Poul Anderson - The Broken Sword

He took a whip from a bracket on the wall and ran the thongs through his fingers. His eyes glittered; he wet his lips.

“I hate you,” he mouthed. He brought his face close to Imric’s. “I hate you for bringing me into the world. I hate you for stealing my heritage. I hate you for being what I can never be-nor would, cursed elf! I hate you because of your evil works. I hate you because your damned fosterling is not at hand for me and you must do instead-now!”

He lifted the whip. The imp huddled as far into a corner as he could get. Imric made no sound or movement.

When Valgard’s one arm tired, he used the other. After it was also weary, he threw down the whip and left.

The wine was working out of him; only a coldness and headache remained where it had been. As he came by a window he heard the roar of rain.

The troll-hated summer for which he had longed, thinking to lie out in green vales and beside clucking rivers, and which he had spent in futile sallies against the elves or caged between these walls—the summer was waning at last. But so was Trollheim. There was silence from Valland. The last word thence had been of a field stark with slaughter.

Would the rain never end? He shuddered at the wet breath through the window. Lightning glared blue-white and his bones shook to the thunder.

He stumbled upstairs to his chambers. The troll guard sprawled in sottish sleep-ha, were they all drunks and murderers of their own kin? Where in this stinking, brawling horde was one to whom he could open his heart?

He came to his bedroom and stood huge and stoop-shouldered in the doorway. Leea sat upright on the couch. She at least, he thought dully, she had not played the bitch like the other elf women; and she gave him comfort at times when he trembled for himself.

Lightning blazed anew. Thunder sent quiverings through the floor. Wind screamed and dashed rain against glass. Tapestries fluttered and candles flickered in a cold draught.

Valgard sat heavily down on the edge of the bed. Leea slid arms about his neck. Her gaze rested moon-cool upon him; her smile and silkiness and the odour of her were luring though somehow they had no warmth. She spoke, sweetly beneath the storm: “What have you been doing, my lord?”

“That you know,” he muttered, “and I wonder why you have never sought to keep me from it.”

“The strong do as they please to the weak.” She slipped a hand beneath his clothes, making plain what he might do to her; he paid no heed.

“Aye,” he said, and clenched his teeth. “That is a good law when one is strong. But now the trolls are breaking; for Skafloc-by every word I hear, it must be Skafloc-has come back with a weapon that carries all before it. What now is the rightful law?”

He turned to look darkly at her. “Though what I can least understand,” he said, “is the fall of the great strongholds. Even an elf army victorious in the field should have broken itself to bits against such walls. Why, some few have never been out of elf hands despite everything we could bring against them. A few others we starved out; most yielded to us with no fight, like this one. We had them fully manned, well supplied—and they were lost as soon as a troop of the Elfking’s got to them.” He shook his unkempt head. “Why?”

Seizing her slim shoulders in rough hands: “Elfheugh shall not fall. It cannot! I will hold it though the gods themselves take the field against me. Ha, I hanker for battle-naught else would so cheer me and my weary men. And we will smash them, you hear? We will fling them back and I will raise Skafloc’s head on a pike above these walls.”

“Aye, my lord,” she purred, still smiling and secret.

“I am strong,” he growled, deep in his throat. “When I was a viking, I broke men with my bare hands. And I have no fear, and I am crafty. Many victories have I won, and I will win many more.” His hands fell slackly to his lap and his eyes darkened. “But what of that?” he whispered. “Why am I so? Because Imric made me thus. He moulded me into the image of Orm’s son. I am alive for no other reason, and my strength and looks and brain are Skafloc’s.”

He climbed to his feet, gaped before him like a blind man, and screamed. “What am I but the shadow of Skafloc?”

Lightning leaped and flamed, hellfire loose in heaven. Thunder banged. Wind hooted. The rain flung itself down rivering panes. A gust within the walls blew out the candles.

Valgard swayed and groped through the lightning-raddled gloom. “I will kill him,” he mumbled. “I will bury him deep under the sea. I will kill Imric and Freda and you, Leea—everyone who knows I am not really alive, that I am a ghost conjured into flesh moulded after a living man’s—cold flesh, my hands are cold—”

The thunder-wheels rumbled down the sky. Valgard howled. “Aye, throw your hammer around up there! Make your noise while you can! I will put my cold hands about the pillars of the gods’ halls and pull them down. I will tread the world beneath my feet. I will raise storm and darkness and glaciers grinding out of the north, and ashes shall whirl in my tracks. I am Death!”

Someone beat frantically on the door, scarcely to be heard above the weather. Valgard made a beast noise and opened it. His fingers sought the neck of the troll who stood wet and weary before him.

“I will begin with you,” he said. Foam flecked his lips. The messenger struggled, but troll strength was too little to break that hold.

When he sprawled dead on the floor, the berserkergang left Valgard. Weak and trembling, he leaned against the doorjamb. “That was unwise,” he breathed.

“Perhaps he had others with him,” said Leea. She stepped out on the landing and called: “Ohe, down there! The earl wants to speak with any who lately arrived.”

A second troll, likewise spent and reeling, a bloody gash in his cheek, shambled into sight, though he did not try to climb the stairs any farther than that. “Fifteen of us set out,” he groaned. “Hru and I alone are left. The outlaws dogged us the whole way.”

“What word were you bearing?” asked Valgard. “The elves have landed in England, lord. And we heard, too, that the Irish Sidhe, led by Lugh of the Long Hand himself, are in Scotland.”

Valgard nodded his gaunt head.

Under cover of an autumn storm, Skafloc led the best of the elf warriors across the channel. He was chief of that host, for the Elfking stayed behind to command the rest in driving the last trolls from mainland Alfheim. To take England, the king warned, would be no light task; and if the trolls should repulse the invaders, Britain would be a rallying point for them, later a base for counter attack.

Skafloc shrugged. “Victory goes with my sword,” he said.

The Elfking studied him before answering: “Have a care about that weapon. Well has it served us hitherto; nevertheless it is treacherous. Sooner or later it is fated to turn on its wielder, maybe when he is most sorely needed.”

Skafloc paid scant heed to this. He did not outright wish to die—there was, after all, much to do in the world—but who knew if he would not be spared for many years yet? However that might be, he did not mean ever to try to get rid of the sword. It gave him what nothing else could. Wielding it in battle, he did not go berserk; indeed, his awareness was never more keen, his wits never more swift and sure. But he flamed upward, out of himself, no longer alone, altogether one with what he was doing and that which he did it with. So might it feel to be a god. So, in different wise, had it felt to be with Freda.

In hidden Breton bays he gathered ships, men, and horses. He slipped word to the elf chiefs in England, that they should start hosting their scattered folk. And on a night when gales cloaked the northern world, he took his fleet across the channel.