Poul Anderson - The Broken Sword

Rage flapped up in Skafloc. “Aye, call on your god, whine your prayers!” he said. “Is that all you are good for? You were ready to sell yourself for a meal and a roof, whoredom no matter how many priests snivel over it ... after what you vowed to me aforetime.” He lifted the sword. “Better my son die unborn than he be given to that god of yours.”

Freda stood stiff before him. “Strike if you will,” she jeered. “Boys and women and babes in the womb—are they your foes?”

He lowered the great blade, and suddenly, without cleaning it, he clashed it into the scabbard. As he did, the fury drained from him. Weakness and grief rose in its stead.

His shoulders sagged. His head bent. “Do you really disown me, then?” he said low. “The sword is accursed. Twas not I who spoke those foul things or slew that poor lad. I love you, Freda, I love you so that the whole world is bright when you are near and black when you are gone. I—like a beggar, I ask you to come back.”

“No,” she gasped. “Leave. Go away.” A scream: “I do not want to see you ever again! Go!”

He turned toward the door. His mouth trembled. “Once I asked you for a farewell kiss,” he said most quietly, “and you would not give it to me. Will you now?”

She went to Audun’s huddled form, knelt down and touched her lips to those. “My dear, my dear,” she crooned, stroked the bloody hair and closed the dulled eyes. “God take you to Him, Audun mine.”

“Then farewell,” said Skafloc. “There may come a third time when I ask you for a kiss, and that will be the last. I do not think I have long to live, nor do I care. But I love you.”

He went out, closing the door behind him against the night wind. His spells faded away. The folk of the garth were awakened by barking dogs and hoofbeats that drummed off toward the rim of the world. When they came into the front room and saw what was there, Freda told them an outlaw had tried to steal her.

In the darkness before morning her time came upon her. The child was big and her hips were narrow. Though she made scant noise, her pains were long and hard.

With a murderer about, there could be no sending after a priest at once. The women helped Freda as best they could; but Aasa’s face was grim.

“First Erlend, now Audun,” she muttered to herself. “Orm’s daughters bring no great luck.”

At daybreak men went forth to seek for spoor of the killer. They found nothing, and by sundown returned home saying that tomorrow it ought to be safe for one or two to ride to the church. Meanwhile the child had come forth, a well-shaped, lustily howling man-child whose mouth was soon hungrily at Freda’s breast. In the early evening she lay, worn out and atremble, in the offside room they had given her to herself, with her son in her arms.

She smiled down at the little body. “You are a pretty babe,” she half sang; she had not altogether come back from that shadow land where she had lately been, and nothing seemed wholly real save what she held. “You are red and wrinkled and beautiful. And so you would be to your father.”

Tears flowed, mild as a woodland spring, until her mouth was salt. “I love him,” she whispered. “God forgive me, I will always love him. And you are the last that is left of what was ours.”

The sun burned bloodily to darkness. A gibbous moon swept through clouds blown on a sharp wind. There would be storm tonight; the long fall of elven-welcome was past and winter came striding.

The garth huddled under heaven. Trees groaned around it. The noise of the sea beat loud.

Night deepened and the wind rose to a gale, driving troops of dead leaves before it. Hail rattled now and again on the roof, like night-gangers thumping their heels on the ridgepole. Freda lay wakeful.

About midnight, far away, she heard a horn. Something of its scream ran cold through her. The child cried out and she gathered him to her.

The horn sounded again, louder, nearer, through skirling wind and grinding surf. She heard hounds bay, like none that she knew. Hoofbeats rushed through the night, filling the sky with their haste. Earth rang an echo.

The Asgard’s Ride, the Wild Hunt—Freda lay in a shroud of fear. How could it be that no one else stirred?

Her babe wailed at her breast. The wind rattled the shutters.

There came a mighty tramping of hoofs in the yard. The horn sounded again, a blast to which the house shook. The clamour of hounds went around the walls, music of brass and iron.

A door led from Freda’s chamber to the outside. Someone knocked on it. The bolt flew back and the door swung wide. The wind flew around the room, billowing the cloak of the one who trod in.

Though no light burned, she could see him. He must stoop beneath the rafters. His spearhead flashed like his single eye. Wolf-grey hair and beard streamed down from under the hat that shadowed his face.

He spoke with the voice of wind and sea and the hollow sky: “Freda Ormsdaughter, I have come for that which you swore to give me.”

“Lord—” She shrank back, under no shield but a blanket.

If Skafloc were here—“Lord, my girdle is in yonder chest.”

Odin laughed in the night. “Think you I wanted a sleeping draught? No, you were to give me what lay behind; and already you bore that child.”

“No!” She hardly heard her own scream. She thrust the crying babe behind her. “No, no, no!” She sat up and snatched the crucifix they had hung over her head. “In the name of God, of Christ, I, I bid you flee!”

“I need not run from that,” said Odin, “for you swore away their help in this doing. Now give me the child!”

He thrust her aside and took the little one in the crook of his free arm. Freda crawled from the bed to crouch at his feet. “What do you want with him?” she moaned. “What will you do to him?”

The Wanderer answered from boundlessly far above her: “His weird is high and awful. Not yet is this game between Aisir and Jotuns and the new gods played out. Tyrfing still gleams on the chessboard of the world. Thor broke it lest it strike at the roots of Yggdrasil; then I brought it back and gave it to Skafloc because Bolverk, who alone could make it whole again, would never have done so for Ais or elf. The sword was needed to drive back the trolls—whom Utgard-Loki had been secretly helping—lest Alfheim be overrun by a folk who are friendly to the foemen of the gods. But Skafloc cannot be let keep the sword, for that which is in it will make him seek to wipe out the trolls altogether; and this the Jotuns dare not allow, so they would move in, and the gods would have to move against them, and the doom of the world would be at hand. Skafloc must fall, and this child whom I wove my web to have begotten and given to me must one day take up the sword and bear it to the end of its weird.”

“Skafloc die?” She clasped his feet. “Him too? Oh, no, oh, no!”

“What has he further to live for?” asked Odin coldly. “If you should go to him at Elfheugh, whither he is bound, and make whole again what was broken at the howe, he would gladly lay down his weapons. Then that which is would have no need of his death. Otherwise he is fey. The sword will kill him.”

With a swirl of his cloak, the Wild Huntsman was gone. His horn blew, his hounds yelped and howled, hoofbeats rushed away and were lost in the night. Then the only sounds were the empty whistle of wind, shout of sea, and weeping of Freda.

Valgard stood in the topmost room of the highest tower in Elfheugh and watched the gathering of his foes. His arms were folded, his body was rock-still, and his face was as if carved in stone. Nothing but his eyes seemed altogether alive. Beside him were the other chiefs of the castle and of the broken armies which hid in this last and most powerful stronghold. Weary and downcast were they, many wounded, and they stared fearfully at the hosting of Alfheim.