Poul Anderson - The Broken Sword

They spent no more than two days resting in the cave before Skafloc busked himself to go.

Freda did not weep, but she felt the unshed tears thick in her throat. “You think this is dawn for us,” she said once, the second day. “I tell you it is night.”

He looked at her, puzzled. “What mean you?”

“The sword is full of wickedness. The deed we go to do is wrong. No good can come of it.”

He laid his hands on her shoulders. “I understand you do not like making your kin travel the troublous road,” he said. “Nor do I. Yet who else among the dead will help and not harm us? Stay here, Freda, if you cannot bear it.”

“No-no, I will be at your side even at the mouth of the grave. It is not that I fear my folk. Living or dead, there is love between us; and the love is yours too, now.” Freda lowered her glance and bit her lip to halt its trembling. “Had you or I thought of this, I would have less foreboding. But Leea meant no boon in her rede.”

“Why should she wish ill on us?”

Freda shook her head and would not answer. Skafloc said slowly: “I must own that I like not altogether your meeting with Odin. It is not his way to set a low price, but what he really is after I cannot guess.”

“And the sword-Skafloc, if that broken sword is made whole once more, a dreadful power will be loose in the world. It will work unending woe.”

“For the trolls.” Skafloc straightened until his fair locks touched the smoky cave roof. His eyes flashed lightning-blue in the gloom. “There is no other road than the one we take, hard though it be. And no man outlives his weird. Best to meet it bravely face to face.”

“And we side by side.” Freda bowed her shining bronze head on his breast, and now the tears flowed heavily. “One thing do I ask, my dearest of all.”

“What is that?”

“Ride not out this eventide. Wait one day more, only one, and then we will go.” Her fingers dug into the muscles of his arms. “No longer than that, Skafloc.”

He nodded unwillingly. “Why?”

She would not say, and in their love that followed he forgot the question. But Freda remembered. Even when she held him most closely and felt his heartbeat against hers, she remembered, and it gave a terrible yearning to her kisses.

In some blind way, she knew this was their last night.

The sun rose, glimmered wanly at noon, and sank behind heavy storm-clouds scudding in from the sea. A wolf-toothed wind howled over the breakers that dashed themselves to noisy death on the strand rocks. Soon after darkfall there came for a while the far-off sound of hoofs at gallop through the sky, outrunning the wind, and a baying and yelping. Skafloc himself shivered. The Wild Hunt was out.

They mounted their elf horses, leading the other two with their goods, for they did not expect to return. Lashed across his back, Skafloc had the broken sword wrapped in a wolf skin. His elven blade was sheathed at his side, his left hand carried a spear, and both riders wore helm and byrnie under their furs.

Freda looked back at the cave mouth as they trotted off. Cold and murky it was, but they had been happy there. She pulled her eyes away and held them steadfastly forward of her.

“Ride!” shouted Skafloc, and they broke into full elf-gallop. The wind skirled and bit at them. Sleet and spindrift blew off the waters in stinging sheets, white under the flying fitful moon. The sea bellowed inward from a wild horizon, bursting on skerries and strand. When the breakers foamed back, the rattle of stones was like some ice-bound monster stirring and groaning. The night was gale and sleet and surging waves, a racket that rang to the riven driven clouds. The moon climbed higher, keeping pace with their surge and clatter of gallop along the cliffs.

Now swiftly, swiftly, best of horses, swiftly southward by the sea, spurn ice beneath your hoofs, strike sparks from rocks, gallop, gallop! Ride with the air loud in your ears and bleak in your lungs, ride through a moon-white curtain of hissing sleet, through darkness and the foeman’s land. Swiftly, ride swiftly, south to greet a dead man in his howe!

A troll horn screamed when they raced past Elfheugh harbour. Witchsight or no, they could not make out the castle, but they heard hoofbeats behind them. That thunder soon dwindled; the trolls rode not so fast, nor would they follow where their quarry went tonight.

Swiftly, swiftly, through woods where the wind skirls in icy branches, dodging between trees that claw with naked twigs-past frozen bog, over darkling hilkrest, down into the low country and across bare fields-gallop, gallop!

Freda began to know the way. The wind still drove sleet before it in these parts, but the clouds were thinning and the crooked moon cast glitter on ploughlands and paddocks locked in snow. She had been here before. She remembered this river and that darkened croft, here she had gone hunting with Ketil, there she and Asmund had fished throughout one lazy summer day, in yonder meadow had Asgerd woven chains of daisies for them-how long ago?

The tears froze on her cheeks. She felt Skafloc reach out to touch her arm, and she smiled back into his shadowy face. Her heart could scarce endure this return, but he was with her, and when they were together there was nothing they could not stand.

And now they were reining in.

Slowly on their panting, shaking horses, not saying a word but riding hand in hand, they came into what had been the garth of Orm. They saw great snowdrifts, white in the moonlight, out of which stuck charred ends of timbers. And high at the head of the bay bulked the howe.

A fire wavered over it, roaring and blazing in blue-tinged white-heatless, cheerless, leaping far aloft into the dark. Freda crossed herself, shuddering. Thus had the grave-fires of the old heathen heroes burned after sunset. Belike her unholy errand had kindled this one; it could not be Christian ground wherein Orm lay. But however far into the nameless lands of death he had wandered, he was still her father.

She could not fear the man who had ridden her on his knee and sung songs for her till the hall rang. Nonetheless she was racked with trembling.

Skafloc dismounted. He felt his own clothes drenched with sweat. Never before had he used the spells he must make tonight.

He went forward—and stopped, breath hissing between his teeth as he snatched for his sword. Black in the light of moon and fire, a shape sat moveless as if graven atop the barrow, under the howling flames. If he must fight a drow—

Freda whimpered, the voice of a lost child: “Mother.”

Skafloc took her hand. Together they climbed the barrow.

The woman who sat there, heedless of the fire, might almost have been Freda, thought Skafloc bewilderedly. She had the same pert features, the same wide-set grey eyes, the same red-sparked brown hair. But no, no ... she was older, she was hollowed out by sorrow, her cheeks were sunken, her eyes stared emptily out to sea, her hair streamed unkempt in the pie. She wore a thick fur cloak, with rags beneath, over her gaunt frame.

When Skafloc and Freda came into the light, she slowly turned her head. Her glance sought him.

“Welcome back, Valgard,” she said dully. “Here I am. You can do me no more harm. You can only give me death, which is my fondest wish.”

“Mother.” Freda sank to her knees before the woman.

Ailfrida stared at her. “I do not understand,” she said after a time. “It seems to be my little Freda—but you are dead. Valgard took you away, and you cannot have lived long.” She shook her head, smiled, and held out her arms. “It was good of you to leave your quiet grave and come to me. I have been so lonely. Come, my little dead girl, come lie on my breast and I will sing you to sleep as I did when you were but a baby.”