Elven Winter

by Bernhard Hennen

  He lifted the precious piece of jewelry carefully from her head. Then he held it high so that everyone could see it. “The tyrant of Albenmark is dead!”

  A QUESTION OF HONOR

  Alfadas looked up to the summit of the Hartungscliff on the other side of the fjord. A stone crown graced the top of the steep rock face. It was the gateway to another world. Winter would soon set in in Albenmark, the jarl thought with some melancholy. What would he not give to be able to step through that gate one more time!

  Sometimes, when he went off into the woods for days, he climbed up to the stone circle. His father had managed to pass through it on his own. Alfadas thought with deep bitterness about how that same gift had been denied him, although he had lived among the elves for twenty years. It was true that, in the Fjordlands, there was no one to match him as a swordsman. Ollowain, the best sword fighter in Albenmark, had trained him. Over the course of the years, the elf had been many things for him—foster father, teacher, and friend. For most at court, the swordmaster seemed cold and aloof. A living legend, the white knight of the Shalyn Falah. He had devoted himself to one goal—to become the perfect swordsman and warrior. He had traveled so far along that road that no elf could best him.

  As absurd as it may have sounded, it was exactly that quality of Ollowain that had made it so easy for Alfadas. He had spent half his life trying to be like an elf, and yet he had always remained the human: to be pitied, to be tolerated. Only around Ollowain were things different. There was no one else like the swordmaster, and for that reason, Alfadas had at times been able to find peace at his side. Of course, he had tried constantly to master all the fine points of fighting and the art of war, but with Ollowain, it was always less bitter to be no more than human.

  The sweet, spicy fragrance of fresh cider made the memories of the past fade. Alfadas licked his lips and smiled. He had brought some things back with him from Albenmark. They had not known cider in Firnstayn, and at first the fighters had taunted him, jibing that he was brewing a little juice for beardless boys. But now when Firnstayn celebrated the apple festival, the people came from the neighboring villages for miles around.

  He swept his gaze over the small village on the fjord: a few longhouses and huts surrounded by a wooden palisade. Not even a hundred families lived there. Compared with the splendor of Albenmark, it was . . .

  No, it was foolish and unfair to compare Firnstayn with Albenmark. And as long as I think like that, I will never really be one of them, he chided himself. But deep inside, he knew it was hopeless. He would never truly be one of them! As hard as he tried, he could not understand the people here. How they thought, how they lived . . . he had grown a beard to be more similar to them, but that was just the outward appearance.

  When he went away from Firnstayn, there were occasional moments when he could disappear. When he hid his sword, which was too good. When he managed to mimic the harsh, slow timbre of the people . . . but as soon as his name came out, it was over. Everyone in the Fjordlands knew the story of Alfadas Mandredson, and instantly he no longer belonged to those around him. He could never tell if the others feared or admired him. They were simply strange, the people to which he belonged, and his soul could find no way to join them.

  One story going around was that his father had conceived him with the elven queen. At the same time, there were people there in the village who had known his mother and who could still remember clearly how Emerelle had come to take him away, who had seen the cavalcade of riders cross the frozen fjord in the eerie faerylight, and who had never forgotten the sight.

  “You’re dead, giant troll!” Ulric dug the end of a wooden spoon into Alfadas’s doublet. “Now fall down, you smelly troll. I’ve killed you!”

  “No honorable warrior fights like that, you know. You should have challenged me.”

  “But then I wouldn’t have won. No one can beat you in a sword fight, Father. Everybody knows that.” Ulric had stopped smiling. He looked accusingly at his father, who was clearly unwilling to understand the simplest concepts.

  “A true warrior would rather fight a hopeless battle than attack an opponent treacherously and betray his own honor.”

  Ulric lowered his spoon. “Isn’t that sort of dumb?”

  Alfadas had to smile. “It is never smart to get mixed up with trolls.” He leaned forward, grunted wildly, and threw Ulric over his shoulder. “If you try to talk to them, they’ll end the conversation by eating you!”

  His son squealed with pleasure and thrashed Alfadas’s back with the spoon with all his might. They were already halfway down the hill when someone called out from behind them.

  “Blast, I forgot,” the boy hissed.

  “What?”

  “Mother sent me. She said I should go and see if you were standing around somewhere dreaming again.” It was clear that the boy found it embarrassing to repeat Asla’s words. “She’s angry because she’s been standing at the apple press the whole afternoon and you haven’t helped her.”

  “Alfadas!” came a shout from atop the hill.

  “Hmm. I’m afraid I haven’t behaved very honorably at all.” He put his son down. “You have to promise me something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t take me as a good role model. I’m not a good husband. You mother is always angry at me.”

  Ulric gave him a gappy grin. “I want to be an honorable man, not a married one.” He stabbed wildly with the wooden spoon at some invisible adversary. “When I’m big, I will lead the king’s troops. I’ll be a hero. I’ll be even famouser than you. And . . .” He looked up with his big child’s eyes. “Will you give me your magic sword when I’m big? I’ll need it if I’m to be a hero.”

  Alfadas sighed. “I don’t have a magic sword. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  Ulric pouted. “I know what’s true. Your sword can cut through any shield and any armor. It is enchanted! Grandfather says so!”

  “It is simply a very good sword.” Alfadas kneeled in front of his son to look him in the eye. “My sword was forged by elves. It is an excellent weapon. But there is no magic in it. And when it comes to heroes . . . it is not the weapon that makes the hero. The man who guides the sword must be someone special—like you.”

  “So will I be a hero when I’m as big as you?”

  “You will be, Ulric.” He grinned. “At least, if you get out of the habit of sneaking up on trolls. Now let’s go to your mother.”

  They climbed back up the little hill on which the longhouse stood. Everyone in the village had helped to build it after he had married Asla. Alfadas knew that some of the new inhabitants of the village had moved to Firnstayn only because he lived there. Alfadas the elf-friend, Alfadas, commander of the king’s army. They were polite with him, always, but they did not love him. He was something like a particularly dangerous watchdog loose in the yard. Where he was, no fox would go. The villagers felt safer having him around.

  Kalf stood by the apple press. The blond giant had been jarl of Firnstayn himself. He was the watchdog before Alfadas came. Alfadas of the magnificent sword belt, Alfadas of the famous father . . .

  Asla looked at Alfadas reproachfully. “Where have you been hiding?”

  Ulric stepped in front of his father. “He was showing me how to fight honorably.”

  “I wish you would do me the occasional honor of helping me. What were you doing? Staring up at that accursed mountain again, where your father disappeared with his elven friends?”

  “They have names. His friends were Farodin and Nuramon.”

  “I’ll be going, then,” said Kalf. He was a big, quiet man. Alfadas knew that he had ruined Kalf’s life. If not for him, Kalf would still be jarl and he would have married Asla. There had never been an ill word between them. Alfadas knew that Kalf still loved Asla . . . he had taken no other wife. For all these years, he had lived alone in his little hut down by the river. Alfadas could not look him in the eye for long . . . those sad, sky-blue eyes.
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br />   Kalf tapped his forehead fleetingly. “Evenin’, Alfadas.”

  The jarl only nodded. “I’ll look after the press,” Alfadas said, speaking to his wife.

  Asla waved one hand dismissively. “The work’s done. I called for you to carry in the barrels of juice, but Kalf has done it instead. All that’s left is the pressings.” She pointed to the trough beside the press. “You . . . No, Kadlin! Not again!”

  Their daughter felt her way along the edge of the trough, then plunged both hands into the golden mash of pressed fruit. She looked up to Alfadas, shook her head with a laugh, and then rubbed the rough apple pulp into her face and hair with both hands.

  Asla, exhausted, sat down on the chopping block. “She’s just like you, my beautiful, strange man. She knows exactly what she’s not supposed to do and does it anyway. And no matter what, I can’t stay mad at her for long.”

  Alfadas sat beside his wife. He placed one hand gently across her shoulders. Her dress was saturated with the scent of apples.

  “Why are you so furious?”

  Asla wiped her hands on her apron. “Because of the mountain,” she said softly. “Sometimes I wish we lived somewhere else, somewhere where I don’t have to see it every single day . . . and where you don’t have to see it either. I can’t stand the way you gaze up to the summit.”

  “It is just a mountain.”

  She stared at her red, calloused hands. “No, it is not. From there came the elves who carried you away for twenty years. In the stories, they say their hearts are as cold as winter stars. They—”

  “That’s nonsense!” Again and again, she talked like that. “You met Farodin and Nuramon yourself. Did they have cold hearts?”

  “Farodin was spooky to me. There was nothing human about him—”

  “What do you expect? He’s an elf!” Alfadas interrupted her. “But they are not coldhearted.”

  “Did you know many of their women? They say their beauty never fades.” She looked again at her damaged hands. “It’s been more than eight years since we danced around the stone together. I am scared that they will come and take you away from me. Do elves dance around a stone and promise eternal love, too?”

  “No.” He reached down for a sliver of wood that lay beside the chopping block and rubbed it between his fingers. “They promise nothing for eternity. They live too long for that. What they promise each other is to separate before the first lie passes between them. They believe that when there is something that they cannot discuss together, then it is time to let the other go.”

  “Would we still be a couple if we were elves?”

  Alfadas could sense her trembling. Why did she torment herself with such questions? Did she not see that he loved her? Alfadas pressed her to him gently. “I have never lied to you.”

  “Nor I to you.”

  “All this work is wearing you down, Asla. Should I bring you back a slave woman from Gonthabu next summer?”

  She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Only if you find one as ugly as the night.” She smiled, but her eyes were red with unwept tears.

  “Awa!” Kadlin came to them on wobbly legs. Her whole face was smeared with mashed apple. She had her mother’s eyes, chestnut brown and full of warmth. “Awa . . .” She stretched her arms up toward Alfadas. He picked her up, and she ran her sticky fingers through his hair, squealing with delight.

  He took one of her hands and licked off the sweet bits of apple. Kadlin giggled as his tongue tickled her fingers.

  “Da!” She held out her other hand to him.

  Asla sighed and stood up. “The first guests will be arriving soon. Can you take care of the fire? The evenings are starting to get cold early now.”

  Alfadas nodded.

  The smile had returned to Asla’s eyes as she looked down on the two of them. “It seems no woman can resist you, my beautiful, strange man.”

  The jarl felt something lukewarm run down his leg. He lifted Kadlin up. A dark patch was spreading across his breeches.

  Asla laughed. “Can you take care of our little one? I have to get the bread out of the oven.”

  BLOOD

  Fog crept up the fjord and engulfed the village. Sometimes, from down below, Alfadas heard stifled laughter. All of Firnstayn was celebrating the apple festival. His longhouse lay a little way from the other houses. He no longer remembered if it had been his idea to build there or if Kalf, who was still the jarl at that time, had suggested it. As it was with his house, so it was with Alfadas himself. The house stood on the edge of the village, not at its heart. And while Alfadas was held in high regard, he could not find a way into the hearts of the people. He remained the outsider, even for Asla, who was so fond of calling him her “beautiful, strange man.”

  Or was he imagining all of it? The hill was the best place, after all. Perhaps they had wanted to honor him? The hard life in the mountains left the people there with little time to be complicated. Normally they would say whatever was on their mind.

  The fine hairs on his neck stood on end. Was that a noise? Something moved in the fog. Not a man. A throaty growl came, and Alfadas swung a torch toward it. As if from nowhere, a large black dog appeared. It stalked closer, teeth bared. A deep, bloody weal crossed its snout.

  “Heel, Blood!” snarled an imperious voice from the fog.

  The dog stopped. It was trembling with tension. Alfadas was expecting the beast to leap at him at any moment. It had a shaggy black coat and a broad leather loop around its neck.

  “Greetings, Jarl.” A burly man appeared behind the dog and pulled a strap through the leather collar. “Lie!” the man snapped at the dog, which reluctantly lay down.

  “Greetings, Ole Erekson.” Alfadas did not go to the trouble of faking a sincere tone. He did not like his father-in-law’s brother at all. He was an untrustworthy brute who bred dogs and tortured them until they turned into bloodthirsty beasts.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

  Ole knew exactly what Alfadas thought of him. The two men looked each other up and down. The dog breeder was a squat, solid man with long red hair. His meaty face was framed by an unkempt beard in which broad gray streaks had begun to appear. Ole wore a beautiful deep-red cape held together at his neck by a bronze clasp. He smelled like his dogs: of wet fur, piss, and rotten meat.

  “Your dog does not enter my house.”

  “Not a wise decision, Jarl. Everyone knows how touchy my puppies are.” He held his end of the strap high. “How long do you think it would take Blood to chew through this? Do you really want a dog like him straying through the village? You know I raise them to take on wolves and bears. And they’re always hungry. I can imagine Blood mistaking a drunkard staggering home for easy prey . . . of course, if you have a chain, we can tie him up out here.”

  Ole knew very well that there was not a house in the village that possessed a chain. Iron was far too valuable to waste it making chain.

  “Why did you bring that monster with you at all?”

  The dog breeder smiled broadly. “You’ve got a few men in from the outlying farms among your guests tonight, no doubt. They can always use a good dog out there in the wilderness. You lock it in a cage, and any stranger who sets foot near your farm will set it off. Something like that is good when you live out in the middle of nowhere. Besides, my dogs are perfect for all kinds of hunting. Could be a bull elk you’ve cornered or a pack of wolves you want to drive away or an escaped slave you want to get back. My dogs do it all. And they’re obedient, too, as long as their master and his whip are close by. Isn’t that true, Blood?”

  The dog glared up at Ole, full of hate. In the breeder’s belt was a whip with balls of lead and sharp thorns woven into it. “When I sell a dog, I hand over the whip I raised it with. That way they know who their new master is. Especially if you give ’em a good hiding with it right after the sale.”

  “Take the dog away and you’ll be welcome as my guest.”

  Ole stepped so close that Alfadas co
uld smell his reeking breath. “Send me away and I’ll go down to the village and tell everyone that you refused me entry to my niece’s house for the festival, Jarl. At the next full moon, the village will elect a new jarl. I always thought the title was important to you, Alfadas Mandredson? A man who denies hospitality to a relative will hold a bad hand going into an election. Kalf has many friends. They say that even your wife likes him.” He smiled lasciviously. “And maybe even a little more than that.”

  Alfadas lowered one hand to the grip of the knife he wore at his belt.

  Ole laughed. “Your father would have stabbed me dead long ago, but I see no scrap of the great Mandred in you, you elven bastard!”

  “You know I’m no half blood! You yourself saw them come for me, or did you already forget about that? Get out of my sight.”

  “Oh, yes. I saw that coldhearted crew come and take away the son of Mandred and Freya. But do I know who the man is who came back to the village half a lifetime later? Take a look at yourself! Do you have a drop of the hot blood of the Fjordlanders in your veins? A real man would have fought me long ago, half blood! It’s your mother’s blood, the blood of some elven slut, that holds you back.”

  “Haven’t you heard the stories about the cruelty of the elves, Ole?”

  The dog breeder’s brow furrowed.

  “Stories of humans who encountered them and then disappeared forever,” Alfadas continued.

  Ole licked his lips nervously. “Heel, Blood!” His voice now sounded hoarse. He drew the whip from his belt and smacked the grip against his thigh.

  “If you’re right, then you might be in more grave danger than you can imagine.” Alfadas reached for the whip and twisted it out of Ole’s hand with a jerk.

  “Hold, Blood!” the breeder squawked. The beast did not move.

  “What were you saying just now? You train them so that they listen to whoever holds the whip. Do you think it would obey me if I ordered it to tear you limb from limb?”

  Perspiration gleamed on Ole’s forehead. “Sorry. I’ve been drinking. Makes me say stupid things. You have to—”