Poul Anderson - The Broken Sword

Orm shrugged, while tears glimmered in Ailfrida’s eyes.

They set out next dawn, many men on horseback, dog-barks coming in frost out of mouths, and scattered into the woods according to plan. Valgard went alone and afoot as was his habit. He carried a great axe for weapon and bore a helmet on his tawny mane, but otherwise in his shaggy garments he might have been a beast of prey. He snuffed the crisp air and circled about looking for spoor. At tracking he was inhumanly gifted. Erelong he found faint remnants of a trail. He grinned again and did not sound his horn, but set off at a long easy lope.

As the day wore on, he came west into thicker and older forest where his rambles had never taken him before. The sky greyed and clouds flew low over skeleton trees. Wind whirled dead leaves through the air like ghosts hurrying down hell-road, and its whine gnawed at Valgard’s nerves. He could smell a wrongness here, but having no training in magic he did not know what it was that bristled the hair on his neck.

At dusk he had gone far, and was tired and hungry and wroth at Ketil for giving him this trouble. He would have to sleep out tonight, with winter on the way, and he vowed revenge for that.

Hold—Dimly through the thickening twilight he saw a glimmer. No will-o’-the-wisp that; it was fire-shelter, unless it was a lair of outlaws. And were that the case, Valgard snarled to himself, he would have joy in killing them.

Night outraced him to the cottage. A thin wind-driven sleet stung his cheeks. Cautiously Valgard edged to a window, and peered in through a crack between the shutters.

Ketil sat glad on a bench before a leaping fire. He had a horn of ale in one hand, and the other caressed a woman on his lap.

Woman—almighty gods, what a woman! Valgard sucked a sharp breath between his teeth. He had not dreamed there could be such a woman as her who laughed on Ketil’s knees.

Valgard went to the door and beat it with the flat of his axe. It was some time before Ketil got it open and stood spear in hand to see who had come. By then the sleet was thick.

Huge and angry, Valgard filled the doorway with his shoulders. Ketil cursed, but stepped aside and let him in. Valgard stalked slowly across the floor. Water from the melting sleet dripped off him. His eyes glittered at the woman, where she crouched on the bench.

“You are not very guest-free, brother,” he said, and barked a laugh. “You leave me, who travelled many weary miles to find you, out in the storm while you play with your sweetheart.”

“I did not ask you here,” said Ketil sullenly.

“No?” Valgard was still looking at the woman. And she met his gaze, and her red mouth curved in a smile.

“You are a welcome guest,” she breathed. “Not ere this have I guested a man as big as you.”

Valgard laughed again and swung to face Ketil’s stricken stare. “Whether you asked me or not, dear brother, I will spend the night,” he said. “And since I see there is only room for two in the bed, and I have come such a long hard way, I fear me you will have to sleep in the stable.”

“Not for you!” shouted Ketil. The knuckles stood forth white where he gripped his spear. “Had it been Father or Asmund or anyone else from the garth, he had been welcome. But you, ill-wreaker and berserker that you are, will be the one to sleep in the straw.”

Valgard sneered and chopped out with his axe. It drove the spear against the lintel and split off its head. “Get out, little brother,” he bade. “Or must I throw you out?”

Blind with rage, Ketil struck him with the broken shaft. Fury flamed in Valgard. He leaped. His axe shrieked down and buried itself in Ketil’s skull.

Still beside himself, he swung about on the woman. She held out her arms to him. Valgard gathered her in and kissed her till their lips bled. She laughed aloud.

But next morning when Valgard awoke, he saw Ketil lying in a gore of clotted blood and brains, the dead eyes meeting his own, and suddenly remorse welled up in him. “What have I done?” he whispered. “I slew my own kin.”

“You killed a weaker man,” said the woman indifferently.

But Valgard stood above his brother’s body and brooded. “We had some good times together between our fights, Ketil,” he mumbled. “I remember how funny we two found a new calf that strove to use its wobbly legs, and wind in our faces and sun asparkle on waves when we went sailing, and deep draughts at Yule when storms howled about our father’s hall, and swimming and running and shouting with you, brother. Now it is over, you are a stiffened corpse and I gang on a dark road—but sleep well. Goodnight, Ketil, goodnight.”

“If you tell men of this, you will be slain,” said the woman. “That will not bring him back. And in the grave is no kissing or coupling.”

Valgard nodded. He picked up the body and bore it into the woods. He did not wish to touch the axe again, so he left it sticking in the skull when he raised a cairn over the dead man.

But when he came back to the cottage, the woman was waiting for him, and he soon forgot all else. Her beauty outshone the sun, and there was naught she did not know about the making of love.

The weather grew unrelentingly cold, until the first snow whispered down. This winter would be long.

After a week, Valgard thought it would be best if he returned home. Else others might come looking for him, and fights might break up his crews. But the woman would not come with him. “This is my place and I cannot leave it,” she said. “Come, though, whenever you will, Valgard my darling. I will always gladly greet you.”

“I will be back soon,” he vowed. He did not think of carrying her off by force, though he had done that to many before her. The free gift of herself was too precious.

At Orm’s hall he was joyously greeted by the chief, who had feared him lost too. None else was overly happy at seeing him again.

“I hunted far to the west and north,” said Valgard, “and did not find Ketil.”

“No,” replied Orm, with sorrow reborn in him, “he must be dead. We searched for days, and at last found his horse wandering riderless. I will ready the funeral feast.”

Valgard was but a brace of days among men, then he slipped into the woods anew with a promise to be back for Ketil’s grave-ale. Thoughtfully, Asmund watched him leave.

It seemed odd to the youngest brother how Valgard dodged talk of Ketil’s fate, and odder yet that he should go hunting—as he said—now that winter was on hand. There would be no bears, and other game was getting so shy that men did not care to go after it through the snow. Why had Valgard been gone that long, and why did he leave that soon?

So Asmund wondered, and at last, two days after Valgard left, he followed. It had not snowed or blown since, and the tracks could still be seen in the crisp whiteness. Asmund went alone, walking on ski through silent reaches where no life stirred but him, and the cold ate and ate into his flesh.

Three days later, Valgard returned. Folk had gathered at Orm’s garth from widely around for the grave-ale, and the feast went apace. The berserker slipped grim and close-mouthed through the crowded yard.

Ailfrida plucked at his sleeve. “Have you seen Asmund?” she asked shyly. “He went into the forest and has not come home yet.”

“No,” said Valgard shortly.

“Ill would it be to lose two tall sons in the same month and have only the worst left,” said Ailfrida and turned away from him.

At eventide the guests met in the great hall for drinking. Orm sat in his high seat with Valgard on his right. Men crowded the benches down both the long sides of that room and lifted horns to each other across the flames and smoke of the fire, where it burned in the trench between. Women went to and fro to keep those horns filled. Save for the host family, the men had grown merry with ale, and many an eye followed Orm’s two daughters through the hazed, restless red light.