Poul Anderson - The Broken Sword

“I thank you,” she whispered, “next after God Who—”

“Nay, speak not holy names here,” Skafloc warned her, “for elves must flee from such things, and you are a guest of theirs. Otherwise you free to do whatever you like.”

“You are not an elf,” said Freda slowly.

“No, I am human, but raised here. I am foster son to Imric the Guileful, and feel more akin to him that to whoever my real father was.”

“How came you to save us? We had despaired—”

Skafloc told briefly of the war and his raid, then smiled afresh and said, “Better to speak of you. Who could have had so fair a daughter?”

Freda flushed, but began telling him her story. He listened without understanding what it meant. The name of Orm carried naught to him, for Imric, to break his fosterling’s human ties, had given out that the exchange of babes was made far off in the west country; furthermore, by means that he knew, he had raised Skafloc so as to kill any curiosity about parentage. As for Valgard, Freda knew naught save that he was her brother gone mad. Skafloc had sensed an inhumanness about the berserker, but with so much else to think over-especially Freda-did not search deeply into the matter. He decided that Valgard might well be possessed by a demon. The likeness to himself he supposed must be due a mirror spell; Illrede could have put one on Valgard for any of a dozen reasons. Besides, none of the elves to whom Skafloc chanced to speak of the matter had noticed it. Was that because they had been too busy staying alive, or because Skafloc had mis-seen? Imric’s fosterling shrugged off the whole question and forgot about it.

Nor did Freda ponder on the likeness of the two men, for she could never have mistaken them. Eyes and lips and play of features, gait and speech and manner and touch and thought, were so different in them that she scarcely noticed the sameness of height and bone and cast of face. She wondered fleetingly if they maybe shared a forebear-some Dane who spent a summer in England a hundred years ago—and then herself forgot about it.

For there was too much else. The drug she had taken might dull but could not hide the starkness of what had happened. As she talked, the bewilderment and the following wonder that had hitherto kept grief at bay yielded before its onrush; and she ended her tale weeping on Skafloc’s breast.

“Dead!” she cried. “Dead, all dead, all slain save Valgard and me. I ... I saw him kill Father and Asmund when Ketil was already dead, I saw Mother stretched at his feet, I saw the axe go into Asgerd-now only I am left, and I would it were me who had died instead of-Oh, Mother, Mother!”

“Be of good cheer,” said the man awkwardly. The elves had not taught him about mourning such as this. “You are unharmed, and I will seek out Valgard and revenge your kindred upon him.”

“Little good will that do. Orm’s garth is an ash heap and his blood spilled and lost, save in one gone mad and one left homeless.” She dung to him, shuddering. “Help me, Skafloc! I scorn myself ... for being afraid ... but I am. I am afraid of being this alone—”

He ruffled her hair with one hand, while the other tipped her chin back so that she looked into his eyes. “You are not alone,” he murmured, and kissed her with butterfly gentleness. Her lips quivered under his, soft and warm and salty with tears.

“Drink,” he said, and held out the wine-cup.

She took a draught, and another, and huddled a while in his arms. He comforted her as best he could, for it seemed wrong to him that she should ever know unhappiness; and he whispered certain charms that lifted woe sooner than nature does.

And she remembered that she was daughter to Orm the Strong, who beneath his gusty merriment had always been a man stern with himself. He raised his children to be likewise: “None can escape his weird; but none other can take from him the heart wherewith he meets it.”

So in the end, calm, even looking forward to the marvels that Skafloc promised her, she sat straight and told him: “Thank you for your goodness to me. I have myself back in hand now.”

He chuckled. “Then ’tis time you broke your fast,” he said.

A dress had been laid out for her, of the filmy flowing spider silk worn by elf women. Though Skafloc did her bidding and turned his back while she changed into it, she blushed hotly, for it hid little. Yet she could not help feeling pleasure at the heavy gold rings he put on her arms and the diamond-twinkling coronet he set on her locks.

They crossed the unseen floor and came into a long hallway which did not appear at once but grew like a mist about them into solidity. Shining colonnades lined the marble walls, and the richly hued figurings of rugs and tapestries moved in slow, fantastic dances.

Here and there went goblin thralls, a race halfway between elf and troll, green-skinned and squat but of not unpleasing aspect. Freda shrank against Skafloc with a small cry when a yellow demon-shape stalked past bearing a chandelier. Ahead of him scuttled a dwarf with a big shield.

“What is that?” whispered Freda.

Skafloc grinned. “One of the Cathayan Shen, whom we took captive in a raid. He is strong and makes a good slave. However, as his kind can only move in straight lines unless deflected by a wall, the dwarf must lay the shield slantwise across corners for him to rebound off like light off a mirror.”

She laughed, and he listened in wonder to the clear peal of it. Always in the mirth of the elf women was a hint of malicious mockery; Freda’s came like a morning in blossom time.

The two ate of rare viands, alone at a table where music sighed from the air around them. Quoth Skafloc:

Food is good for friendship, Fairest one, and wine-cups. Good it is to gladden gullets in the morning. But my eyes, bewildered by the sight of Freda, sate themselves on sun-bright southern maiden’s beauty.

She dropped her eyes, feeling her cheeks -burn afresh, though she could not but smile.

Remorse came upon her. “How I can know cheer so soon after my kin are dead? Broken is the tree whose branches sheltered the land, and wind blows cold across fields gone barren—” She ceased looking for words, saying merely, “We all grow poorer when good folk go.”

“Why, if they were good you need not mourn them,” said Skafloc glibly, “for they are safe from this world’s sorrows, come home to Him above. I should think, in truth, that only the sound of your weeping could trouble their bliss.”

Freda clung to his arm as they left the room. “The priest spoke about deaths unshriven—” Her free hand knuckled her eyes. “I love them, and they are gone and I mourn alone.”

Skafloc’s lips brushed her cheek. “Not while I live,” he murmured. “And you should pay no great heed to what some yokel priest has prated of. What does he know?”

They came into another chamber, whose vaulted ceiling was made dusky by its own height. Freda saw standing therein a woman whose beauty was not of mortal flesh. Beside her, the girl felt little and plain and afraid.

“You see I came back, Leea,” Skafloc hailed her in the elven tongue.

“Aye,” she replied, “with no booty, and more than half your men lost. A fruitless quest!”

“Not altogether,” Skafloc said. “More trolls fell than did elves, and the foe was left in disarray, and their captives that we freed can tell us much about them.” Arm around her waist, he drew Freda close against him. She came willingly in her dread of the cold white witch that glowered at her. “And look what a jewel I did bring back.”

“What do you want with her?” taunted Leea. “Unless your own blood is calling within you.”

“Belike.” Skafloc was unruffled.

She drew near and laid a hand on his arm, searching his face with her eyes of blue dusk and moonlight. “Skafloc,” she said urgently, “get rid of this wench. Send her home if you will not slay her.”