“Enough, Ragni!” Alfadas snapped at his war jarl. “No one will lay a hand on this woman. She is welcome here, now that she is with us.” He turned to Veleif. “And you, skald? What led you here?”
The poet smiled apologetically. “I fear my intentions are purely selfish. I have had enough of composing lies about Horsa. This campaign is the most heroic story to happen for generations. I simply have to be part of it. You will make history, Alfadas, and I will capture your deeds in beautiful words so that future generations can learn from your courage and valiance. I have experienced more wonders in less than two hours with your army than in the forty years before. I have walked on a golden path through the darkness, stood in an elven army camp, and heard your soldiers talk about a spirit horse they encountered. I will write a saga about you, Alfadas Elvenson.”
The duke recoiled inwardly at the mention of that hated epithet. He could not send Veleif back. Lyndwyn, who had opened the portal, had disappeared shortly after the army arrived in Albenmark. With her had gone most of the elves that had set up the camp. There was no turning back . . . but of course, the skald did not know that.
“I am no friend of lies and shameless exaggeration, Veleif, and I am inclined to send you back along the path of light. Maybe you will run into that spirit horse for yourself. Now go out there and look at the men that beast attacked. See what it’s like to age decades in the blink of an eye. Prove yourself as a truly great skald. Sing the songs of truth.”
“I always sing—”
Alfadas jerked one hand through the air harshly, cutting off Veleif. “I know what you did for Horsa. I was there when he met the elven queen, and it did not take place inside a tent on a raft.”
“The king told me what I was supposed to say. I did not do it gladly. You know—”
“I know that I will send you back on the same day you spread any more lies like that. Get out there, Veleif! Look reality in the face. Give it words to match all its horror and splendor. You’re dismissed.”
The skald looked at him indignantly. With a sweep of his cape, he left the tent.
Alfadas now turned to the unknown soldier. “And who are you?”
“Egil Horsason.” He pushed the hood back.
Alfadas looked at the young man in dismay. Horsa’s son! As if he did not have enough on his mind already.
Egil’s face was slim and more sharply honed than his father’s. There was something febrile about his blue eyes, which were surrounded by dark rings. He wore an expensive, closely meshed chain-mail shirt and finely woven clothes. Only the cloak he wore was made of coarse wool, like those the regular soldiers of his army wore.
“Does your father know that you are here?”
Egil shook his head. “Of course not. He would never have let me go off with you. He treats me like a slave and does everything he can to humiliate me.”
Alfadas did not know what to say. He did not think much of Egil and had heard only bad things about him. “Why did you come?”
“To prove myself as a warrior. One day I will rule the Fjordlands, but I am well aware that many of the jarls despise me. I was never part of one of your campaigns, Duke, and I have never had the chance to show my mettle in combat. I want to earn the respect of the men, that’s why I am here.”
Alfadas looked to Ragni. “He can join me and my men,” said the war jarl.
“That is not a good idea.” Alfadas sighed. “I will soon have Lambi and his men’s shackles removed. I have no use for manacled warriors. It is clear to you, isn’t it, that they will be keeping a close eye on you, Ragni? Nothing that happens to or near you will escape them. They would kill Egil just to make you fall from Horsa’s favor.” Alfadas turned to the king’s son. “You will go with the shepherds looking after our sheep. No one there knows you, and you will be safe. Ragni, dig up some clothes for the boy that would be suitable for that work. Our shepherds don’t wear chain mail or fine cloth.”
“You can’t just—” Egil began, but he broke off when he saw the wrathful look on Alfadas’s face.
“What can’t I do? Give you orders? I am the duke. My word here is law. You want to be a warrior? Then learn to obey! That is the chief virtue of any soldier. Respect has to be earned, Egil. It is not something laid in your cradle at birth. Tell no one who you are. Let your deeds speak for you, and if you are lucky and survive the weeks ahead, then you will return to the Fjordlands a respected man. And if you should rebel against me, then rest assured that I will treat you like any other rebel. I did not want any king’s son here with me, and I will act as if you don’t exist. From now on, your name is Ralf! And Dalla! You have heard and seen nothing of what has just happened here!”
The healer nodded silently. In a fury, Alfadas left the tent. What was the callow young fool thinking? And how would Horsa react when he realized where his son was?
“Duke?” Ollowain was coming toward him. “Count Fenryl wishes to speak with you. He would like the soldiers to break camp already.”
“Why is he in such a hurry?”
“A caravan is on its way from Rosenberg to Phylangan. They have left their homeland because we are unable to defend the small settlements of the Snaiwamark. Fenryl wants us to join with the refugees because they only have a small escort traveling with them. The count does not want to interfere with your decisions, of course, but his wife and child are part of the caravan.”
“How far away are they?” Alfadas asked. Now that his anger at Egil had evaporated, he began to feel the cold again. He shivered and rubbed his arms.
“We could meet them about three days’ march from here. It would mean only a minor detour, because the refugees have to get to Phylangan as well. It is the only way to reach the high plateau of Carandamon.”
“Good, then we will go and find them. Better for the men if we break camp soon. We should not give them too much time to think about what happened on the way through the portal.” Alfadas’s teeth began to chatter.
“You should not underestimate the cold, my friend. It will be the end of you. Come with me!”
Ollowain led him behind the tents to an area of the camp where the elves’ cargo sleds stood side by side. More than two hundred wolfhounds sat and lay close by in the snow. They were not tethered and were unsettlingly calm, attentively eyeing anyone who came close to them.
A little farther on, Lambi’s men were gathered around him. The war jarl was addressing them from atop one of the sleds.
“I hope you’ve got that through your thick skulls, you brainless whoremongers. The elves have loaned us these amulets! If you lose them or—what I’d say is more likely—try to steal them, then you will be in more trouble than you can choke down! The amulets will protect you from the cold out here. It’s a kind of magic. Put it on and you can go whoring in a snowdrift without freezing your ass cheeks together. You won’t need a blanket or clothes to keep out the cold.
“But don’t go getting carried away. The amulets protect you only from the cold, but not from anything else! Got it? Good, then come and get ’em. And don’t forget that we’ll be giving them back as soon as we leave Albenmark. And if a troll smashes in one of your friends’ skulls, or someone throws up his guts and drops dead or gets hit by lightning while he’s emptying his bowels, then make sure you take his amulet. We have to give all of them back, and I do mean all!”
The soldiers pressed around Lambi, who handed out the precious trinkets from a small silver box. The amulets looked like very thin gold coins. Alfadas was surprised at how plain they had been kept, their only decoration a few wavy lines, a sun wheel, or a small shard of ruby. They were threaded on plain red leather cords.
One of the men, a heavyset fighter with a thick red beard, marched up to Lambi. He had tied his amulet onto his fur cap.
“My magic’s busted,” he snorted.
“You have to wear it against bare skin,” Ollowain piped up. “If the amulet doesn’t touch your body, the power in it can’t unfold.”
Lambi glanced ove
r at the elf. “Damn me, I’d completely forgotten that.” He turned back to his men. “Did you hear that? Wear this elven gold against your bare skin or the magic won’t work.”
“Don’t matter where?” the bearded man asked with a grin.
“Stick it wherever it makes you happy. Be my guest. But if you give it back to me and it stinks, then I’ll squeeze your balls until you’ve licked it so clean it glistens.”
The bearded man laughed. “Hear that, everyone? Our war jarl is after my balls. Let’s hope he finds a willing elf girl soon who’s not put off by that thing on his face that no one’s supposed to mention, or the horny buck’ll screw us all, one after the other.”
“Do they ever talk about anything else?” asked Ollowain in his native tongue.
Alfadas smiled. “They love invented heroics almost as much. If they had a copper piece for every lie they told, they’d all be rich men.”
“And you want to have their chains removed?”
“Worried they might really tread too close to an elven woman?”
Now it was Ollowain who smiled. “If they reach for any elf with those grimy fingers, then they can pick them up one at a time afterward out of the snow. What do you think Lysilla or Silwyna would do with these men if they got too close?”
“We’ll have problems with some of the men if they go too long without a woman,” Alfadas replied seriously. “But that should not worry us today. Are the other war jarls handing out the protective amulets to their men, too?”
“It is all going according to your plan, Alfadas,” Ollowain assured him.
Alfadas went to Lambi and took one of the elven amulets out of the silver box. The moment he picked up the charmed gold piece, an agreeable warmth flowed through him. How much power would you have to have to create something like this? he thought. And how much wisdom must a race have not to use that power to create weapons . . .
All the enchanted swords that the skalds of his race so loved to ascribe to the elves in their poems could, in reality, exist if the elves so wanted. And in that moment, Alfadas wished that this is what they had done. He knew that they would need every weapon they had to battle the trolls.
Even the elves must have understood that. Why else would they have accepted the help of humans?
THE WOLFPIT
Orgrim paced back and forth among blooming bushes and trees and shook his head in incomprehension.
“Useless!” he said angrily, and Mandrag nodded. The large main cave of the Wolfpit, at one time their rock fortress, had been turned into a flower garden. And although it was the middle of winter, the cavern was overflowing with color. It was uncomfortably warm. There in the cave, it was spring. It was not right to mock the unalterable passage of the seasons like that. One could not simply revolt against the laws of nature . . . nature would always win. A smart man lived according to its rules—every troll knew that!
“Nothing is like it was,” said Mandrag bitterly. “What is the king’s castle going to look like if they have already ruined the order of things so much here?” He pulled his mace from his belt and stomped heavily up to the statue of an elven prince with an arrogant smile. One swing smashed the marble nose. Over and over, Mandrag hammered the stone with the heavy weapon, wiping out the elf’s face, until the head of the statue broke off and rolled into a bed of roses.
Orgrim and those with him—monstrous Gran; the shaman Birga; and his artillery chief, Boltan—watched the old troll in silence. They could all feel Mandrag’s wrath. When they entered the Wolfpit, they were confronted with the sobering reality: none of their mountain castles would still look as they once had. The elves had spoiled everything! They had had centuries to wipe out every memory of the trolls, and at least there in the Wolfpit, they had done their work thoroughly. The murals of soot and blood were gone, as were the rune stones and the small niches in the rocks where a man could find the pleasure of a woman while the ancients sat by the fire and talked. All gone! And in their place were wide-open caves with gardens, cave roofs magically illuminated, palaces with countless rooms, and ponds, pools, and fountains everywhere.
Boltan had pressed his cheek to one of the large stone stelae that stood everywhere in the flower gardens. “There’s water flowing through this,” he said in surprise. Suddenly, his face lit up and he smiled. “They’re using the geysers. The rock here is very warm. That’s how they’ve made a spring garden in winter. There’s no magic to it at all!”
Birga banged her bone staff on the ground angrily. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand, Boltan! There is magic everywhere here. The entire natural order of things has been warped. They have twisted everything here to serve them!” The shaman pointed up to the cave ceiling. “How do you think they could light up stone like that, like daylight? And how did they even excavate the caves? Magic, magic, magic!” She laid one hand on the damaged statue. “Even here I can feel the magic. They softened the stone until they could shape it with their bare hands, like you can form clay into a figure. The land itself will help us drive the Normirga out. It has grown tired of the elves. It will shake them off like a dog shakes off its fleas.”
Orgrim thought differently, but he had no desire to contradict Birga. The pack leader knew that it was smarter if they helped get rid of the Normirga. The land had put up with them for centuries . . . Why should that suddenly change now?
Their scouts had found the Wolfpit abandoned the day before. No elves remained inside the rocky fortress, but everywhere they looked, they found signs of a hasty departure. A half-finished tapestry still in the loom. Freshly slaughtered game hung in the cool caves close to the entrance of the Wolfpit to bleed out and be skinned. All of it pointed to one conclusion: the Normirga had been warned. They knew the trolls were coming despite the fact that Orgrim had done everything possible to complete their march through the Swelm Valley in secrecy. They had moved only at night, when not even the ghostlights danced in the sky, and had stayed hidden in dense forests during the short hours of daylight. The scouts had stolen up to the fortress during a snowstorm and had found everything abandoned. It seemed almost as if the elves had somehow miraculously sensed that the trolls had returned to their homeland. The order to abandon the fortress must have been given on the same day that the Wraithwind anchored at the entrance to the Swelm Valley.
The pack leader made his way down a set of steps between the garden terraces and looked around for the large table he had noticed the evening before. He lost his footing and almost fell. Cursing, he grasped one of the stone stelae that lined the stairway, spaced well apart. The steps were far too narrow and small—for trolls, practically an invitation to stumble.
The strange marble table stood in the center of an arbor of climbing roses. Blood-red petals were strewn across the snow-white stone, and an uncomfortably sweet fragrance hung in the air. Orgrim screwed up his nose and swept the petals aside. The tabletop was uneven. Winding lines had been gouged into the stone, and in many places, it seemed not to have been properly smoothed at all. There was no pattern to it; on the contrary, it seemed completely random. At first, Orgrim had thought that the stone plate had not yet been finished, and he turned away from it. Then, from the stairway, he looked back at it one more time. He needed the distance to realize what he was looking at—it was a map! Every mountain had been carefully modeled, and he recognized the coastline around Whale Bay and the mountain ridges that enclosed the Swelm Valley.
Mandrag came down the stairs. “So that’s the map table you told me about.” The old troll braced himself against the marble plate, breathing heavily. “That’s what the land must look like to a bird if it could fly high enough.” Mandrag studied the map briefly and pointed to a solitary mountain. “That there is the Wolfpit.” He tensed and pointed to a much larger mountain that blocked a pass. “That is the goal of all our dreams: Kingstor, the biggest and most beautiful of our strongholds. From there, our ancestors ruled over the Snaiwamark.”
“Branbeard will get his old throne
back this very winter,” said Orgrim excitedly. “The Kingstor is much closer than I thought.”
“You’re mistaken, my boy.” The old man ran his finger over the stone plate, following a long arc around the low foothills of a mountain range. “This is the way we have to go. From here, eight or nine days.”
Orgrim slid his finger over the uneven mountains. “What’s here? You could cut the distance to Kingstor in half if you went through the mountains. They don’t look very high, if the map is right. What’s to stop us doing that?”
“The Maurawan! These are the southern foothills of the Slanga Mountains, and their country. It is a forest of oaks as high as the sky. Even in the short summer months, the ground beneath the trees lies in permanent darkness. Hardly a ray of light can make it through the dense canopy. And the paths in that forest are enchanted. They deceive you. You can walk around in circles for days without realizing it . . .” He cleared his throat. “That is, if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, then you’ll get a Maurawan arrow in the back of your neck the moment you enter the forest. They say that even the trees are the allies of the elves there and will hide them from any prying eyes. The Maurawan are always around you when you go into their forest, but you can only see them if they want to be seen.”
“Aren’t they the smallest of all the elvenfolk, Mandrag? How long could they resist the fury of our pack?”
“The answer to that is easy: as long as there are trees in which they can hide themselves, you presumptuous whelp. It is impossible to engage the Maurawan in open combat. If they want to fight you, they lure you into their forest, but they will never surrender in there. They run through the branches of the big trees like wind. And the minute you think you’re clear of the pests, the man next to you drops dead. The miserable bastards make it a point of pride never to have to shoot more than one arrow to kill—whatever they’re hunting. Going into those forests means sacrificing warriors for nothing. I hope most of all that Branbeard has the wisdom to avoid them.”
Elven Winter Page 34