Elven Queen

by Bernhard Hennen

  The first of the defenders were already climbing down. “Asla,” Kalf said in a low voice. “You have to stop them. They’ll listen to you.” He took his arm from around her. She looked up at him. Her lips were pressed into a thin line, as if she were struggling to smother a sudden pain. Then she swept a strand of hair from her face, squared her shoulders, and looked along the wall-walk. Almost half the defenders were already down the ladders or had simply jumped into the snow.

  “Strange creatures, you men!” she shouted, rubbing her hands together. “Here I am, not freezing for the first time in two weeks, and you’d rather run off and hand this cozy spot over to the trolls. I don’t understand you at all. As for me, I’m going to stay a while longer.” She raised her sword and sidestepped a tongue of flame that shot up between the boards beside her.

  Many of the retreating men stopped, shamed, and many who had already left the palisade turned and looked up at her. In her heavy mail tunic, her sword raised and surrounded by smoke and flames, she looked like one of Norgrimm’s sword maidens, or even Svanlaug herself.

  A chunk of ice grazed past Asla, knocking the helmet from her head. She stumbled. Kalf reached out to stop her from falling, but she pushed him away. She had already caught herself.

  With a loud crack, one of the trunks of the palisade split. The trolls roared.

  “Go down and make sure any of them that sticks his head through the breach gets a bloody nose,” she ordered Kalf. Then she turned to the remaining men. “We all will die—maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe in fifty years. Luth alone knows when our hour will come. But we bear at least a little responsibility for how we tread our final path. Me? I’d rather burn here than let a troll beat me to death when I’m running away. But that’s a choice you have to make for yourselves.”

  Kodran, who was already standing on a ladder, stepped back onto the wall-walk. “Asla’s right. I’m not going to let the trolls spoil my chance to warm my rear up here.” He trotted back to his place on the wall. Others followed.

  The sound of splintering wood drowned out the din of the flames. Kalf hesitated a moment longer. Only when he felt sure that his apparent retreat would not cause the men’s temper to swing against Asla did he spring from the wall-walk.

  “Archers, to me!” he bellowed as loudly as he could.

  The back of the palisade was blazing along its entire length. The trolls had breached the wall almost exactly in the middle and were now attacking it feverishly with their stone axes to widen the gap.

  Several boys carrying bows and arrows came running; the oldest had seen perhaps fourteen summers. They were the last stand.

  “Shoot into the breach!” Kalf ordered. “Sigvald! Bring in the last of the brushwood. Let’s see what our friends think of a wall of fire behind the wall of wood.”

  The youngsters did their job well. With a few accurate shots, the trolls were driven back from the breach. The flames were flying high above the wall-walk now. The thick trunks that formed the defensive wall itself began to catch fire. The wall of flames would hold the trolls for hours.

  Kalf looked up at the wall-walk with concern. A screaming man leaped down into the snow, beating at his burning trousers. Asla was still pacing back and forth along her section of the wall. She seemed calm, like a sentry on a balmy, peaceful summer night. Her face was black with soot.

  The fisherman swore to himself. Could she allow herself no rest? She leaned over the parapet and peered down at the enemy. Finally, she waved to her men. “Down from here! Before the soles of your shoes fry!”

  Even then, though, she waited until the others had abandoned the wall-walk. Flames blocked her route to the nearest ladder. Kalf began to run. She could not be allowed to jump. Not with a child in her belly!

  Asla swung down from the back of the walk, landing hard. The heat of the fire had melted the snow close to the wall, and the ground underneath was stony. Asla got back to her feet, swaying a little.

  Kalf grasped her under her arms, supporting her. Her face was as black as crow feathers, her beautiful blond hair singed by the flames.

  “Let me go!” she hissed at him. “If you want me in your arms, then be in my hut tonight. I’ll wait for you.” She pulled herself free.

  A hundred pairs of eyes were watching them. Suddenly, one man cried out, “Long live the duchess!”

  More and more around him joined in his call. The exhausted fighters rushed to her and clapped her on her shoulders, then hoisted her on theirs. Louder and louder rang the cry, “Long live the duchess!”

  Kalf felt a lump in his throat. He watched as she was carried away. He’d spent countless nights dreaming of lying with her. Now he was afraid of just that.

  RUNNERS

  Alfadas had ordered his men to set up camp outside Honnigsvald. They had completed the march from Firnstayn in a little more than a day. Almost half his warriors came from the town or close by. They had marched on despite the heavy snow and the murderous chill. Without the elven amulets, they found the winter more bitterly cold than they had before, but fear had spurred them onward.

  Alfadas stood at the shore where Sigvald’s workshop must once have been, although he was not completely certain. The town had lost its familiar face. Nothing known to him still stood—not a single wooden building had survived the conflagration.

  A flat strip of iron jutted from the snow in front of him. Alfadas bent down and pushed the snow and half-charred wood aside. Just another barrel hoop. Alfadas sighed heavily. Then he straightened up and tried to orient himself. What had he seen on the other shore when he’d visited Sigvald’s shop? How could he find the spot on which the long shed had stood? Was it here? Or had it really been a little farther along the shore?

  For two hours, he searched but found no traces. Down by the harbor, no wagons or sleds appeared to have stood at all, nor did he find the remains of a burned wagon anywhere else, which meant that they had left the town. From Firnstayn, Honnigsvald was the nearest town of any size. Here was where you would run if enemies came from the mountains in the north. But Asla had no longer been there when Honnigsvald burned. He was certain of it.

  He climbed the hill that dominated the center of town. He was searching for other traces now. Although Honnigsvald had not been a large settlement, he found it hard to get his bearings. Only the slightest outline remained of the broad road that had once led from the harbor to the banquet hall. All the narrow alleys had utterly vanished, buried beneath blackened roof beams, fallen walls, and smashed slate shingles. Over all of it, winter had laid its white linen.

  Every time he saw a flat, bent piece of iron in the rubble, he was gripped by fear. Once, he’d been misled by the blade of a scythe. When he moved aside the heavy beam around it and saw for himself that no sled had stood there, he had not understood how he could have seen the runner of a sled in the scythe. The fear . . .

  Dozens of other men picked their way through the town, just as he did. They were men who had stood up to all the horrors of the troll war in Albenmark, only to collapse now when they found the charred remnants of their huts. Mag, who had not shed a tear at the funeral of his brother Torad, wandered pale and distraught through the field of ruins, calling for Kodran.

  Alfadas chewed at his lips until the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. He could not lose control. He had to lead these men. They needed him now more than ever before. Tomorrow, before sunrise, they would march onward. They would hunt down the murderous beasts until the last troll was dead, the last troll that had come here to slaughter women and children, and then they—his mind went blank. He could not allow himself to think about what else they had done. It would destroy him! Asla was alive. She was smart. She would never have waited until the trolls made it to Honnigsvald. She had fled farther along the fjord.

  Alfadas had covered less than half of the burned town, but no large wagon had been there. He did not want them to have been there—it could not be, and he could not even allow the idea!

  Tears welled i
n his eyes. He went down to the fjord. What did it prove if he did not find the wagon? Asla and the children might still have been there. Maybe someone had stolen the wagon from them. Who knows what might have gone on inside the walls when the trolls attacked. The heavy wagon might have broken through the ice and would now lie hidden forever at the bottom of the fjord.

  Alfadas wandered a short way out onto the frozen arm of the sea. It was a beautiful winter’s day. A radiant blue sky covered the snowy land, and an icy wind blew from the northwest. The duke hardly felt it against his face. He felt as if he were dead.

  His feet unconsciously led him southward. There, some distance from the earthen ramparts of the town, lay the abandoned camp of the trolls, close to the shore. That morning, Alfadas had told his men what they could expect to find there, but few had yet dared to visit the place. Lost and in silence, they had wandered among the snow-covered ruins, poked through the snow, and hoped to find nothing. Only then did they go down to the water’s edge.

  That was where the trolls had taken the survivors from the town. To all appearances, they had overrun Honnigsvald with their first assault.

  Alfadas looked across to the dreadful mound beside which Lambi and Ollowain were standing. He knew what the snow, mercifully, covered there, and he did not join them. Nor did he return to the water’s edge. The men who had no relatives in the area were carrying out their grim service there. If the frozen corpses could be moved, they had carried them down to the shore and laid them out. And from the hill of bones where Lambi and Ollowain stood watch, they recovered anything they could that might help identify the dead. Things that were unmistakable. Embroidered boots, a colorful scarf, a skirt on which small freshwater pearls had been sewn, dolls, armbands with distinctive markings, an amber necklace . . .

  Alfadas had been with the men briefly that morning when they had begun their work. He had not been able to watch. They had cleared away a mountain of human bones. The gouges that the stone knives had left in the bones as the trolls trimmed them of flesh were clearly visible. Marrow bones had been smashed open and sucked clean. They had even broken open the skulls. They ate everything, the beasts. Alfadas thought of the delicate children’s bones he’d seen strewn all around. His stomach tightened.

  “Asla took the wagon. She was not here,” he said to himself aloud. There was no trace of her, the children, or the wagon.

  Again, he turned his eyes toward the shoreline. A man was there on his knees, doubled over—one who had found certainty. Alfadas knew he should go there, too, but he could not. Searching for a wagon in the town was one thing, but he could not bring himself to walk along the row of frozen bodies. Most were old people and young children, many about Kadlin’s age. A wet bottom out there in the bitter chill was a death sentence. He swallowed hard. There was no doubt that Asla had fled across the ice with the children. But they had found no dead along the way to Honnigsvald. Whatever Asla had done, wherever she had gone, she had saved everyone, at least until they had reached the treacherous security of the town.

  Ollowain had left his place at the hill of bones and was coming his way. Alfadas turned away. He acted as if he had not seen the elf. He trembled—he did not have the strength to run away. He did not want to talk about his duties as commander now. And he was dreadfully afraid that Ollowain was coming for another reason.

  If not for the faint crunch of snow, he would not have heard Ollowain’s approach. The elf could move as silently as a cat, and he knew that Alfadas had seen him coming. He wanted Alfadas to hear him.

  “What is it?” the duke asked, without turning.

  “I have to talk to you.” The elf stepped in front of him, forcing Alfadas to look at him. Ollowain held something out of sight beneath his sweeping white cloak.

  Alfadas exhaled. He could not take his eyes off the hidden hand. What was he hiding?

  “Let’s go into the woods.” Ollowain pointed a short distance along the fjord, toward a sparse stand of birch trees. “I want to talk to you alone.”

  “We’re alone here.” Alfadas’s voice shook, although he was trying as hard as he knew how to keep himself under control.

  “No one should be watching us. You’re the duke. They cannot be allowed to lose their faith in you. Not now.”

  “I’m just a man. They know that. A man like any one of them.”

  “No! You’re the elvenjarl, a man like those in the old sagas, a hero who has never been defeated, a celebrated commander. That’s what you are for them.”

  Ollowain turned away and moved off toward the birch grove.

  “You know better than anyone else that I am just a human, my master. Those are stories, no more. You know all my weaknesses. You know what I truly am. The sagas are just tall tales invented by skalds like Veleif. None of them are true.”

  Ollowain did not reply. He simply walked on unperturbed toward the stand of birches.

  Alfadas suppressed a desire to run after him. He knew that they were being observed from the shore. He could not afford to show a weakness like that! He strode along after the elf and had to force himself over and over not to break into a run. But try as he might, he could not catch up with Ollowain. The swordmaster only stopped when he reached a clearing in the middle of the grove.

  “What are you hiding there?”

  Ollowain turned. His face was a mask. He held a dagger in his hands. It was a long, sleek weapon, almost a short sword. The grip was carved from light whalebone and showed two rearing lions frozen in a deadly embrace. Fragments of turquoise had been set in the silver sheath. There were eighty-three altogether, Alfadas knew. Ulric had counted them.

  “I know what you really are, human,” said Ollowain gently. “Even if you don’t want to believe it, there is a lot of truth in the stories. The men look up to you, more than ever in this hour of mourning. They will find their strength in you.”

  Alfadas took the silver dagger. “It lay among the bones?”

  Ollowain nodded.

  “Please, leave me alone,” Alfadas said quietly.

  A STRONG OAK AND A DECENT PIECE OF MEAT

  It took a long time, but finally he appeared among the trees. Orgrim had been waiting for the scout for more than an hour. He immediately led Brud to Dumgar’s fire.

  “Well?” asked the Duke of Mordrock. “Did you find the path?”

  Brud knocked the snow from his mantle as he and Orgrim sat. “There is no path. The wretched humans chose their site well. To reach the village, you have to go up the valley. There are two more walls, one at the top of the valley and one closer to the huts.”

  “How many humans?” Orgrim asked.

  “Less than two hundred who can fight.”

  Dumgar jumped up from the fire. “Then we have two warriors to one puny human, and we can’t even rip that many of them apart? Weak little pissants! What are you, warriors or lukewarm ratfarts?” The duke snatched up a few ribs that lay on a wooden board beside the fire and began to gnaw the scanty meat from the bones. Orgrim had seen the man they’d chosen for the meal—a skinny, sickly looking fellow with a pocked face. He’d whimpered like a whipped pup. I’m not about to touch that meat, Orgrim thought.

  “Maybe it would boost the warriors’ morale if they saw you fighting in the front line for once.” Orgrim held Dumgar’s glare. Orgrim loathed his commanding officer. The only lukewarm ratfart in that camp was him.

  “I can read your mind, Orgrim. You’d love to see the humans kill me and hand you my command. But that’s not going to happen. I’m too important. The army can’t afford to lose me.”

  Orgrim ran his fingers over the scab that marked the fresh arrow wound on his shoulder. He’d been one of the warriors who’d tried to open the breach in the wall while Dumgar waited out of range on the hillside. “Let me reassure you, Commander. As long as you keep your distance from the battlefield, the greatest danger you face is choking on a rib.”

  Dumgar threw a bone into the fire. He gave Orgrim a sour smile. “Don’t worry about that. I�
�m an experienced eater.”

  You’re a pimple on the king’s ass, Orgrim thought angrily, but he held his tongue. One day I’ll squeeze you dry.

  Dumgar turned to Birga. The shaman sat by herself, away from the fire. With a thin twig, she was marking a twisting pattern in the snow. “Are you certain that Emerelle is up in the humans’ village?”

  The shaman’s stick stopped moving. The leather skin she wore over her face slipped to one side a little when she jerked her head around, but the motion was too quick to see anything of her face in the darkness. “Believe me, Dumgar, a man I interrogate is only too happy to give up his secrets to me. Emerelle is there!”

  Dumgar licked his lips nervously. “I did not mean to doubt your knowledge. It would just be—how long will it take us to overrun the village?”

  “I can’t see into the future,” she replied with irritation. “That damned golden-haired slut is always firing them up. I’ve been watching her for a long time. She’s carrying a baby. The prisoners say she’s the wife of the elvenjarl. She’s the one we have to kill. Once she’s dead, we’ll finish the rest easily. But how fast that happens depends entirely on who’s in charge the next time we attack.” She looked to Orgrim. “I’m sure you would take a different approach than what we’ve tried so far. Or am I mistaken?”

  Orgrim knew that he could not oppose Dumgar. The easiest way for him to reach his goal would be to kowtow to the Duke of Mordrock. “I think Dumgar has been taking the right approach, but we need to use more force. Our battering rams are too weak, and that comes from attacking too fast. We should leave the humans in peace for a day. Even if we don’t attack, they’ll be so afraid of us that they’ll just sit there and stew, and we can use that time to find a big oak. A huge tree, that’s what we need! Then we carve it into the kind of battering ram only trolls can lift. We’ll break through the humans’ next palisade in one rush.”

  “That’s exactly what I had in mind,” Dumgar asserted. “You just spoke up before I could, Orgrim. I give you permission to work out the details of my idea. But hurry it up. You know we’ve only got enough food to last a few more days. We have to take the village to get more meat.”