The Broken Sword

XIX

A few hours before the next night ended, after a blinding elf-gallop from the cave, they reined in their horses. Skafloc could not wait, when Alfheim was dying. The half moon rode in a cloudy sky, its wan light filtering through icicled trees to sheen on the snow. Breath smoked upwards in the still, cold air, to glimmer like ghosts that fled the lips of dying men.

“We dare go no nearer Elfheugh together.” Skafloc’s whisper sounded unnaturally loud in that quiet, in the shadowiness of that thicket which hid them. “But I can make it alone, on wolf foot, ere dawn.”

“What is your haste?” Freda clung to his arm and he tasted salt on her cheek. “Why not, at least, go by day, when they will be asleep?”

“The skinturning cannot be done in sunlight,” he told her. “And once inside the castle walls, day or night are the same; most of the trolls are as likely to be sleeping as wakeful at any hour. When I am in, there are those who can help me. I think chiefly of Leea.”

“Leea—” Freda bit her lip. “I like it not, this whole crazy doing. Have we no other way at all?”

“None that come to my mind. You, my sweet, have the hardest task-that I admit-waiting here, alone until I return.” He looked at her shadowed face as if to learn every line of it. “Remember, now, make a tent of those hides we brought, before sunrise, to shelter the horses from it. And remember I will have to come back in man shape, with the burden I shall be carrying. Thus I can go by day, safe till dusk, but slower, so I will not get here until sometime tomorrow night. Be not reckless, princess. If trolls come near, or if I am not back by the third evening, be off. Fly to the world of men and sunlight!”

“I can endure waiting,” she said tonelessly, “but to leave this place, not knowing whether you lived or—” she choked “—or died, that may be past my strength.”

Skafloc swung from his saddle into the snow, which crunched underfoot. Quickly he stripped himself naked. Shivering, he fastened the otter skin about his loins and the eagle skin over his shoulders, and flung the wolf skin cloak-like over both.

Freda dismounted too. Hungrily, they kissed. “Farewell, dearest one,” he said. “Until J bring the sword, farewell.”

He turned away, not daring to linger by the quietly crying girl, and drew the grey pelt tighter about him. He dropped on all fours and said the needful words. Then he felt his body shift and recast itself, felt his senses blurred with change. And Freda saw him alter, swiftly as if he melted, until a great wolf stood beside her with eyes glowing green in the dark.

Briefly the cold nose nuzzled her palm, and she rumpled the rough coat. He padded away.

Over the snow he went, weaving between trees and among bushes, loping faster and more tireless than a man. It was strange, being a wolf. The interplay of bone, muscle, and sinew was something else from what it had been. The air ruffled his fur. His sight was dim, flat, and colourless. But he heard every faintest sound, every sigh and whisper, the night’s huge stillness had turned murmurous-many of those tones too high for men ever to hear. And he smelled the air as if it were a living thing, uncounted subtle odours, hints and traces swirling in his nostrils. And there were sensations for which men had no words.

It was like being in a new world, a world which in every way felt different. And he himself was changed, not alone in body but in nerve and brain. His mind moved in wolfish tracks, narrower though somehow keener. He was not able in beast shape to think all the thoughts he did as a man, nor, on becoming man again, to remember all he had sensed and thought as a beast.

On and on! The night and the miles fled beneath his feet. The woods stirred with their secret life. He caught the scent of hare-frightened hare, crouched nearby with big eyes upon him—and his wolf mouth drooled in greed. But his man soul drove the gaunt grey frame ahead. An owl hooted. Trees and hills and ice-scabbarded rivers went by in a blur, the moon trudged across heaven, and still he ran.

And at last, looming against silver-tinged clouds but its towertops crusted with frosty winter stars, he saw Elfheugh. Elfheugh, Elfheugh, the lovely and fallen, now a menace bulking black across the sky!

He flattened himself on his hairy belly and slid up the hill towards those walls. Every wolf-sense reached out, searching around him ... were enemies nigh?

The snaky troll smell came to him. He lowered his tail and bared his fangs. The castle reeked of troll—and of worse, fear and pain and throttled wrath.

With his dim wolf-eyes he could not well see the top of the wall under which he crouched. He heard the guardsmen pace above him, and winded them, and trembled with the longing to rip out their throats.

Easy, easy, he told himself. There they went, they were past him, now to turn his skin again.

Already beast, he needed but to will the change. He writhed, felt the shifting and shrinking, and his brain swam. Then he beat the broad wings of the eagle and rose heavenward.

His sight was sharp now, inhumanly so; and the glory of flight, of wind and skyey endlessness, sang through every feather of him. Yet the austere eagle brain had will to refuse that magnificent drunkenness. His eyes were not an owl’s, and aloft he was a target for troll arrows.

Over the wall he went and soared across the courtyard, braking himself with the air awhistle in his pinions. He landed by the keep, in the shadow of a thickly ivied tower, and again he shuddered with change. There, otter, he waited a while.

He could not smell in this shape quite so well as a wolf, though better than a man, but his eye saw further and his ears were as good. Also, his body had a wiry alertness wherein every hair and whisker tip tingled with sensations indescribable to man; and his swiftness and suppleness, the luster of his pelt, were a joy to the vain, cocky, frolicsome otter brain.

Tense and still he lay, straining every sense. He heard startled halloos from the battlements. Someone must have had a glimpse of the eagle and he had best not dawdle here.

He slipped lithe along the wall, keeping to the shadows. An otter was too big to be safe-better had he been weasel or rat—but was the best he could do. Glad he was that Freda had brought those three magic skins. A tenderness welled up in him, but he could not stop to think about her, not yet.

A door stood ajar, and through this he sneaked. It was in the back of the building. However, he knew each corner and cranny of that labyrinth. His whiskers twitched as he snuffed the air. Though the place stank of troll, it was also heavy with the smell of sleep. In that much he was lucky. He could make out some few who moved around, but they would be easy to avoid.

He padded by the feasting hall. Trolls sprawled throughout, snoring drunkenly. The tapestries hung in rags, the furnishings were scarred and stained, and the ornaments of gold and silver and gems, the work of centuries, had been stolen. It would have been better, thought Skafloc, to be overrun by goblins. They were at least a mannered people. These filthy swine-Up the stairs towards Imric’s chambers he wound. Whoever was now earl would most likely sleep there ... and have Leea beside him.

The otter flattened against the wall. His soundless snarl showed needle teeth. His yellow eyes blazed. Around the curve he smelled troll. The earl had posted a guard and—

Like a grey thunderbolt the wolf was on the troll. Drowsy, the warrior could not know what struck until fangs closed in his throat. He fell in a clatter of mail, clawing at the beast on his breast, and thus he died.

Skanoc crouched. Blood dripped from his jaws. It had a sour taste. That had been quite a racket ... no, no sound of alarm or awareness ... the castle was so big, after all-He would have to risk the body being found ere he was away. Indeed, it almost surely would be come upon-no, wait—

Quickly, as a man, Skafloc used the dead troll’s sword to hack that throat until it could not be seen that teeth rather than blade had torn out life. They might think the guard had been slain in some drunken quarrel. They had better! The thought was grim in him while he wiped and spat the blood from his mouth.

Otter again, he raced onward. At the head of the stairs, the door to Imric’s rooms stood closed, but he knew the secret hiss and whistle that would compel the lock. Softly he gave them, nosed the door open a crack, and entered.

Two slept in Imric’s bed. If the earl awoke, that would be the end of Skafloc’s quest. He crawled on his lissome otter stomach towards the bed, and every movement seemed doomsday loud.

Reaching there, he braced himself on his hind legs. Leea’s goddess face lay on one pillow in a cloud of silvery-gold hair. Beyond her was a tawny-maned head with a countenance harsh even in slumber—but in every blunt, sinewy line it was his own.

So Valgard the evil-worker was the new earl. Barely could Skafloc hold himself from sinking wolf teeth in that throat, tearing with eagle beak at the eyes, nuzzling with otter tongue among the ripped-out guts.

But those were beast wishes. Fulfilling them would too likely make a noise and thus cost him the sword.

He touched the smoothness of Leea’s cheek with his nose. Her long lashes fluttered, and recognition flared in her eyes. Very slowly she sat up. Valgard stirred and moaned in his sleep. She froze. The berserker mumbled to himself. Skafloc caught fragments: “-changeling—the arie—O Mother, Mother!—”

Leea slid one leg to the floor. Poised on that small foot, she eased her whole body out. Its whiteness gleamed through the swirling veil of her hair. Like a shadow she slipped out of the room, through another, and into a third. Skafloc padded after. Soundlessly, she had closed every door between. “Now we can talk,” she breathed.

He stood up, man once more, and she fell into his arms with a half laugh, half sob. She kissed him until, no matter Freda, he was hotly aware of how lovely a woman he held.

She saw it, and tried to draw him towards a couch. “Skafloc,” she whispered. “My darling.”

He mastered himself. “I have no time,” he said roughly. “I am come for the broken sword which was the Aisir’s naming-gift to me.”

“You are tired.” Her hands traced the haggardness of his face. “You have been cold and hungry arid in peril of life. Let me rest you, comfort you. I have a secret room—”

“No time, no time,” he growled. “Freda waits for me in the very heart of the troll holdings. Lead me to the sword.”

“Freda.” Leea went a shade more pale. “So the mortal girl is still with you.”

“Aye, and a doughty warrior for Alfheim has she been.”

“I have not done too badly myself,” Leea said with an odd pairing of her old malicious humor and a new wistful-ness. “Already Valgard has slain Grum Troll-Earl for my sake. He is strong, but I am bending him.” She swayed closer. “He is better than a troll, he is almost you—but he is not you, Skafloc, and I weary of pretending.”

“Oh, hurry!” He shook her. “If I am caught it could be the end of Alfheim, and every minute strengthens the chance.”

She stood quiet for a space. Finally she looked away, out the broad glass window, to a world where clouds had engulfed the moon, a land silent and frozen in the dark before dawn. “Indeed,” she said. “You are right, of course. And what is better or more natural than that you should hasten back to your love-to Freda?”

She swung on him, shaken with noiseless mirth. “Do you want to know who your father was, Skafloc? Shall I tell you who you really are?”

He clamped a hand over her mouth. The old fear choked him. “No! You have heard what Tyr warned!”

“Seal my lips,” she said, “with a kiss.”

“I cannot wait—” He obeyed her. “Now can we go?”

“Cold was that kiss,” she murmured desolately. “Cold as duty ever was. Well, let us be on our way. But you are naked and unarmed. Since you cannot carry the iron sword away as a were-beast, you had best have some clothes.” She opened a chest. “Here are tunic, breeches, shoon, mantle, whatever else you like.”

He tumbled into the garments with feverish haste. Richly fur-trimmed, they must have been made over for Valgard from Imric’s, since they fitted him well. At his belt he hung a sax. Leea threw a flame-red cloak over her own nakedness. Then she led the way out, to another stair.

Down they wound and down. The well was chill and silent, but this silence was stretched near the breaking point. Once they passed a troll on watch. Skafloc’s hackles rose, and he reached for the sax at his belt. But the guard only bowed his head, taking the man for the changeling. In his outlaw life, Skafloc had let grow a full though close-cropped beard like Valgard’s.

Presently the dungeons were reached, where only widely spaced torches lit the dank gloom. Skafloc’s steps made slithery sounds down corridors whose shadows looked well-nigh solid. Leea flitted ahead, wordless.

They came at last to a place where the stone showed a lighter splash of cement in which were scratched runes. Nearby was a closed door. Leea pointed to it. “In yonder cell Imric kept the changeling-mother,” she said. “Now he is in there himself, hung by his thumbs over an undying fire. It is often Valgard’s pleasure when drunk to lash him senseless.”

Skafloc’s knuckles stood white on his sword haft. And yet, he could not help thinking at the back of his mind, was this worse than what Imric had done to the troll-woman, and to how many others? Was Freda-was the White Christ of whom she had told a little-not right in saying that wrongs only led to more wrongs and thus at last to Ragnarok; that the time was overpast when pride and vengefulness give way to love and forgiveness, which were not unmanly but in truth the hardest things a man could undertake?

Yet Imric had fostered him, and Alfheim was his land, . and what was the reason he must not know of his human birth-? He dug the tip of the sax fiercely into the wall.

A noise drifted faintly down, shouting of voice and clatter of feet. “An alarm,” breathed Leea.

“Belike they found the guard I had to kill.” Skafloc dug harder. The cement scraped slowly from the stone.

“Were you seen entering?” she demanded.

“I may have been glimpsed in eagle shape.” Skafloc’s tool snapped. He cursed and dug on with the broken blade.

“Valgard is shrewd enough, if he hears about that eagle, to think this may be no ordinary killing. If he sends men to ransack the castle, and they find us-Hurry!”

The racket above beat on their ears, less loud than the scrape of metal on stone or an ages-old dripping of water.

Skafloc got the blade into a crack and heaved. Once-twice-thrice, and the stone crashed out!

He reached into the niche beyond. His hands shook as he brought forth the sword.

Earth clung damp to the halves of the broad blade. It had been two-edged, and so huge and heavy that only the strongest of men could readily wield it. However long buried, it had not rusted, nor had the edges lost their razor sharpness. Guard, haft, and pommel shone golden, with a coiling dragon shape engraved so that they made its tail, body, and head; the bright rivets were like a hoard on which it lay. Runes that Skafloc could not read went down the dark blade. He had the feeling that the mightiest of these were hidden on the tang.

“The weapon of the gods.” He held it with awe. “The hope of Alfheim—”

“Hope?” Leea stepped back, hands raised as if to fend something off. “I wonder! Now that we have the thing, I wonder.”

“What mean you?”

“Can you not sense it? The power and hunger locked in that steel, held by those unknown runes. The sword may be from the gods, but it is not of them. There is a curse on it, Skafloc. It will bring the bane of all within its reach.” She shivered with a cold not that of the dungeon. “I think ... Skafloc, I think it were best if you walled that sword up again.”

“What other hope have we?” He wrapped the pieces in his cloak and took the bundle under one arm. “Let us flee.”

Unwillingly, Leea led him to a stair. “This will be tricky,” she said. “We can scarce avoid being seen. Let me speak for both of us.”

“No, that would be dangerous for you afterwards, unless you go off with me.”

She swung around, her face alight. “You care about me?

“Why, of course, as about the whole of Alfheim.”

“And ... Freda?”

“For her I care more than for the whole rest of the world, gods and men and Faerie together. I love her.”

Leea turned forward again. Her voice fell colourless: “I will be able to save myself. I can always tell Valgard you forced or tricked me.”

They came out on the first floor. It was a bustle of scuttling guards, uproar and confusion. “Hold!” bawled a troll when he saw them.

Leea’s countenance flared like fire-gleam off ice. “Would you halt the earl?” she asked.

“Pardon-your pardon, lord,” stammered the troll. “ ’Twas only that-I saw you but a moment ago, lord—”

They went out into the courtyard. Every nerve in Skafloc shrieked that he should run, every muscle was knotted in expectancy of the cry that would mean he was found out. Run, run! He shook with the task of walking slowly.

Few trolls were outside. The first white streaks of the hated dawn were in the east. It was very cold.

Leea stopped at the west gate and signed that it should be opened. She looked into Skafloc’s eyes with a withdrawn blind gaze.

“From here you must make your own way,” she said softly. “Know you what to do?”

“Somehow,” he answered, “I must find the giant Bolverk and make him bring it form anew for me.”

“Bolverk-evil-worker-his very name is a warning. I have begun to guess what sword this is and why no dwarf would dare reforge it.” Leea shook her head. “I know that stubborn set to your jaw, Skafloc. Not all the hosts of hell shall stop you—only death, or the loss of your will to fight. But what of your dear Freda on this quest?” She sneered the last words.

“She will come along, though I will try to persuade her to shelter.” Skafloc smiled in pride and love. The dim dawn-light touched his hair with frosty gold. “We are not to be parted.”

“No-o-o. However, as to finding the giant, who can tell you the way?”

Skafloc’s face bleakened. “It is not a good thing to do,” he said, “but I can raise a dead man. The dead know many things, and Imric taught me the charms to wring speech from diem.”

“Yet it is a desperate deed, for the dead hate that breaking of their timeless sleep, and wreak vengeance for it. Can you stand against a ghost?”

“I must try. I think my magic will be too strong for it to strike at me.”

“Perhaps not at you, but—” Leea paused before going on slyly: “That would not be as terrible a revenge anyway as what it could work through-say-Freda.”

She watched the blood drain from his cheeks and lips. Her own went whiter. “Do you care for the girl that much?” she whispered.

“Aye. More,” he said thickly. “You are right, Leea. I cannot risk it. Better Alfheim should fall than-than—”

“No, wait! I was going to give you a plan. But I would ask you one thing first.”

“Hurry, Leea, hurry!”

“Only one thing. If Freda should leave you—no, no, do not stop to tell me she won’t, I merely ask-if she should, what would you do?”

“I know not. I cannot dream of that.”

“Perhaps-win the war and come back here? Become elf again?”

“Belike. I know not. Hurry, Leea!”

She smiled her cat-smile. Her eyes rested dreamy upon him. “I was simply going to say this,” she told him, “that instead of raising just any dead man, call on those who would be glad to help you and whose own revenge you would be working. Has not Freda a whole family, slain by Valgard? Raise them, Skafloc!”

For a moment he stood moveless. Then he dropped the sword-bundle, swept Leea into his arms, and kissed her with numbing power. Grabbing anew the burden, he sprang through the gate and rushed into the forest.

Leea stared after him, fingers on her tingling lips. If she was right about what sword that was, the same thing was about to happen that had happened aforetime. She began to laugh.

Valgard learned that his likeness had been seen within the castle. His leman, looking dazed and atremble, said forlornly that, something had cast a spell on her while she slept, so that she remembered naught. But there were tracks in the snow, and the troll hounds could follow dimmer trails than this.

At sunset, the earl led his warriors on horseback in pursuit.

Freda stood in her thicket, staring through the bare moon-ghostly woods towards Elfheugh.

She was cold on this second night of her waiting, so cold that it had long since passed feeling and become like a part of herself. She had huddled in the shelter among the horses, but they were cool and elfly, not the warm sweet-smelling beasts of home. Strangely, it was the thought of Orm’s horses that brought her loneliness back to her. She felt as if she were the last living creature in a world of nothing but moonlight and snow.

She dared not weep. Skafloc, Skafloc! Lived he yet?

A rising wind blew clouds ever thicker across the sky, so that the moon seemed to flee great black dragons which swallowed it and spewed it briefly back out. The wind wailed and roared around her, whipping her garb, sinking teeth into her flesh. Hoo, hoo, it sang, blowing a sudden sheet of snowdrift before it, white under the moon, hoo, halloo, hunting you!

Hoo, hoo! echoed the troll horns. Freda stiffened. Fear went through her like a dagger. They hunted—and what game could it be save—

Soon she heard the baying of their hounds, nearer, nearer, the huge black dogs with red coals for eyes. O Skafloc! Freda stumbled forward, scarce hearing her own sobs. Skafloc!

Fresh darkness closed on her. She crashed into a bole. Wildly she beat at it, get out of the way, you thing, step aside, Skafloc needs me-Oh!

In the returned moonlight she saw a stranger. Tall he was, with a cloak tossing like wings around him. Old he was, his long hair and beard blowing wolf-grey in that hurried light; but the spear he carried could have been wielded by no mortal man. Though a wide-brimmed hat threw his face into shadow, she saw the gleam of a single eye.

She trod backward, gasping, seeking to call upon Heaven. The voice stopped her, deep, slow, a part of the wind yet somehow moving steady as a glacier: “I bring help, not harm. Would you have your man back?”

She sank dumbly to her knees. For a moment, in the blurry, wavering moonlight, she saw past drifting snow, past frozen miles, to the hill up which Skafloc fled. Weaponless he was, spent and reeling, and the hounds were on his heels. Their barking filled the sky.

The vision faded. She looked to the night shape that stood over her. “You are Odin,” she whispered, “and it is not for me to have dealings with you.”

“Nonetheless I can save your lover—and I alone would, for he is heathen.” The god’s one eye held her as if she were speared. “Will you pay my price?”

“What do you want?” she gasped.

“Hurry, the hounds are about to rend him!”

“I will give it to you—I will give it—”

He nodded. “Then swear by your own soul and everything which is holy to you, that when I come for it you will give me what is behind your girdle.”

“I swear!” she cried. Tears blinded her, the weeping of one set free. Odin could not be relentless as they said, not when he asked for such a mere token, the drug Skafloc had given her. “I swear it, lord, and may earth and Heaven alike forsake me if I do not keep my oath.”

“That is well,” he said. “Now the trolls are off on a false spoor, and Skafloc is here. Woman, remember your word!”

Darkness came back as a cloud bedecked the moon. When it had blown past, the Wanderer was gone.

Freda hardly knew that. She was clinging to her Skafloc. And he, bewildered at being snatched somehow from the jaws of the troll hounds to safety and his darling, was not too mazed to answer her kisses.