‘Why, of course – as I fear for all Alfheim.’
‘And for – Freda?’
‘For her I fear more than for all the rest of the world, gods and men and faerie together. I love her.’
Leea turned forward again, her face hidden from him and her voice colorless: ‘I will be able to save myself. I can always tell Valgard you forced or tricked me.’
They came out on the first floor. It was a bustle of hurrying guards, uproar, clamor, confusion. ‘Hold!’ roared a troll as he saw them.
Leea’s face flared cold arrogance. ‘Dare you halt the earl?’ she cried.
‘Pardon – your pardon, lord,’ mumbled the troll. ‘ ’Twas just that – I saw you but a moment ago, lord—’
They went out into the courtyard. Every nerve in Skafloc shrieked that he should run, every muscle was knotted in expectancy of the cry that would mean they were found out. Run – run! He shook with the effort of walking slowly.
But few trolls were outside. The first chill silvery streaks of the hated dawn were in the east. It was very cold.
Leea stopped at the great outer gate and signed that it should be opened. Then she looked into Skafloc’s eyes with an inscrutable blind gaze.
‘Now you must make your own way,’ she said softly. ‘Know you what to do?’
‘Somehow,’ he answered, ‘I must find the giant Bölverk who forged the sword and make him bring it forth anew for me.’
‘Bölverk – evil worker – his very name is a warning.’ Leea shook her head. ‘But I know that stubborn set to your jaw, Skafloc. Not all the powers of hell shall stop you – only death or the loss of your will to fight. But what of your dear Freda on this quest?’ She sneered the last words.
‘She will come along, though I will try to persuade her to shelter.’ Skafloc smiled in pride and love. The dim dawn-light touched his hair with frosty gold. ‘We are not to be parted.’
‘No.’ A strange and secret smile stole over Leea’s mouth. ‘But as to finding the giant – who can tell you the way?’
Skafloc’s face grew bleak. ‘It is not a good thing to do,’ he said, ‘but I can raise a dead man. The dead know all things, and Imric taught me the charms to compel speech from them.’
‘Yet is it a desperate deed,’ she said, ‘for the dead hate most of all that breaking of their timeless sleep, and they wreak vengeance for it. Can you fight a ghost?’
‘I must try. I think my magic will be too strong for it to strike at me.’
‘Perhaps not at you, but—’ Leea paused, and her smile was cruel. ‘That would not be as terrible a revenge anyway as one it could work through – say – Freda.’
She watched the blood drain from his face. Her own went white with his. ‘Love you the girl that much?’ she whispered.
‘Aye. More,’ he said thickly. ‘You are right, Leea. I cannot risk it. Better Alfheim should fall than – than—’
‘No, wait! I was going to give you a plan. But I would ask one thing first.’
‘Hurry, Leea, hurry!’
‘Only one thing. If Freda should leave you – no, no, do not stop to tell me she won’t, I only ask – if she should, what would you do?’
‘I know not. I cannot dream of that.’
‘Perhaps – come back here? Become elf again—?’
‘Perhaps. I know not. Hurry, Leea!’
She smiled again, a cat-smile cold as the bitter dawn-wind which stirred her glorious hair. Her eyes rested dreamy and remote on him. ‘I was simply going to say this,’ quoth she, ‘that instead of raising just any dead man, call on those who would be glad to help you and whose own revenge you would be working. Has not Freda a whole family, all slain by Valgard? Raise them, Skafloc!’
For a moment Skafloc stood moveless. Then he dropped the sword-bundle, swept Leea into his arms, and kissed her with numbing force. Seizing anew the burden, he sprang through the gate and rushed into the forest.
Leea stared after him. Once her fingers came up to her still tingling lips. Then she began to laugh.
Valgard learned that his own likeness had been seen within the castle. His leman, looking dazed and a-tremble, could only say that something had cast a spell on her as she slept, so that she remembered naught. But there were tracks in the snow, and the hounds of the trolls could follow colder trails than this.
At sunset, the earl led his trolls on horseback, in pursuit.
Freda stood in the shadow of a tree, looking through the bare moon-ghostly forest toward Elfheugh.
She was cold on this second night of her waiting, so cold that it had long since passed feeling and was now like a part of herself. She had huddled between the horses, but they were cool and elfly, not the warm sweet-smelling beasts of home. Strangely, it was the thought of Orm’s horse that brought her loneliness back to her. She felt now as if she were the last living creature in a frozen dead world of moonlight and snow and desolation.
She dared not weep, but – Skafloc, Skafloc! Lived he yet?
A rising wind blew snow-heavy clouds ever thicker over the sky, so that the wan moon seemed to be fleeing great black dragons which swallowed it and smothered the dead world in darkness. The wind alone lived, it wailed in the trees, it roared through the sky, it snarled around her where she stood in a blind fury of bitter noise. Hoo, hoo, it sang, blowing a sudden sheet of snow before it, eldritch white in the moon, hoo, halloo, hunting you!
Hoo, hoo! echoed the troll horns. Freda stiffened with a fear like a dagger. They hunted now – hunted, and what game could it be save—
Now she heard the yelp of their hounds, the huge black monsters with eyes like red coals, baying on the trail, nearer, nearer. Oh, Skafloc! Freda stumbled forward, scarce hearing her own screams. Skafloc!
Raving darkness closed on her. She crashed into a tree. Wildly she beat at it, get out of my way, you thing, step aside, Skafloc is calling me – Oh!
In the suddenly streaming moonlight she saw the stranger. Tall he was, with a cloak tossing like great dark wings around his shadowy form. He was old, with long hair and beard blowing frosty gray in the eerie hurrying light, but the unearthly flashing spear he carried could have been wielded by no mortal man. A wide-brimmed hat threw his face into shadow, but she saw the cold terrible gleam of a single eye fixed on her.
She stumbled backward, gasping in fear, seeking to call on Heaven’s help. The voice stopped her, deep and strong, seeming a part of the berserk roar of the storm, but chill and calm: ‘I bring help, not harm. Would you see your man again?’
She sank dumbly to her knees. For a moment, in the blurring, wavering moonlight, she seemed to see – past flying snow, past frozen miles, to the hill up which Skafloc stumbled. Weaponless he was, spent and reeling from weariness, and the hounds were springing toward him. Their howling seemed to shake the moon.
The vision faded. She looked up to the figure of night and storm and mystery looming over her. ‘You are Odin,’ she whispered. ‘You are Odin, and it is not for me to have dealings with you.’
‘Nevertheless I can save your lover – and only I, for he is heathen.’ The god’s blazing eye held her as if she were speared. ‘But you must pay the price. Now quickly, woman, quickly!’
‘What do you want?’ she gasped.
‘Hurry, the hounds are about to rend him!’
‘I will give it to you – I will give it—’
He nodded slowly. His grim deep voice rolled over her: ‘Then you must swear by your own soul and all which is holy to you, that when I come for it you must give me what is behind your girdle.’
‘I swear!’ she cried, and now tears blinded her, wild weeping of relief. Odin could not be the cruel implacable being of whom they spoke, not when he only wanted the drug Skafloc had given her. ‘I swear it, lord, and may all the earth and Heaven forsake me if I do not keep the vow.’
‘It is well,’ he said. ‘Now the trolls are off on a false trail, and Skafloc is here. Woman, remember your oath!’
Darkness came as a clou
d swallowed the moon. When light returned, the As was gone.
But Freda scarce noticed that, not when she was laughing and sobbing in the arms of Skafloc. And he, bewildered at being of a sudden removed from the very jaws of the troll dogs to his goal, was not too mazed to answer her kisses.
20
They spent no more than two days resting in the cave, and then Skafloc busked himself to go.
Freda did not weep, but she could feel the unshed tears thick and bitter in her throat. ‘You think this is dawn for us,’ she said once, the second day. ‘I say it is night.’
He looked at her, puzzled. ‘What mean you?’
‘The sword is evil. The deed we now go to do is evil. No good can come of it.’
He laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘I know you do not like making your own kin travel the troublous road,’ he said gravely. ‘Nor do I. Yet who else of all the dead will help and not harm us? Stay here, Freda, if you cannot bear it.’
‘No – no, I will be at your side even at the mouth of the grave. It is not that I fear my folk. Living or dead, there is love between them and me – and the love is yours too, now.’ Freda lowered her eyes and bit her lip to halt its trembling. ‘Had you or I thought of this, I would not be so frightened. But Leea meant no good with her rede.’
‘Why should she wish ill on us?’
Freda shook her head and would not answer. Skafloc said slowly: ‘I must say, I like not altogether your meeting with Odin. It is not his way to ask a small price. But what the Wanderer really meant I cannot imagine.’
‘And the sword – Skafloc, if that broken sword is made whole again, a terrible power will be loose in the world. It will work unending woe.’
‘For the trolls.’ Skafloc straightened until his fair head touched the smoky cave roof. His eyes flashed lightning-blue in the gloom. ‘There is no other road than the one we take, hard though it be. And no man outlives his weird. Best to meet it bravely, face to face.’
‘And side by side.’ Freda bowed her shining bronze head on his breast, and now the tears flowed heavily. ‘One thing only do I ask of you, my dearest of all.’
‘What is that?’
‘Ride not out tonight. Wait one night more, only one, and then we will go.’ Her fingers dug into the muscles of his arms. ‘Only that, Skafloc—’
He nodded reluctantly. ‘Why is that?’ he asked.
She would not say, and in the sweet riot of their love he forgot the question. But Freda remembered. Even when she held him most closely and felt his heart beating against hers, she remembered, and it gave a terrible yearning to her kisses.
Blindly, reasonlessly, she knew this was their last such night.
The sun rose, glimmered palely at noon, and sank behind heavy storm-clouds scudding in from the sea. A wolf-fanged wind howled over the breakers dashing themselves to thunderous death. Once there seemed to come the remote sound of hoofs galloping through the sky, swift as the storm, and a frightful baying and yelping. Even Skafloc shivered – the Wild Hunt was out.
They mounted their elf horses, leading the other two with all their goods, for they did not expect to return. Lashed to his back, Skafloc had the broken sword wrapped in a wolfskin. His own elf blade was sheathed at his side, one hand carried a spear, and both of them wore helm and byrnie under their furs.
Freda looked back at the black cave mouth as they rode away. Cold and gloomy and barren it was, but they had had happiness there. Then, resolutely, she turned her eyes forward.
‘Now ride!’ shouted Skafloc, and away they went at full elf-gallop.
The wind roared and bit at them as they raced along the coast. Sleet and spindrift blew in stinging sheets, white under the flying fitful moon. The sea bellowed on the rocks, its dark heaving wastes reaching out to a wild horizon. When the breakers foamed back, the rattle of stones was like some ice-bound monster stirring and groaning. The night was a chaos of wind and sleet and surging waters, its angry roar ringing to the cloud-flying heavens. The moon seemed to keep pace with the tearing, hoof-clattering gallop along the cliffs.
Now swiftly, swiftly, best of horses, swiftly southward by the sea, spurn ice under your hoofs, strike sparks from naked rocks, gallop, gallop! Ride with the wind roaring in your ears, ride through a moon-white curtain of hissing sleet and through screaming darkness, rush through the foeman’s land ere he can tell you are abroad. Swiftly, ride swiftly, south to greet a dead man in his howe!
A troll horn screamed once as they raced past Elfheugh harbor. They could not see the castle in the rushing dark, but they heard a thunder of hoofs behind them. A thunder that dwindled into the storm – the trolls rode not so fast, nor would they follow where their quarry went tonight.
Swiftly, swiftly, through forests where the wind skirls in icy branches, weaving between trees that claw with naked twigs – gallop past frozen bog and darkling lake, rush out on open fields – gallop, gallop!
Now Freda began to know the way. The wind still drove sleet before it but the clouds were thinning, the moon cast its cold pale glitter over fields and dales locked in snow and slumber. She had been here before. She remembered this river and that darkened croft, here she had gone hunting with Ketil, there she and Asmund had fished all one lazy summer day, in that meadow had Asgerd woven chains of daisies for them – how long ago, how many centuries ago?
The tears froze on her cheeks. She felt Skafloc reach out to touch her arm, and she smiled back into his moonlit, shadowy face. Her heart could scarce endure this return, but he was with her – and when they were together there was nothing they could not stand.
And now the speed-blurred countryside became the remembered fields of Orm, and her breath sobbed in her throat as she reined in.
They rode slowly on their panting, trembling horses, not saying a word but riding close together. They came into what had been the garth of Orm. There were great snowdrifts, white in the racing moonlight, out of which the charred ends of timbers stuck like fangs. And huge at the head of the bay rose the dark bulk of the howe.
A cold fire wavered over it, roaring and blazing its terrible blue-tinged white – heatless, cheerless, leaping up into the sleeting night. Freda crossed herself, shuddering. Thus had the grave-fires of the old heathen heroes burned, each night after sunset. It could not be holy ground in which Orm lay – but however far into the nameless lands of death he had wandered, he was still her father.
She could not fear the man who had ridden her on his knee and sung songs for her till the hall rang. But she was racked with trembling.
Skafloc rode up and dismounted. He felt his own body cold with sweat. He had never used the spells he must make tonight.
He went forward – and stopped, breath hissing between his teeth as he snatched for his sword. Black in the light of moon and fire, a figure sat motionless as if graven atop the barrow, under the howling flames. If now he had to fight a drow—
Freda’s voice whimpered in the dark, the voice of a little lonely child: ‘Mother.’
Skafloc took her hand. Together they walked up on the barrow.
The woman who sat there might almost have been Freda, thought Skafloc bewilderedly. She had the same pert beauty of thin-chiseled features, the same great gray eyes, the same red-sparked brown glory of hair. But no, no – she was older, she was ravaged by sorrow, her cheeks were sunken in and her eyes hollow, staring emptily out to sea, and her hair streamed unbound, unkempt, in the gale. She wore a thick fur cloak, with rags under that, over her gaunt unmoving body.
She turned slowly around as they came into the shuddering light. Her eyes sought Skafloc’s tall form.
‘Welcome back, Valgard,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Here I am. But you can do me no more harm, I am beyond all hurting now. You can only give me death, which is a boon.’
‘Mother—’ Freda sank to her knees before the woman.
Aelfrida stared at her. ‘I do not understand,’ she whispered. ‘It seems to be my girl, my little Freda – but you are dead. Valgard took y
ou away, and you cannot have lived long.’ She shook her head, smiling, and held out her arms. ‘It was good of you to leave your quiet grave and come to me. I have been so lonely. Come, my little dead girl, come lie in my arms and I will sing you to sleep as I did when you were but a baby.’
‘I live, Mother, I live – and you live—’ Freda choked on her tears. ‘See, feel, I am warm, I am alive. And this is not Valgard, it is Skafloc who saved me from him. It is Skafloc, my lord, a son for you—’
Aelfrida stood slowly up, leaning heavily on her daughter’s arm. ‘I have waited,’ she said. ‘I have waited here, and they thought I was mad. They bring me food and clothing, but they fear the mad woman who will not leave her dead.’ She laughed, softly, softly. ‘Why, what is mad about that? The mad are those who leave their beloved ones.’
She scanned the man’s face. ‘You are like to Valgard,’ she said quietly, ‘you have the height and strength and much of the face of Orm – but your eyes are kinder than Valgard’s.’ She laughed again, tenderly. ‘Why, now let them say I am mad! I waited, that is all, I waited, and now out of the night and mystery of death two of my children have returned to me.’
‘We may return more ere dawn,’ said Skafloc. He and Freda led the stumbling woman down the icy mound.
‘Mother lived,’ whispered the girl. ‘I thought her dead too, but she lived, and she sat shivering alone in the winter – What have I done?’
She wept, and Aelfrida comforted her.
Now Skafloc staked out his rune wands, one at each corner of the howe. He stood in its shadow with his arms raised. The sea raged at its foot and the moon fled through ragged monstrous clouds. Sleet blew in on the keening wind.
Skafloc spoke the spell, and it racked his body and seared his throat with a blinding pain. Shuddering with the unearthly might surging up in him, he made the rune signs with his lifted hands.
The grave-fire roared higher. The storm screamed like a wild beast and clouds swallowed the moon. Darkness fell on the world, a living darkness in which tremendous presences stirred.
The Broken Sword Page 15