Poul Anderson - The Broken Sword

They were six, dark powerful shapes in the starlight. He puzzled them—a mortal, in clothes and mail half elven and half Sidhe, on a steed akin to theirs though even bigger and craggier. They barred his path, and one shouted forth: “In the name of Illrede Troll-King, halt!”

Skafloc spurred his stallion and drew the sword as he lunged ahead. The blade flared hell-blue in the night. He rode full tilt in among that squad, and clove a helmet and skull and lopped another off ere the trolls were aware of it.

Then one struck at Skafloc from the left with a club, another from the right with an axe. Guiding horse with knees, he held shield between him and the first. His sword leaped to meet the second, tearing through the axe haft and the breast behind. Slewing the glaive about, Skafloc split the troll on his left from shoulder to waist. He plucked with one finger at the reins. His monster horse reared and struck out with forefeet that crunched the skull of the fifth troll.

The last screamed and sought to flee. Skafloc threw his sword in a gleaming bolt that went in the troll’s back and came out of his breast.

Thereafter he rode on, seeking the beleaguered Elfking. Near dawn he halted by a river for a short sleep.

He woke to the rustle of leaves and a faint shiver in the ground. Two trolls were stealing on him. He sprang to his feet, drawing sword though with no time to busk himself otherwise. They rushed. Through the shield and shoulder and heart of the first he hewed. At once he raised his dripping blade and the second troll could not stop fast enough to keep from spitting himself on it. Against that hard shock Skafloc held steady, braced by the unearthly strength that flowed from his weapon.

“This was nigh too easy,” he said; “but no doubt better sport will come along.”

He rode on through the day. About noon he found a cave where several trolls lay asleep. He killed them and ate their food. It mattered little to him that he was leaving a trail of corpses for anyone to follow. Let them!

Near dusk he reached the mountains. High and beautiful they reared, snowpeaks afloat in the sunset sky. He heard song of waterfalls and sough of pines. Strange, he thought, that such peace and loveliness was a place for slaughter. By rights, he should have been here with Freda and their love, not with a grim black horse and a sword of doom.

But so it went, so it went. And how went it for her?

He rode up the steeps and across a glacier on which his steed’s hoofs rang. Night spread across heaven, clear and cold at these heights, a rising near-full moon to turn the peaks into ghosts. A while later Skafloc heard, far and weird in the still spaces around him, the lowing of a lur horn. His heart jumped and he spurred the horse to a gallop, from crag to crag and over windy abysses. The air hooted in his ears and the echoes of iron horseshoes toned between the mountains.

Someone fought!

The harsh bray of a troll horn reached him, and soon the distance-dwarfed shout of warriors and clatter of weapons.

An arrow zipped past. He snarled and crouched low in the saddle. No time to deal with the archer; bigger game was at hand.

He burst over a ridge and looked across moonlit white up—and-down to the battlestead. Men might have seen only a peak on which whirled snow-devils, and heard only a curious note in the wind. Skafloc’s witch-sight pierced beneath. He saw the mountaintop as a high-walled, frost-bedecked castle whose towers climbed for the stars. Ringed about it on the upper slopes were the black tents of a great troll army. One pavilion was of more than ordinary size, with a dark ensign over it; and from the highest turret of the castle flew the banner of the Elfking. The overlords had met.

The trolls were storming the fortress. Like dogs they yelped under the walls, they raised ladders and sought to climb, they hid the foundations with their numbers. Many engines of war did they have, mangonels that cast fireballs over the parapets, wheeled towers trundling ahead full of armed men, rams beating on the gates, trebuchets to hurl boulders against masonry. The shouts, trampling of feet and hoofs, clash of metal, roar of drums and horns, filled the night with a storm of sound that started avalanches grinding and smoking downward and made the ice-fields ring an answer.

The elves stood on their battlements and fought the trolls off. Swords gleamed, spears and arrows darkened the moon, boiling oil gushed from cauldrons, ladders were upset—but the trolls came on, and the elves were few. This siege was drawing to an end.

Skafloc pulled out his sword. The blade hissed through the scabbard and poured moonlight over its length in cold ripples. “Hai-ah!” he shouted, spurred his horse and went down the slope before him in a cloud of snow.

He did not toil through the ravine that barred his way. At the brink, his thighs felt the stallion’s muscles bunch, and then he was soaring through the middle of the sky with stars everywhere around him. He struck the farther side with a shock that slammed his teeth together; but at once he rushed up the mountainside.

The troll camp was almost empty. Skafloc reined in, his horse pawing the wind, and leaned over to snatch a brand from a fire. The speed of his gallop whipped it to a full blaze as he rode around setting tents aflame. In a short while many were burning and sparks were spreading to the rest. Skafloc hastened on toward the castle gates, busking himself fully while he did.

As before, he carried shield on left arm, sword in right hand, and steered the horse with knees and words. Ere the trolls at the main gate were aware of him he had struck down three and his beast had trampled as many.

Then the outermost of that mass turned on him. His sword leaped and whirred and shrieked, clove with a belling through helm and hauberk, flesh and bone, to rise streaming. Never did its death-dance halt, and Skafloc mowed trolls like ripe wheat.

They surged around him, but none could touch the iron he wore and few of their blows landed. Those that did, he seldom felt-not when the sword was in his grasp!

He swung sideways and a head rolled off its shoulders. Another swing, and he had opened a horseman’s belly. A third blow shore through helm and skull and brain. A warrior on foot stabbed at him with a spear, scraping his arm; he leaned down and struck the troll to earth. But most of those afoot died under the kicks and bites of the Jotun horse.

Clang and screech of outraged metal rose beneath the moon. Blood steamed in the trampled snow, corpses wallowed in its pools. The black stallion and his rider and the blade of terror rose high over all, carving a road to the gates.

Hew, sword, hew!

Panic fell on the trolls and they scrambled to get clear. Skafloc shouted: “Hai, Alfheim! Victory-Father rides with us tonight! Sally forth, elves, come out and kill!”

A ring of fire, the burning camp, walled in the battlefield. The trolls saw and were dismayed. Also, they knew a Jotun steed and a haunted sword when they met them. What manner of being fought against Trollheim?

Skafloc rode his rearing stallion back and forth before the gate. His mail gleamed wet with blood in the light of moon and fire. His eyes flung back a blue like that of his blade. And he taunted his foes and called on the elves to sally.

The frightened whisper ran among the milling trolls: “-It is Odin, come to make war-no, he has two eyes, it is Thor-it is Loki, risen from his chains, the end of the world is nigh-it is a mortal possessed by a demon-it is Death—”

Lur horns blew, the gates swung wide, and the elves rode forth. Fewer by far than the trolls were they, but a new hope lit their haggard faces and gleamed from their eyes. At their head, on a milk-white charger, his crown aglitter in the moonlight and his hair and beard flowing hoar over byrnie and dusk-blue cloak, came the Elfking.