The Broken Sword

XXII

Three days later, Skafloc stood on a shore and watched Mananaan’s boat sculled forth by a leprechaun from the grotto where she was berthed. She was a small slender craft, her silvery hull seeming too frail for deep water. The mast was inlaid with ivory, the sail and tackle interwoven with dyed silk. A gallant golden image of Fand as a dancer stood on prow for figurehead.

The lady herself saw them off. Otherwise the Tuatha had said their farewells and no one was about in the cool grey mists of morning. The fog glittered like dewdrops in her braided hair, and her eyes were a brighter and deeper violet than before, as she bade Mananaan goodspeed.

“Luck be with you in your faring,” she said to him, “and may you soon return to the green hills of Erin and the golden streets of the Land of Youth. My look shall be bent seaward by day and my listening to the waves by night, for news of Mananaan’s homecoming.”

Skafloc stood apart. He thought about how he might have been seen off by Freda. Quoth he to himself:

“Let us away,” said Mananaan. He and Skafloc stepped into the boat from the small dock and raised the glowing sail. The man took the steering oar while the godling struck a chord on his harp and sang:

At his music, a strong breeze sprang up and the boat surged forth into waves cold and green that threw salt spray onto the lips. Swift as elf craft were those of Mananaan, and erelong the grey land was not to be told from grey clouds on the world’s rim.

“Meseems that finding Jotunheim will mean more than just sailing north,” said Skafloc.

“True,” replied Mananaan. “It will need certain spells. Still more will it need stout hearts and arms.”

He squinted ahead. The wind tossed his hair about the countenance that was at once majestic and merry, keen and cool. “The first phantom breath of spring goes over the lands of men,” he said. “This has been the worst winter in centuries, and I think the reason is that Jotun powers were abroad. We sail into the everlasting ice of their home.” His gaze swung back to Skafloc. “It is past time that I should voyage to the edge of creation. Am I not a king of the Ocean Sea? Yet I should not have waited so long, but gone when the Tuatha De Danaan were gods and had their full might.” He shook his head. “Even the Aisir, who are still gods, came not unscathed back from their few ventures into Jotunheim. As for us two-I know not. I know not.”

Then boldly: “But I sail where I will! There shall be no water in the Nine Worlds unploughed by the keels of Mananaan Mac Lir.”

Skafloc made no answer, wrapped as he was in himself. The boat handled like a live thing. Wind harped in the rigging and spray sheeted in a rainbowed veil about the beautiful image of Fand. The air was chill but the sun had come blindingly forth, drunk up the mists and scattered diamond dust on the waves. Those romped and shouted, under a blueness filled with scudding white clouds. The rudder sent a thrum into Skafloc’s arm. He could not but feel the freshness of this morning. Quoth he, low:

Clear the day is, coldly calling with a wind-voice to the sea, where tumbles titan play of billows. Stood you by my side now, sweetheart, on the deck-planks, life were full of laughter. (Long you for me, Freda?)

Mananaan regarded him closely. “This quest will need all that a man has to give,” he said. “Leave nothing back on shore.”

Skafloc flushed in anger. “I bade no one come who feared death,” he snapped.

“The man who has naught to live for is not the most dangerous to his foes,” said Mananaan. And then quickly he took his harp and sang one of the old war-songs of the Sidhe. Strangely did it ring in the vastness of waves and sky and wind. For a while Skafloc thought he saw cloudy hosts bound to battle, the sun aflame on plumed helmets and ranked forests of spears, banners flying and horns shouting and scythe-bladed chariot wheels rumbling over heaven.

They sailed steadily for three days and nights. Ever the wind blew behind them, and the boat rode the waves as a swallow does the air. They stood watch and watch, sleeping in their bags under the little foredeck, and lived on stockfish and cheese and hardtack and whatever else was aboard, with spells to get fresh water out of salt. Few words passed between them, for Skafloc was in no mood for chatter and Mananaan had an immortal’s satisfaction in his own thoughts. But respect and friendliness, each for the other, grew with hard work; and they joined in singing the powerful songs that got them across the marches of Jotunheim.

And swiftly went the boat. They felt the cold and gloom deepen almost by the hour as they sped north into the heart of winter.

The sun lowered until it was a far pale disc on a sullen horizon, briefly seen through hurried stormclouds. The cold grew relentless, gnawing through clothes and flesh and bone into the soul. Spray hung in icicles on the rigging, and golden Fand on the prow was clad in rime. To touch metal was to peel skin from fingers, and breath froze in the moustache.

More and more did it become a world of night, where they sailed over black, dimly silver-sparked seas between moon-ghostly mountains that were icebergs. The sky was an utter murk holding uncounted bitter-bright stars, among which leaped northern lights that brought the howe-fire back to Skafloc’s mind. Only the drone of wind and rush of sea were heard in that stupendous lifelessness.

They did not come into Jotunheim as into some kingdom on Midgard. It was just that they sailed farther than mortal ship would have gone ere sighting land, into waters that grew ever more chill and dead and pitchy, until at last they had nothing but stars and moon and shuddering aurora for light. Skafloc thought this realm could not lie on earth at all, but in strange dimensions near the edge of everything, where creation plunged back into the Gap whence it had arisen. He had the notion that this was the Sea of Death on which he sailed, outward bound from the world of the living.

Now, after those three days when they saw the sun, they lost track of time. Somehow moon and stars were wheeling awry; and there was no time in wind and waves and deepening cold. Mananaan’s spells began to fail .He had gone beyond the realm where his powers held good. Foul winds came, against which few craft other than his could have sailed. Snow and sleet blew blindingly. The boat rolled and pitched in the gales, shipped water of numbing chill, flapped her sail and fought her rudder. Icebergs loomed monstrous out of blackness, and barely did the travellers save themselves from shipwreck.

Belike the fogs were most terrible-windless, soundless grey damp that dripped and froze, cut off eyesight half an arm away, soaked through clothes to skin and ran down into boots until teeth clattered. The boat would lie moveless, rocking ever so little to unseen wavelets, and the only sounds were their muffled slap and the fog dripping from ice-sheathed tackle. Groping, cursing, shivering, Skafloc and Mananaan sought to break such weather with charms-to scant avail. They had the feeling that Powers crept through the blindness overside and stared hungrily inboard.

Then a storm might come, like as not from the wrong direction, and unease would be lost in struggle. Mast groaned, sheets ripped hands, combers brawled under rails, and the boat mounted a wave toward the raving sky merely to slide down its trough as if into hell.

Quoth Skafloc:

But he did not stop working. Mananaan, who thought a grumble betokened better health than a lament, smiled into the crazy skies.

And the time came at last when they raised land. They saw it by unwinking stars and by northern lights that leaped and flickered high over gaunt mountains and greenly flashing glaciers. Surf boomed on cliffs behind which the land climbed steeply, a dead huge world of crags and ice-fields and wind screaming over ancient snow.

Mananaan nodded. “Yonder is Jotunheim,” he said, his words already half lost in those noises. “Utgard, nigh which you say the giant bides, should by my reckoning lie to the east of here.”

“As you say,” muttered Skafloc. He had long since lost his way, nor did any elf know much more than frightened rumours about these coasts.

He felt weariness no longer, he was past that. It was as if he went on like a ship with the steering oar lashed, because there was nothing else to do and no one to care if it foundered.

But it came to him, as he stood there looking on the terrible face of Giant Land, that Freda could not be less unhappy than he. More so, perhaps; for he could lose himself in the quest of the sword and know she was safe, while she knew only that he was on a deadly search and must have little to do but think about it.

“That had not struck me before,” he whispered in astonishment, and of a sudden he felt tears freezing on his cheeks. Quoth he:

Late will I the lovely lost one be forgetting.

Ways that I must wander will be cold and lonely. Heavy is my heart now, where she sang aforetime.

Greatest of the griefs that she gave me is her sorrow.

And he fell again to brooding. Mananaan let him be, having learned it was no use trying to hasten his arousal from such fits, and the boat ran eastward on the harrying wind.

Naught seemed to stir in this waste of rock and ice, save the tumbling breakers and the snow-devils awhirl in the mountains and the flapping auroral fires. But he felt there were presences not far off. Here was the spawning ground of those who threatened the viking gods-Asa-Loki, Utgard-Loki, Hel, Fenris, Jormungandr, Garm who at the end of the world will devour the moon.

By the time Skafloc had shaken off his glumness, the boat had sailed a long ways, and Mananaan was steering dose to every fjord in search of their goal. The sea king had grown uneasy, for he could almost smell the lairs of Utgard, and not he himself cared to come near that dark town.

“Bolverk dwells in a mountain, I was told,” Skafloc said. “That would mean a cave.”

“Aye, but this cursed land is riddled with caves.”

“A big one, I should think. With signs of smithery about.”

Mananaan nodded and made for the next inlet. As he neared the sea-cliffs, Skafloc began to understand the size of them. Up they went, in such a cataract of height that he grew dizzy trying to see their tops. A few aurora-lit clouds sailed over them, and he had the feeling that those walls of rock were toppling on him-now the sides of the world fell asunder as it sank beneath the sea!

Antlike, the boat crawled under the cliffs and peered into the fjord. It ran past sight, a maze of holms and skerries and crags jutting high enough to block out stars. But Skafloc’s nostrils tingled to a faint scent borne on the wind-smoke, hot iron—and he heard the far-off banging of a hammer.

There was no need for words. Mananaan headed into the fjord. Soon the cliffs had shouldered all wind aside and the sailors must scull. They went right swiftly, but so long was the fjord that they scarce seemed to move.

Deeper grew the stillness, as if sound had frozen to death and the northlights danced on its grave. Some dry snow-flakes drifted out of the great starry sky. The cold ate and ate. It seemed to Skafloc that the quiet was that of a beast of prey waiting to pounce, with greedy eyes and switching tail. He knew somehow that he was being watched.

Slowly the boat won around the many twists and out-thrusts of the fjord, on into the stark land. Once Skafloc heard a slithering inshore, that kept pace. The wind yowled over the clifftops, so high that it might almost have been blowing between the stars. Strange was it to see the image of Fand, dancing ever farther into Jotunheim.

At last the boat came to a place where a broad rough slope cut down from a mountain whose top was crowned with the Lodestar. A glacier ran along that slope, glimmering in the uneasy half-light, to end at the water. “This looks to be our landing spot,” said Mananaan.

Something hissed from the tumbled blocks of ice piled beneath the glacier’s side.

“Methinks first is a guard to get by,” said Skafloc. He and his companion busked themselves, putting on helm and byrnie, with furs above against the tearing cold. Each took a shield on his arm and girded a sword at his waist. Skafloc had yet another sword in his gloved hand, while Mananaan bore his great spear whose head gave back what light there was in a ripple like moonglade.

The boat grounded gently on ice and shale. Skafloc could jump ashore without going into the slurried water. He drew the hull up and made fast while Mananaan stood watch, straining into the gloom beyond. Thence came a grinding sound, as of a heavy weight dragging over stones.

“Our way is dark and has an evil smell,” remarked the sea king; “however, we grow no safer by dawdling.”

He started off between and over the house-sized chunks of ice and rock. Blackness thickened until the seekers must grope ahead by what few ragged patches of stars showed between the heights. The stench waxed around them, with something altogether cold about it, and the stirring and hissing got louder.

Passing a ravine that led toward the glacier, Skafloc saw the long pale shape within. His grip tightened on the haft.

The thing slid out and towards them. Mananaan’s battle-cry rang between the steeps. He drove his spear into the looming form. “Out of the way, white worm!” he shouted.

The thing hissed and struck at him. Its coils scraped on the stones and sent them rattling. He darted aside, and as the flat head smote near, Skafloc hewed. The shock of the blow rammed back into his shoulders, and the worm turned gape-jawed on him. Barely could he see the creature in this dark, but he knew that mouth could swallow him whole.

Mananaan thrust his spear into the pallid neck. Skafloc cut again at the snout. The charnel smell made his throat seize up; he gasped for air and rained blows. A drop of blood or venom splashed on him, ate through his coat, and seared his arm.

He cursed, and hewed more strongly at the weaving head. Then he felt his sword crumple, corroded by that blood. He heard Mananaan’s spearshaft break as it went in.

Drawing their sheathed blades, he and the sea king pressed forward afresh. The worm withdrew, and they followed it up onto the glacier.

Grisly to see was the thing. Its coils writhed halfway to the peak, leprous white and thicker than a horse. The snake head swayed high above, drooling blood and poison. Mananaan’s broken spear was in one eye; the other glittered balefully down. Its tongue flickered in and out, a blur to the sight, and it hissed like sleeting gale.

Skafloc slipped on the ice. The worm hacked down at him. Yet swifter was Mananaan, to hold his shield above the fallen man and smite with his sword. That blade gashed open the puffed throat. Skafloc scrambled to his feet and swung likewise.

The worm brought a coil lashing around. Skafloc rolled aside into a snowdrift. Mananaan was caught in a loop, but ere it could crush him his glaive had slotted between two ribs.

At that the worm fled, plunged past them like a snowslide into the sea. Gasping and trembling, the wayfarers sat for a long while under the northlights before they took up their journey anew.

“Our second blades are pitted,” said Skafloc. “Best we go back for new weapons.”

“Nay, the worm might be lurking for us by the shore, or if not that, then sight of us may re-awaken its wrath,” answered Mananaan. “These arms will serve till we have the rune sword.”

They climbed slowly along the slick, mysteriously shimmering glacier. Black ahead, the mountain blotted out half the sky. Dimly, the wind brought noise of a beating hammer.

Onward they went, until hearts fluttered and lungs gasped. Often they must rest, even sleep a little, there on the back of the glacier, and it was well they had brought food along; for the ice was sharply canted and treacherous. Naught stirred, naught seemed to live in the cold, but always louder came the ringing of the hammer.

Until in the end Skafloc and Mananaan stood at the head of the glacier, halfway to the top of the mountain crowned with the Lodestar. A narrow trail, broken and boulder-strewn, hardly to be seen in the murk, went off leftward. Sheer cliffs dropped from it to whittering depths. The travellers roped themselves together and crept along it.

They came, after many falls where one saved his partner by clawing himself to the rock, out on a ledge that fronted a cave mouth. From the deeps behind rolled the sound of iron.

A great red dog was chained in the opening. It howled and flung itself at them. Skafloc half raised his sword to kill it.

“No,” said Mananaan. “I have the feeling that seeking to slay this beast would bring the worst of luck. We had best try to slip by it.”

They held their shields overlapping and went in crabwise, right arms to the rock. The hound’s weight slammed against them and its teeth dented the rims. The howling shook their skulls. Barely could they win past the reach of the chain. Now they came into lightlessness. They held hands and groped along a downward-slanting tunnel, feeling ahead for pits and often crashing into fanged stalagmites. The air was less cold than outside, but its dankness made it seem more so. They heard the noise of mighty waters and thought that this must be one of the sounding rivers that flow through hell. Louder and nearer clamoured the beat of the hammer.

Twice came a yelping that made echoes fly, and they stood braced for battle. Once they were set upon by something big and heavy, that bit chunks out of their shields. Blind in the dark, they yet made shift to slay the thing. But they never knew what shape it had had.

Soon afterwards they saw a red glow, like that star which is in the Hunter. They hastened forward and came, more slowly than they would have thought, to a vast frosty chamber. And into this they stepped.

Dimly was it lit by a wide but low forge-fire. In that light, the hue of half-clotted blood, they could make out vague gigantic things that might belong in a smithy. And at the anvil was a Jotun.

Huge he was, so tall they could scarce see his head in the reeky gloom, and so broad that he nonetheless was squat. He wore only a dragonskin apron on his hairy body, which was gnarled like an old tree bole and muscled like a snake-pit. Black hair and beard hung matted to his waist. His legs were short and bowed, the right one lame, and he was hunchbacked, bent over till his arms touched the ground.

As the seekers entered, he turned a terrible face on them, broad-nosed, wide-mouthed, scarred and seamed. Under the heavy brow ridges were twin hollownesses; his eyes had been plucked from the sockets.

His voice carried the boom and hiss of those rivers that flow through hell. “Oho, oho! For three hundred years has Bolverk toiled alone. Now the blade must be hammered out.” And he took that on which he had been working and flung it across the room. The clang when it struck flew back and forth between the walls for a long while.

Skafloc stood boldly forth, met the empty glare, and said: “I bring new work that is also old for you, Bolverk.”

“Who are you?” cried the Jotun. “Mortal man can I smell, but there is more than a little of Faerie about him. Another I can smell who is half a god, but he is not of Aisir or Vanir.” He groped around him. “I am not easy about either of you. Come closer so I can tear you apart.”

“We are on a mission you will not dare hinder,” said Mananaan.

“What is it?” Bolverk’s question rolled through the caverns until it was lost in the inner earth. Quoth Skafloc:

And he opened his wolfskin bundle and flung the broken sword clashing at the giant’s feet.

Bolverk’s hands fumbled over the pieces. “Aye,” he breathed. “Well I remember this blade. Me it was whose help Dyrin and Dvalin besought, when they must make such a sword as this to ransom themselves from Svaftlami but would also have that it be their revenge on him. We forged ice and death and storm into it, mighty runes and spells, a living will to harm.” He grinned. “Many warriors have owned this sword, because it brings victory. Naught is there on which it does not bite, nor does it ever grow dull of edge. Venom is in the steel, and wounds it gives cannot be healed by leechcraft or magic or prayer. Yet this is the curse on it: that every time it is drawn it must drink blood, and in the end, somehow, it will be the bane of him who wields it.”

He leaned forward. “Therefore,” he said slowly, “Thor broke it, long ago, which none but he in the Nine Worlds had strength to do; and it has lain forgotten in the earth ever since. But now-now, if Loki calls to arms as you say, there will be need of it.”

“I did not say that,” muttered Skafloc, “though I meant you to think I did.”

Bolverk heard him not. The Jotun stared sightlessly ahead, rapt, while his fingers stroked the sword. “So it is to end,” he whispered. “Now comes the last evening of the world, when gods and giants lay waste creation as they slay each other, when Surt scatters flame which leaps to the cracking walls of heaven, the sun blackens, earth sinks undersea, the stars fall down. It ends-my thralldom, blind beneath the mountain, ends in a blaze of fire! Aye, well will I forge the sword, mortal!”

He went to work. The clamour of it filled the cave, sparks flew and bellows gusted, and as he worked he called out spells which made the walls shudder. Skafloc and Mananaan took shelter in the tunnel beyond.

“I like this not, and wish I had never come,” said the sea king. “An evil is being waked to new life. None have named me coward, yet I will not touch that sword; nor will you, if you are wise. It will bring your weird on you.”

“What of that?” answered Skafloc moodily.

They heard the seething as the blade was quenched in venom. The fumes stung where they touched bare skin. Bolverk’s doom-song bellowed through the caverns.

“Throw not your life away for a lost love,” pleaded Mananaan. “You are young yet.”

“All men are born fey,” said Skafloc, and there the matter stood.

Time dragged-though they did not understand how the giant could be done as soon as he was, blind and without help-until he shouted: “Enter, warriors!”

They came into the bloody light. Bolverk held forth the sword. Brightly gleamed the blade, a blue tongue about whose edges little flames seemed to waver. The eyes of the dragon on the haft glittered, the gold glowed as with a shiningness of its own.

“Take it!” cried the giant.

Skafloc seized the weapon. Heavy it was, but strength to swing it flowed into him. So wondrous was the balance that it became like a part of himself. He swept it in a yelling arc, down on a rock. The stone split asunder. He shouted and whirled the blade about his head. It shone in the murk like a lightning flash.

“Ha, halloo!” Skafloc yelled. And he chanted:

Swiftly goes the sword-play! Soon the foe shall hear the wailing song of weapons. Warlock blade is thirsty! Howling in its hunger, hews it through the iron, sings in cloven skullbones, slakes itself in bloodstreams.

Bolverk’s laughter joined his. “Aye, wield it in glee,” said the Jotun. “Smite your foemen-gods, giants, mortals, it matters not. The sword is loose and the end of the world comes nigh!”

He gave the man a scabbard bedight with gold leaf. “Best you sheathe it now,” he said, “and draw it not hereafter unless you wish to kill.” He grinned. “But the sword has a way of getting drawn at the wrong time—and in the end, never fear, it will turn on you.”

“Let it strike down my enemies first,” Skafloc answered, “and I care not overly much what it does later.”

“You may ... then,” said Mananaan under his breath. Aloud: “Let us be off. Here is no place to bide.”

They left. Bolverk’s eyeless face stared after them.

When they had won out—the hound on the chain shrank whimpering aside-they set swiftly down the glacier. As they neared the bottom they heard a loud rumble and looked back. ,

Black against the stars, higher than the mountain, loomed three who strode down upon them. Mananaan said, scrambling for the boat: “I think Utgard-Loki has somehow learned of your trick and wishes not that you should fulfill whatever plans the Aisir have. Hard will it be to get quit of this land.”