He rode over hills, the young spring around him. It had rained in the morning and the ground was still muddy, pools and rivulets glittering in the sunlight. But the grass had grown, its first cool, light viridescence reached to the horizon. The trees were budding forth, the new green life shaded the world with its delicate tint, the vanguard of summer.
It was still chilly, a strong wind gusted over the hills and whipped Skafloc’s cloak about him; but it was a wind of spring, its rough boisterous shout in trees and over the earth was a call to the summer, its raw damp lash stirred blood to tingling life. The sky was high and blue and light, the sun struck through white and gray clouds that still raced over the greater part of the heavens, shafts of luminance stabbing down to gleam on the new wet grass. Thunder rolled from the still darkened southern horizon, but against that smoky cloud-mass a rainbow was shining.
The honking of geese came from overhead, the migratory birds were coming home. A thrush was trying out his song in a wind-dancing grove, and two squirrels chased each other in the grass.
Before long now came full spring and summer, warm days and light nights, green forests and nodding flowers, love and life and hope. Something stirred within Skafloc as he rode over the hills, a dim unfolding of old forgotten instincts, a bright blossom of memory.
O Freda, if you were with me—
The day smoldered toward the west. Skafloc rode straight forward on his tireless horse, taking no great pains to be inconspicuous. He went at an easy pace for the Jötun breed, but the land slipped by in the dusk, quivering under the black stallion’s mighty hoofs. He was entering faerie realms, the central province of Alfheim, riding toward the mountain fastnesses where the Erlking must be if he still held out. He found signs of war – burned garths, clean-picked bones, broken weapons. Now and again a fresh troll spoor showed, and Skafloc licked his lips hungrily.
Night rose, strangely warm and light after the bitter dark whence he had come. He rode on, at times dozing in the saddle but never ceasing to listen. Long ere the troll horsemen crossed his path he heard them and was alert.
There were six, dark powerful forms in the half-lit gloom. They were puzzled by him – a mortal, in clothes and armor half elf and half Sidhe, riding a horse akin to their own but even huger and stronger. They barred his path, and one shouted forth: ‘In the name of Illrede Troll-King, halt!’
Skafloc struck spurs in his stallion and drew the giant’s sword as he shot forward. The blade seemed to flame hell-blue in the night. He rode full tilt into the company, and the screaming thundering sword clove one helm and skull, and lopped another head off, ere the trolls were aware of it.
Then one struck at Skafloc with an ax. His sword roared to meet it, tearing through the weapon and the breast behind it. Swinging the glaive about, Skafloc split the troll on his other side from shoulder to waist. He reined in his monster horse, so that it stood on its hind feet and pawed with its fore hoofs. A troll skull crunched.
The last soldier screamed and turned to flee. Skafloc threw the sword in a flaming bolt that went through the troll’s back and out his breast.
Thereafter he rode on, seeking the beleaguered Erlking. Near dawn he stopped by a river for a brief sleep.
He woke at once when he heard the rustle of leaves and the faint quiver of the ground. Two trolls were stealing on him. He sprang to his feet, drawing the sword as they rushed. Through the shield and face and heart of the first he hewed. He raised his dripping blade at once and the second troll, unable to halt his lunge, spitted himself on it. Even against that frightful shock Skafloc stood braced, the chill unearthly strength of the sword stiffening him to iron hardness.
‘This is nigh too easy,’ quoth he, ‘but ’twill soon grow hard enough to suit the most exacting.’
He rode on through the day. Near noon he came to a cave in which several trolls were asleep. He killed them and ate their food. It mattered little to him that he was leaving a trail of slain foes for anyone to follow. Let them – if they dared!
Near dusk he began to come into mountains. High and beautiful they reared, their remote snowy heads seeming to float serene in the sunset sky. He heard the singing of waterfalls and the soughing of pines. Strange, he thought, strange that so much peace and loveliness was but a place for murder. By rights, he should have been here with Freda and their love, not with a grim black horse and a sword of horror.
But so it went, so it went. And how went it for her—?
Skafloc rode up the slopes and across a glacier on which his steed’s hoofs rang. Night spread across the sky, clear and cold at these snowy heights, with a rising moon to turn the peaks into dreaming ghosts. Presently Skafloc heard, far and weird in the great skyey spaces, the bray of a lur horn. His heart leaped with a fierce gladness and he spurred the horse to a gallop, leaping from crag to crag and over windy abysses. The cloven air hooted in his ears and the echoes of the mighty hoofbeats rolled like rising thunder between the silent mountains.
Someone still fought!
The harsh bray of a troll horn came to him, and then the distance-muted shout of warriors and clang of weapons. An arrow zipped past his face. He snarled and crouched low in the saddle – no time to deal with one archer, bigger game was at hand.
He burst over a snowy ridge and looked across moonlit chasms to the scene of battle. Men might only have seen a single high mountain on which blew whirling snow-devils, and heard only a strange roar and boom about the craggy peak. But Skafloc’s witch-sight discerned more – he saw the top of the mountain as a high-walled, frost-covered castle whose towers climbed for the distant stars. Ringed about it on the upper slopes of the mountain, on snow-field and glacier, were the black tents of a great troll army. One in particular was of more than ordinary size and had a dark ensign over it – and flying from the highest tower of the castle was the banner of the Erlking. The monarchs had met.
The trolls were storming the fortress. Like mad dogs they yelped about the walls, they set up ladders and sought to climb, they hid its base with their numbers. Many engines of war did they have, mangonels throwing balls of fire over the walls, huge wheeled towers trundling ever closer, rams clamoring at the gates, ballistae hurling their mighty stones against shuddering masonry. The shouts of the men, the trampling of feet and hoofs, the clash of metal, the roar of drums and horns, filled the night with a storm of sound that started landslides grinding down and made the ice-fields ring an answer.
The elves stood atop the walls and fought the trolls off. Swords gleamed, spears and arrows darkened the moon, blazing oil poured from great cauldrons, ladders were upset – but still the trolls came on, and the elves were few, few. It was near the end of the siege.
Skafloc pulled out his sword, the blade snarling hungrily through the scabbard and flaring icy-blue under the-moon. ‘Hai-ah!’ His shout woke flying echoes as he spurred his horse down the slope in a cloud of moon-eerie snow.
At the brink of the chasm he felt the stallion’s huge muscles bunch, and then he was soaring through the middle of the sky with stars swirling around him. He struck the mountainside with a shock that slammed his teeth together, but at once he was rushing up the slope with his blade a whirling frozen hell-flame.
The troll camp was almost empty. Skafloc reined in, his horse pawing the sky, and leaned over to snatch a brand from a fire. The speed of his gallop whipped it to a bright blaze as he rode through the camp, setting tents afire. In a short time many were burning and the sparks were spreading to others. Skafloc rode swiftly on toward the castle gates.
He wore his shield on his back, steered the horse with his knees and voice, and swung the great sword two-handed. Ere the trolls about the gates were aware of him he had struck down three and his horse had trampled as many.
The foemen turned on him then. His sword leaped and whirred and shrieked, clove with a shout of metal through helm or hauberk, flesh and bone, to rise streaming – never did its death-dance halt, and Skafloc mowed trolls like ripe wheat.
The
y surged around him, but none could touch the iron he wore and few of their blows landed. Those that did, he scarce felt – not when the sword was in his hands!
He swung sideways and a head rolled off its shoulders. Another swing, and he had opened a horseman’s belly. A third blow shore through helm and skull and brain down to the neck. A warrior on foot stabbed at him with a spear, scraping his arm – he leaned down and hewed the troll to earth. But most of the foot soldiers went down under the kicks and bites of the huge black horse.
Clamor and clang of outraged metal rose under the moon. Blood steamed in the trampled snow, corpses wallowing in its pools. The Jötun horse and his rider and the blade of terror rose high over the battle, carving a road of death.
Hew, sword, hew!
Now the trolls veered away in panic. Skafloc’s voice lifted ringingly: ‘Hai, Alfheim! Victory rides with us tonight! Sally forth, elves, come out and kill your foes!’
A ring of fire, the burning troll camp, surrounded the battlefield. The trolls grew aware of it and felt dismay. Also, they knew a Jötun horse and a demon glaive when they met them – what manner of being fought against them tonight?
Skafloc rode his curvetting stallion before the gates, his blood-splashed helm and byrnie agleam in the light of moon and fire. His eyes blazed with a bitter blue no less terrible and remorseless than the sword dripping in his hand, and he taunted the trolls hoarsely and bitingly, and called on the elves to rally.
The frightened whisper ran about the milling troll army: ‘– It is Odin, come to fight – no, he has two eyes, it is Thor – it is Loki, risen from his chains, now the end of the world is nigh – it is a mortal, possessed by a demon – it is Death—’
Now lur horns blew and the gates swung wide, and the elves of the castle rode forth. Fewer by far than the trolls were they, but a new hope lit their haggard faces and a light of battle gleamed in their strange eyes. At their head, on a milk-white stallion, with his crown aglitter in the moonlight and his hair and beard flowing white over byrnie and the dusk-blue cloak that wrapped him in magic and mystery, came the Erlking.
‘We looked not to see you alive again, Skafloc,’ he called.
‘But you have, and well it is for Alfheim,’ replied the man, with not a trace of his old awe – for nothing, he thought, was left to frighten him who had sailed to the edge of the world and had naught to lose anyway.
The Erlking’s weird eyes rested on the wizard sword. ‘I wonder how well it is even for Alfheim,’ he murmured, ‘and I think it is all ill for you.’ Then his voice rose in a shout: ‘Forward, elves!’
Now the elves charged upon the trolls, and bloody was that battle. Swords and axes rose and fell and rose streaming again, metal cried out and sundered, a rain of spears and arrows clouded the sky – horses screamed and trampled the rolling corpses under their hoofs – warriors shouted and fought and sank to earth.
‘Hola, Trollheim! Forward, trolls!’ The shout boomed forth as Illrede rode into battle. His black stallion snorted fire, his ax never rested and never missed, and he clove a frightful way from which elves began to flee. Above his black byrnie, his face gleamed icy green under the moon – hideous, a mask of rage, the tendrils of his beard writhing, his eyes boiling pits of black horror and death. No one could stand before his blows, and the trolls rallied around him and drove back the elves.
Skafloc saw him and howled, a berserker’s wolf-cry. He swung his Jötun horse about and pressed toward the troll-king. His sword screamed and thundered, hewing trolls as a woodman hews saplings, a blur of blue flame in the night. Shock and clang of battle rose about him, heralding his passage.
‘Ha!’ roared Illrede. ‘Make way, trolls, make way – he is mine!’
They rode at each other through a suddenly cleared path. Skafloc’s eyes were like icy blue moonlight, Illrede’s like the night itself, as they glared at each other. But as the troll-king saw the rune sword, he shuddered in sudden horror.
Skafloc’s laughter rang harsh and pitiless between the nighted mountains. ‘Aye, your weird is upon you,’ he shouted. ‘Darkness comes for you and all your evil race.’
‘The evil done in the world was never all troll work,’ said Illrede quietly. ‘It seems to me you have done a deed more wicked than any of mine in bringing that sword back to the world. Whatever his nature, which the Norns and not himself gave, no troll would do such a thing.’
‘No troll would dare!’ sneered Skafloc, and rode in upon him.
Illrede struck valiantly out. The ax smote the Jötun horse in the shoulder. It did not go deep, but the stallion screamed and reared, and while Skafloc fought to stay in the saddle Illrede hewed at his side.
The byrnie gave, but held long enough to stop the edge of the ax. Skafloc rocked in his seat from the blow. Illrede pressed closer, smashing at the man’s helmet. It crumpled, and only the uncanny strength lent by the sword kept Skafloc conscious.
Illrede raised his ax again, shouting. Dizzily Skafloc struck at him. Sword and ax met in a shower of sparks, and with a mighty sound the ax burst asunder. Skafloc shook his head to clear it, then laughed as a hunting wolf yelps. He cut off Illrede’s left arm.
The troll-king sagged in the saddle. Skafloc’s blade whined about his head and carved off his other arm. ‘It ill becomes a warrior to play with a helpless foe,’ quoth Illrede. ‘It is the devil in the sword doing this, not you.’
Skafloc killed him.
Now a great dismay fell on the trolls and they began to retreat. The elves pressed furiously on them, and the din of battle rang beneath the mountains. In the van of the elves, the Erlking wielded his sword and shouted encouragement. But it was Skafloc, riding everywhere, reaping the foe with a blade that screamed and bellowed, who struck the deepest terror.
And the trolls broke and fled. Hotly did the elves pursue, cutting them down, driving them into the blazing camp. Not many escaped alive.
The Erlking sat his horse in the first thin dawn-light, looking over the death heaped about the castle walls. A cold breeze blew his hair and the white mane and tail of his horse about. Skafloc rode up to him, gaunt and weary, painted with blood and brains, but eyes still smoldering revengefully.
‘This was a great victory,’ quoth the Erlking. ‘But we were one of the last elf strongholds. The trolls are everywhere in Alfheim.’
‘Not for long,’ replied Skafloc. ‘We will ride forth against them. They are scattered thinly, and every free elf now skulking as an outlaw will join us. We can get weapons for them from the trolls we kill, if nowhere else. Hard will the war be, but – my sword carries victory.
‘Also,’ he added slowly, ‘I have a new standard which we will bear in the forefront of our army, a banner to strike fear into all enemies.’ And he held up a spearshaft, on the top of which was impaled the head of Illrede. The dead eyes still seemed to watch and the mouth to grin with menace.
The Erlking shuddered. ‘Grim is your heart, Skafloc,’ he said. ‘You have changed since last I saw you. But let it be as you wish.’
24
In the desolation of a winter’s dawn, Freda stumbled into Thorkel Erlendsson’s garth.
The landholder was just arisen and had come out into the snowy yard to look at the weather. For a moment he scarce believed his eyes – a shield maiden, with arms and armor of a strange coppery metal and clothes of utterly foreign cut, groping forward blind with her own tearless grief and horror – it could not be.
He reached for a spear he kept just inside the door. But his hand dropped as he saw the girl more closely. Freda – Freda Orms-daughter, worn out with sorrow and weariness, her eyes dry and hollow and emptily staring, Freda was back.
Thorkel said no word, but led her inside. Aasa his wife hastened to them.
‘You have been gone long, Freda,’ she said. ‘But welcome – welcome home!’
The girl sought to reply, but no words would come out. ‘Poor child,’ murmured Aasa. ‘Poor lost child. Come, I will help you to bed.’
Freda
followed slowly, her shining head bent.
Audun, Thorkel’s next oldest son after the slain Erlend, came into the house. ‘ ’Tis colder outside than a proud maiden’s heart,’ said he, and then: ‘But who is this—’
‘Freda Ormsdaughter,’ answered Thorkel. ‘Freda Ormsdaughter, come back somehow.’
Audun stepped over to her with his voice a glad cry: ‘Freda! Freda, come home again!’ He laid his arms about her waist, but ere he could kiss her the mute woe of her gaze fell chill on his heart. He stood aside. ‘What is the matter?’ he asked.
‘Matter?’ Aasa snapped. ‘Why, ask what is not the matter with the poor sorrow-burdened girl. Now get out, you heavy-footed goggle-eyed men, get out and let me put her to bed.’
Freda lay awake for a long time, staring at the wall. But when at last Aasa brought her food and murmured to her and stroked her bright hair, as a mother to a babe, she began to weep. Long and long she wept, a terrible unending flow of tears, noiseless and with all her grief to make them bitter, and Aasa held her and let her cry it out. Thereafter Freda fell asleep.
Now at Thorkel’s bidding she made her dwelling there. It did not take her long to recover herself, but she was not the glad girl folk remembered.
Thorkel asked her what had happened. When she lowered a suddenly whitening face, he added quickly: ‘No, no, you need not say it if you wish not to do so.’
‘No reason to hide the truth,’ she said in so low a voice he could scarce hear it. ‘Valgard bore Asgerd and myself east over the sea, but he troubled us not. Scarce had he landed when – another viking fell on him and slew his men. But Valgard escaped, and Asgerd was killed in the fight. This other chief took me with him, but at last he set me ashore near my father’s garth.’
The Broken Sword Page 19