‘It is not good to deal with heathen things, least of all when the heathen gods offer them,’ she pleaded. ‘No good can come of it, Skafloc. Forget the sword!’
‘It is true that the gods must have their own purposes in this,’ he admitted, ‘but it need not be one which is contrary to ours. I think all faerie is a chessboard on which Aesir and Jötuns move their pieces, elves and trolls, in some game beyond our understanding. Yet the good chess player takes care of his men.’
‘But the sword is buried in Elfheugh and the trolls are there—’
‘I will get in somehow. I think I know a way already.’
‘The sword is broken. How shall you – we – find that giant whom it was said could mend it? How make him forge it anew to be used against his own kin, the trolls?’
‘There will be a way.’ Skafloc’s voice was like metal. ‘Even now I know a way to find out, though it is difficult and dangerous. We may well fail, aye, but the god-gift is our last chance.’
‘The god-gift.’ She began to cry. ‘I tell you, naught but ill can come of this. I feel it in me, cold and heavy. If you embark on this quest, Skafloc, our days together are numbered.’
‘Would you leave me on that account?’ he asked unbelievingly.
‘No – no, Skafloc—’ She clung to him, blind with darkness and tears. ‘It is but a whisper in my soul, yet – I know—’
He drew her into his arms with hard eager strength. All the mirth and bravery and will dammed up in him now burst their bonds. Wildly he kissed her, until her head swam, and he laughed and was joyous – finally, she could do no more than drive the fears from her mind, for they seemed unworthy of Skafloc’s bride, and be glad with him.
But there was a fierceness and yearning in her love which had not been there before. Far down in the darkness of her soul, she felt that they would not have many more nights together.
19
It was the next night when they reined in their horses after a blinding gallop from the cave. Skafloc could not wait, not when Alfheim was dying day by day. There was a half moon riding in a cloudy sky, its dim light filtering through bare icicle-gleaming trees and shimmering eerily on the deep snow. The night was still and cold, so cold that breathing was pain, and their breaths steamed out of the shadowed ravine in which they hid and up to glimmer in the moonlight like ghosts escaping the lips of dying men. Now and again through the great cold silence came ringing the sharp cry of trees splitting open.
‘We dare go no nearer Elfheugh.’ Skafloc’s whisper sounded unnaturally loud in the frost-choked quiet. ‘But I can make it alone, on wolf-foot, ere dawn.’
‘Why can you not wait?’ Freda clung to his arm and he saw her eyes tear-bright under the moon. ‘Why not, at least, go by day, when they will be asleep?’
‘The were-beast guise cannot be used by day,’ he answered. ‘And once inside the castle walls, day or night are the same, the most of the trolls are as likely to be sleeping as wakeful. When I am in, there are those who can help me; I think chiefly of Leea.’
‘Leea—’ Freda bit her lip so that sharp pain came. ‘I like it not, this whole mad scheme. Is there no other way?’
‘None I can think of. But you, my sweet, have the hardest task – that I admit – waiting here, alone in the dark and cold, until I return.’ He looked at her shadowed face as if to learn every least line of it. ‘Be not foolish, princess. If trolls come near, or if I am gone longer than three days, be off. Fly to the world of men and sunlight!’
‘I can endure waiting,’ she said tonelessly, ‘but to abandon this place, not knowing whether you lived or—’ she choked ‘—or died, that may be past my strength.’
Skafloc swung from his horse into the snow. Quickly he stripped off furs, helm and byrnie, all garments until at last he stood naked, shivering in the silent gnawing cold. Then he wrapped the otter skin about his waist, the eagle skin about his shoulders, and flung the great gray wolfskin cloak-like over both.
Freda dismounted and stood in the snow. Fiercely, hungrily, he kissed her. ‘Now goodbye, dearest one,’ he whispered. ‘Until I return with the sword, goodbye.’
He turned away, not daring to linger by the quietly crying girl, and drew the wolfskin tighter about him. He dropped to all fours, feeling his body shift and mold itself, feeling his senses in a blur of change. And Freda saw him, swiftly as if he melted, alter, until a great wolf stood beside her with eyes glowing green in the dark.
Briefly the cold nose nuzzled her hand, and she rumpled the rough gray coat. Then he turned and padded noiselessly away.
Over the snow he went, weaving between trees and slipping lithely under tangled bushes, loping swifter and more tireless than a man. It was strange, being a wolf. He could feel the alien interplay of nerve and sinew, the air ruffling his fur. His sight was dim, flat, and colorless, but he heard every faintest sound, every sigh and whisper, the night’s huge silence was now alive and murmurous for him – many of those tones too high for men to hear at all; and he smelled the air as if it were a living thing, the uncounted subtle odors, the hints and traces swirling in his nostrils. And there were other sensations for which men had no words whatever.
It was like being in another world, a world which in every way felt different. And he himself was changed, not alone in this new taut body but in brain and nerve. His mind moved in wolfish tracks, narrower but in a way keener. He was not able in beast body to think all the thoughts he did as a man, nor, on becoming man again, to remember all he had sensed and thought as a beast.
On and on! The night and the miles fled under his racing feet. The forest stirred with its secret life. He caught the scent of hare – frightened hare, crouched nearby with big eyes watching him – and his wolf mouth drooled with desire. But his man soul drove the gaunt gray body ahead, relentlessly ahead. An owl hooted far away in frost and silence. Forest and hills and ice-scabbarded rivers went by in a blur, the moon sank low, and still he ran.
And at last, looming against the moon-swallowing horizon, its towers seeming crusted with frosty winter stars, he saw Elfheugh. Elfheugh, Elfheugh, the lovely and fallen, now a crouched menace bulking black across the sky!
He flattened himself on his hairy belly and slid up the hill toward the rearing walls. Every quivering wolf-sense reached out, feeling around him – were enemies at hand?
Trolls! He caught the cold snaky smell and bunched his lean form, snarling in rage and hate. The castle reeked of troll. And of subtler, even worse smells, fear and pain and throttled wrath.
With his dim wolf-eyes he could not see the top of the mighty wall under which he crouched. But he heard the troll guardsmen pace above him, and smelled them, and his gray moon-silvered body trembled with the longing to rip out their throats.
But easy – easy! There they went, they were well past him – now to turn his skin again.
He writhed, felt the shifting and shrinking, his brain swam with the change. But then he beat the mighty wings of the eagle and rose regally heavenward.
His sight was keen now, inhumanly so, and the pulsing joy of flight, the mastery of air and skyey space, tingled in every feather of him. But the cold sharp eagle brain had will to refuse that magnificent drunkenness. His eyes were almost blind in the dark, and in flight he was a target for troll arrows.
Over the wall he went and soared across the courtyard, braking his flight with the wind whistling in his pinions. He landed against the castle, under the shadow of a thickly ivied tower, and again he shuddered with change. Then as otter he crouched and waited.
He could not smell in this shape quite so well as a wolf, though better than a man, but his eyes were somewhat sharper and his ears as good. Also, his body had a wiry alertness where every fur-hair and whisker tip quivered with awareness, with subtlest sensations indescribable to man; and his litheness and swiftness and grace, the deep luster of his pelt and the supple slimness of his body, were a joy to the vain, cocky, frolicsome otter brain.
Now he lay tense and still
, straining every sense. He heard startled halloos from the wall – someone must have had a fleeting glimpse of the eagle, and it was not well for him to stay here.
He slipped lithely along the wall, keeping to the shadows. An otter was too big to be safe – better had he been a weasel or a rat – but it was the best he could do. It would have to serve, and glad he was that Freda had brought those three magic skins. A great tenderness welled up in him at thought of her, but he could not stop, not now.
A door stood open, and into this he sneaked. It was in the back of the castle, but he knew every hole and corner of that mysterious labyrinth. His whiskers twitched as he snuffed the air. The place was stinking with troll, but it was also heavy with the smell of sleep. In that much he was lucky. He could sense some few moving about, but they were easy to avoid.
He padded by the great feasting hall. Trolls sprawled there, snoring drunkenly. The tapestries hung in rags, the cunningly carved furnishings were scarred and stained, and the ornaments of gold and silver and jewels, the work of many centuries, had been looted. It would have been better, thought Skafloc, to be conquered by goblins. They were at least a mannered people. But these filthy troll savages—
Up the stairs toward Imric’s tower chambers he wound. Whoever was now earl would most likely sleep there – and have Leea beside him.
The otter flattened against the wall, a soundless snarl showing needle teeth. His yellow eyes blazed as around the curve he smelled troll. The earl had mounted a guard and—
Like a gray thunderbolt the wolf was on the troll. Sleepy, he could not know what had struck until the terrible fangs closed in his throat. He fell in a clatter of armor, clawing at the beast on his chest, and thus he died.
Skafloc stood taut, with blood dripping from his jaws. It had been a loud racket – no, no sound of alarm or awareness in all the great castle – He would have to chance the troll’s body being found before he was away. It would surely be found soon – no, wait—
Briefly, as a man, Skafloc used the dead troll’s sword to chop face and throat until it could not be seen that teeth rather than blade had torn out life. They might think the guard had been murdered in some drunken quarrel. They had better! The thought was grim in him as he wiped and spat the blood from his mouth.
Then as otter he raced on his way again. At the head of the stairs, the great door to Imric’s chambers stood closed, but he knew the secret hiss and whistle which would open the lock. Softly he gave them, and nosed the door open a crack.
Two slept in Imric’s bed. If now the earl awoke, that would be the end of Skafloc’s quest. He crawled on his lissome otter stomach toward the bed, and every movement seemed loud as thunder in the room.
He stood up on his hind legs. Leea’s pale lovely features lay in a cloud of her silvery-blonde hair on the pillow. Beyond her he discerned a tawny-maned head with a countenance gaunt and grim even in slumber – but in every blunt, strong, muscled line it was his own.
Valgard – so Valgard the evil-worker was now earl. Barely could Skafloc hold himself back from sinking wolf teeth in that corded throat, tearing with eagle beak at the closed eyes, nuzzling and licking with otter tongue among the ripped-out guts.
But the sword—
He touched Leea’s smooth white cheek with his nose. Her eyes fluttered open, and though she made no move remembrance flared in them.
Slowly, slowly, with infinite care, Leea sat up. Valgard stirred and groaned in his sleep and she froze. The berserker mumbled to himself, Skafloc caught broken fragments: ‘—changeling – the ax – O Mother, Mother!—’
Leea slid one leg to the floor. Poised on that slender foot, she eased her whole body out. Its whiteness gleamed through the swirling cloudy veil of her hair. Like a drifting shadow, she slipped out of the room, through another, and into a third, with Skafloc padding after. Noiselessly she closed the door.
‘Now we can talk, Skafloc,’ she breathed.
He stood forth, man again, and she fell into his arms with a half laugh, half sob. She had never kissed him thus before, and despite Freda he was hotly aware of what a fair woman it was he held.
‘Skafloc,’ she whispered. Her voice shook. ‘Skafloc.’
‘I have no time,’ he said harshly. ‘I am come for the broken sword which was the Aesir’s naming-gift to me.’
‘You are tired.’ Her hands touched the haggard lines of his face. ‘You have been cold and weary and hungry. Let me rest you now – come, there is a secret room—’
‘No time, no time,’ he fairly snarled. ‘Freda waits for me in the very heart of the troll holdings. Quickly, lead me to the sword.’
‘Freda—’ Leea’s ivory cheeks went a shade whiter. ‘So the mortal girl is still with you.’
‘Aye, and a valiant warrior for Alfheim has she been.’
‘I have not done too badly myself.’ Leea smiled with her old malicious humor. ‘Already Valgard has slain Grum Troll-Earl for my sake. He is strong, but I am bending him.’ She swayed closer. ‘He is better than a troll, he is almost like you – but he is not you, Skafloc, and I weary of pretending.’
‘Oh, hurry!’ He shook her. ‘If we are caught it is the end of Alfheim, and every moment strengthens the chance.’
She stood very quiet for a long moment. Then she looked away, out the broad window through which a bitter breeze blew and over a world silent and frozen in the moonless dark before dawn. ‘Indeed,’ she whispered. ‘You are right, of course. And what is better or more natural than that you should hasten back to your love – to Freda?’
She swung on him, shaking with noiseless terrible mirth, hair blowing wild about her. ‘Do you want to know who your father was, Skafloc? Shall I tell you who you really are?’
He clamped a hand over her mouth, the old ghastly fear choking him: ‘No! No, never – you know what Tyr said!’
She stood trembling in the cold air. ‘Seal my lips,’ she said. ‘Seal them with a kiss.’
‘I cannot wait—’ He kissed her. ‘Come!’
‘Cold was that kiss,’ she murmured desolately. ‘Cold as duty ever is. Well, let us be on our way. But you are naked and unarmed. Since you cannot carry the iron sword away as a were-beast, you had best have some clothes.’ She opened a chest. ‘Here is tunic, breeches, shoon, cape, whatever else you like.’
He tumbled into the garments – his own, and richly fur-trimmed – with feverish swiftness. Leea threw a flame-red cloak over her own nakedness. Then she led the way out and down another stair.
Down they wound and down. It was cold and silent here, a death-like silence but stretched near the breaking point, quivering with its own tautness. Once they passed a troll soldier, and Skafloc’s hackles rose and he reached for the sax at his belt. But the guard saluted, taking the man for the changeling.
Now the dank gloom of the dungeons hid them, only the widely spaced, flaring torches lighting the eternal night. Skafloc’s steps boomed in hollow echoes down corridors which seemed to fill their emptiness with thronging, watchful shadows. Leea flitted ahead, ghost-silent.
They came at last to a place, where the ancient stone showed a lighter splash of cement in which were scratched mighty runes. Not far beyond was a great closed door. Leea pointed to it. ‘In the cell there Imric kept the changeling-mother,’ she said. ‘Now he is in there himself, hung by his thumbs over an undying fire. It is often Valgard’s pleasure when drunk to lash him senseless.’
Skafloc’s knuckles were white on his sword haft. He said naught, but with the tip of the sax he dug fiercely at the wall.
Dimly a sound drifted down to them, shouting of voices and hurrying of feet. ‘There is an alarm,’ hissed Leea.
‘Belike they found the guard I had to kill.’ Skafloc dug frantically. The cement scraped slowly from the stone.
‘Were you seen entering?’ she asked sharply.
‘I may have been glimpsed in eagle guise.’ Skafloc cursed as his tool snapped. He dug with the broken blade.
‘Valgard is shrewd
enough, if he hears about that eagle, to think this may be no ordinary killing. If he sets men to search the castle, and they find us – Hurry!’
The clamor above beat faintly on their ears, less loud than the scrape of metal on stone or a centuries-old dripping of water.
Skafloc got the blade into a crack and heaved, heaved with every surging muscle. Once – twice – thrice, and the stone crashed out!
He reached into the niche beyond. His hands shook as he brought forth the sword.
It was old – old. Rust and damp and ancient earth clung to the halves of the mighty iron blade. It had been two-edged, and so huge and heavy that only the strongest of men could swing it. The black haft was of some strange iron-like wood, carved in the shape of a coiling dragon whose tail made the guard and whose gape-jawed head the pommel, and great rivets held it to the snapped blade. There were runes, half hidden by rust and mold, running down the dark iron length.
‘The weapon of the gods.’ Skafloc held it with an almost holy awe. ‘The hope of Alfheim—’
‘Hope?’ Leea shrank back. ‘I wonder! Now that I see the old sword, I wonder!’
‘What mean you?’
‘Can you not feel it? The monstrous slumbering power locked in that iron, held by those runes so ancient even I cannot read them – the power ravenous and resistless and – evil! There is a curse on that weapon, Skafloc. It will bring the bane of all within its might.’ Her eyes were wide and frightened. She shivered with a cold not that of the dungeon. ‘I think – Skafloc, I think it were best for you if you walled up that sword again.’
‘What other hope have we?’ he asked grimly. He wrapped the sword in his cloak and took the bundle under one arm. ‘Come, let us away.’
Leea shuddered, but led him to a stair. ‘This will be hard and perilous,’ she said. ‘We can scarce avoid being seen by the trolls. Let me speak for both of us.’
‘It would be too dangerous for you—’ he began. She swung around. Her eyes were alight. ‘You fear for me?’ she breathed.
The Broken Sword Page 14