The Broken Sword

XXVI

Under cover of an autumn storm, Skafloc led the best of the elf warriors across the channel. He was chief of that host, for the Elfking stayed behind to command the rest in driving the last trolls from mainland Alfheim. To take England, the king warned, would be no light task; and if the trolls should repulse the invaders, Britain would be a rallying point for them, later a base for counter attack.

Skafloc shrugged. “Victory goes with my sword,” he said.

The Elfking studied him before answering: “Have a care about that weapon. Well has it served us hitherto; nevertheless it is treacherous. Sooner or later it is fated to turn on its wielder, maybe when he is most sorely needed.”

Skafloc paid scant heed to this. He did not outright wish to die—there was, after all, much to do in the world—but who knew if he would not be spared for many years yet? However that might be, he did not mean ever to try to get rid of the sword. It gave him what nothing else could. Wielding it in battle, he did not go berserk; indeed, his awareness was never more keen, his wits never more swift and sure. But he flamed upward, out of himself, no longer alone, altogether one with what he was doing and that which he did it with. So might it feel to be a god. So, in different wise, had it felt to be with Freda.

In hidden Breton bays he gathered ships, men, and horses. He slipped word to the elf chiefs in England, that they should start hosting their scattered folk. And on a night when gales cloaked the northern world, he took his fleet across the channel.

Sleet-mingled rain drove out of a sky that was black save when lightning split it open; then each last drop on the wind and grassblade on the earth stood forth starkly white. Thunder rolled and roared through the clamorous, battering air. The waves seethed white with foam and spindrift, booming out of the west and snarling far up onto every shore. Not even the elves dared raise sail; they rowed. Rain and sea dashed in their faces and drenched their garb. Blue fire crawled over the oars and the reeling dragon heads.

Out of the dark reared England. The elves pulled until it seemed their thews must snap. Surf bawled on beach’ and reef. The wind caught at the ships and sought to hurl them onto rocks or against each other. Skafloc grinned and said aloud:

From the bow of his rolling longship he saw the headland which was his goal; and for a moment longing overwhelmed him.

Quoth he:

When the fleet had done this, it found sheltered waters for landing and a small troop of elves waiting to help. The ships were grounded, dragged ashore, and made fast.

Thereafter the crews busked themselves swiftly for war. A captain said to Skafloc: “You have not told us who is to stay and guard the ships.”

“No one,” he answered. “We will need our men inland.”

“What? The trolls might come on the fleet and burn it! Then we would have no way of retreat.”

Skafloc looked about the lightning-lit strand. “For me,” he said, “there will be no retreat. I will not leave England again, alive or dead, till the trolls are driven out.”

The elves regarded him with more than a little awe. He hardly seemed a mortal, tall and iron-clad as he stood, the demon sword at his waist. Wolf-greenish lights flickered far back in the ice blue of his eyes. The elves thought he was fey. He swung into the saddle of his Jotun horse. His call struck through the wind: “Sound the lur horns. We ride after prey tonight!”

The army set off. About a third of them were mounted. The rest hoped soon to get steeds. Like French or Normans, rather than English or Danes, elves on land fought by choice as cavalry. Rain sluiced over them, fallen leaves scrunched soddenly under them, lightning cracked, the wind thrust cold with the first breath of a new winter.

After a while they heard the remote brassy bellow of troll battle-horns. The elves hefted their weapons and smiled in the flickering glare. Rain-streaming shields came onto arms and the lurs dunted again.

Skafloc rode at the head of the wedge. He felt no joy just then. The thought of more slaughter wearied and sickened him. Yet he knew it would be otherwise when he unsheathed his blade, and so he could hardly wait for battle.

The trolls appeared, a darkling mass on the great rolling down. They must have sensed the newcomers and gone out from a nearby castle, belike Alfarhoi. Their force was to be reckoned with, albeit smaller than the elves. A full half of it was mounted, and Skafloc heard someone behind him say merrily, “Here is where I get four legs under me.”

The chief on his right was less high-hearted. “We outnumber them,” he said, “but not by enough to roll over them. This would not be the first time brave warriors have beaten a bigger host.”

“I do not fear they will defeat us,” replied Skafloc; “still, it would be bad if they killed very many, for then the next fight might indeed be our last.” He scowled. “Curse it, where is the main body of England’s elves? They were to meet us erenow. Unless the messengers were caught on the way—”

The troll horns sounded to battle. Skafloc drew his sword and swung it above his head. Lightning made it flare blindingly, dripping blue fire.

“Forward!” He spurred his horse. And the glory of power surged upward in him.

Spears and arrows arced overhead, unseen and unheard in the storm. The ripping wind made it hard to aim, and so the clatter of weapons was quickly begun.

Skafloc leaned forward in his stirrups and hewed. A troll struck at him. His sword bit through both those arms. Another rode close, axe lifted. The blade screamed around into that one’s neck. A pikeman jabbed; the point glanced off Skafloc’s shield, he cut the shaft in twain, his horse trampled the troll into the mud.

Axe and sword! Clang and spark-flash! Cloven metal, rent flesh, warriors sinking to earth, devil-dance of lightning!

Through the clangour rode Skafloc, smiting, smiting. His blows shuddered in byrnie and bone, shocks that slammed back into his own shoulders. Weapons lashed at him, to be stopped by shield or shorn across by sword. The hawk-scream of his blade sounded through wind and thunder. None could stand before him, and he led his men through the troll lines and turned on the foe from the rear.

Nonetheless the trolls fought stubbornly. They re-formed into rings that held firm. From these, arrows flocked. Charging horses ran into braced spears. Elves toppled under axe and club. Where was help, where was help?

As if in answer, a horn blew—and another, and another—a war-cry, a hail of missiles, a sweep of ragged hundreds out of the night!

“Ha, Alfheim!” Firespear rode in the van. Blood streamed from his lance like the rain from his helmet. Glee shone from his face. By his side, battle-dinted axe dripping, came Flam of Orkney. And other elf chiefs were in the fight, rising as if out of the earth to cleanse it of its despoilers.

Now it became no great task to clear away the foe, and erelong only corpses kept the down. Skafloc held saddle-council with Firespear, Flam, and their fellow lords.

“We came as fast as we could,” said Firespear. “We had to stop at Runehill and secure it, since the gates stood open for us and few trolls were left. Well had the women done their work! I think they will have everything finished for us in Alfarhoi, seeing that most of its garrison is lying here.”

“Good,” nodded Skafloc. Battle past and sword sheathed, he felt a return of weariness. The storm was dying overhead in wink and grumble, the wind sank and rain washed heavily out of a lightening sky.

“The Sidhe of Erin go to war too,” Flam said. “Lugh has landed in Scotland, and Mananaan drives the trolls from the northern waters and isles.”

“Ah—he kept his word.” Skafloc showed a little cheer. “A true friend is Mananaan. He is the only god I would trust.”

“And that only because he is a half-god, stripped of most of his powers and brought down to Faerie,” muttered Firespear. “Unwise is it to have any dealings with gods ... or giants.”

“Well, we had best move, so we can be inside ere dawn,” said Flam. “Today we sleep in Alfarhoi. Oh, long since I slept in an elf burh beside an elf woman!”

Skafloc’s mouth writhed, but he did not speak.

Though fall that year had come in with such rage, it soon turned mild and stayed thus uncommonly long. It was as if the land were welcoming back her lovers of old. Some lay down with her for ever, and the maples remembered them in the colour of their leaves. Other trees rustled in a thousand hues of gold and bronze, wide across hazy hills under dreaming heaven. Squirrels bustled about, bringing in their little harvests; stags shook antlers and belled forth pride; the lonesome cry of southbound geese drifted downward with the leaves. At night the stars gleamed untellably many, so bright that it seemed one could reach up and pluck them from that crystalline blackness.

And the luck of the elves rode high. North and south, east and west, their enemies broke before them with small loss to themselves. For not only did they have dread allies, they were better supplied and got more reinforcements weekly as the Elfking cleared the mainland; and they took back their castles with ease. The trolls, on the other hand, were altogether cut off after Mananaan drew tight his blockade. Toward the end of that season, elves were heard to complain about how hard they must search to find any who could give them a fight.

There was no gladness in this for Skafloc. First, he knew what lay behind it. Once Valgard saw that his troops would be cut down piecemeal in the field, he began withdrawing them as fast as might be toward Elfheugh; knots of them stayed behind, making too much trouble for the elves to get at the larger bodies. While Skafloc had no doubt he could overrun their last stand, the cost might be high.

That did not really grieve him, but it did offend a certain sense of workmanship, and he weighed different schemes for ending the matter more handily. His thinking was slower than of yore, because of the second thing which gnawed at him.

And that thing sprang from the very peace he was bringing. Pitched battles dwindled to skirmishes, to chivvyings, to naught. For days, finally weeks on end, his sword slept. Then memory awoke. He had hoped the wound within him was somewhat healed. He found that it was not. He could not say whether his long lyings awake, hurt the more, or his dreams.

In such wise did his autumn fade toward a new winter. The end of it came one night in the Danelaw, when Fire-spear-to whom Skafloc had told no more than he told anyone else, leaving them to suppose he had either grown tired of his human girl or left her among men for safekeeping-sought him out and said: “You may like to know, I was riding at dusk by a garth not far hence and saw a young woman who might well be Freda Ormsdaughter. She was great with child, though to me she looked as if she also bore sorrow.”

Skafloc rode alone through evening. The black stallion went at a walk, no faster than a mortal steed. Strewn leaves crackled under his hoofs and danced before him on a cool wind. Such of them as were left on the boughs were still bright, as if to make a crown for his rider. Twilight closed hazily in as he went through woods that the man remembered.

Skafloc was unbowed by the weight of helmet, byrnie, or dragon-hilted sword. His hair blew long and light from under a cap coif. His face, strong blunt lines of it standing out beneath weather-darkened skin, was set unbending. Yet his heart knocked and knocked, blood beat in his ears, his hands were wet and his lips dry.

Dusk became a rustling dark. He splashed across a brook which purled icy clear, and by witch-sight spied dead leaves floating seaward like small brown boats. He heard an owl hoot and the trees creak—but underneath all was a singing silence wherein only his heart lived.

O Freda, Freda, are you really so near?

Many stars had twinkled forth when Skafloc rode into Thorkel Erlendsson’s yard. He hissed a word that made the dogs run off without barking; and the hoofs fell softly. The steading was dark save for a weak glow of firelight from under the front door of the house.

He dismounted. His knees shook. It took a surge of will for him to walk over to that door. The bolt was in place, and he stood for a moment readying the spell that would slide it back.

Thorkel was a yeoman of worth but no chieftain; so his main room was not big, and no one slept there when he did not have guests. Freda sat late by a low hearthfire as was her wont. Audun came in from the rear. His eyes were brighter than the flame-glow. “I could not sleep,” he said. “The others can-how they can!—so I put my clothes back on hoping we could talk without being stared at.”

He joined her on the bench. The light sheened ruddily from her hair. She did not go with it covered in the manner of a wife, but she had braided it. “I can hardly believe my luck,” he said. “Any day now, my father comes home and we shall be wed.”

Freda smiled. “First I must have my babe, and get well from that,” she said, “though it could likewise come any day.”

She grew grave. “And have you in truth naught against me—or him?” she asked slowly.

“How could I?” said Audun. “How often must I tell you? It is your child. That is enough for me. It will be like my own.”

He laid his arms about her.

The bolt slid free. The door opened and the night wind blew in. Freda saw the tall form limned athwart the dark. She could not speak. Rising, she crept backwards until she was stopped by the wall.

“Freda,” croaked Skafloc above the faint hiss and crackle of the fire.

It was as if an iron band tightened around her breast. She lifted her arms, but wide apart with the hands turned inward.

Like a sleepwalker, Skafloc came toward her. And she took a step toward him, and another.

“Hold!” Audun’s voice crashed across the silence. His shadow wavered huge before him. He snatched a spear that leaned in a corner, and pushed himself between those two.

“Hold ... I, I, I tell you hold!” he stammered. “Who are you? What will you?”

Skafloc traced a sign and spoke a stave. Those in the rear of the house would not awaken while he was inside. He did it without thinking, in the way that a man brushes off a fly. “Freda,” he said again.

“Who are you?” cried Audun. His tone cracked in the middle. “What will you?” He saw how those two looked at each other, and though he did not understand, he whimpered in pain.

Skafloc looked over the boy’s shoulder, hardly aware of him. “Freda,” he said. “My darling, my life. Come away with me.”

She shook her head, wrenchingly, yet still she reached for him. “I went to Jotunheim, I came back to war, thinking Time and swords might cut me loose from you,” Skafloc said raggedly. “They could not. This deathbringer I carry cannot do it, nor law nor gods nor aught that is in the Nine Worlds. Then what are they to us? Come with me, Freda.”

She bent her head. Her face was wrenched out of shape with what fought behind it. She sobbed, with hardly a noise though her ribs seemed about to be torn loose; and tears broke forth.

“You hurt her!” screamed Audun.

He stabbed unskillfully with the spear. It glanced off the broad, byrnied chest and furrowed Skafloc’s cheek. The elf lord spat like a lynx and reached for his sword.

Audun thrust again. Skafloc leaped aside, unhumanly swift. The sword went s-s-s-s-s as it rose from the scabbard. It clove the shaft over. “Get out of our way!” grasped Skafloc.

“Not while my bride lives!” Audun, beside himself with rage and terror-terror not of death but of what he had seen in Freda’s eyes-felt his own tears run. He snatched forth his dagger and lunged for Skafloc’s throat.

The sword flamed high, whistled down, and sang in bone and brain. Audun skidded across the floor and crashed into a wall, where he crumpled gruesomely limp.

Skafloc stared at the reddened blade in his hand. “I did not mean that,” he whispered. “I only wanted to beat him aside. I forgot this thing must drink each time it is drawn—”

His glance lifted to Freda. She gaped at him, shuddering, mouth stretched open as if for a scream.

“I meant it not!” he shouted. “And what does it matter? Come with me!”

She fought for a voice. It came at last, half strangled: “Go. At once. Never come back.”

“But—” He took a stiff step forward.

She stooped and picked up Audun’s dagger. It gleamed in her hand. “Get out,” she said. “Any nearer and I drive this into you.”

“I wish you would,” he answered. He stood swaying a little. The blood coursed down his gashed cheek and dripped on the floor. “Or I will slay myself if I must,” Freda told him. “Touch me, murderer, heathen, who would lie with your own sister like a beast or an elf, touch me and I will sheath the knife in my own heart. God will forgive me the lesser sin if I escape the greater.”

Rage flapped up in Skafloc. “Aye, call on your god, whine your prayers!” he said. “Is that all you are good for? You were ready to sell yourself for a meal and a roof, whoredom no matter how many priests snivel over it ... after what you vowed to me aforetime.” He lifted the sword. “Better my son die unborn than he be given to that god of yours.”

Freda stood stiff before him. “Strike if you will,” she jeered. “Boys and women and babes in the womb—are they your foes?”

He lowered the great blade, and suddenly, without cleaning it, he clashed it into the scabbard. As he did, the fury drained from him. Weakness and grief rose in its stead.

His shoulders sagged. His head bent. “Do you really disown me, then?” he said low. “The sword is accursed. Twas not I who spoke those foul things or slew that poor lad. I love you, Freda, I love you so that the whole world is bright when you are near and black when you are gone. I—like a beggar, I ask you to come back.”

“No,” she gasped. “Leave. Go away.” A scream: “I do not want to see you ever again! Go!”

He turned toward the door. His mouth trembled. “Once I asked you for a farewell kiss,” he said most quietly, “and you would not give it to me. Will you now?”

She went to Audun’s huddled form, knelt down and touched her lips to those. “My dear, my dear,” she crooned, stroked the bloody hair and closed the dulled eyes. “God take you to Him, Audun mine.”

“Then farewell,” said Skafloc. “There may come a third time when I ask you for a kiss, and that will be the last. I do not think I have long to live, nor do I care. But I love you.”

He went out, closing the door behind him against the night wind. His spells faded away. The folk of the garth were awakened by barking dogs and hoofbeats that drummed off toward the rim of the world. When they came into the front room and saw what was there, Freda told them an outlaw had tried to steal her.

In the darkness before morning her time came upon her. The child was big and her hips were narrow. Though she made scant noise, her pains were long and hard.

With a murderer about, there could be no sending after a priest at once. The women helped Freda as best they could; but Aasa’s face was grim.

“First Erlend, now Audun,” she muttered to herself. “Orm’s daughters bring no great luck.”

At daybreak men went forth to seek for spoor of the killer. They found nothing, and by sundown returned home saying that tomorrow it ought to be safe for one or two to ride to the church. Meanwhile the child had come forth, a well-shaped, lustily howling man-child whose mouth was soon hungrily at Freda’s breast. In the early evening she lay, worn out and atremble, in the offside room they had given her to herself, with her son in her arms.

She smiled down at the little body. “You are a pretty babe,” she half sang; she had not altogether come back from that shadow land where she had lately been, and nothing seemed wholly real save what she held. “You are red and wrinkled and beautiful. And so you would be to your father.”

Tears flowed, mild as a woodland spring, until her mouth was salt. “I love him,” she whispered. “God forgive me, I will always love him. And you are the last that is left of what was ours.”

The sun burned bloodily to darkness. A gibbous moon swept through clouds blown on a sharp wind. There would be storm tonight; the long fall of elven-welcome was past and winter came striding.

The garth huddled under heaven. Trees groaned around it. The noise of the sea beat loud.

Night deepened and the wind rose to a gale, driving troops of dead leaves before it. Hail rattled now and again on the roof, like night-gangers thumping their heels on the ridgepole. Freda lay wakeful.

About midnight, far away, she heard a horn. Something of its scream ran cold through her. The child cried out and she gathered him to her.

The horn sounded again, louder, nearer, through skirling wind and grinding surf. She heard hounds bay, like none that she knew. Hoofbeats rushed through the night, filling the sky with their haste. Earth rang an echo.

The Asgard’s Ride, the Wild Hunt—Freda lay in a shroud of fear. How could it be that no one else stirred?

Her babe wailed at her breast. The wind rattled the shutters.

There came a mighty tramping of hoofs in the yard. The horn sounded again, a blast to which the house shook. The clamour of hounds went around the walls, music of brass and iron.

A door led from Freda’s chamber to the outside. Someone knocked on it. The bolt flew back and the door swung wide. The wind flew around the room, billowing the cloak of the one who trod in.

Though no light burned, she could see him. He must stoop beneath the rafters. His spearhead flashed like his single eye. Wolf-grey hair and beard streamed down from under the hat that shadowed his face.

He spoke with the voice of wind and sea and the hollow sky: “Freda Ormsdaughter, I have come for that which you swore to give me.”

“Lord—” She shrank back, under no shield but a blanket.

If Skafloc were here—“Lord, my girdle is in yonder chest.”

Odin laughed in the night. “Think you I wanted a sleeping draught? No, you were to give me what lay behind; and already you bore that child.”

“No!” She hardly heard her own scream. She thrust the crying babe behind her. “No, no, no!” She sat up and snatched the crucifix they had hung over her head. “In the name of God, of Christ, I, I bid you flee!”

“I need not run from that,” said Odin, “for you swore away their help in this doing. Now give me the child!”

He thrust her aside and took the little one in the crook of his free arm. Freda crawled from the bed to crouch at his feet. “What do you want with him?” she moaned. “What will you do to him?”

The Wanderer answered from boundlessly far above her: “His weird is high and awful. Not yet is this game between Aisir and Jotuns and the new gods played out. Tyrfing still gleams on the chessboard of the world. Thor broke it lest it strike at the roots of Yggdrasil; then I brought it back and gave it to Skafloc because Bolverk, who alone could make it whole again, would never have done so for Ais or elf. The sword was needed to drive back the trolls—whom Utgard-Loki had been secretly helping—lest Alfheim be overrun by a folk who are friendly to the foemen of the gods. But Skafloc cannot be let keep the sword, for that which is in it will make him seek to wipe out the trolls altogether; and this the Jotuns dare not allow, so they would move in, and the gods would have to move against them, and the doom of the world would be at hand. Skafloc must fall, and this child whom I wove my web to have begotten and given to me must one day take up the sword and bear it to the end of its weird.”

“Skafloc die?” She clasped his feet. “Him too? Oh, no, oh, no!”

“What has he further to live for?” asked Odin coldly. “If you should go to him at Elfheugh, whither he is bound, and make whole again what was broken at the howe, he would gladly lay down his weapons. Then that which is would have no need of his death. Otherwise he is fey. The sword will kill him.”

With a swirl of his cloak, the Wild Huntsman was gone. His horn blew, his hounds yelped and howled, hoofbeats rushed away and were lost in the night. Then the only sounds were the empty whistle of wind, shout of sea, and weeping of Freda.