The Broken Sword

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The elf raid on Trollheim was to be a strong one. Fifty longships were manned with the best warriors of Britain’s elves, and veiled and warded by the sorceries of Imric and his wisest warlocks. It was thought that under these spells they could sail unseen into the very fjords of Finnmark’s troll realm; how deeply inland they could thrust thereafter would hang on what resistance they met. Skafloc hoped they could get into Illrede’s own halls and bring back the king’s head. He was wild to go.

“Be not too reckless,” cautioned Imric. “Kill and burn, but lose no men in mere adventures. ’Twill be worth more if you get a measure of their strength than if you wipe out a thousand of them.”

“We will do both,” grinned Skafloc. He stood restless as a young stallion, eyes alight, the tawny hair tumbling down from his headband.

“I know not-I know not.” Imric looked grave. “I feel, somehow, that no good will come of this trip, and would fain order it halted.”

“If you do that, we will go anyway,” said Skafloc.

“Aye, so you will. And I may be wrong. Go, then, and luck be with you.”

On a night just after sunset, the warriors embarked. A moon newly risen cast silver and shadow on the crags and scaurs of the elf-hills, on the strand from which they rose, on the clouds racing eastward on a wind that filled heaven with its clamour. The moonlight ran in shards and ripples over the waves, which tumbled and roared, white-maned, on the rocks. It shimmered off weapons and armour of the elf warriors, while the black—and-white longships drawn up on the shore seemed but shades and light-gleams.

Skafloc stood wrapped in a cape, the wind streaming his hair, awaiting the last of his men. To him, pale in the moonlight, with her tresses tossing cloudy and her eyes aglow, came Leea.

“ ’Tis good to see you,” cried Skafloc. “Bid me farewell and sing a song for my luck.”

“I cannot give you goodspeed properly, for I cannot come up to that iron byrnie of yours,” she answered in her voice that was like breeze and rippling water and small bells heard from afar. “And I have a feeling my spells will avail naught against a doom that is set for you.” Her gaze sought his. “I know, with a sureness beyond proof, that you sail into a trap; and I beg you, by the milk I gave you as a child and the kisses as a man, to stay home this one time.”

“That would be a fine deed for an elf chief, in command of a raid that may bring back his foeman’s head,” Skafloc said in anger. “Not for anyone would I do so shameful a thing.”

“Aye-aye.” Sudden tears glimmered in Leea’s eyes.

“Men, whose span is cruelly short, rush nonetheless to death in their youth as to a maiden’s arms. A few years ago I rocked you in your cradle, Skafloc, a few months ago I lay out with you. in the light summer nights, and to me, undying, the times are almost the same. And no different, in that blink of years, is the day your hacked corpse will await the ravens. I shall not ever forget you, Skafloc, but I fear I have kissed you for the last time.” And she sang:

Seaward blows the wind tonight, and the seamen, never resting, rise from house to take their flight with the gulls, and spindrift’s questing. Woman’s arms and firelit hearth, kith and kin, can never hold them when the wind beyond their garth of the running tides has told them. Spume and seaweed shall enfold them.

Wind, ah, wind, old wanderer, grey and swift-foot, ever crying, Woman curses, who, from her, calls forth Man to doom and dying. Seamen, kissed by laughing waves, cold and salt-sweet, hearts deceiving, shall be borne to restless graves when the sea their life is reaving. And their women will be grieving.

Skafloc liked not this song, which smacked of bad luck. He turned and shouted to his men to get the ships afloat and get aboard them. But soon as he himself was waterborne, he lost every foreboding in renewed eagerness.

“This gale has blown for three days now,” said Goltan, a comrade of his. “And it has a wizard smell about it. Mayhap some warlock sails eastward.”

“ ’Twas kind of him to spare us the trouble of raising our own wind,” laughed Skafloc. “However, if he has been three days eastbound, his ship is of mortal make. We travel at a better clip!”

Masts and sails were raised, and the slim dragon-headed craft leaped ahead. Like the gale itself they went, like flying snow and freezing spindrift white under the moon, waves seething in their wake, a long easy bounding over the noisy waters. Swiftest of all in Faerie, afoot or on horse or in hull, were the elves, and ere midnight Finnmark’s cliffs loomed in sight.

Skafloc’s teeth gleamed forth. Quoth he:

Trolls shall tumble (tumult rages), fear of firebrands freeing bowels. Kin, be kind to clamouring troll-men: have they headaches, hew the heads off. The elves grinned down the length of the plunging hull, lowered sail and mast, and took to their oars. Into the fjord the fleet steered, busked for battle, but no sign of enemy guards met their eyes. Instead they saw other vessels drawn up on the beach-three mortal longships, whose folk were bloodily strewn across the rocks.

Skafloc leaped ashore, sword out and cloak flapping behind him. “Strange is this,” he said uneasily.

“Belike they sheltered here from the gale and were set on by trolls,” Goltan replied. “ ’Twas a very short time ago-see, feel, the blood is still wet, the bodies warm—and so the killers may be at Illrede’s hall reporting the matter.”

“Why, then, that is wondrous luck!” cried Skafloc, who had not looked to make a surprise attack. Rather than wind his horn, he signalled with his blade. Not he nor the elves gave further thought to the dead men, who were merely human.

The crews sprang into the shallows and dragged their ships ashore. A few stayed there on guard, while Skafloc led the main troop along the inland trail.

Through a gorge they went, where mortals would have been blind, and came out on to a mountainside where snow glittered dazzling and peaks raked the sky. Wind shrieked and cuffed them with cold hands. Ragged clouds blew across the moon’s face, as if it blinked. Lithe as cats, the elves made their way over cliff and crag, up the mountain towards the cave mouth that gaped in its side.

Nearing, they saw a band of trolls come out, belike the coast watchers bound back to their posts. Skafloc’s cry rose over the wind: “Swiftly, and we can cut them off!”

Pantherish he sprang, the elves beside and around him. Ere the trolls were fully aware, metal howled in their ears, and that was the last sound they heard. But of course the noise reached inside, and when Skafloc’s raiders entered, they met growing opposition.

Din of weapons was redoubled in the descending tunnel. The war-shouts of the elves and the booming cries of the trolls rolled in broken echoes. Skafloc and Goltan led the way shield by shield, hewing over the rims. Mostly un-unarmoured and all slower-moving, troll after troll fell beneath those sharp edges.

A warrior thrust at Skafloc with a spear like a young tree. He caught that thrust on his shield, forced the shaft aside, closed in and smote. His iron blade burned through the shoulder to the heart. Glimpsewise he saw a club smashing at him from the left. It could have crushed his helmet and the head beneath. He got his shield in the way. The blow rang on its sheet-iron facing and the shock sent him staggering back. He fell to one knee, but freed his sword and cut a leg out from under the troll. Rising, he swept his glaive in a whistling, twisting curve, and another troll’s head leaped from its neck.

At last the retreating defenders came into a large cave. The elves cried their glee at having a space big enough for their best kind of fighting. Longbows came off backs and the grey-feathered arrows stormed up from behind Skafloc’s front line and down again among the trolls. As the defenders gave way and their own ranks broke, single combats scattered across the floor. One troll without mail was seldom a match for that leaping, dodging, hewing, stabbing blur which was an elf.

Some of the attackers did die, with shattered skulls or ripped hides, and no few took wounds. But for the trolls it was a slaughter. Nonetheless the royal guards stood fast in the archway that led to their master’s feasting hall. When the elves, having finished off everyone else, charged, too few of them could get at that grim line, and there was too little room for their speed and skill to count. They recoiled in confusion, leaving a number of dead and hurt. Nor would missiles be much use against that wall of shields, which were made to cover from just below the eyes to just below the knee.

But Skafloc saw how high the arch was above them. “Let me show you the way!” he shouted. Streaming green troll blood and some of his own red, with dented helm and shield and nicked sword, he laughed as he scabbarded the blade and took a spear. Dashing forward, he pole-vaulted over the foemen’s heads into the hall beyond.

Falling, he drew sword again. The landing, with the weight he bore, shocked in his soles and thudded in the ground. He whirled about. The guardsmen having been on duty, were well armoured, but legs and parts of arms must needs be bare. The iron blade brought down three trolls in as many blows.

Others turned to face him. The elves rushed on the suddenly ragged line-broke it asunder and poured into the troll-king’s hall!

Skafloc saw Illrede at the far end, clutching a spear but rocklike in his high seat. The man plunged towards him. Two trolls who sought to stop Skafloc sank beneath his weapon. Then a man trod into his path.

For a moment Skafloc stood stiff with astonishment, seeing his own face glare at him behind the descending axe. He got his shield up barely in time. However, the axe was not soft bronze or light alloy, it was steel itself, and not blunted by combat; whereas the shield had taken much beating. The axe struck the rim, clove wood and thin iron, and did not stop until it had laid open Skafloc’s left arm.

He tried to keep the axe caught in place while he cut from above. But the stranger sprang back, wrenching free his weapon with a strength that sent Skafloc lurching. Then he moved to the attack. Skafloc cast aside the now useless shield. Iron belled and sparked on iron. Both men wore helm and byrnie, and unshielded, the swordsman was not well matched against the greater weight of the axe. Though Skafloc knew the elven art of thrust, parry, and bind, a blade such as he bore tonight was poorly balanced for that. He made shift to defend himself, but must keep on giving way.

Then the tide of battle came between. Skafloc found himself suddenly pitted against a troll, who gave him a hard fight ere falling. Meanwhile the stranger was embroiled with elves. He cut his way through them, back to Illrede, and the remaining trolls rallied about those two. In a quick, strong push they beat a path to a rear door. Through this they went.

“After them!” roared Skafloc in battle fury.

Goltan and the other elf captains urged him back. “ ’Twould be foolhardy,” they said. “See, the door opens on lightless downward-leading caverns where we could be too easily ambushed. Best we bar it on this side instead, that Illrede call not the monsters of the inner earth up against us.”

“Aye, you are right,” said Skafloc grudgingly.

His glance swept the hall, first greedily across the riches therein, then with a measure of sorrow across the bodies of elves sprawled on the blood-slippery floor. Yet he must rejoice at how few they were beside the enemy dead. The troll wounded were being dispatched—the loudness of their groans and cries dropped fast-while the elven hurt were being roughly bandaged until healing magic could be worked for them back home.

Suddenly Skafloc’s eyes came to rest in an amazement hardly less than when he had seen his own shape among the foe. Two mortal women lay bound and gagged near the high seat.

He strode over. They shrank from his knife when he drew it. “Why, I am only going to free you,” he said in the Danish tongue, and did. They rose, shuddering, clinging to each other. He was surprised afresh when the tall fair-haired one stammered through tears: “B-b-backbiter and murderer, what new evil do you wreak?”

“Why—” Skafloc checked his bewilderment. Though he had learned the speech of men, he had had little use of it and spoke it with the singing note of the elf tongue. “Why, what have I done?” He smiled. “Unless you like being tied up.”

“Mock us not, Valgard, on top of everything else,” said the golden-haired maiden.

“I am not Valgard,” Skafloc said, “nor do I know him unless he is that man whom I fought—but belike you did not see that in the crowd. I am Skafloc of Alfheim, and no friend to trolls.”

“Aye, Asgerd!” burst from the younger girl. “He cannot be Valgard. See, he is beardless, he wears different garments, he speaks strangely—”

“I know not,” mumbled Asgerd, “Is this death around us another trick? Is he making an enchantment to beguile us-? Oh, I know naught save that Erlend and our kindred are dead.” She began to sob, dry racking coughs.

“No, no!” The younger maiden clung to Skafloc’s shoulders searching his face, beaming through tears like springtime sunshine through rain. “No, stranger, you are not Valgard though you do look much like him. Your eyes are warm, your mouth knows well how to laugh-Thanks unto G—”

He covered her lips with his palm before she could finish. “Do not speak that name yet,” he said hastily. “These are also Faerie folk who cannot bear to hear it. But they will do you no harm. Rather will I see that you are taken to where-ever you wish.”

She nodded, wide-eyed. He dropped his hand and looked long at her. She was only of middle height, but each inch was one of supple slender youthful beauty gleaming through the tatters of her dress. Her locks were long and lustrous bronze-brown, sparked with red; her face was a sweet moulding of broad forehead and pertly tilted nose and wide soft mouth. Under dark brows, her long-lashed eyes were big, wide-set, bright, a grey that woke some ghostly half-memory in Skafloc’s elf-schooled mind. But he could not make out what it was, and it left him.

“Who are you?” he asked slowly.

“I am Freda Ormsdaughter from the Danelaw in England; this is my sister Asgerd,” she told him. “And you, warrior-?”

“Skafloc, Imric’s fosterling, of Alfheim’s English lands,” he answered. She shrank back, barely stopping a sign of the cross. “I tell you, do not fear me,” he said with unwonted earnestness. “Wait here while I take charge of our work.”

The elves got busy plundering Illrede’s hall. Ranging through offside rooms, they found slaves of their own race whom they freed. Finally they went outside. Near the cave mouth they found houses, sheds, and barns which they set afire. Though a strong wind still blew, the weather had mostly cleared, and flames roared bright into a star-frosted sky.

“Meseems Trollheim is nothing to fear,” said Skafloc.

“Be not too sure,” cautioned Valka the Wise. “We took them unawares. I wish I knew how big the levies have grown and how near to this stead they are camping.”

“We can find that out another time,” said Skafloc. “Now let us go back to the ships, and we can be home ere dawn.”

Asgerd and Freda had stood by, numbly watching from their witch-sighted eyes what the elves did. Strange were these tall warriors, moving like water and smoke, with never a sound of footfall but with byrnies chiming silvery through the night. Ivory pale, with thin high-boned features, beast ears and blankly glowing eyes, they were a sight of terror to mortal gaze.

Among them passed Skafloc, almost as soft-footed and graceful, seeing like a cat, speaking their eldritch tongue. Yet he was a man in his looks, and Freda, remembering the warmth of him, unlike what cool silky-skinned elf flesh had happened to brush her, felt sure he was human.

“Heathen must he be, to dwell among these creatures,” said Asgerd once.

“Well-I suppose so—but he is kind, and he saved us from-from—” Freda shuddered and wrapped more tightly about herself the cloak Skafloc had given her.

The man blew his horn for withdrawal, and the long, silent file wound its way down the mountain. Skafloc walked beside Freda, saying naught but often casting his glance upon her. She was younger than him, with a trace of endearing coltish awkwardness still in the long legs and slim-waisted body. She bore her head high, and the shining hair seemed to crackle in the frosty moonlight—but he thought it would be soft to the touch. As they came down the rugged slope he steadied her, and the little hand was engulfed in his calloused paw.

Then all at once there rang between the steeps the bull bellow of a troll horn, and another answered it and another, echoes snarling back from cliffs and blowing ragged on the wind. The elves stopped dead, ears cocked, nostrils aquiver while they searched the night for trace of their foes.

“I think they must be ahead, to cut off our retreat,” said Goltan.

“Bad is that,” said Skafloc, “but it would be worse to go blundering down the black gorge and have rocks hurled at us from above. We will make our way beside it instead of through it.”

He blew a battle call on the lur horn carried for him. Elves made the first of the great curving lurs and used them still, though men had forgotten them since the Age of Bronze. To Freda and Asgerd he said: “I fear we must fight once more. My folk will ward you if you speak not those names which hurt them. If you do, they must scatter, and trolls standing out of earshot can slay you with arrows.”

“It would not be good to die without calling on-Him above,” said Asgerd. “However, we will obey you in this.”

Skafloc laughed and laid a hand on Freda’s shoulder. “Why, how can we but win when such beauty is to be fought for?” he asked gaily.

He told off two elves to carry the girls, who could not keep up when the pace grew swift, and had others form a shield-burg around them. Then, at the head of a wedge formation, he proceeded over the ridge towards the sea.

Lightly went the elves, springing from rock to crag, ring-mail singing and weapons agleam in the moonlight. When they saw the trolls massed black against the wan night-bridge of the gods, they raised a shout, clashed swords on shields, and ran to the fight.

But Skafloc drew a quick breath at the size of the troll force. He guessed the elves were outnumbered some six to one—and if Illrede could raise that horde this fast, what might not his full strength be?

“Well,” he said, “we shall have to kill six trolls apiece.” The elf archers loosed their shafts. The slower trolls could not match the moon-darkening clouds which sighed again and again over them. Many sank on the spot. But as ever, most arrows rattled harmlessly off rocks, or stuck in shields, and all were soon spent.

The elves charged, and battle burst in the night. Roaring troll horns and dunting elf lurs, wolf-howling troll cries and hawk-shrieking elf calls, thunder of troll axes on elf shields and clangour of elf swords on troll helmets, stormed to the stars.

Axe and sword! Spear and club! Cloven shield and sundered helm and broken mail! Red gush of elf blood meeting cold green flow of troll’s! Auroras dancing death-dances overhead!

Two tall shapes, hardly to be told apart, loomed in the strife. Valgard’s axe and Skafloc’s sword clove bloody trails through the locked and swaying warriors. The berserker foamed with the rage that had come on him, bawled and smote. Skafloc was silent save for panting breath, but scarcely less wild.

The trolls had hemmed in the elves on every side, and in that press, where swiftness and agility counted for little, troll strength came into its own. It seemed to Skafloc that for each gaping grinning face that sank before him, two more rose out of the blood-steaming snow. He had to stand his ground, while sweat rivered off him to freeze in his breeks, and grip his new shield and strike without end.

Thus it was Valgard who came to him, mad with the berserkergang and with hatred for everything elfly-most for Imric’s fosterling. They met well-nigh breast to breast, eyes glaring into eyes through the tricky moonlight.

Skafloc’s blade clanged on Valgard’s helm and dented it. Valgard’s axe chopped splinters from Skafloc’s shield. Then Skafloc got in a sidewise cut that laid open Valgard’s cheek so that the teeth grinned forth. The berserker howled anew and laid on a thunderous hail of blows, knocking the blade aside, banging on the shield till Skafloc’s left arm was ready to drop off and blood drenched the cloth bound over the earlier wound in it.

Nonetheless he watched his chance; and when his foe stuck a leg too far forward, Skafloc hewed down deep into the calf. He might have disabled, had his edge not been blunted from use. As was, Valgard hooted and fell back. Skafloc followed. A blow as of a falling boulder smote his helm, casting him to his knees. Illrede Troll-King had loomed beside him and swung a stone-headed club. Valgard came back with axe aloft. Though his ears rang and pain was an iron band around his temples, Skafloc rolled aside. The weapon struck ground. Battle-crazed, an elf in the shield-burg took a step out of it to cut down the berserker ere he could free his axe. Illrede’s mallet hit and broke that warrior’s neck. Valgard lifted his axe and brought it down through the hole in the line, on to the elf behind. But it was into the burden he bore that the axe sank.

The shield-burg closed and moved against man and troll, who retreated from so many spears. Skafloc got back up and led them away. They left their dead behind. Illrede likewise rejoined his guardsmen. Valgard stayed where he was, alone, for the fit had passed from him.

Swaying on his feet, painted with blood, he stood over Asgerd’s body. “I did not mean that,” he said. “Indeed my axe is accursed—or is it me?” He passed a hand over his eyes, puzzledly. “Yet ... they are not my kin, are they?”

Weak after the fury, he sat down beside Asgerd. The battle moved further away from him. “Now there are only Skafloc and Freda to kill, then all the blood I once thought my own is shed,” he mumbled, stroking her heavy golden braids. “And it might be well to do it with you, Brother-slayer. ^Elfrida. too, if she still lives. I could kill-why not? She is not my mother. My mother is a great horrible thing chained in Imric’s dungeons, /Elfrida, who sang me to sleep, is not my mother—”

Ill went it with the elves, however valiantly they fought. In their van, Skafloc shouted to them, rallied and ordered and led them. His blade yelled death. No troll could stand before that whirling steel, and with his men he slowly carved a seaward way.

For a space he faltered, when Goltan fell with a spear through him. “Now I am one friend poorer,” he said, “and that is a wealth not gained back.” His voice rose anew: “Hai, Alfheim! Forward, forward!”

And so at last a remnant broke through the trolls and retreated to the beach. Valka the Wise, Flam of Orkney, Hlokkan Redlance, and other great elves fell in the rearguard. But meanwhile the rest won to their ships. Some among them, in full sight of the trolls, ran about the slope above, scattering what booty remained. This softened the attack, for Illrede would rather,get back his treasures than lose many more folk.

Enough elves were alive and somewhat hale for the under-manning of about half the ships. The rest they set alight with fire spells. Then they launched and boarded and rowed painfully out of the fjord.

Freda, huddled in the bottom of Skafloc’s dragon, saw him standing tall and bloody against the moon, making rune signs and uttering words she did not know. The wind shifted aft, became a gale, a storm, and with iron-hard sails and bow-bent masts and twanging tackle the ships leaped forward. Faster and ever faster they fled, like the spindrift, like the clouds, like dream and witchcraft and moonlight over the water. Skafloc stood in the spray-sheeting bows and sang his warlock song, unhelmed hair flying and ragged byrnie ringing, a shape out of lost sagas and worlds beyond man. Darkness came to Freda.