Elven Queen

by Bernhard Hennen

  “You won’t find her there,” said a quiet voice.

  Alfadas turned around in surprise. He peered into the darkness but only gradually made out Silwyna. In her white hunting clothes, she blended into the snowy landscape. “I found tracks. The snow had covered them. Runners cut deep grooves in the ice, and I also saw the marks left by large horseshoes. She escaped with the sled.” Silwyna pointed southward, along the fjord. “They were moving in the direction of Honnigsvald.”

  “Who destroyed the village?”

  Instead of answering, Silwyna tossed something dark that landed at Alfadas’s feet. Alfadas crouched. In the snow lay a chunk of coarsely chiseled flint. “Trolls?”

  “Yes. It’s from an axe blade. I found it wedged in a beam.”

  “When were they here?”

  Silwyna shrugged. “Hard to say. The snow’s covered everything. More than a week but less than a moon. I can’t say how many there were either, but I’m sure there were more than just a hunting party passing through.”

  Alfadas looked around the field of ruins. “Why?”

  “The queen. They must have discovered that Emerelle was here. Probably from one of your men that they caught in Phylangan. We should have thought of that sooner,” she added quietly.

  Alfadas nodded. Emerelle. Her presence in the Fjordlands would have been enough to draw the trolls to the village. So the war had now come home. He looked up to the Hartungscliff. A fiery snake was winding its way down the snow-covered slope. His men had lit torches. Two, maybe three hours, then they would be here in the village. A short rest, then he would lead them farther along the fjord. Honnigsvald, with its earth walls and wooden palisades, would not be able to hold out long against the trolls. A few days, a week at best. “Are you sure the attack here was more than a week ago?”

  “Yes.”

  Alfadas looked out over the ice again. If he met his men on the other side and led them southward past the Hartungscliff, they would save at least an hour on the way to Honnigsvald. It was pathetically little when it came to making up for a week’s lead or more, but maybe that one hour would make the difference.

  “What are you planning?” Silwyna asked. She lightly moved across the ice to his side.

  “To win a war,” he replied bitterly. It was as if his sense of hopelessness had been blown away by the wind that swept the ice. He felt ashamed that he had not thought of Emerelle for even a heartbeat before Silwyna mentioned her. “Take Lysilla and go back to Albenmark. Find Orimedes and anyone else who can carry a sword. We may be too weak to defeat the trolls alone.”

  “I will ride to my people. I am sure some of the Maurawan will help us fight.”

  “You’d fight to save Emerelle? I thought you all hated the queen?”

  “They would come for my sake and for your family.”

  Alfadas looked keenly into Silwyna’s eyes. “You are worried about my family?” He was honestly surprised and not entirely sure if the elf woman’s words had not been meant ironically.

  “I am part of your family, Alfadas, and I always will be. I carried your child in me. For me, that is a stronger bond than any lightly spoken vows of loyalty.”

  “I thought none of your race knew about our child.” Alfadas was confused. Had she lied to him? This sudden display of passion was not like her.

  “Everyone knows that I loved you. That’s enough. They will come if I ask them to help me for you and your human wife. They will help us because we love each other. Not one of them would leave the forest for the queen. Don’t try to understand them. We think differently about love and loyalty than you humans do. One does not have to live under the same roof to belong together, not even in the same world. I will be back when you need me the most.” With that, she broke into a light trot.

  Alfadas was too weary to be able to go with her. He watched her run ahead until her pale form blurred into the distant winter terrain.

  THE FIRST WALL

  A big, knotted hand came down on the edge of the wooden parapet, and Kalf swung his axe. Twitching fingers fell at his feet. A shrill cry rang out, only to be swallowed by the din of battle.

  The palisade shuddered under the furious pounding of the battering ram. Arrows buzzed like giant hornets from the nearby slopes. He’d seen some trolls take ten arrows or more before they breathed their accursed last.

  Kalf ducked below the parapet as a salvo of hurled chunks of ice came flying. Most of the projectiles flew harmlessly over the parapet, but a few smashed against the edge of the palisade, sending shards spraying across the wall-walk. Asla swore.

  Kalf saw her from the corner of his eye—a red furrow had opened up across her cheek. Dark blood dripped down her neck, and she pressed one hand to the wound. He’d done everything he could to keep her from being up there, but she simply refused to listen to him. And the last thing she would do was be intimidated by him. Maybe it was better that Alfadas had gotten her as his wife. Kalf smiled sadly. No, it was not better. She was exactly the woman he would have wanted beside him in his life.

  Cautiously, the fisherman looked up and over the edge of the palisade. The wooden wall was four paces high, enough to be a serious obstacle to the gray-skinned bastards below. Still, they tried repeatedly to reach over the top of the wall to pull themselves up, even more when the defenders were forced to take cover from the salvos of ice.

  There was another one! “Sigvald, by you!” Kalf screamed.

  The wagon maker jumped to his feet and raised his axe, but a huge fist shot forward and sent him tumbling backward from the wall-walk. A heartbeat later, the troll was over the parapet. He let out a shrill victory cry, casually crushing with his club the farmer who’d had the bad luck to be crouching beside Sigvald.

  “For Firnstayn!” Kalf cried, and jumped up. They had to finish the troll quickly. If the beast managed to clear a section of the wall-walk and two or three of his comrades pulled themselves up, the palisade was lost.

  One of Horsa’s soldiers attacked the troll, his slash opening a gaping wound in the troll’s granite-colored hide. But the giant barely took notice of the injury. His club swung down. Instinctively, the soldier jerked his shield upward. Kalf gritted his teeth. He’d tried to impress on the men a hundred times or more: duck or jump out of the way. If you have to, jump off the damned parapet, but never, ever try to parry a troll’s attack. It was always the soldiers who let themselves be lured into making that mistake. They’d been drilled for a lifetime in fighting with a blade and a shield, and it was in their blood to parry an enemy’s strike.

  The troll’s club destroyed the shield, the arm behind it, the helmet, and the soldier’s skull. The man’s blood sprayed as far as Asla. Her face turned as white as snow. Kalf pushed past her before she could do anything rash.

  Below, at the foot of the palisade, men with long spears were already attacking. They stabbed at the troll and tried to distract him from the defenders on the wall-walk, and the many light wounds they were causing would weaken him. None of the archers on the slopes dared shoot, however. There was too much danger of hitting one of the defenders.

  The troll leaned forward and swung his club in a wide arc. The spears he hit snapped like twigs, and the men holding them were thrown into disarray by the force of the blow.

  The troll was straightening up again when Kalf leaped at him. He hit the troll in the side, feetfirst, and the beast grunted and threw up his arms. Both of them crashed from the walkway.

  The men yelped and ran clear. Kalf landed in the snow, next to the monster—the impact knocked the wind out of him. Dazed and blinking, he saw the troll push himself to his feet. Kalf realized that jumping at him like that had probably not been his best idea.

  Arrows flew into the snow around them, one missing Kalf by a hair’s breadth. The fisherman cursed and wished that his archers included more hunters and soldiers than farmers. The last thing he needed was to die from a wayward arrow fired by one of his own men.

  The monster’s club came crashing down. K
alf rolled to one side. Then the troll lashed out with his foot—it was like getting kicked by a horse, and Kalf was thrown against the palisade. Stars sparkled before his eyes. Between the stars, he saw the leering scowl of the troll.

  Kalf’s left hand closed around a broken spear. Imagine he’s a fish. A very big, very ugly fish. You can kill him. You’ve never seen a fish you couldn’t kill. Do it like you do with the big salmon when you ram your barbed spear into their eyes to pull them on board. Kalf’s thoughts were racing. You can do it, he told himself. But his hand was shaking.

  Something silver flashed and hit the troll on the head, leaving a bloody graze. Kalf looked up and saw Asla’s face. She was lying flat on the wall-walk and trying to hit the troll a second time. The beast’s enormous club swung upward.

  “No!” Kalf screamed. He pushed himself away from the palisade with all his strength. The spear struck the troll in the neck, just beneath the chin. Kalf felt how the iron spike of the weapon carved through the tough flesh. There was a sudden jolt as it penetrated more easily and another as the tip hit the top of the troll’s skull.

  The club dropped from the troll’s hand. As if struck by lightning, he tipped over backward. The broken spear shaft was jerked out of Kalf’s hands. From the wall-walk and the slopes came jubilant cries, but the fisherman had no eye for the men hailing him. All he saw was Asla. The troll had missed her, gods be praised.

  But he could not stare at her like that, not in front of the men. She was the duke’s wife. “You should have talked to him,” Kalf called up to her. “Your tongue is deadlier than your sword.”

  Asla smiled. “I know. But these bastards are too dumb to understand me, so it doesn’t help much. I think you’ve been lazing around in the snow long enough. Get back up here. We’ve got to defend this wall.”

  The men laughed. Asla’s brash manner made them forget they were in an unwinnable fight. It was important for her to be standing up there. No man, neither soldier nor farmer, would abandon the wall as long as a woman stood her ground there and mocked the trolls. She was the rope that bound them all together. It was right that she was there, and yet Kalf was terrified for her. He could bear anything but watching her die.

  The fisherman stretched his aching limbs. He looked with concern at the trunks that made up the palisade. They would not stand up to the trolls’ assault much longer. It was time for them to pull back to the second wall, higher up the valley, even if their defenses there were not yet finished.

  Kalf looked around for one of the leaders familiar with their plan. He saw Sigvald crouching in the snow close by, his face contorted with pain, one hand pressed against his hip. Kalf crouched beside the wagon maker. “Should I have them take you up to the village?”

  “I’ll survive,” Sigvald growled. Then he smiled wryly. “A man would have to be a damn fool to let a troll talk him into a fistfight.”

  “It looked to me as if you wanted to find out what it’s like to fly like a bird.”

  Sigvald pushed himself up to his feet. “The flying part was fine. But the landing . . . I need to work on that.”

  “Funny how everyone’s in a mood for jokes.”

  Sigvald smiled. “When no one’s looking, I cry in my sleep. But enough. What do you want me to do?”

  “We have to abandon the palisade.” Kalf pointed to the middle section of the wooden wall. Several of the trunks were already splitting lengthwise. Soon they would fail completely, and once the trolls broke through, any thought of an orderly retreat to the next defensive line would be impossible. They would be simply overrun.

  The smile vanished from Sigvald’s face. “So soon? I’d hoped we could hold out a little longer.”

  Kalf shrugged. “Luth has his own plans for us. I’m relying on you, Sigvald. See to it that our reserve is ready and waiting twenty paces behind the palisade. When we retreat, they could break through.” He turned away, picked up a poleaxe from the snow, and climbed back up to the wall-walk.

  The trolls had fallen back a short distance from the wall and were re-forming. Their leader seemed well aware of exactly how close they were to breaking through. Kalf gazed at their immense opponents. They looked like lumbering, ungainly creatures. Their arms were too long in relation to their torsos; their gray faces seemed somehow unfinished, with thick, swollen noses, wide bulges above the eyebrows, and heads devoid of hair. They looked as if they’d been crudely formed from clay and never completed, half-done sculptures on which the artist had yet to work out the finer details. With their sloping foreheads and wide mouths, they really did resemble fish.

  And yet they were very different from how he’d always imagined trolls to be. Strong as bears, bloodthirsty man-eaters, all that was part of how he’d pictured them. But they were not stupid. They knew how to wage war, and it seemed very possible that their leader knew more about it than he did. A silly wooden palisade would not hold them for long, and each defensive line behind it was weaker still.

  How much time did they have before the last line fell? He shuddered at the thought of what would happen then. The white torrent . . . at least that would buy the women and children another day.

  Asla came to him. She laid one hand tenderly on his arm.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” she said gently. “My heart stopped when I saw you fall from the wall.”

  Kalf avoided her eye. Her touch sent a pleasing shiver through him, but he could not let it show. No one there could know what he felt for the duke’s wife.

  “How would a life at your side have been, Kalf?” she asked, her voice low.

  “Don’t talk like that!” he whispered sharply. “Anyone might hear.” Indeed, the nearest men were several paces distant, but he was still worried.

  “Alfadas will never return from Albenmark.”

  “But he said—”

  She stopped him with a shake of her head. “Pretty lies. I know him too well. The way he said good-bye . . . he left knowing that he would die in Albenmark. He tried so hard to hide his fear from me that it was impossible not to see it, although I tried. Don’t you go, too, Kalf. I couldn’t—” Her words were lost in the wild war cries of the trolls.

  Kalf grasped the poleaxe tighter. A troll, one of the bigger ones, had begun to run toward his section of the wall. He was met by a hail of arrows, but they did not slow him down.

  Thick black smoke rose along the length of the palisade. Sigvald had set fire to the bundles of brushwood soaked in seal oil. Up on the wall, they would have to endure the smoke and heat until the heavy trunks of the palisade caught fire and the flames were licking at the wall-walk. If they pulled back prematurely, the trolls could break through too easily. Then everything would have been in vain.

  Kalf looked down at the charging troll. Kalf could see it in the way he ran: he was going to jump! The troll glared back fixedly at him. He would try to climb the palisade right where Kalf stood.

  A ball of ice hissed past, close to Kalf’s head. Farther back, he saw several trolls that had clearly set him as their target. They were already picking up new chunks of ice to throw. But he could not afford to duck! The only chance he had against the troll was when he reached for the parapet to pull himself up. For one or two heartbeats, the troll would be helpless.

  A chunk of ice shattered against the palisade close beside Kalf, spraying smashed ice in his face. He blinked to clear his eyes and raised the poleaxe. When the troll jumped at the wall, the entire palisade shuddered with the impact. With his right hand, the troll reached over the wooden wall and pulled himself up until his head appeared in front of Kalf. He had a second pair of eyes tattooed on his forehead.

  Kalf had missed the moment to strike at the troll’s fingers. He changed his grip and stabbed at the troll’s head with the long spike topping the weapon. His hands were trembling. He missed its eyes—but no, he had stabbed at the tattooed eyes. The iron spike glanced off the side of the troll’s skull before the top corner of the curved blade struck home with all Kalf’s strength behind
it. The troll grunted. A second blade buried itself in the beast’s shoulder—the troll lost its grip and fell back in the snow.

  “I won’t let them take you,” said Asla with determination, flicking the blood from her sword with a twist of her wrist.

  The smoke grew thicker all along the wall-walk. Kalf could feel the heat of the fire through the boards beneath his feet.

  “Thank you,” he said simply, and wished he had a silken tongue like Alfadas’s, always able to find elegant words when needed.

  A desperate cry made him look to the left. They’d started angling for humans again! Some of the trolls carried leather slings tied to strong ropes. They threw them over the palisade and tried to pull down the defenders—they’d lost more than a dozen already that way. Kalf had ordered the archers to focus mostly on the trolls with the leather slings, but there were too many of them, and the arrows did not stop them.

  Kodran, the ferryman, went to the aid of the young man they’d snared. He raised his sword to cut through the rope but came too late. With a jerk, the poor man was hauled over the parapet.

  Kalf watched in horror as the monsters fell on the young man. They tore him apart, stuffing bloody clumps of flesh greedily into their maws. Dark blood steamed in the snow.

  Asla buried her face against Kalf’s shoulder. “What did we do to the gods?” she asked. “Why is this happening?”

  Kalf put one arm around her and embraced her tightly. In that moment, he didn’t give a damn what the others thought.

  Bright flames licked through the gaps between the boards of the wall-walk. The fire hissed and snapped like an angry beast, and Sigvald and his helpers were still piling new brushwood onto the flames.

  The rhythm of the battering ram increased. The trolls had realized that the humans were on the verge of defeat, or at least delay. Another tried to scale the palisade, but Kodran chopped into his hand, and he fell.