The Broken Sword

by Poul Anderson

  Finally he paused before a great door of brass-barred oak. It was green with moss and dark with age and cold with the dew of the inner earth, and only Imric had the keys to the three mighty locks. These he opened, muttering certain words, and swung the ponderous door back. It groaned, for three hundred years had passed since last he had opened it.

  A woman of the troll race sat within the little cell. She wore only the bronze chain, heavy enough to anchor a ship, which fastened her by the neck to the wall. Light from a torch ensconced outside the door fell dimly on her huge squat mighty-muscled form. She had no hair, and the green skin moved on her bones. As she turned her great hideous head to Imric, her wolf-toothed mouth snarled. But her eyes were empty, two deep pools of utter blackness in which a soul could drown, sinking down forever into nothingness. For nine hundred years she had been Imric’s captive, and she was mad.

  The elf-earl looked down at her, but not into her eyes. He said softly, ‘We are to make a changeling again, Gora.’

  The troll-woman’s voice rumbled like thunder out of the earth’s inmost deeps. ‘Oho, oho,’ she said, ‘he is here again. Be welcome, you, whoever you are, out of night and unending chaos. Ha, will none wipe the sneer off the face of the cosmos?’

  ‘Hurry,’ said Imric. ‘I must make the change ere dawn.’

  ‘Hurry and hurry, autumn leaves hurrying on the rainy wind, snow hurrying out of the sky, life hurrying to death, gods hurrying to oblivion.’ The troll-woman’s crazy voice boomed hollow down the corridors. ‘All ashes, dust, blown on a senseless screaming wind, and only the mad can gibber the music of the spheres. Ha, the red cock on the dunghill!’

  Imric took a whip from the wall and lashed her. She cowered and lay down, and quickly, because he liked not the slippy clammy cold of her flesh, Imric did what was needful. Thereafter he walked nine times widdershins about her where she squatted, singing a song no human throat could have formed, a song which certain beings had sung once, shambling around a strangely carved monolith, to bring forth the fruits of a quaking steamy world. As he sang, the troll-woman shook and swelled and moaned in pain, and when he had gone the ninth time around she screamed so that it pierced his ears and rang in his skull, and she brought forth a man-child.

  It could not by the human eye be told from Orm Dane-chief’s son, save that it howled fiercely and bit at its mother. Imric cut its cord and took it in his arms, where it lay quiet.

  ‘The world is flesh dissolving off a dead skull,’ mumbled the troll-woman. She clanked her chain and lay back, shuddering. ‘Birth is but the breeding of maggots in the crumbling flesh. Already the skull’s teeth leer forth, and black crows have left its eye-sockets empty. Soon a barren wind will blow through its bare white bones.’ She howled as Imric closed the door. ‘He is waiting for me, he is waiting on the hill where the mist blows ragged on the wind, for nine hundred years has he waited. The black cock crows—’

  Imric locked the door anew and hastened up the stairs. He had no liking for making changelings, but the chance of getting a human baby was too rare to lose.

  When he came out into the courtyard he saw that a storm was brewing. A rising wind drove a wrack of clouds across the heavens, great flying black monsters from which the moon fled wildly over the sky. Like mountains in the east, the lightning-veined storm clouds boiled darkly over the horizon. The wind hooted and howled.

  Imric sprang to the saddle and spurred his horse south. Over the crags and hills they went, across dales and between trees that writhed in the gale. The fleeing moon cast fitful white gleams over the world, and Imric was like such a wind-swift flitting phantom.

  Swiftly, swiftly he raced, with his cloak blowing like bat-wings and the moonlight glittering briefly on his mail and his eldritch eyes. He rode along the eastern sea-cliffs with the surf roaring and snarling at his feet and spindrift blowing cold on his cheeks. Now and again a lurid lightning flash showed the waste of running waters and the storm marching out of the east. Thunder bawled ever louder in the darkness that followed the boom and bang of great wheels across the sky. Imric spurred his horse to yet wilder flight – he had no wish to meet Thor, out here in the storming dark with naught but loneliness around for many miles.

  Into Orm’s garth he leaped and up to Aelfrida’s window. She was awake, holding her child to her breast and whispering comfort to him. Her hair blew around her face, almost blinding her.

  There came a sudden glare of lightning like white fire. She could not see in that terrible flare, and the thunder that went with it was like a hammer-blow. But she felt the baby fall from her arms, she snatched for him, and then she felt the dear weight again as if it had been laid there.

  Imric laughed aloud as he rushed back through the storm. But of a sudden he heard his laughter echoed, a howl in the raving darkness, and he reined in with his breast gone cold. Through a last break in the clouds came a shafting icy-white moonbeam, limning the figure which galloped with the east wind across Imric’s path. A brief glimpse he had, seated on his plunging horse, of the mighty cloaked form that outran the wind, the huge eight-legged horse and its rider with the long gray beard and the shadowing hat. The moonbeam gleamed on the head of his spear and on his single eye.

  Hoo, halloo, there he went through the sky with his troop of dead warriors and the fire-eyed hounds barking like thunderclaps. His horn screamed in the storm, the hoofbeats were like a rush of hail drumming on the roof; and then the whole pack was gone and the rain came raving over the world.

  Imric snarled, for the Wild Hunt boded no good to those who saw it and the laughter of the one-eyed huntsman had been mockery. But – he had to get home now, lightning was cracking all around him and Thor might take a fancy to throw his hammer at an elf. Imric held Orm’s son in his cloak and struck spurs into his stallion.

  Aelfrida could see again, and she clutched the yelling boy in her arms. He should be fed now, if only to quiet him. He suckled her, but bit until it hurt.

  4

  Skafloc, Imric named the stolen child, and gave him to his sister Leea to nurse. She was as beautiful as her brother, with thinly graven ivory features, unbound silvery-gold tresses floating in the air under a jeweled coronet, and the same moon-flecked twilight-blue eyes as he. Tenuous spider-silk garments drifted about the slender white wonder of her body, and when she danced in the moonlight it was as a ripple of light and madness to those who watched. She smiled on Skafloc with pale full lips, and her milk was sweet fire in his mouth and veins.

  Many great lords of Alfheim came to the naming of the child, and they brought goodly gifts: cunningly wrought goblets and rings, dwarf-forged swords and axes, byrnies and helms and shields, garments of silk and satin and cloth-of-gold, charms and talismans. Since elves, like gods and giants and trolls and others of that sort, know not old age, they had few children, perhaps centuries apart, and the birth of one was a great event; still more portentous to elves was the fostering of a human.

  As the feast was in progress, there came a tremendous clatter of hoofs outside Elfheugh, until the walls trembled and the brazen gates sang an answer. Sentries on the moonlit towers winded their clear-throated horns, but none wished to contest the way of that rider and Imric himself met him at the portals, bowing low.

  It was a great fair figure in flashing byrnie and eagle-winged helm, with a blaze in his eyes like lightning, and the earth trembled under his horse’s hoofs. ‘Greeting, Skirnir,’ said Imric. ‘We are honored by your visit.’

  The messenger of the Aesir rode across the moon-white flagstones. At his side, jumping restlessly in the scabbard and glaring like fire of the sun itself, was Freyr’s mighty sword, given him for his journey to Jötunheim after Gerth. He bore another sword in his hands, a huge rusted one still black with the earth in which it had long lain, and broken in two.

  ‘I bear a naming-gift for your foster-son, Imric,’ he said. ‘Guard well this glaive, and when he is old enough to swing it tell him the giant Bölverk who forged it can make it whole again. The day w
ill come when Skafloc stands in sore need of a good blade, and this is the Aesir’s gift against that time.’

  He threw the broken sword clashing on the ground, whirled his horse about, and in a roar of hoofbeats was lost in the night. The elf-folk stood very still, for they knew the Aesir had some purpose of their own in this, yet Imric could not but obey.

  None of the elves could touch iron, but Imric shouted for his dwarf thralls and had them pick up the old weapon. Under his direction they bore it down to the inmost dungeons and walled it into a niche near Gora’s lonely cell. Imric warded the spot with rune signs, and then left it and avoided the place for a long time.

  Now some years went by and naught was heard from the gods.

  Skafloc grew apace, and a bonny boy he was, big and gay, with great blue eyes and hair like spun gold in the sunshine. He was noisier than the few elf children, and grew so much swifter that he was a man when they were still unchanged. It was not the way of the elves to show over-much fondness for their young, but Leea often made much of Skafloc, singing him to sleep with the wild ancient lays that were voices of sea and wind and soughing forest. She taught him the courtly manners of the elf lords, and also their corybantic dances when they were out in the night, barefoot in the dew and drunk with streaming moonlight. Much of what wizard knowledge he had came from her, songs which could blind and dazzle and enchant, songs which the rocks and trees sang back in shivering echoes, songs without voice to which the auroras danced on winter nights.

  While yet a child, Skafloc had a merry time, at play with the elf young and with their strange fellows. Many were the presences haunting the hills and glens of that wild land; it was a place of sorcery and the men and beasts who wandered into it rarely returned. Not all the dwellers were safe or friendly, but Imric always had some warrior of his guard following Skafloc about.

  There were sprites dancing and whirling in the rainbowed mists about cataracts tumbling into the dells, with their voices shouting and booming back from the cliffs. Skafloc could dimly see them, a cloudy glimpse of white, graceful, water-gleaming bodies leaping in the foam and spray, haloed with rainbows. Of moonlit nights, drawn like other denizens of faerie by the cold mystic beams, they would sometimes come out and sit on the mossy banks, white and naked and streaming water, with weeds twisted into their long hair and garlands of cool pale water lilies; and elf children could then talk to them. Much could the sprites tell, of flowing rivers and the quick silvery gleam of fish in them, of the frog and the otter and the kingfisher and what those had to say to each other, of sunlit pebbly bottoms and of secret places where the water was still and green and alive with presences – and then the wild rush over cliff edges in a roar and a rainbow, shooting down to dance in the whirlpools!

  Other watery places there were from which Skafloc was warned away, certain quaking bogs and silent dark tarns, for the dwellers there were not good.

  Often he would be out in the forest to speak with the little old folk who lived there, the humble gnomes and brownies, with their gray and brown homespun clothes and their long stocking caps and the men’s beards down to their knees. They lived under trees, with a gnarly comfort to their simple abodes, and were glad to see the elf children. But they feared the grown elves, and thought it well that they were so small none of these could get into their dwellings. Unless of course he had shrunk to their size, which none of the haughty elf lords cared to do.

  There were a few goblins about. Once they had been powerful in the land, but Imric had entered with fire and sword, and those who were not slain or driven out had been broken of their might. They were furtive cave dwellers now, but Skafloc managed to befriend one and from him got much curious goblin lore.

  Once the boy heard a piping far off in the forest, and he thrilled to its eerie enchantment and hastened through the twilit trees to the glen from which it came. So softly had he learned to move, like a flitting shadow, that he stood before the creature ere it was aware of him. It was a strange being, man-like but with the legs and ears and horns of a goat. It blew a melancholy air on its reed pipe, and its eyes were great and sad and liquid.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Skafloc wonderingly.

  The being lowered his pipe, seeming for a moment ready to flee, then he relaxed and sat down on a log. His accent was odd as he said, ‘I am a faun.’

  ‘I have heard of no such beings.’ Skafloc sat down cross-legged in the grass before him.

  The faun smiled sorrowfully in the twilight. The evening star blinked forth above his head. ‘There are none save me hereabouts,’ he said. ‘I am an exile.’

  ‘Whence came you hither, faun?’

  ‘I came from the lands of the south, after great Pan was dead and the new god whose name I cannot speak was come to Hellas. There was no more place for the old gods and the old beings who haunted the land. The priests cut down the sacred grove and built a church – Oh, I remember the dryads’ screams, quivering voicelessly on the still, hot air and seeming to hang there forever. They ring yet in my ears, they always will.’ The faun shook his horned head. ‘I fled north,’ he said, ‘but I wonder if those of my ancient comrades who stayed and fought and were slain with exorcisms were not wiser. Long and long has it been, elf-boy, and lonelier than it was long.’ Tears glimmered in the faun’s eyes. ‘The nymphs and the fauns and the very gods are dead, dust blowing on desolate winds. The temples stand empty, white under the sky, and slowly they topple to ruin. And I – I wander alone in a foreign land, scorned by its gods and shunned by its people. It is a land of mist and rain and soul-freezing iron winters, angry gray seas and pale sunlight spearing through hurrying clouds. No more of blue sky and sapphire ocean, creamy-white in its gentle swells, no more of little rocky islands and the dear warm groves where the white nymphs waited for us, no more of grapes hanging from ancient vines and fig trees heavy with fruit, no more of the stately gods on high Olympus—’

  Of a sudden the faun ceased his crooning, stiffened, cocked his ears forward, and then turned and fled into the bushes. Skafloc looked around and saw the elf-guard approaching to take him home.

  Skafloc, who could stand the daylight which the elves hated, was much more about in the hills and dales than the other children, and came to know the land far better than a man who had lived there for a lifetime might.

  Of the wild beasts, the fox and the otter were most friendly to elves, it being held that there was some kind of kinship, and insofar as these had a language the elves knew it. From the fox Skafloc learned the secret ways of the forest, the hidden trails through sun-spattered shadow and the myriad tiny signs which told a story to one who knew the full use of his senses. From the otter, he learned of the world about lake and river, he learned to swim like a living arrow and to sneak through cover which would scarce hide half his body.

  But he grew friendly with nigh all the other animals, even the most timid of birds would come sit on his finger when he whistled in its own tongue, even the grim old bear would grunt a welcome when he came to its cave. Deer and elk and rabbit and other game became wary of him as he took up hunting, but with some special ones he made friends. And the story of all his farings among the beasts would be a long one.

  And the years swung by, and he was borne on their resistless current. He was out in the first shy green of spring, when the forests woke after their sleep and grew clamorous with returning birds, when the rivers brawled with melting ice and a few little white flowers in the chill moss were like remnant snowflakes. The summer knew him, a naked brown form with flying sun-bleached hair, chasing butterflies up the windy hills toward the sky, rolling over in the long grasses with sheer joy of life; or out in the light nights which were like a dreamy ghost of day, stars overhead and chirring crickets and dew glittering under the moon. The cold thunderous rains of autumn washed him, or he wove a crown of flame-colored leaves and stood in the breathless sharp air listening to skies gone clangorous with the calls of departing birds. Even in winter he was about, flitting through the dance of sn
owflakes, crouched under a windfall while the storm roared like a mad bull through the groaning forests; sometimes of nights when it grew so numbingly cold that trees broke open like thunderclaps far away, he would be standing on the moon-white snowfields, listening under the hard brilliance of the stars to a voice of winter, the deep vibrant tone of ice-bound waters shivering in the cold with thunders that rolled between the hills.

  5

  When Skafloc’s limbs began to lengthen Imric took him in charge, only a little at first, but more and more with time until he was being raised wholly as a warrior of Alfheim. Being short-lived, humans could learn more quickly than the folk of faerie, and Skafloc’s knowledge grew even faster than his body.

  He learned to ride the horses of Alfheim, white and black stallions and mares of an eerie quicksilver grace, swift and tireless as the wind, and erelong his moonlight gallops were taking him from Caithness to Land’s End with the cloven air singing in his ears. He learned the use of sword and spear and bow and the slender long-shafted ax which rang like a great bell on splitting skulls. He was less quick and supple than the elves, but grew to be far stronger and could bear helm and hauberk as many days on end as needful; and any other human was like a clumsy clod beside his weird flitting movements.

  He hunted far and wide over land, alone or in company with Imric and his warriors. His bow twanged death to many a tall-antlered stag or mighty wild boar, he could put an arrow whither he would at any distance it could reach. There was other and trickier game, hunted crazily through the forests and across the crags swifter than stormwinds, the unicorns and griffins which Imric had brought from the edge of the world for his pleasure.

  Skafloc learned also the manners of the elves, their courtly grace and their guileful intriguing and their subtle speech. He could dance in the drenching moonlight to the wild harps and pipes, naked and drunken and abandoned as any of them. He could himself play, and sing the strange lilting lays older than man. He learned the skaldic arts so well that he spoke in verses as easily as in ordinary speech. He could discriminate between the rare and subtle viands of the elves, and drink the liquid fire which smoldered in dusty spider-shrouded bottles below the castle, but for all that his taste for the hunter’s black bread and salt meat, or the rainy sunny earthy savor of berries, or the clear cool springs in distant woodlands, was not spoiled.