The Broken Sword

XXV

In late summer the northland weather turned rainy. For days and nights on end, wind scourged the elf-hills and veiled them in lightning-blinking grey. The trolls seldom dared leave Elfheugh; bands of their homeless enemies had grown too big, well-supplied, and cunning at ambush. They slouched and slumped about, drinking, gaming, quarrelling, and drinking again. In their sullen, fearful mood, the lightest word might lead to a death-fight. Meanwhile their elf lemans had gotten so perverse that hardly a day went by without friendships broken and often lives lost over a woman.

Rumours were muttered along the dim corridors. Illrede-aye, he had fallen, and his grinning head lay in a cask of brine until battle, when it became the standard of the foe. The new King Guro could not hold the troll armies together as the old had done, and each time he made a stand he was driven back. A demon on a giant horse, with a sword and a heart from hell, led the elves to victory over twice their number.

Wendland had fallen, whispered someone, and the elves’ terrible chieftain had ringed in trolls there and spared not a one. It was said you could walk on troll corpses from end to end of that wide field.

Strongholds in Norway, Sweden, Gothland, Denmark were stormed, said another, and-somehow, though they were elf castles and built with elf skill to withstand assault-they fell as quickly as they had earlier surrendered to the trolls, and their garrisons were put to the sword. A fleet was taken in a Jutish bay and used for raids on Trollheim itself.

Allies and hirelings, such of them as survived, were falling away. A company of Shen was said to have turned on its troll companions in Gardariki and butchered them. A goblin uprising wiped out three towns—or five or a dozen-in Trollheim.

The elves were thrusting into Valland with the trolls in retreat before them ... a retreat that became a rout and finally, caught against the sea under the cromlechs and menhirs of the Old Folk, a slaughter. Tales went around the castle of that dreadful horse which trod out warriors’ lives, that weapon manyfold worse which sheared through metal as if through cloth, with never a blunting of its twin edges.

Valgard, gaunter and grimmer and curter of speech as the months wore on, sought to raise flagging spirits. “The elves have rallied,” he said. “They have gained certain powers. Well, have you never seen a man thresh about just before he dies? They spend their last strength, and it is not enough.”

But this the trolls knew: that fewer and fewer ships came from across the channel or the eastern seas, and what word they brought got worse and worse until Valgard forbade his warriors to talk freely with their crews; that the outlaw elves under Flam and Firespear grew nightly bolder, until a whole army was not safe from their sniping arrows, their swift forays on horse or by water; that the Irish Sidhe were arming as if for war; that weariness, despair, and hatred of one’s fellow spread among themselves, fed by the elf women’s sly minxiness.

Up and down the castle Valgard prowled, from its highest towers where chough and merlin nested to its deepest dungeons where toad and spider lurked, snarling, sometimes smiting and even killing in bursts of blind rage. He felt hemmed in, trapped by these misty-blue walls, by the outlaws beyond, by the waxing hosts of the Elfking, by his whole life. And naught could he do about it.

No use leading men forth. That was like fighting shadows. The slinkers would be gone; from somewhere a shaft would thunk into a troll’s back, a noose tighten around a troll’s neck, a pit with sharp stakes at the bottom open beneath a troll’s horse. Even at the table one was never sure; now and again someone died, clearly poisoned, and no bland servitor offered any clue and it might have been done by a troll with a grudge.

Cunning and patient were the elves, turning their weaknesses into strengths, biding their time. The trolls could not understand them and came slowly to fear this race they thought they had beaten.

Who were now beating them, thought Valgard bleakly. But this he kept from his men as much as possible, though he could not stop the whispers or the wrangling.

Naught could he do, save sit in Imric’s high seat draining cup after cup of fiery wine. Leea tended to him, and his beaker was never empty. He sagged in silence, eyes blurring toward blindness until he slid to the floor.

Often, however, when he was not yet too drunk to walk, he would slowly lift his great frame. Reeling a little, he made his way through the hall where the troll chiefs sprawled in spilth and vomit. He took a torch and fumbled down a rough-hewn stair. Leaning on the cold slippery wall, he got to one dungeon door and opened it.

Imric’s white body, streaked and blackened with clotted blood, glimmered in the gloom by the light of the coals below his feet. The imp tending that fire kept it ever hot, and the earl hung by his thumbs without food or drink. His belly was sunken in, his skin was taut over the arching ribs, his tongue was black, but he was an elf and this was not enough to let him die.

His slant cloudy-blue eyes rested on Valgard with the unreadable stare that, somehow, always chilled the changeling’s heart. The berserker put a grin on that fear.

“Can you guess why I have come?” he said. His voice was thick and he swayed on his feet.

No word spoke Imric. Valgard struck him in the mouth, a blow that sounded very loud in the stillness here and set him swinging to and fro. The imp shrank aside, eyes and fangs agleam in the murk.

“You know, if your brain has not shriveled in your skull,” said Valgard. “I have come before. I will come again.”

He took a whip from a bracket on the wall and ran the thongs through his fingers. His eyes glittered; he wet his lips.

“I hate you,” he mouthed. He brought his face close to Imric’s. “I hate you for bringing me into the world. I hate you for stealing my heritage. I hate you for being what I can never be-nor would, cursed elf! I hate you because of your evil works. I hate you because your damned fosterling is not at hand for me and you must do instead-now!”

He lifted the whip. The imp huddled as far into a corner as he could get. Imric made no sound or movement.

When Valgard’s one arm tired, he used the other. After it was also weary, he threw down the whip and left.

The wine was working out of him; only a coldness and headache remained where it had been. As he came by a window he heard the roar of rain.

The troll-hated summer for which he had longed, thinking to lie out in green vales and beside clucking rivers, and which he had spent in futile sallies against the elves or caged between these walls—the summer was waning at last. But so was Trollheim. There was silence from Valland. The last word thence had been of a field stark with slaughter.

Would the rain never end? He shuddered at the wet breath through the window. Lightning glared blue-white and his bones shook to the thunder.

He stumbled upstairs to his chambers. The troll guard sprawled in sottish sleep-ha, were they all drunks and murderers of their own kin? Where in this stinking, brawling horde was one to whom he could open his heart?

He came to his bedroom and stood huge and stoop-shouldered in the doorway. Leea sat upright on the couch. She at least, he thought dully, she had not played the bitch like the other elf women; and she gave him comfort at times when he trembled for himself.

Lightning blazed anew. Thunder sent quiverings through the floor. Wind screamed and dashed rain against glass. Tapestries fluttered and candles flickered in a cold draught.

Valgard sat heavily down on the edge of the bed. Leea slid arms about his neck. Her gaze rested moon-cool upon him; her smile and silkiness and the odour of her were luring though somehow they had no warmth. She spoke, sweetly beneath the storm: “What have you been doing, my lord?”

“That you know,” he muttered, “and I wonder why you have never sought to keep me from it.”

“The strong do as they please to the weak.” She slipped a hand beneath his clothes, making plain what he might do to her; he paid no heed.

“Aye,” he said, and clenched his teeth. “That is a good law when one is strong. But now the trolls are breaking; for Skafloc-by every word I hear, it must be Skafloc-has come back with a weapon that carries all before it. What now is the rightful law?”

He turned to look darkly at her. “Though what I can least understand,” he said, “is the fall of the great strongholds. Even an elf army victorious in the field should have broken itself to bits against such walls. Why, some few have never been out of elf hands despite everything we could bring against them. A few others we starved out; most yielded to us with no fight, like this one. We had them fully manned, well supplied—and they were lost as soon as a troop of the Elfking’s got to them.” He shook his unkempt head. “Why?”

Seizing her slim shoulders in rough hands: “Elfheugh shall not fall. It cannot! I will hold it though the gods themselves take the field against me. Ha, I hanker for battle-naught else would so cheer me and my weary men. And we will smash them, you hear? We will fling them back and I will raise Skafloc’s head on a pike above these walls.”

“Aye, my lord,” she purred, still smiling and secret.

“I am strong,” he growled, deep in his throat. “When I was a viking, I broke men with my bare hands. And I have no fear, and I am crafty. Many victories have I won, and I will win many more.” His hands fell slackly to his lap and his eyes darkened. “But what of that?” he whispered. “Why am I so? Because Imric made me thus. He moulded me into the image of Orm’s son. I am alive for no other reason, and my strength and looks and brain are Skafloc’s.”

He climbed to his feet, gaped before him like a blind man, and screamed. “What am I but the shadow of Skafloc?”

Lightning leaped and flamed, hellfire loose in heaven. Thunder banged. Wind hooted. The rain flung itself down rivering panes. A gust within the walls blew out the candles.

Valgard swayed and groped through the lightning-raddled gloom. “I will kill him,” he mumbled. “I will bury him deep under the sea. I will kill Imric and Freda and you, Leea—everyone who knows I am not really alive, that I am a ghost conjured into flesh moulded after a living man’s—cold flesh, my hands are cold—”

The thunder-wheels rumbled down the sky. Valgard howled. “Aye, throw your hammer around up there! Make your noise while you can! I will put my cold hands about the pillars of the gods’ halls and pull them down. I will tread the world beneath my feet. I will raise storm and darkness and glaciers grinding out of the north, and ashes shall whirl in my tracks. I am Death!”

Someone beat frantically on the door, scarcely to be heard above the weather. Valgard made a beast noise and opened it. His fingers sought the neck of the troll who stood wet and weary before him.

“I will begin with you,” he said. Foam flecked his lips. The messenger struggled, but troll strength was too little to break that hold.

When he sprawled dead on the floor, the berserkergang left Valgard. Weak and trembling, he leaned against the doorjamb. “That was unwise,” he breathed.

“Perhaps he had others with him,” said Leea. She stepped out on the landing and called: “Ohe, down there! The earl wants to speak with any who lately arrived.”

A second troll, likewise spent and reeling, a bloody gash in his cheek, shambled into sight, though he did not try to climb the stairs any farther than that. “Fifteen of us set out,” he groaned. “Hru and I alone are left. The outlaws dogged us the whole way.”

“What word were you bearing?” asked Valgard. “The elves have landed in England, lord. And we heard, too, that the Irish Sidhe, led by Lugh of the Long Hand himself, are in Scotland.”

Valgard nodded his gaunt head.