Poul Anderson - The Broken Sword

Onward they went, until hearts fluttered and lungs gasped. Often they must rest, even sleep a little, there on the back of the glacier, and it was well they had brought food along; for the ice was sharply canted and treacherous. Naught stirred, naught seemed to live in the cold, but always louder came the ringing of the hammer.

Until in the end Skafloc and Mananaan stood at the head of the glacier, halfway to the top of the mountain crowned with the Lodestar. A narrow trail, broken and boulder-strewn, hardly to be seen in the murk, went off leftward. Sheer cliffs dropped from it to whittering depths. The travellers roped themselves together and crept along it.

They came, after many falls where one saved his partner by clawing himself to the rock, out on a ledge that fronted a cave mouth. From the deeps behind rolled the sound of iron.

A great red dog was chained in the opening. It howled and flung itself at them. Skafloc half raised his sword to kill it.

“No,” said Mananaan. “I have the feeling that seeking to slay this beast would bring the worst of luck. We had best try to slip by it.”

They held their shields overlapping and went in crabwise, right arms to the rock. The hound’s weight slammed against them and its teeth dented the rims. The howling shook their skulls. Barely could they win past the reach of the chain. Now they came into lightlessness. They held hands and groped along a downward-slanting tunnel, feeling ahead for pits and often crashing into fanged stalagmites. The air was less cold than outside, but its dankness made it seem more so. They heard the noise of mighty waters and thought that this must be one of the sounding rivers that flow through hell. Louder and nearer clamoured the beat of the hammer.

Twice came a yelping that made echoes fly, and they stood braced for battle. Once they were set upon by something big and heavy, that bit chunks out of their shields. Blind in the dark, they yet made shift to slay the thing. But they never knew what shape it had had.

Soon afterwards they saw a red glow, like that star which is in the Hunter. They hastened forward and came, more slowly than they would have thought, to a vast frosty chamber. And into this they stepped.

Dimly was it lit by a wide but low forge-fire. In that light, the hue of half-clotted blood, they could make out vague gigantic things that might belong in a smithy. And at the anvil was a Jotun.

Huge he was, so tall they could scarce see his head in the reeky gloom, and so broad that he nonetheless was squat. He wore only a dragonskin apron on his hairy body, which was gnarled like an old tree bole and muscled like a snake-pit. Black hair and beard hung matted to his waist. His legs were short and bowed, the right one lame, and he was hunchbacked, bent over till his arms touched the ground.

As the seekers entered, he turned a terrible face on them, broad-nosed, wide-mouthed, scarred and seamed. Under the heavy brow ridges were twin hollownesses; his eyes had been plucked from the sockets.

His voice carried the boom and hiss of those rivers that flow through hell. “Oho, oho! For three hundred years has Bolverk toiled alone. Now the blade must be hammered out.” And he took that on which he had been working and flung it across the room. The clang when it struck flew back and forth between the walls for a long while.

Skafloc stood boldly forth, met the empty glare, and said: “I bring new work that is also old for you, Bolverk.”

“Who are you?” cried the Jotun. “Mortal man can I smell, but there is more than a little of Faerie about him. Another I can smell who is half a god, but he is not of Aisir or Vanir.” He groped around him. “I am not easy about either of you. Come closer so I can tear you apart.”

“We are on a mission you will not dare hinder,” said Mananaan.

“What is it?” Bolverk’s question rolled through the caverns until it was lost in the inner earth. Quoth Skafloc:

And he opened his wolfskin bundle and flung the broken sword clashing at the giant’s feet.

Bolverk’s hands fumbled over the pieces. “Aye,” he breathed. “Well I remember this blade. Me it was whose help Dyrin and Dvalin besought, when they must make such a sword as this to ransom themselves from Svaftlami but would also have that it be their revenge on him. We forged ice and death and storm into it, mighty runes and spells, a living will to harm.” He grinned. “Many warriors have owned this sword, because it brings victory. Naught is there on which it does not bite, nor does it ever grow dull of edge. Venom is in the steel, and wounds it gives cannot be healed by leechcraft or magic or prayer. Yet this is the curse on it: that every time it is drawn it must drink blood, and in the end, somehow, it will be the bane of him who wields it.”

He leaned forward. “Therefore,” he said slowly, “Thor broke it, long ago, which none but he in the Nine Worlds had strength to do; and it has lain forgotten in the earth ever since. But now-now, if Loki calls to arms as you say, there will be need of it.”

“I did not say that,” muttered Skafloc, “though I meant you to think I did.”

Bolverk heard him not. The Jotun stared sightlessly ahead, rapt, while his fingers stroked the sword. “So it is to end,” he whispered. “Now comes the last evening of the world, when gods and giants lay waste creation as they slay each other, when Surt scatters flame which leaps to the cracking walls of heaven, the sun blackens, earth sinks undersea, the stars fall down. It ends-my thralldom, blind beneath the mountain, ends in a blaze of fire! Aye, well will I forge the sword, mortal!”

He went to work. The clamour of it filled the cave, sparks flew and bellows gusted, and as he worked he called out spells which made the walls shudder. Skafloc and Mananaan took shelter in the tunnel beyond.

“I like this not, and wish I had never come,” said the sea king. “An evil is being waked to new life. None have named me coward, yet I will not touch that sword; nor will you, if you are wise. It will bring your weird on you.”

“What of that?” answered Skafloc moodily.

They heard the seething as the blade was quenched in venom. The fumes stung where they touched bare skin. Bolverk’s doom-song bellowed through the caverns.

“Throw not your life away for a lost love,” pleaded Mananaan. “You are young yet.”

“All men are born fey,” said Skafloc, and there the matter stood.

Time dragged-though they did not understand how the giant could be done as soon as he was, blind and without help-until he shouted: “Enter, warriors!”

They came into the bloody light. Bolverk held forth the sword. Brightly gleamed the blade, a blue tongue about whose edges little flames seemed to waver. The eyes of the dragon on the haft glittered, the gold glowed as with a shiningness of its own.

“Take it!” cried the giant.

Skafloc seized the weapon. Heavy it was, but strength to swing it flowed into him. So wondrous was the balance that it became like a part of himself. He swept it in a yelling arc, down on a rock. The stone split asunder. He shouted and whirled the blade about his head. It shone in the murk like a lightning flash.

“Ha, halloo!” Skafloc yelled. And he chanted:

Swiftly goes the sword-play! Soon the foe shall hear the wailing song of weapons. Warlock blade is thirsty! Howling in its hunger, hews it through the iron, sings in cloven skullbones, slakes itself in bloodstreams.

Bolverk’s laughter joined his. “Aye, wield it in glee,” said the Jotun. “Smite your foemen-gods, giants, mortals, it matters not. The sword is loose and the end of the world comes nigh!”