The Broken Sword

by Poul Anderson

  ‘It has a wonderful, wild, manic originality, a driving story and a genuine feel of the grim realities informing the Anglo-Saxon myth and legend which few other fantasies possess. The inevitability of its drama, its dooms and its emotional conflicts made this one of the most influential fantasy novels I ever read’

  Michael Moorcock

  ‘This book is a stunner, and a must for every fantasy lover’

  Asimov’s

  ‘Poul Anderson wrote fantasy of harsh truth and driving narrative, imbued with the energy and the wild beauty of the old Norse tales’

  Robert Holdstock

  ‘Changeling humans become tragically entangled with the fate of the elves, in a tale full of dark savagery and lyrical magic. Anderson taps the authentic vein of Norse myth, but, like Tolkien, recreates it in his own unique style’

  Michael Scott Rohan

  The ULTIMATE FANTASIES sequence

  Conan

  Elric

  Lankhmar

  Lyonesse

  Lud-in-the-Mist

  The Broken Sword

  The Chronicles of Amber

  The Dragon Waiting

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © Poul Anderson 1954

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Poul Anderson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This edition first published in Great Britain in 2002 by

  Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  This eBook first published in 2010 by Gollancz.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-0-575-10184-5

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  Contents

  Copyright

  The ULTIMATE FANTASIES sequence

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  AFTERWORD

  ALSO BY POUL ANDERSON

  1

  There was a man called Orm the Strong, a son of Ketil Asmundsson who was a great landsman in the north of Jutland. The folk of Ketil had dwelt in Himmerland as long as men remembered, and were mighty landowners. The wife of Ketil was Asgerd, who was a leman-child of Ragnar Hairybreeks. Thus Orm came of good stock, but as he was the fifth living son of his father there could be no large inheritance for him.

  Orm was a great sea-farer and spent most of his summers in viking. When he was in his twentieth winter, he went to his oldest brother Asmund and said, ‘Now you have been sitting in Himmer-land and having the use of the farm for some years, and your brothers grow restless for a share. But it is plain that if we divide it five ways our family will sink from great landsmen to smallholders, and soon be lost and forgotten.’

  ‘That is true,’ replied Asmund, ‘and if you will not yield the inheritance it were best we steered it together.’

  ‘I will not be fifth man at the rudder,’ said Orm, ‘and so I will make you this offer: give me three ships, and outfit them, and supply arms to all who will follow me, and I will find my own land and quit all claim on our father’s.’

  Asmund was well pleased with this, the more so since two more of the brothers said they would go with Orm, and ere spring he had bought longships and all their outfit and found many of the younger and poorer men of the neighborhood who would be glad to fare westward. On the first clear day of spring, when the seas still ran high, Orm took his ships out of the bay, and that was the last Asmund ever saw of him.

  The dragons turned their tails to the low gray moors and the high cloudy sky of Himmerland. With wind piping in their riggings and sea-gulls screaming about the mastheads and the strakes foaming, they pointed their heads westward. Orm made a verse:

  White-maned horses

  (hear their neighing!),

  gray and gaunt-flanked,

  gallop westward.

  Wild with winter

  winds, they snort and

  buck when bearing

  burdens for me.

  By starting thus early, Orm reached the western islands ahead of most other vikings and had a good plundering. With this he bought more ships and gathered a following while he lay in Ireland over the winter.

  Now for some time Orm harried the western lands and had a great booty. But he wished for land of his own, and so one summer joined his fleet to the great one of Guttorm, or Guthrum as the English called him. For some time he was with Guthrum ashore as well as at sea, and when peace was made with Alfred, Orm went into the Danelaw to seek land.

  He found a green and fair tract beside a little bay where he could keep his ships. An Englander already dwelt there, but Orm ringed his house with men one night and burned it. The man, his brothers, and most of his household perished then. Some say that the man’s mother, who was a witch, escaped the fire – for the burners let all women and children and thralls that wished leave first – and laid the curse on Orm that his eldest son should be fostered beyond the world of men, while Orm should in turn foster a wolf that would one day rend him.

  Now Orm built a great house and other buildings on his newly gained land, and with the wealth and fame he had he was accounted a mighty chief in the Danelaw. When he had sat there a year, he felt it were well if he had a wife. He rode with a great following to the English ealdorman Athelstane and asked for his daughter Aelfrida, who was said to be the fairest maiden in England.

  Athelstane dared not refuse, but Aelfrida said to Orm’s face: ‘Never will I wed a heathen dog, nor indeed can I. And while it is true you can take me by force, you will have little joy of me – that I swear.’

  She was small and slender, with soft ruddy-brown hair and flashing gray eyes, while Orm was a huge bulky man with face burned red and hair nearly white from years of sun and sea. But he felt she was somehow the stronger, so after thinking for a while he said: ‘Now that I am in a land where folk worship the White Christ, it might be well if I made peace with him as well as his followers. Indeed, most of the Danes have already done so. I will be baptized if you will wed me, Aelfrida.’

  ‘That is no reason,’ she cried.

  ‘But think,’ said Orm slyly, ‘if you do not wed me I will not be christened, and then, if we may trust the priests, my soul is lost. And you will have to answer heavily to your God for losing a human soul.’ He whispered to Athelstane, ‘Also, I will burn down this house and throw you off the
sea-cliffs.’

  ‘Aye, daughter, we dare not lose a human soul,’ said Athelstane very quickly.

  Aelfrida did not hold out much longer, for indeed Orm was a not ill-looking man, and he was known to be rich and powerful. So Orm was christened, and the next day he wed Aelfrida and bore her home to the Danelaw. They lived together contentedly enough, if not always peacefully.

  There were no churches near, so at Aelfrida’s wish Orm kept a priest on the land, and for atonement of his sins he paid the priest well. But being a careful man with no wish to offend any of the Powers, Orm continued to sacrifice to Thor in midwinter and to Freyr in spring for peace and good harvests, as well as to Odin and Aesir for luck before each sea-voyage.

  All that winter he and the priest quarreled about this, and in spring, not long before Aelfrida’s child was born, Orm lost his temper and kicked the priest out the door and bade him begone. Aelfrida reproached him greatly for this, until he cried that he could stand no more of that woman-chatter and now would have to flee it. A few days later, earlier than he had planned, he left with his ships and spent the summer harrying in Ireland and Scotland.

  Scarce were his ships out of sight when Aelfrida was brought to her bed and gave birth to a child. It was a fine big boy who after Orm’s wish she called Valgard, a name old in that family. But now there was no priest to christen the child, and the nearest church lay a good two or three days’ journey away. She sent a thrall there at once.

  Meanwhile she was proud and glad of her son, and often she sang to him as her mother had to her—

  Lullaby, my little bird,

  of all birds the very best!

  Hear the gently lowing herd.

  Now the sun is in the west

  and ’tis time that you should rest.

  Lullaby, my little love,

  nodding sleepy on my breast.

  See the evening star above

  rising from the hill’s green crest.

  Now ’tis time that you should rest.

  Lullaby, my little one.

  You and I alike are blest.

  God and Mary and their Son

  guard you, who are but their guest.

  Now ’tis time that you should rest.

  2

  Imric the elf-earl rode out one night to see what had happened in the lands of men. It was a cool spring dark with the moon nearly full, rime glittering on the grass and the stars still hard and bright as in winter. The night was very quiet save for the sighing of wind in budding branches, and the world was all sliding shadows and cold white light. The hoofs of Imric’s horse were shod with an alloy of silver, and there was a high clear ringing in the gloom as they struck the hard ground.

  The elf-earl rode into a darkling forest. Night lay heavy here, but from afar he saw a ruddy glimmer of fire. When he came there he saw it shone through cracks in a little hut of mud and wattles huddled under a great gnarly oak from whose boughs Imric remembered the Druids cutting mistletoe. He could sense that a witch lived here, so he dismounted and rapped on the door.

  A woman who seemed old and bent as the tree opened it and saw him standing there, the broken moonlight sheening off his helm and byrnie and his horse shimmering-white and mysterious, cropping the frosty grass behind him.

  ‘Good evening, mother,’ quoth Imric.

  ‘Let none of you elf-folk call me mother, who have borne tall sons to a man,’ grumbled the witch, but she let him in and hastened to pour him a horn of ale. Imric had to stoop inside the tiny hovel and clear away a litter of bones and other trash ere he could sit.

  He looked at her with the strange slant eyes of the elf-folk, all cloudy-blue without pupil or white. There were little moon-flecks drifting in Imric’s eyes, and shadows of ancient wisdom, for Imric had dwelt long in the land when the first men came. But he was ever youthful, with the broad forehead and high cheekbones, the narrow jaw and the straight thin-chiseled nose of the elf lords. His hair floated silvery-gold, finer than spider silk, from under his horned helmet down to his wide red-caped shoulders.

  ‘ ’Tis long since the elves have been abroad among men,’ said the witch.

  ‘Aye, we have been too busy in the war with the trolls,’ answered Imric in his voice that was like a wind blowing through ancient trees far away. ‘But now there is truce, and I am curious to find what has happened in the last hundred years.’

  ‘Much, and little of it good,’ said the witch. ‘The Danes have come from the east, burning and plundering and breaking English lords. They are nigh to overrunning all the western islands.’

  ‘That is not bad.’ Imric stroked his long mustache. ‘Before them the Saxons came with fire and death, and before them the Picts and Scots, and before them the Romans, and before them the Brythons and Goidels, and before them – but the tale is long and long, nor will it end with the Danes. And I, who have watched it almost since the land was made, see naught of evil in it, for it helps pass the time. I were fain to see these new folk.’

  ‘Then you need not ride far,’ said the witch, ‘for Orm the Strong has taken land here and his hall is but the ride of a night or less to the east on a mortal horse.’

  ‘A short trip for my windy-maned stallion. I will go.’

  ‘Hold – hold, elf!’ For a moment the witch sat muttering, and only her eyes had life, gleaming red out of the firelight’s monster shadows. Then of a sudden she cackled in glee and screamed, ‘Aye, ride, ride, elf, to Orm’s house by the sea. He is gone a-roving, but his wife will guest you gladly. She has but newly brought forth a son, and he is not yet christened.’

  At these words Imric cocked his long pointed ears forward and his ivory-white face tautened. ‘Speak you sooth, witch?’ he asked then, low and toneless like wind blowing through unpeopled heather.

  ‘Aye, by Sathanas I swear it.’ The old woman rocked to and fro, squatting in her rags before the dim coals that spattered her face with red. The shadows flowed out of corners and chased each other across the walls, huge and misshapen and noiseless. ‘Go see for yourself.’

  ‘I would not venture to take a Dane-chief’s child. He might be under the Aesir’s ward.’

  ‘Nay, elf, nay. Orm is a Christian, but an indifferent one, and his son has yet been hallowed to no gods at all.’

  ‘Ill is it to lie to me,’ said Imric thinly.

  ‘I have naught to lose,’ answered the witch. ‘Orm burned my sons in their house, and my blood dies with me. I do not fear gods or devils, elves or men. But ’tis truth I speak.’

  ‘I will go see,’ said Imric, and stood up. The scales of his byrnie rang together like little silver bells. He swept his great red cloak around him and went out and swung onto the moon-white stallion.

  Like a rush of wind and a fleeting blur of moonlight he was out of the forest and across the fields. Far and wide the land stretched, shadowy trees and silent hills and rime-whitened meadows asleep under the moon. Here and there stood a lonely croft, dark now, huddled beneath the great star-crusted sky. There were presences moving in the night, but they were not men – he sensed a distant wolf-howl, the green gleam of a crouched wildcat’s eyes, the scurry of furtive feet under the mighty oak-roots. They were aware of the elf-earl’s passage and shrank deeper into the shadows.

  Erelong Imric rode up to Orm’s garth. Here the barns and sheds and houses were big, of rough-hewn timbers. The great hall stood with its carven dragon heads like a hill-ridge against the shining star clouds, but after Imric had overleaped the fence it was to a lesser dwelling that he rode. The dogs smelled him and snarled, hair a-bristle, but ere they could bark he had turned his terrible blind-seeming gaze on them, and they crawled off whimpering in fear.

  He rode like a wandering night-wind up to the house and looked in a window. Moonlight shafted in over the bed, limning Aelfrida’s lovely slumbrous face in soft silver and a cloudiness of unbound silken hair. But it was on the babe beside her that Imric gazed.

  The elf-earl laughed within the locked mask of his cold beautiful face, and
rode north again. Aelfrida moved in her sleep, woke, and looked at the little one beside her. Her eyes were still clouded with uneasy dreams.

  3

  In those days the elves and other folk of faerie still dwelt upon the earth, but even then a strangeness hung over their holdings, as if these wavered halfway between this world and another; and there were places which might at one time be a simple lonely hill or lake or forest and then at another gleam forth in all the ancient splendor of the true dwellers. Now and again the gaunt bare crags of the northern highlands known as the elf-hills might be seen by men as halls and castles, and thus they were shunned.

  Imric rode to the grim form of Elfheugh, which he saw as a castle tall and slender-spired, having gates of bronze and floors of marble, hung with the fairest shifty-patterned tapestries of magic weave and crusted with great blazing gems. In the moonlight the faerie folk were dancing on the green before the castle, but Imric rode by into the courtyard. His horse’s hoof-beats echoed hollowly from the massive outer walls, and the dwarf thralls hurried forth to attend him. He swung to the ground and hastened into the keep.

  The clear unwavering light of the tapers was broken into a shifting, tricky dazzle of many colors by the gems and the gold in the walls. Music breathed through the vaulted rooms, rippling harps and keening viols and the voices of flutes like mountain brooks under darkling pines. The patterns on the rugs and tapestries moved slowly, like live figures. The very walls and floors, and the groined ceiling in its dim blue twilight of height, had a fluid quicksilver instability, they were never the same and yet one could not say just how they changed.

  Imric went down a staircase, his byrnie chiming in the stillness. Of a sudden it grew dark about him, save for the occasional bloody light of a guttering torch, and the cold dark air of the inner earth filled his lungs. Now and again a clash of metal or a shuddering wail echoed down the rough-hewn water-dripping corridors, but Imric paid no heed. Like all elves, he had a rippling liquid cat-grace in his movements, he went swift and silent and easy as a questing wind down into the dungeons.