly married Rind, a Frost Giantess, who was several times his own height. This news had not gone down well at all: Light Elves and, in particular, their elders, took a rather dim view of bigamy, especially when one of their own race was perceived to be a victim of it.

  The elders’ blessing had therefore been withheld.

  Mithrén and Sharp Axe had asked whether they could do anything to change the elders’ minds. There was, of course: Sharp Axe could obtain a divorce.

  Sharp Axe had no idea whether a process even existed to obtain a divorce from a Frost Giantess, but he did know that he would be a hundred times less welcome in Jøtunheimr than he was currently being made to feel in Álfheimr. Moreover, he had had a pretty strong suspicion that if he ever dared to show his face again in Jøtunheimr, the outcome was likely to be very swift, very violent and, for him, very definitely terminal. The self-preservationist in him was advising extreme caution, by continuing to give Jøtunheimr a very wide berth and Sharp Axe was inclined to heed that advice to the letter.

  Sharp Axe therefore found himself unable to marry Mithrén until such time as he found a safe way of persuading the Frost Giants to annul his marriage to Rind, or until Rind herself passed away; sadly, neither scenario seemed at all likely in the foreseeable future.

  Having left Mithrén once, Sharp Axe had no intention of doing so again and so resigned himself to making the best of a bad situation: he decided to remain amongst the Light Elves, in the hope that the elders would change their minds or, failing that, all die before he and Mithrén did.

  On the positive side, Sharp Axe told himself, there were worse places in which to pass his days: Grimstad, for example, listening to and witnessing the rantings of his father; the open sea, being attacked by sea monsters, or Jøtunheimr itself, feeling very cold and being stamped on by angry Frost Giants.

  Whilst the life of a Light Elf was seldom exciting or even, to be honest, all that interesting, it was relatively comfortable, generally safe and, especially in the company of Mithrén, not altogether unpleasant.

  There was also Sharp Axe’s trusted friend, Fynn, in whom he could confide and who provided him with a stiffer level of competition in the weaponry contests than the Light Elves, although Fynn had been absent from the tournament on that particular day and, as Sharp Axe thought about it, they had been seeing less and less of each other as the days and weeks in Álfheimr had turned into months and years.

  Then, suddenly and without warning, on the day of his latest and most satisfying tournament victory to date, the path of Sharp Axe’s life took a sudden and most unexpected turn.

  Chapter Two

  The Messenger

  Few things irritated Sharp Axe about his Light Elf hosts more than the manner in which they treated all visitors to Álfheimr and, in particular, human visitors. It mattered little whether these visitors presented any realistic kind of threat to Elfkind: they were all afforded the same degree of suspicion, aloofness and on occasions, in his opinion, downright rudeness.

  No exception was made for the visitor who arrived at Álfheimr’s entrance within an hour of Sharp Axe’s latest victorious display of swordsmanship. Granted, the visitor in question (a gentleman of rather advanced years, who turned up wearing what could best be described as a suit of rags, smelling worse than an elderly elk with unusually-low standards of personal hygiene and shouting for Sharp Axe at the top of his voice) did appear a little eccentric, but this mattered little to Sharp Axe because, if there was one thing on which the tenth-century Viking prided himself, it was the hospitality he offered to the weary traveller – and this particular traveller struck Sharp Axe as wearier and generally more deserving of hospitality than most. The fact that he was also clearly out of his mind should not, in Sharp Axe’s view, have detracted from the fact that the poor individual was in need of a drink, a decent meal and, perhaps most importantly, a thorough wash and a change of clothing.

  All of this simply by-passed the Light Elf reception committee, however, as its members gathered around the stranger, swords drawn, for all the world appearing to be seeking an excuse to run him through, where he stood.

  Sharp Axe, at that moment relaxing in the warm sun and reliving, for the umpteenth time, his typically smooth and impressive progress through the qualifying rounds of that morning’s sword-fighting contest, heard his name being shouted again and again, above the cries of the Light Elf guard, so thought he really should investigate the cause of the mysterious commotion.

  What met his eyes was, indeed, a curious scene.

  The visiting stranger found himself looking down the lengths of several Light Elf swords, the points of which were poised in the immediate proximity of his throat. For some reason, this did not seem to unnerve him in the least, for he stood his ground and shouted, repeatedly:

  ‘Erik Sharp Axe! I would speak with Erik Sharp Axe!’

  As Sharp Axe approached the group, heads began to turn in his direction; accusing looks met his gaze, implying, it seemed to him, that it was his fault the peace and tranquillity of the Light Elves’ existence had been shattered so inconsiderately by the rather odd character who had had the audacity to present himself at Álfheimr’s border.

  ‘I am Erik Sharp Axe,’ said Sharp Axe, in the hope that these words would restore a little order to the proceedings. Unfortunately, they had the opposite effect, because they caused the stranger to lunge forward in order to greet Sharp Axe, taking the Elven guard by surprise; they, in turn, reacted as one by drawing back their swords, as if to strike down the unwelcome guest.

  ‘Let him through!’ shouted Sharp Axe irritably, but confident in the knowledge that he had the respect of the Light Elf swordsmen and so his request, however sternly it might have been delivered, would be honoured.

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ enthused the stranger, as he made his way past the disgruntled armed guard, with several ill-advised shoves.

  At this point, Fynn the Fortunate arrived on the scene, having heard the shouting.

  ‘Hello… ’ he muttered to Sharp Axe from behind, as the stranger approached, ‘… what have we here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Sharp Axe, also in muttered tones, ‘but he seems to know of me – somehow or other.’

  ‘Erik Sharp Axe!’ resumed the stranger, looking directly at the one he sought. Then, when he was two or three paces away, he dropped down onto one knee and bowed his head, watched by a cordon of intrigued Light Elves.

  Sharp Axe cleared his throat, now more than a little embarrassed by the stranger’s behaviour and addressed the Light Elves.

  ‘You can, um, leave now, thank you… I’ll, er, deal with this,’ he said, but the Light Elves were having none of it; they remained rooted to the spot, fascinated as to why this peculiar visitor should be treating another of their visitors (albeit it now a long-standing resident) with such reverence.

  ‘Or,’ sighed Sharp Axe, under his breath, ‘you can just stay where you are, if you like.’

  The stranger looked up at Sharp Axe, expectantly.

  ‘Ah… ’ said Sharp Axe, suddenly realising what was required of him, ‘… get up – please.’

  The stranger rose to his feet and t
ook a step nearer. At this point, Sharp Axe caught a whiff of the stranger on the breeze and, as tactfully as possible, took an evasive half-step backwards.

  ‘Erik Sharp Axe,’ said the stranger again, rather unnecessarily, ‘I bring a message to you… ’ He looked at Fynn, paused, then looked back at Sharp Axe, anxiously.

  ‘This is Fynn the Fortunate: an old and trusted friend,’ said Sharp Axe firmly. ‘Anything you have to say to me can be said in front of him.’ The stranger’s backward glance in the direction of what had formed his welcoming-committee indicated that he was still not altogether at ease with the situation.

  ‘Come,’ said Sharp Axe to the stranger, eyeing the inquisitive group of sword-carrying elves, a short distance in front of him, ‘let’s find somewhere a little more private to speak,’ and he ushered the stranger and Fynn in the opposite direction, further into the forest. There was a collective groan of disappointment from the elves, but they did not follow.

  ‘Now… ’ said Sharp Axe, finally satisfied he was out of earshot of his hosts, ‘… what do you want of me?’

  ‘My name is Bekan,’ said the stranger. ‘I bring you a message… from… the king!’

  Sharp Axe and Fynn looked at each other.

  ‘The king?’ they replied as one. This lack of recognition seemed to throw the stranger, slightly.

  ‘Yes… ’ he went on, looking a little uncertain, ‘… Harald Fairhair – King of Norway!’

  The fact that Norway had a king at all, fair-haired or otherwise, was news to both Sharp Axe and Fynn. To have made this fact known to Bekan, however, would merely have prolonged the proceedings and Sharp Axe was dying to know what this ‘king’ wanted with him.