Elven Queen

by Bernhard Hennen

  AWAKENING

  Svenja began to tremble when she heard the call of the horn. The trolls had never attacked them at night. At sunset, she had felt secure, at least for the night ahead. She pictured her niece Asla wearing that horrible chain mail tunic and climbing up onto the wall to be with the men. A woman should not stand in the middle of a battle line, least of all a woman expecting a child. What had they done to the gods for them to impose such trials on them?

  She turned her attention to her obligations. She would stay with the children. Whatever happened, she would never leave them alone. A lot of the little ones could not even walk yet, and far too many children had died already. She looked across at the heavy pan beside the fire. A woman should not run around with a sword in her hand, but that did not mean she had to be defenseless.

  “Sing another song,” Loki begged. His father had died two days before, snatched off the wall by a troll with a rope. The boy had not cried. He was six. Old enough to understand.

  “Fly, little bird . . . ,” Svenja began, but her voice failed her. There were so many songs she did not like to sing anymore. In the past, she hadn’t given a second thought to the words of children’s songs. She’d sung them just as her mother had sung them for her. But things were different now.

  “Don’t stop,” Loki urged her.

  Kadlin, sleeping in Svenja’s arms, squirmed restlessly. They had brought all the small children who were still alive to Svenja. There were only seventeen, mostly sleeping peacefully by the brick fire pit, like the queen. The elf woman made Svenja’s flesh creep. She lay as if dead. She did not move, nor could Svenja hear her breathe. Her face was as white as the snow outside and had a cold beauty like the fjord on a winter’s morning. Asla had told her that the queen was many hundreds of years old, but that could not be right. She had the face of a young lady who still dreamed about men because she didn’t know any better. She had none of the scars that life left one with—the fine folds around the eyes from laughing or the deep grooves at the corners of the mouth that marked despair and disappointment.

  “The song!” Loki complained. “Did you forget how it goes?”

  Svenja smiled. “I did. I’ll sing something else. The song of the golden king. That’s much nicer, anyway.” She took a deep breath. Kadlin flailed in her sleep and pressed her head against Svenja’s breasts.

  “So many little fishes swim

  Along the bottom of the fjord . . .”

  Svenja’s voice faltered, and she began to tremble again. The elf woman! She had opened her eyes and was looking at her. What eyes! Now she believed that the queen had lived for hundreds of years.

  “You do not need to fear me, mortal.”

  The elf spoke with a gentle, amiable voice. Someone with a voice like that was not to be feared, whatever her eyes might look like. The children were looking at the queen now, too. None of them seemed afraid of her. Loki even went over to her.

  “Why were you asleep so long?” the boy asked.

  “I was hurt and very tired.” The queen looked around. Her eyes, to Svenja, were like two chasms, gulping down hungrily everything she saw.

  “How did I get here? And what is your name?”

  “I am Svenja.” She wondered at how firm her own voice sounded. Her hands stopped shaking. A deep calm came over her. She told the queen about how the elves had come to Firnstayn, how the ghost-wolf had haunted them, and how it had finally been killed by Gundar. Then she told her about how the trolls had come and about their flight across the ice that had led them here, to Sunhill. As she was talking, Kadlin woke up. The little girl went to the queen as if she had known her all her life.

  Emerelle stroked Kadlin’s hair gently. “You’re the daughter of Alfadas. I knew your father when he was as big as you are now.”

  “Papa gone,” said Kadlin indistinctly.

  A shudder ran down Svenja’s spine. The little girl could not speak properly yet. What had the queen done to her? Svenja wanted to stand up and take Kadlin in her arms, but it was as if her legs were paralyzed.

  “Ulric gone. Mama sad. Good you wake up.” The little girl’s voice was becoming clearer and clearer. Svenja had been looking after children for nearly thirty years, but she had never seen anything like this.

  “Let Kadlin go,” she said fearfully.

  The little girl turned around to her. “I am well, Auntie. Don’t worry.”

  Emerelle removed her hand from the young girl’s hair. The war horn sounded again in the distance. “I am what the trolls want. I will go out and surrender to them. This is not a war for mortals. It should never have come here. I did not see it.”

  Svenja did not understand what the queen meant with her last words. She inhaled deeply. Suddenly, she felt filled with energy. She jumped to her feet and threw her arms around Kadlin.

  Emerelle rose from her bed as if she had only rested for a few moments. Pale and dressed in only a thin nightdress, she looked like a ghost. She bowed momentarily to Svenja. “Thank you for watching over my bed for so many hours. You have a very lovely singing voice. It is a special gift. I hope you will sing the children happy songs again soon.” With that, she opened the door, and winter’s icy breath crept into the hut. “By the way, Kadlin likes you very much, Svenja. She wanted me to tell you that.”

  Svenja pressed the little girl to her tightly.

  “Dada.” Kadlin pointed to the door. A gust of wind hit the hut, rattling the wooden shingles. The door creaked and swung on its hinges.

  “Shut winter out before Father Firn bites all our noses,” Svenja ordered Loki. Then she eyed Kadlin suspiciously. The child seemed unchanged. “What did you talk about with the elf?”

  Kadlin tilted her head to one side and smiled.

  Svenja breathed a sigh of relief. The episode was over.

  THE REFUGE

  Blood ploughed a path for them through the deep snow. They had seen lights on the fjord some time before, and now moved deeper into the woods, out of sight from the ice. Ulric was very tired but was intent on not complaining. Halgard was still on her feet, although she sighed quietly with every step she took. Ulric looked back to Yilvina, who walked in silence. She kept her left hand pressed to her hip. Her makeshift bandage was drenched with blood. The wound had opened again, despite so much time passing since she had come to the trolls’ camp to rescue him and Halgard.

  Ulric’s belly growled. They had hardly eaten anything for three days. Yilvina had dug up a few caches of nuts hidden by squirrels, but nuts alone could not fill you up. Yilvina had led them deep into the forest, far from the fjord. She did not think anyone would come looking for them back there.

  Ulric knew enough stories about the hunt. He was sure he knew what the elf was thinking. She was like a she-wolf with its belly torn open by a wild boar. She knew that her strength was failing her, bit by bit, and now wanted only to rescue her young. That was why they had turned back toward the fjord. Yilvina hoped that they would find the refugees again. She wanted to get him and Halgard to safety. Then she would return to the woods to die.

  The lights on the fjord had appeared just after sundown. They had been unable to make out the shadowy figures on the ice very well, but it had to be the trolls. They were heading south, looking for new victims.

  Ulric had, in fact, expected Yilvina, as an elf, to be able to tell a guinea fowl from a snow hare from a mile away, but the elf told him she was so dizzy that she could barely see her own feet, and they had then decided to give the figures on the ice a wide berth.

  If only I weren’t so tired, thought Ulric in despair. It was good to have Blood forging a path through the snow for them. Ulric would not have found the strength for it. The moment he stepped off Blood’s track, the snow was over his knees. He probably wouldn’t even make it a mile. It was better to rely on the dog’s strength.

  Halgard held on to Blood’s tail. Ulric had worried about that at first. He knew that dogs didn’t like someone pulling on their tail, but Blood put up with it. Maybe he sen
sed that Halgard had no choice. Sometimes she even had to lean on him for support. Without Blood, their escape would have failed long ago.

  The day before, they had stumbled onto a farm that had been plundered and burned, and Ulric had learned that it made no difference if you spent a night in four walls without a roof or among a few rocks that protected you from the wind.

  He could see that Yilvina was gritting her teeth as she moved along. She was in great pain, he was sure of it. Dark blood seeped through her bandage, and every few steps a fat, red drop fell onto the snow. But with the track the dog was making, a few drops of blood made no difference. You would not have to be an experienced tracker to follow them—having eyes in your head would do. Even at night, the deep furrow through the snow was impossible to miss.

  Yilvina looked back. She supported herself against a snow-covered birch trunk and squinted into the darkness. She shook her head angrily.

  The boy started. Was that a sound? Ulric peered as hard as could but could not make out anything. After just a few paces, the dense tree trunks blurred with the night to become a dark, impenetrable wall. Was it footsteps crunching in the snow? Or was it just the sound of swaying branches? Who would be following them?

  Ulric thought of the battle in the trolls’ camp. Yilvina and Blood had appeared in the middle of the night. The elf woman had only wanted to take him and Halgard. She had no interest in the others at all. But that wasn’t right! He had balked, and only then had others seen what was going on. In the cold and darkness, their only concern was for themselves. Most had been sleeping, though some lay stiffly, already frozen to death.

  Ulric now knew how to tell the dead from the sleeping. With the dead, the snow did not melt in the fine line between their lips.

  When he demanded that Yilvina save them all, the other prisoners had crowded her, wanting to be taken along. Then the guards had come, two trolls with stone axes. Yilvina had needed less time to kill them than his mother took to kill and gut a chicken. Ulric wished that he would one day be able to fight like that. Her movements had been faster than his eyes could follow.

  When the trolls lay dead in the snow, Yilvina had picked up Halgard and him bodily, and that had caused an uproar among the prisoners. Anyone with the strength to go a few steps had tried to take advantage of the terrible confusion to escape. More guards came running, but Yilvina somehow managed to get both of them out.

  They had already left the camp behind them when that one troll had suddenly appeared. A warrior, a giant even among trolls. He had decorated his naked belly with bloody handprints. He held a freshly carved club in his hand and had emerged from the woods, making straight for them.

  Yilvina had dropped them in the snow and attacked the troll at a run. One of her blades struck home, and the wounded troll had bellowed like a rutting elk and fallen to his knees, one hand pressed to his crotch. Yilvina had tried to retreat, but the troll lashed out with a backhanded swing. He hit Yilvina with so much force that she flew several paces through the air and had trouble getting back on her feet. She had her left hand clenched at her side, and a thin strand of blood trickled from her nose and covered her lips. One of her swords was gone, lost somewhere in the snow. She staggered and called out to Halgard and him to run. But he was no coward! Luckily, the troll had not been able to get back onto his feet. When Yilvina saw that, she took the two of them and led them deep into the woods.

  Several days had now passed, but the face of that one troll had haunted the boy in nightmares ever since. In the troll’s eyes, Ulric had seen unbridled hatred, and he knew he would come after them as soon as his injuries allowed.

  Ulric shook himself, as if he could simply shake the troll warrior out of his mind. He glanced back at Yilvina fearfully. She looked like Kadlin’s ragged straw doll: crooked, her hair unkempt, somehow crushed. More and more, she had to stop and lean against a tree to catch her breath. She would not make it much farther, Ulric knew. Someone had to help her. Halgard, too, was at the end of her rope. She moved now less with her own strength and more because Blood was pulling her along. They urgently needed to find somewhere to camp, somewhere where there was dry wood and where they could light a fire. But no one could be allowed to see the firelight. Luth alone knew who else was creeping around in the dark. Maybe there really were trolls on their trail.

  Ulric tried to remember what his father had told him about a good nighttime camp, all the things you had to keep in mind. In this kind of cold, they should light a fire in the shelter of rocks, which would reflect the warmth. In winter, you could sit at a fire and still get frostbitten if you didn’t choose your campsite carefully.

  He looked around desperately. They were making their way down a gentle slope. Somewhere off to their left, there had to be a branch of the fjord. All around them were trees. There was no place here to camp. But Yilvina and Halgard would not make it much farther. He had to find a place for the night. He had to!

  Ulric fought back tears. What should he do? If only he were a little bit older! Then he would pick Halgard up and just carry her, and he would come back and get Yilvina as soon as he’d found a place for the night. It’s always so much easier in the skalds’ songs, he thought angrily. The heroes never have problems carrying their maidens in those.

  A faint shimmer among the trees distracted him. Blood stopped in his tracks as golden light poured like resin from a large tree. Suddenly, Ulric was standing before a familiar figure. Gundar! The priest smiled, spread his arms out wide, and came toward them. Blood greeted him with a friendly bark.

  “What is it?” Halgard asked anxiously. “I can sense a light.”

  Yilvina moved up beside the children. She held her remaining sword ready to defend them.

  “You won’t need that, my pretty elf. You could not injure me, but you don’t need to.” As if to underscore his words, the priest walked through a tree.

  “Are you a ghost?” Ulric asked suspiciously, putting one arm protectively around Halgard.

  “First of all, I’m your friend. And you can take my word for it that I did not carry you all the way down that hillside to your mother’s house to watch you freeze to death now.” Gundar had stopped a few steps away from them.

  Ulric felt a lump form in his throat. “You died for me, didn’t you?” He bit down on his lips to hold back his tears.

  “No.” Gundar shook his head amiably. “I died because Luth had spun the thread of my life to its end. You are not to blame at all. It was the weaver of fate’s decision.” He blinked. “They must still talk about me a lot, don’t they?”

  Ulric nodded.

  “I had a good death,” the old man declared. Then he looked past them, up the slope of the hill. “The warp of your lives has broken from the weft. Luth has allowed me to return to rescue the tapestry he is weaving. You are being followed. A terrible enemy has picked up your trail. There is only one place where he is unable to kill you.”

  “I am protecting the children,” Yilvina said, through clenched teeth.

  Gundar looked sadly at her. “I do not have to tell you how you are faring, elf-maid. Trust me. I did save you, after all, when I faced the wolfhorse.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Halgard softly. “I . . . I can see you.” The blind girl was gazing steadfastly at where, between the trees, the apparition of the priest glowed.

  “I’ll come, too,” Ulric decided. He was terribly worried about Halgard. His friend was shivering with exhaustion. He put his arms around her and embraced her tightly. “Do we have to go far?”

  “Just down to the fjord. Come now.”

  Yilvina still seemed suspicious, but Ulric knew that following the priest was the right thing to do. He had known Gundar all his life, and the old man had never been anything but good to him. One could trust him always, even as a ghost.

  Gundar led them some distance down the slope until they came to a broad swath of trees blown down by a storm. Dozens of them lay felled, like soldiers in battle. Some were snapped through the midd
le; others tipped from the ground, roots and all. They had fallen left and right and had formed an impenetrable thicket of dead wood.

  Beneath a tree trunk gleamed two eyes, like polished pieces of gold. A low growl sounded, but a gesture from the priest was enough to silence whatever was lurking there under the trunk.

  Ulric’s hand went to his belt. He wished he still had the elven dagger.

  Finally, they reached the shore of the fjord. There, too, were fallen trees, locked in the ice. Gundar glided through a trunk, and Ulric had to duck to follow him. The going was much harder for Halgard. She caught her hair in upturned roots, and it seemed to take an age before Ulric was able to free her again.

  Something rolled down the slope. Stones and snow slammed onto the ice behind them.

  “Quickly, now!” Gundar pressed them. “Or else it will all have been for nothing. It’s not much farther.”

  Just beyond the broken trees, the side branch of the fjord ended before a steep rock wall. The ice cracked threateningly under their feet.

  “Stop!” Yilvina cried. “It won’t carry us. There must be an underwater spring that opens into the fjord here. The flow stops the ice from getting thick enough. If we keep going, it will break. What are we doing here, priest?”

  Blood tilted his big head to one side and looked from Gundar to the elf, confused.

  “That’s just what I want,” said the priest in all seriousness. “You’re supposed to break through the ice.” He pointed toward the sheer rock wall. “Over there is a cave. The entrance is hidden underwater, behind a rock overhang. It’s the only way into the cave. You will survive in there. No one knows this place.”

  “Survive? A fall into cold water can kill you in a heartbeat, priest.” Yilvina had her sword raised threateningly again. “Have you lost your senses? You say you love the boy. How can you expose him to such a danger?”