The Broken Sword (3 page)

Many lords of Alfheim came to the naming-feast, and they brought goodly gifts: cunningly wrought goblets and rings, dwarf-forged weapons, byrnies and helms and shields, clothing of samite and satin and cloth-of-gold, charms and talismans. Since elves, like gods and giants and trolls and others of that sort, knew not old age, they had few children, centuries apart, and the birth of one was a high happening; still more portentous to them was the fostering of a human.

As the feast was going on, they heard a tremendous clatter of hoofs outside Elfheugh, until the walls trembled and the brazen gates sang. Guards winded their trumpets, but none wished to contest the way of that rider and Imric himself met him at the portal, bowing low.

It was a great handsome figure in mail and helm that blazed less brightly than his eyes. The earth shook beneath his horse’s tread. “Greeting, Skirnir,” said Imric. “We are honoured by your visit.”

The messenger of the Aisir rode across the moonlit flagstones. At his side, jumping restlessly in the scabbard and glaring like fire of the sun itself, was Prey’s sword, given him for his journey to Jotunheim after Gerd. He bore another sword in his hands; long and broad, unrusted though still black with the earth in which it had lain, and broken in two.

“I bear a naming-gift for your foster son, Imric,” he said. “Keep well this blade, and when he is old enough to swing it tell him the giant Bolverk can make it whole again. The day will come when Skafloc stands in sore need of a good weapon, and this is the Aisir’s gift against that time.”

He threw the broken sword clashing on the ground, whirled his horse about, and in a roar of hoofbeats was lost in the night. The elf-folk stood very still, for they knew the Rsii had some purpose of their own in this, yet Imric could not but obey.

None of the elves could touch iron, so the earl shouted for his dwarf thralls and had them pick it up. Led by him, they bore it to the nethermost dungeons and walled it into a niche near Gora’s cell. Imric warded the spot with rune signs, then left it and -avoided the place for a long tune.

Now some years went by and naught was heard from the gods.

Skafloc grew apace, and a bonny boy he was, big and merry, with blue eyes and tawny hair. He was noisier, more boisterous than the few elf children, and grew so much faster that he was a man when they were still unchanged. It was not the way of the elves to show deep fondness for their young, but Leea often did to Skafloc, singing him to sleep with lays that were like sea and wind and soughing branches. She taught him the courtly manners of the elf lords, and also the corybantic measures they trod when they were out in the open, barefoot in dew and drunk with moonlight. Some of what wizard knowledge he gained was from her, songs which could blind and dazzle and lure, songs which moved rocks and trees, songs without sound to which the auroras danced on winter nights.

Skafloc had a happy childhood, at play with the elf young and their fellows. Many were the presences haunting those hills and glens; it was a realm of sorcery, and mortal men or beasts who wandered into it sometimes did not return. Not all the dwellers were safe or friendly. Imric told off a member of his guard to follow Skafloc around.

Sprites whirled in the mists about waterfalls; their voices rang back from the dell cliffs. Skafloc could dimly see them, graceful shining bodies haloed with rainbows. Of moonlit nights, drawn by the glow like other denizens of Faerie, they would come out and sit on the mossy banks, naked save for weeds twisted into their hair and garlands of water lilies; and elf children could then talk to them. Much could the sprites tell, of flowing rivers and fish therein, of frog and otter and kingfisher and what those had to say to each other, of sunlit pebbly bottoms and of secret pools where the water lay still and green-and the rush through the falls in a roar and a rainbow, shooting down to cavort in whirlpools!

Other watery places there were from which Skafloc was warned away, quaking bogs and silent dark tarns, for the dwellers were not good.

Often he would be out in the forest to speak with the little folk who lived in ft, humble gnomes with grey and brown clothes and long stocking caps and the men’s beards hanging to their waists. They dwelt in gnarly comfort beneath the largest trees, and were glad to see the elf children. But they feared the grown elves, and thought it well that none of these could squeeze into their homes-unless of course by shrinking to gnome size, which none of the haughty elf lords cared to do.

A few goblins were about. Once they had been powerful in the land, but Imric had entered with fire and sword, and those who were not slain or driven elsewhere had been broken of their might. They were furtive cave dwellers now, but Skafloc managed to befriend one and from him got some curious goblin lore.

***

Once the boy heard a piping far off in the woods, and he thrilled to its eeriness and hastened to the glen from which it came. So softly had he learned to move that he stood before the creature ere it was aware of him. It was a strange being, manlike but with the legs and ears and horns of a goat. On a set of reed pipes it blew an air that was as sorrowful as its eyes.

“Who are you?” asked Skafloc wonderingly.

The creature lowered his pipes, seeming ready to flee, then grew easier and sat down on a log. His accent was odd. “I am a faun,” he said.

“I have heard of no such.” Skafloc lowered himself cross-legged to the grass.

The faun smiled sadly in the twilight. The first star blinked forth above his head. “There are none save me hereabouts. I am an exile.”

“Whence came you hither, faun?”

“I came from the south, after great Pan was dead and the new god whose name I cannot speak was in Hellas. No place remained for the old gods and the old beings of our land. The priests cut down the sacred groves and built churches-Oh, I remember how the dryads screamed, unheard by them, screams that quivered on the hot still air as if to hang there for ever. They ring yet in my ears, they always will.” The faun shook his curly head. “I fled north; but I wonder if those of my comrades who stayed and fought and were slain with exorcisms were not wiser. Long and long has it been, elf-boy, and lonelier than it was long.” Tears glimmered in his eyes. “The nymphs and the fauns and the very gods are less than dust. The temples stand empty, white under the sky, and bit by bit they crumble to ruin. And I-I wander alone in a foreign land, scorned by its gods and shunned by its people. It is a land of mist and rain and iron winters, angry grey seas and pale sunlight spearing through clouds. No more of sapphire water and gentle swells, no more of little rocky islands and the dear warm woods where the nymphs waited for us, no more of grapevines and fig trees heavy with fruit, no more of the stately gods on high Olympus-”

The faun ceased his crooning, stiffened, cocked his ears forward, then rose and bounded into the brush. Skafloc looked around and saw the elf guard approaching to take him home.

***

But often he was out by himself. He could stand the daylight which the folk of Faerie must shun, and Imric did not await any danger to him from mortal things. Thus he ranged far more around than the other children of Elfheugh, and came to know the land far better than a human might who had lived there for a lifetime.

Of the wild beasts, the fox and the otter were friendliest to elves, it being thought that there was some kind of kinship, and insofar as these had a language the elves knew it. From the fox Skafloc learned the hidden ways of wood and meadow, trails through sun-spattered shade and myriad tiny signs which told a story to one who knew the full use of his senses. From the otter he learned of the world about lake and stream, he learned to swim like his supple teacher and to sneak through cover which would scarce hide half his body. But he got to know the other animals as well. The most timid of birds would come sit on his finger when he whistled in its own tongue; the bear would grunt a welcome when he trod into its den. Deer, elk, hare, and grouse became wary of him after he took up hunting, but with some special ones he made peace. And the story of all his farings among the beasts would be lengthy.

And the years swung by, and he was borne along. He was out in the first shy green of spring, when the forests woke and grew clamorous with returning birds, when the rivers brawled with melting ice and a few little white flowers in the moss were like remnant snowflakes. The summer knew him, naked and brown with flying sun-bleached hair, chasing butterflies uphill toward the sky, rolling back down through the grasses for sheer joy; or out in the light nights which were a dreamy remembrance of day, stars overhead and crickets chirring and dew aglitter beneath the moon. The thunderous rains of autumn washed him, or he wove a crown of flame-coloured leaves and stood in sharp air filled with the calls of departing birdflocks. In winter he flitted among the snowflakes, or crouched under a windfall while storm bellowed and trees groaned; sometimes he would stand on moonlit snowfields and hear the lake ice boom in the cold, a toning that rolled between the hills.

When Skafloc’s limbs began to lengthen more swiftly, Imric took him in charge, only a little at first, but more and more with time until he was being raised wholly as a warrior of Alfheim. Being short-lived, humans could learn faster than the people of Faerie, and Skafloc’s knowledge grew with even more haste than his body.

He learned to ride the horses of Alfheim, white and black stallions and mares of an eerie quicksilver grace, quick and tireless as the wind, and erelong his night gallops were taking him from Caithness to Land’s End with the cloven air singing in his ears. He learned the use of sword and spear and bow and axe. He was less fleet and lithe than the elves, but grew to be stronger than any of them and could bear war-gear as many days on end as needful; and as for grace, another mortal man would have been a clod beside him.

He hunted wide over the land, alone or in company with Imric and his followers. Skafloc’s bow twanged death to many a tall-antlered stag;, his spear stopped many a long-tusked boar. There was other and trickier game, chased crazily through the woods and across the crags, unicorns and griffins which Imric had brought from the edge of the world for his pleasure.

Skafloc learned also the manners of the elves, their stateliness and their unending intrigue and their subtle speech. He could dance to harps and pipes in the drenching moonlight, naked and abandoned as the wildest of them. He could himself play, and sing the strange lilting lays older than man. He learned the skaldic arts so well that he talked in verse as easily as in common speech. He learned every language of Faerie and three of man’s. He could discriminate among the rare viands of the elves, the liquid fires which smouldered in spider-shrouded bottles beneath the castle, but for all that his taste for the hunter’s black bread and salt meat, or the rainy sunny earthy savour of berries, or upland springs, was not blunted.

After the first soft beard was on his cheeks, he got much heed from the elf women. Without awe of gods, and with few children, the elves knew not wedlock; but their nature was such that their women had more wish for lovemaking and their men less than among humans. Thus Skafloc found himself in great favour, and many a good time did he have.

The hardest, most perilous part of his training was in magic. Imric had him wholly in hand for this, once he was ready to go beyond the simple spells that a child could safely use. While he was not able to learn as deeply as his foster father, because of his humanity and short lifespan, he came to be as adept as most elf chieftains. He learned first how to shun and sidestep the iron no elf, troll, or goblin could endure; even when told, and when a gingerly touch on a nail in a yeoman’s house had shown, that he would not be harmed by it, he left it alone out of habit. Next he learned the runes for healing wounds and illness, warding off bad luck, or wishing evil on a foe. He learned the songs which could raise or lay storms, bring good or bad harvests, call forth either anger or peace in a mortal breast. He learned how to coax from their ores those metals, unknown to humans, which were alloyed in Faerie to take the place of steel. He learned the use of the cloak of darkness, and of the skins he could don to take the form of a beast. Near the end of his training he learned the mighty runes and songs and charms which could raise the dead, read the future, and compel the gods; but save in time of direst need no one cared to be shaken to his inmost being by these and risk the destruction they could wreak on him.

Skafloc was often down by the sea, he could sit hour upon hour looking out over its restlessness to the hazy line where water met sky, he never wearied of its deep voice or its tang of salty depths and windy reaches or its thousand moods. He came of a seafaring breed, and the tides were in .his blood. He spoke to the seals in their grunting, barking tongue, and the gulls wheeled overhead to bring him news from the earth’s ends. Sometimes when he was in company with other warriors, the sea maidens would rise from the foam, wringing out their long green hair as they came up on to the strand, and then there would be merriment. They were cool and wet to the touch and they smelled of kelp; afterward Skafloc would have a faint fishy taste on his lips; but he liked them well.

At fifteen years of age he stood nearly as tall as Imric, broad of shoulder and taut of sinew, with long hair flaxen against brown skin. He had a straight, blunt, strong-boned face, a wide mouth quick to smile, large deep-blue eyes set well apart. A mortal without his schooling would have said that a mystery hung over him, veiling itself behind those eyes, which bad looked on more than common mankind saw, revealing itself in that leopard gait.

Imric said to him: “Now you are big enough to be given your own weapons rather than old ones of mine, and also I have been summoned by the Elfking. We will fare overseas.”

At this Skafloc whooped, cartwheeled out into the fields, and galloped his horse madly through the lands of men, making magic out of sheer need to do something. He caused pots to dance on the hearth and bells to ring in the steeples and axes to cut wood of their own accord, he sang cows up onto the crofter’s roof and a wind into being which scattered his hay over the shire and a rain of gold out of the sky into his yard. With the Tarnkappe about his shoulders, he kissed the girls working at twilight in the fields and rumpled their hair and tossed their men into a ditch. For days thereafter, masses were sung to halt the spate of witchcraft; but by that time Skafloc was at sea.