The Broken Sword

XXVII

Valgard stood in the topmost room of the highest tower in Elfheugh and watched the gathering of his foes. His arms were folded, his body was rock-still, and his face was as if carved in stone. Nothing but his eyes seemed altogether alive. Beside him were the other chiefs of the castle and of the broken armies which hid in this last and most powerful stronghold. Weary and downcast were they, many wounded, and they stared fearfully at the hosting of Alfheim.

On Valgard’s right, Leea shimmered in the rays that struck through the unglazed windows from a sinking moon. Thence also came the breeze that blew her spidery gown and pale hair about her. A half smile was on her lips and her eyes shone twilight blue.

Below Elfheugh’s walls, the slopes lay white with rime and moonlight. There moved the elf army. Weapons rattled, ringmail chimed, lur horns lowed, horses stamped ringingly on the frosty earth. Shields flung back the moonbeams, and the heads of spears and axes gleamed cold under the stars. The elves were setting up their camps; tents ringed the castle and fires blossomed ruddy. To and fro flitted the shadowy forms of the warriors.

A rumble rolled through the hills. Into sight came a war chariot, bright almost as a sun. Flames flickered about the swords on its hubs. Four huge white horses drew it, arching their silken-maned heads and snorting like storm winds. He who stood spear-armed behind the driver towered over all others. Dark locks blew about a countenance of majesty and grimness. The eyes burned with a light of their own.

A troll said unsteadily: “That is Lugh of the Long Hand. He led the Tuatha De Danaan against us. He reaped us like wheat. The Scottish ravens darkened the earth, too gorged to fly, and not a hundred trolls escaped.”

Still Valgard spoke no word.

Red-cloaked, silver-byrnied, Firespear pranced his steed around the castle walls. Bright and handsome was his face, though cruel in its mockery, and his lance reached aloft as if to impale stars. “He led the outlaws,” muttered someone else. “Their arrows came from everywhere. They rose out of the night against us, and left fire and death behind them.”

Valgard stayed moveless.

In the moongladed bay, hulks of troll vessels smouldered or lay driven on to the strand and broken. Elven longships rode at anchor, gleaming with shields and weapons. “Flam of Orkney captains those, which Mananaan Mac Lir took back from us,” said a troll chief harshly. “The seas are bare of our craft. One got through, to tell us how the coasts of Trollheim are plundered and ablaze.”

Valgard might have been graven in dark stone.

The elves ashore began to raise a pavilion bigger than the others. A man rode thither on a black horse of monster size and planted his standard—a spearshaft atop which leered the shrivelling head of Illrede. The dead eyes stared straight at those in the tower.

A troll’s voice broke as he said: “That is their leader, Skafloc the Mortal. Naught can stand before him. He drove us northward like a flock of sheep, slaughtering, slaughtering. The sword he wields goes through stone and metal as if through cloth. I wonder if he is indeed a man, and not a fiend risen from hell.”

Valgard stirred. “I know him,” he said softly. “And I mean to slay him.”

“Lord, you cannot. That weapon of his—”

“Be still!” Valgard turned to rake the troll with his eyes and lash them with his words. “Fools, cowards, knaves! Let any who fear to fight go out to yon butcher. He will not spare you, but you will die quickly. As for me, I am going to break him, here at Elfheugh.” His tones deepened, rolling like those war-wheels below: “This is the last troll stronghold in Britain. How the others were lost, we know not. Our folk have only seen elf banners flying over them as they retreated hither. But we do know that this castle, which never yet fell to storm, is now packed with warriors to a number greater than that outside. It is bastioned alike against magic and open assault. Naught but our own cravenness can take it from us.”

He hefted the great axe that never left him. “They will pitch their camp tonight and do no more. Soon comes dawn. Tomorrow night they may begin siege, more likely storm. If it is storm, we will cast it back and sally forth in pursuit. Otherwise we will make the attack ourselves, having the fortress behind us for withdrawal should things go wrong.”

The teeth gleamed in his beard. “But I think we will carry them before us. We are more than they, and man for man stronger. Skafloc and I will seek each other out; there is no love between us twain. And I will kill him and get his victorious sword.”

He stopped. The lord from Scotland asked: “And what of the Sidhe?”

“They are not all-powerful,” snapped Valgard. “Once we have mowed enough elves to make it plain their cause is doomed, the Sidhe will handsel peace. Then England will be a troll realm, guarding the homeland from attack until we have gathered might to fare afresh against the Elfking.”

His darkling gaze slanted down to meet Illrede’s. “And I,” he muttered, “will sit on your throne. But what use is that? What use is anything?”

Some time after the noise in the night had ended, a housecarle plucked up the heart to leave his bed, light a lamp from the hearth-coals, and search out how it stood in Thorkel Erlendsson’s home. He found the outer door open in the room of Freda Ormsdaughter, her child gone, and she lying swooned and bleeding on the threshold. He carried her back. Thereafter she tossed in a fever, crying out things which caused the priest, when he came, to shake his head and cross himself.

None could get sense out of her. Twice in the following days she tried to slip away, and each time someone saw her and led her back. She had no strength to fight them.

But there came the night when she awoke alone, her mind clear—or so she believed—and a little health returned to her. She lay for a while making plans. Then she crept from her bed, clenching her jaws lest teeth clatter in the cold, and found the chest where her clothes lay. Fumbling in the dark, she put on a woolen gown and long, hooded cloak; she carried shoes in hand and went in stockinged feet to the kitchen for bread and cheese to take with her.

On the way back through her room, she stopped to kiss the crucifix above the bed. “Forgive me if You can,” she whispered, “that I love him more than You. Evil am I, but the sin is mine, not his.”

She went out beneath the stars. They were very many, unwinking and sharp. The night was quiet, save where frost crackled under her feet. The cold bit at her. She walked toward the stable.

The castle remained dusky and still while day waned toward sunset. Leea put her hands about Valgard’s arm, where it was thrown across her bosom. Slowly, carefully, she lifted it and laid it on the mattress, and slid herself out on to the floor.

He turned, mumbling in his sleep. The vigour of his wakefulness was gone, leaving a skull over which a scarred hide was drawn tight, save that it sagged at eyes and chin. Leea looked down upon him. A dagger from off a table sheened in her grasp.

Easy to slash his throat—No, too much depended on her. If she should make a slip—and he had a werewolf’s alertness, even when asleep—everything might yet be lost. She turned away, no louder than a questing shadow, drew gown and girdle over her nakedness, and left the earl’s chambers. In her right hand she held the knife, in her left the castle keys, lifted from the hiding place she had suggested to Valgard.

She passed another elf woman on the stair. This one carried swords from the armory. Neither spoke.

The trolls tossed in uneasy slumber. Now and again Leea flitted by a watchman, who paid her no heed beyond a lickerish glance. Elf women were often sent on errands by their masters.

Down into the dungeons she went. She came to the cell door behind which was Imric, and undid the triple lock.

The imp stared at her through the restlessly reddened dark. Leea was on him in a single pounce. His wings rattled, but ere he could cry out he was flopping with his gullet slit across.

Leea scattered the fire. Reaching up, she cut the ropes that bound Imric. He fell heavily into her arms and lay corpse-like when she had lowered him to the floor. She carved healing runes on bits of the charred woods and put them under his tongue, on his eyes and burnt feet, on his lame hands. She whispered spells. The flesh writhed as it grew back. Imric gasped with pain but made no other sound.

Leea put certain keys off the ring beside him. “When you have recovered,” she said low, “free the elf captives. They have been placed in the dungeons for safety’s sake. Weapons will be hidden in the old wellhouse behind the keep. Do not go after them until the fighting is at a peak.”

“Good,” he muttered out of his parched throat. “Also I will get water and wine and a haunch of meat ... and everything else the trolls owe to me.” The gleam in his eyes came near to frightening Leea herself.

On soundless bare feet, she followed an underground passage to a tower for astrologers, now unused, which overlooked the outer walls on the east side. Up the stairs she wound until she stood among the great brass and crystal instruments. From there she stepped forth onto the encircling balcony. Though she was shaded, the sinking sun well-nigh blinded her with glare and stabbed her with rays of a more terrible, invisible light. She barely saw one who stood tall and brightly byrnied outside the wall, as had been asked in the message which a bat carried for her through the last dusk.

She could not tell who it was. A warrior of the Sidhe, belike, though maybe—her heart stumbled—maybe Skafloc himself.

She leaned over the rail and flung the ring of keys upward and outward in a glittering arc. It looped on his spear; and those were the keys to unlock and unbolt the castle gates.

Leea hurried back into grateful dimness. Like a skimming bird she raced for the earl’s chambers. Hardly had she doffed her clothes and gotten back into bed than Valgard blinked awake.

He clambered to his feet and peered out the dusking window. “Almost sundown,” he said. “Time to arm for battle.”

Taking a horn off the wall, he opened the door to the stairs and blew a long-blast. Watchmen who heard it passed the signal on, down and down the reaches of the castle ... not knowing it was the call for every elf woman who was able to plunge a knife into the heart of the troll who had her. Freda kept fainting, and rousing in a whirl of red-spattered darkness just as she was about to fall off her horse. It was pain, swordlike through her half-healed body, that brought her back to awareness, and she thanked it with dry lips.

She had taken mount and remount, and flogged them on unmercifully. Hills and trees wavered past, like stones seen through a swiftly running river. Often they struck her as unreal, things of dream; nothing was real except the tumult that filled her head.

She remembered her horse stumbling once and throwing her into a brook. When she rode on, the water froze in her dress and hair.

Many eternities later, when the sun was again sinking as red as the blood in her trail, her second horse fell. The first had already died; nor did this one get up. She took to her feet, crashing into trees because her eyes could not place them, pushing through bushes whose twigs clawed at her.

Ever more high and loud rose the clamour within her. She could not think who she was, nor care. Nothing mattered save that she keep moving north toward Elfheugh.