The Wizard And The Warlord (43 page)

Hross-Bjorn shook his head and charged, halting at the last instant and changing himself to the lake monster Sigurd had seen at Hrafnborg. The creature towered above him, spitting poison and lashing a forest of tentacles. Sigurd snapped off one appendage that wrapped around his arm, then seized a long, snaky neck and began to twist it. The sending gave a screech, floundering to get away. Sigurd suddenly found himself twisting the neck of the sending’s original shape, with the huge hooves pounding and slashing at him and the other two horse heads reaching over to bite him. Grimly, he maintained his hold and struck the nearest head a heavy blow between the eyes, which staggered the beast. Another smash on the other head’s nose sent the creature to his knees, and Sigurd twisted the horse’s neck until the head was halfway around and shrieking for mercy.

Mikla abandoned his safe post and dashed to Sigurd’s side, tearing open his satchel. “I’ve still got the bridles!” he exclaimed, pulling a tangle of strange objects out of the satchel and beginning to fasten one of the bridles on the sending.

“Give them to me!” Sigurd puffed. “Get out of the way, Mikla, before you get hurt!” Hross-Bjorn began lunging and kicking.

“No, I’m all right.” Mikla rubbed a kicked leg. “There’s no sense wasting a perfectly willing assistant. There, it’s on! Now for the others!”

The bridled head thrashed about desperately, but could do no harm. The instant Sigurd released it, the creature leaped to his feet, plunging and kicking like the gray stallions in Bergthor’s forge, but Mikla held fast to the reins, despite the fact that he spent more time in midair than on the ground, with the sending’s great hooves flailing around, trying to reach him. Sigurd gave the beast another thump on the back and yanked one of the back legs from under him when he staggered. Hross-Bjorn went over again in a heap of scrambling legs and threshing necks.

Sigurd pounced on the foremost head, which was bigger and more vicious than the side ones and also strong enough to throw him off his feet when he attempted to wrestle with it. Two sets of horribly snapping teeth came lunging at him, and the beast threw himself over on his side in an effort to roll over Sigurd and crush him. One set of teeth fastened itself suddenly on Sigurd’s foot as he leaped to get away, but in an instant the beast released him with a frightful howl as Grisnir came hurtling from his doorstep to wrap himself around the sending’s neck and sink his sharp yellow teeth into Hross-Bjorn’s ear. Grisnir’s reward for his efforts was a severe pounding as the sending tried to dislodge him.

Sigurd calmed the beast with a terrific blow between the ears of the foremost head. The beast reared back on his haunches, maddened and desperate, and Sigurd clung to the thick neck with his hand clamped over the beast’s nostrils. Gasping for air, Hross-Bjorn opened his mouth, and Mikla thrust in the bit and swiftly fastened the bridle on the foremost head. Not to be left out, Rolfr rushed forward to seize the reins. Much subdued, groaning, Hross-Bjorn made very little struggle as the third bridle was buckled into his last free muzzle, which was considerably battered from pounding Grisnir on the ground. The troll, unharmed, removed his teeth from Hross-Bjorn’s ear and untwined his arms from the beast’s neck.

“Now we’ve got him,” Grisnir declared, stepping back as the sending lurched to his tottering legs and stood with bridled heads trailing almost to the ground. “What shall we do with him?”

Mikla wrapped a set of reins around his fist, looking a bit wild and untidy from his struggles, but highly pleased. “He’s going back to his master—Bjarnhardr—and he’s taking a wonderful cargo with him. Sigurd, what curses do you want to inflict upon your old enemy? You name it and I can put Hross-Bjorn to it. How about a fire curse, or shall we let Hross-Bjorn follow Bjarnhardr and kill him, as he tried to do with you?”

Sigurd jerked at the bridle he held so he could look into the sending’s lusterless eye. “No, that’s not quite good enough for Bjarnhardr. Or the Dokkalfar who have infested the lowlands that once belonged to Snowfell. What I want is a plague, Mikla, that will move from Dokkalfar settlement to settlement, sparing none and leaving nothing behind but empty buildings and the barrows of the dead. Bjarnhardr will hear about its approach and he will flee, but the plague will follow him until there’s not a Dokkalfar left aboveground on all of Skarpsey. The Ljosalfar shall be spared from the curse, and Snowfell will be rebuilt.”

Rolfr gazed at Sigurd in awe. “That’s wonderful, Siggi. That will be the end of our outlawry and exile. We won’t need to hide in hill forts any longer.”

“It will take time,” Mikla said, after considering the plan for a long moment. “When the plague starts moving westward, so will the Dokkalfar. We’ll need to fortify ourselves against traveling bands of marauders, who will be hungry and desperate. We’ll need powerful leaders.” He and Rolfr looked toward Sigurd standing beside the huge, subdued beast.

Sigurd nodded, still studying Hross-Bjorn. “I would like to be there when Hross-Bjorn finally catches Bjarnhardr. I can’t imagine Bjarnhardr dying with much grace or courage, and I foresee that he’ll be all alone, since he’s not one to inspire loyalty in his followers. A most wretched and lonely death will be his.” He looked back at his companions, breaking off his reverie. “Well, Mikla, when shall you begin our plague curse?”

“At once, of course.” Mikla opened his satchel to begin.

When he was done with his spells, which involved the collection of some strange and rather gruesome specimens, he built a small fire almost under the sagging noses of Hross-Bjorn and burned the little dried creatures, herbs, and bones, making marks in the earth and calling upon the powers of the earth to assist him. The smoke roiled around Hross-Bjorn’s red-rimmed eyes, climbing thick and fast into the pallid night sky and making a smell like a thousand open barrow mounds. Hross-Bjorn began to moan and strain, tugging at the bridle reins until they could scarcely hold him down.

“Now, let him go,” Mikla said at the end of a long chant, with a note of triumph in his voice. “Look, he’s going, he’s going!”

The sending rose into the air, a massive black shape that seemed to expand into a huge bank of cloud, towering and spreading across the sky until the silvery clouds were blanketed with menacing black. Slowly, the blackness traveled westward like a great pall falling over the face of the island.

“It’s done,” Sigurd said with satisfaction. “Now let’s get back to Hrafnborg.”

They walked their tired horses for the last miles to Hrafnborg. The first watchman they encountered rode away at a wild gallop with the news of their return, notifying the next post, who would carry the word to the next watchman, and onward to the hill fort. They had heard about Sigurd’s plague, which was filling the lowlands with its deadly pestilence already.

As they plodded wearily toward the last watch post, Sigurd almost wished he would never get there. He had taken suitable revenge upon Bjarnhardr and all the Dokkalfar for Halfdane’s death, but there still could be someone who might not think it atonement enough, and that someone was Ragnhild. He dreaded meeting her, dreaded the scorn that she would always bestow upon him for his weakness. Even his possession of Halfdane’s other gauntlet could not rectify the loss of Ragnhild’s esteem.

“There’s someone coming to meet us,” Mikla reported, his manner brightening. “We’re home, finally home.”

The horseman approached at full gallop. Sigurd’s heart knocked worriedly; the rider was clad in red, the color always worn by Ragnhild. In an instant he knew it must be Ragnhild, from the slight build and the long, fair hair flying behind her.

She halted the horse with a skidding plunge, leaping to the ground and almost falling in her haste. Sigurd quickly dismounted, thinking she was probably going to run at him with a knife in her hand, and he would have a better chance of defending himself on the ground. He would get a good grip on her until her fury subsided a bit, and then he would turn her over to Mikla and make his escape. For a brief moment, he thought it would have been better to have stayed away than to return to see her hatred.

She came stumbling and running over the bristly fellside, laughing, much to his astonishment. Sigurd could see no knife in her hand, and her face was brimming with welcome. He took a few wary steps forward, still not trusting her entirely, and she plummeted into his arms, like a hawk buffeting the wind out of its quarry. Her arms locked around his neck; he felt her tearstained cheek against his face. This was welcome, he realized with a searing stab of humility, and he clasped Ragnhild gratefully in his arms.

“I never expected this,” he said, as she wiped her eyes on his frayed cloak, still half laughing and half crying.

“Look at you, you’re nothing but tatters,” she said, with a last sob in her throat, followed by a delighted laugh at the sight of the mending job he had done on his shirt. “I’m glad I made you a new one. I must have known how badly you’d need it. I see you’ve still got my little ring—and the bowstring?”

“Still here.” Sigurd indicated the vicinity of his neck. “But— there’s something—I know I can’t be forgiven. I almost didn’t think I should come back here, after—my father, you know.”

The merriment faded in Ragnhild’s eyes, and she smiled with an expression of both sadness and warmth. “I think you’ve changed, Sigurd.”

“I hope I have,” Sigurd answered, with a shudder and a glance at Mikla and Rolfr who were hovering nearby, looking on with weary contentment.

Ragnhild studied him carefully. “Your beard has grown in at last, but it’s grown in gray here and there. This past year must have been the worst trial you’ve ever endured, to leave such marks upon you. Halfdane will hardly know you.”

Sigurd felt his face turn white. “What did you say?” he asked in a half-whisper.

Ragnhild turned to look across the fell, back the way she had come. “You can see for yourself what I said,” she replied, nodding toward the approaching rider on the slow-pacing black horse.

Sigurd scarcely knew how he walked forward to meet Halfdane. He put one hand on the crest of the horse’s neck, unable to find any words to speak, and his mouth was almost too dry for words. Halfdane looked the same—stern and bleak, and his eyes were wary. He kept his injured arm covered inside his cloak, and he kept his shoulders hunched suspiciously.

Sigurd grasped a handful of mane, knowing that he would have to be the first to speak. “Can I—do you want me to come back?” he finally asked.

Halfdane’s shoulders relaxed somewhat. “Only if that’s what you want,” he replied in a gruff tone. “I’ll no longer try to hold you where you don’t want to stay.”

“Mikla and Rolfr—they never told me you still lived. They never even hinted! It was your signal I heard and didn’t recognize. I thought it was Bergthor!”

“I forbade them to tell you,” Halfdane explained. “I didn’t want you coming back because you felt you had to face me. Only if you came of your own will, not to apologize, were you to return.”

“Why didn’t you tell me at first who I was?” Sigurd asked. “I might have believed you, if you had told me.”

Halfdane shook his head, withdrawing a small flat key from a chain around his neck. He held it out to Sigurd. “This is the key that fits the box. Several times I thought about giving it to you, but I was afraid of what Jotull had done to your mind. The consequences might have been disastrous to Hrafnborg through no real fault of your own. If you had turned against me then, knowing that I was indeed your father, the pain would have been far worse than the wound I received in Svinghagahall.”