The Broken Sword

by Poul Anderson

  Swiftly goes the sword-play.

  Some must lose the gamble.

  Norns alone are knowing

  now who throws the dice best.

  Winner in the wailing

  weapon-game we know not,

  but our foes will bitter

  battle find in Alfheim.

  But now other women, shaken by Leea’s ill fortune, were missing the hair-splitting rhythm and being slashed by the hissing swords. Imric called a halt ere someone should be slain and bring the very worst luck, and the company broke up in ill-contented silence or furtive whisperings.

  Skafloc went in troubled silence with Freda to their rooms. There he excused himself for a while. He returned with a broad silver-chased girdle. On its inside was a flat metal vial.

  He gave it to Freda. ‘Let this be my parting gift to you,’ he said quietly. ‘I got it of Imric, and I would you wore it. For though I still think we shall win, I am not so certain after that cursed sword dance.’

  She took it, wordlessly. Skafloc said: ‘In that vial is a rare and potent drug. Should evil luck befall you and our foes be nigh, drink it. You will be as one dead for many days, and any who find you will not think to molest you. Then when you awaken there may be a chance to slip free.’

  ‘What use would it be to escape, if you are dead?’ asked Freda sorrowfully. ‘Better I should die too.’

  ‘Perhaps – but the trolls would not kill you at once, and there are many worse things than clean death.’ Skafloc smiled wearily. ‘ ’Tis not the most cheerful of farewell gifts, dearest one, but ’tis all I have.’

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I will take it, and thank you. But we have a better gift, one we can give to each other.’

  ‘Aye, so,’ he laughed, and both of them were all at once merry.

  15

  The elf and troll fleets met off the northeastern coast soon after dark of the next night. And as Imric, standing by Skafloc in the prow of the great flagship leading his wedge of vessels, saw the size of the enemy force he drew a sharp breath of dismay.

  ‘We English elves have nigh all the ships of Alfheim,’ he said, ‘yet is that fleet more than twice as great as ours.’

  ‘They cannot all be trolls,’ said Skafloc, ‘and I look for no great trouble from goblins and whoever else fights with them.’

  ‘Mock not the goblins. They are good warriors when they have the weapons they need.’ Imric’s taut white face gleamed briefly out of darkness, caught in a fleeting moonbeam. A few snowflakes danced in that ray, whirled on a bitter wind. ‘Magic will avail neither side,’ he went on, ‘since the powers of both are in that regard equal. Thus it depends on strength of hosts alone, and there we are weaker.’

  He shook his silvery-locked head, eyes glittering strange and moon-blue. ‘I held, at the Erlking’s council, that it were best all Alfheim drew together into one place, letting the trolls have the outer provinces, even England, while we held fast and gathered ourselves for a counter-attack. But the other lords would have none of it. Now we shall see whose rede was best.’

  ‘Theirs was, lord,’ said Firespear boldly, ‘for even now we shall smite these dogs. What – let them wallow swinish in Elfheugh? The thought was unworthy of you.’ He hefted his spear and strained eagerly ahead.

  Skafloc too, though he felt these were heavy odds, would have naught but battle. This would not be the first time valiant men had wrested victory from a greater power. He blazed with the cold wish to meet Valgard, Freda’s mad brother who had wrought her so much ill, and cleave his skull.

  And yet, thought Skafloc, if Valgard had not borne Freda off to Trollheim, he, Skafloc, would never have met her. So he owed Valgard something. A quick clean slaying, rather than the slow torture he preferred, should settle the debt.

  Now the great war-horns shrieked their summons on both sides. Down came the sails, and the fleets rowed to battle with ships linked together by ropes. As they neared, the arrows began their flight, a moon-darkening storm that hissed over the restless waves and struck home in wood or flesh. Three shafts rattled off Skafloc’s mail, and a fourth missed his arm by a narrow distance and quivered in the ship’s figurehead. But with his night-seeing eyes he discerned others aboard the vessel who were not so lucky, who sank wounded or slain under the sighing hail.

  The moon showed ever less often through the flying clouds, but will-o’-the-wisps danced on the spindrift-blowing wind and the surging waves ran with cold white phosphorescence. There was light enough for seeing and killing.

  Now spears and slung stones flew between the approaching ships. Skafloc cast a shaft which pinned a dark figure to the mast of the troll flagship. Back came a stone which bounced with a mighty clang off his helmet. He leaned on the rail, briefly dizzy, and the sea slapped cold salt water over his ringing head.

  The horns yelled, almost into each other, and now the two lines shocked together.

  Imric’s ship laid alongside Illrede’s, and the warriors in the bows struck at each other. Skafloc’s sword screamed, and beat aside the ax of a troll and hewed off his arm. He pressed against the line of shields at the rail of the enemy vessel, his steel blade clamoring and his own shield taking the thunder of mighty blows that numbed his arm. On his left, Firespear thrust and jabbed with a pike, yelling in battle madness, reckless of the blades that rained about him. On his right, Angor of Pictland, tall and strong, fought stolidly with his long-shafted ax. For a time the two sides traded blows, and whenever a man in either line fell another pressed into his place.

  Then Skafloc buried his sword in the neck of a troll. As that one fell, Firespear thrust into the breast of the one behind him. Skafloc leaped the rails, into that breach in the troll line, and cut down the man to his left. As the one on his right thrust at him, Angor’s ax descended and the troll’s head rolled into the sea.

  ‘Forward!’ roared Skafloc, and the nearer elves swarmed after him. They stood back to back, striking and hewing – hewing – at the trolls who snarled around them. And at this confusion, still more elves boarded the troll craft.

  Swords flew in a blur that spouted blood. The shock and crash of metal drowned wind and sea. The elves stood in a ring, and around that circle was another one of corpses.

  Tall and terrible, his fair locks flying in the gale and his eyes ablaze with blue hell-flames, Skafloc loomed over the struggle. Never did his sword rest, and he ducked the clumsy troll thrusts and swipes with a flickering grace from which his own glaive darted like a snake’s tooth. The trolls began to fall away from him, and his band cleared the bows.

  ‘Now forward!’ he yelled.

  The elves advanced sternward behind a curtain of flashing steel. Mightily did the trolls fight. Elves sank with crushed skulls or cloven bellies or transfixed hearts. But the trolls went back and back, only their trampled dead holding fast.

  ‘Valgard!’ roared Skafloc into the din. ‘Valgard, where are you?’

  Now the changeling stood forth. Blood was streaming from his temples. ‘A slingstone knocked me out,’ he said, ‘but now ’tis time I went into battle.’

  Skafloc shouted and ran forward. The elves held the troll ship up to the mast, and now there were more of them aboard than there were trolls. From their own vessel, archers sent a steady rain of gray-feathered death.

  Skafloc’s sword and Valgard’s ax met in a howl of steel and a shower of sparks. The madness did not come on the berserker just then; he fought with grim coldness, standing rock-firm on the rolling deck. As Skafloc’s sword crashed into his shield, his own ax smote the elf-chief’s byrnie-clad left shoulder.

  Numbed, Skafloc’s shield-arm fell to his side. Valgard hewed at his enemy’s neck. Skafloc dropped to one knee and took the dreadful blow on his helmet. Even at the same moment, he was stabbing upward.

  He sank half senseless from the fury that dented his helmet, but Valgard stumbled with a ripped leg. They rolled into the scuppers and the battle snarled past them.

  Grum Troll-Earl led the fight for his side, an
d his huge stone-headed club crushed many skulls. Against him went Angor of Pictland, who struck out and hewed off the troll’s right arm. Grum caught his falling club in his left hand and swung a blow that broke Angor’s neck; but then the troll had to crawl under a rowing-bench so that he could carve healing-runes for his spouting wound.

  Now Skafloc and Valgard came out again, found each other, and took up their fight anew in a rain of metal. Skafloc smote with a blow that bit through Valgard’s byrnie and into his side. ‘That for Freda!’ he shouted. ‘Ill have you done to her.’

  ‘Not so ill as I think you have,’ snarled Valgard, and even staggering and bleeding as he was he struck a blow that met Skafloc’s descending sword in mid-air. And the sword sprang in twain.

  ‘Ha!’ cried the berserker, but ere he could follow up his chance Firespear was at him like an angry cat, and others of Alfheim besides. The elves held the ship.

  ‘Now there is no reason for me to stay here,’ said Valgard, ‘but I hope to see you again, brotherling.’ And he sprang overboard.

  The mast of a wrecked ship – many vessels were broken by ramming or the press of battle – swept by him and he grasped it with one hand. The other hand still held the ax Brotherslayer and for a moment he wondered if he should not let it go.

  But no – accursed or not, it was a good weapon.

  Others who had fled the ship, Grum among them, swam through the roaring waves to the floating mast. ‘Kick out, brothers,’ shouted Valgard, ‘and we will reach one of our own ships – and win this battle yet.’

  Aboard the troll flagship, the elves yelled their exultation. But Skafloc asked: ‘Where is Illrede? He should be aboard his own vessel, but I saw him not.’

  ‘Belike he is flying from ship to ship, directing his fleet, even as Imric is doing in form of a sea-mew,’ said Firespear. ‘But now let us chop a hole in this damned hulk and be back to our own boat.’

  There they saw Imric waiting for them. ‘How goes the battle, foster-father?’ called Skafloc gaily.

  The elf-earl’s voice fell cold on his ears: ‘Ill goes it, for however well the elves fight, the trolls throw two to one against them. And others of the troll force are landing unopposed on the beaches.’

  ‘Ill is that indeed!’ cried Golric of Cornwall, ‘and now we must fight like very demons or we are lost.’

  ‘I fear we are lost already,’ said Imric bleakly.

  Skafloc could not at once comprehend this. Looking around, he saw that the flagship drifted alone. Both fleets were breaking up as the linking ropes were cut, but the troll ships held more closely together. And the trolls were laying one vessel on each side of an elf craft.

  ‘To oars!’ shouted Skafloc. ‘They need help. To oars!’

  ‘Well spoke,’ sneered Imric bitterly.

  The longship sprang forward to the closest knot of battle. Arrows began to rain on it.

  ‘Shoot back!’ cried Skafloc. ‘In the name of hell, why don’t you shoot back?’

  ‘Our quivers are nigh empty, lord,’ said an elf.

  Crouching low under their shields, the elves rowed into the fight. Two of their fellow ships were at bay before three mercenary craft and one troll dragon. As Imric’s vessel neared, the bat-winged black demons of Baikal came flying down on her.

  The elves hewed manfully, but it was hard to fight enemies that struck from above with lances. They spent their last arrows, and still the swooping death smote.

  But now they laid alongside a goblin ship, and it was from here that the arrows had come. Skafloc sprang across the rails and struck out with the elf sword he was carrying. One goblin he clove in two, another he sent reeling with a gashed belly, the head of a third he chopped leaping from its shoulders. Firespear cast a javelin that transfixed two, and turning on another he kicked in the goblin’s breast. Others of the elves swarmed aboard, and the smaller goblins were hurled back.

  Skafloc reached their arrow chests, and threw the heavy cases across to his own ship. As the goblins rallied and advanced again, he led a quick retreat. And now elf bows twanged anew and the hovering demons tumbled out of the sky.

  The trolls came alongside. Skafloc saw that the other two elf ships at once fell on the goblins, demons, and Shen. ‘If they can handle those, I suppose we can take care of the trolls,’ he said.

  The green-skinned warriors boomed their cry and came over the rail of the elf dragon. Skafloc ran to meet them, slipped on the bloody deck, and fell as a spear whizzed just where his breast had been. Golric of Cornwall toppled with the spear through his own heart.

  ‘Thanks,’ muttered Skafloc, rising. The trolls were on him, their blows hailing on his dented shield. He struck out, and a foeman sank. Ere he could withdraw his sword, another troll was howling on him. He thrust up his iron shield. The troll screamed and staggered back with his face seared away.

  Shock and thunder of blows sounded through the drifting snow. The ships reeled under the gale, and the fight scrambled over their decks. Skafloc’s byrnie hung in rags, and he threw away his blunted sword for another. Presently his crumpled shield was also useless, and his shattered helmet fell off of itself. Almost naked he was – no longer protected by iron.

  A troll traded blows with him. He sheathed his sword in the enemy’s heart. Then another rushed on him, pulling him away and grappling him with terrible arms.

  Cold and rock-hard was the troll’s flesh. Skafloc knew grimly that the creature could break his ribs like arrow shafts. He put his feet against the troll’s belly as they rolled on the deck, got his hands on the corded throat, and then braced himself against that bear hug.

  Perhaps no other man could have held his back arched against the frightful drag. Skafloc felt the strength drain from him like wine from an overturned cup as he fought. He poured all muscle and will and heart into his back and legs, and into the hands he clamped on the troll’s windpipe. It seemed forever that they rolled with the ship, and he knew he could not hold out much longer.

  Then the troll let go and clawed at Skafloc’s wrists, wild for air. The man snarled and rammed his enemy’s head against the mast with a fury that sang in the wood and split open the horrible skull.

  Skafloc lay over his dead foe, gasping for air, his heart nigh to breaking loose from its rib-cage and the blood roaring in his ears. Dimly he saw Firespear bending over him, heard the elf’s awed voice:

  ‘Not elf nor human was yet known to have slain a troll in barehanded combat. That deed will be unforgotten while the world stands. And now we have won.’

  He helped Skafloc erect. Looking over the nearby scene, the man saw that the enemy ships had all been cleared.

  But at what a cost – Not a score of elves on all three craft remained whole, and the others who lived were grievously hurt. The ships drifted shoreward, manned with corpses and a few elves too weary to lift a sword.

  And straining through the murk, Skafloc saw yet another troll longship, fully crewed, bearing toward them.

  ‘I fear we have lost,’ he groaned, sick with exhaustion and despair. ‘Now there is naught left but to save what we can.’

  The ships rolled helplessly toward tumbling surf. And on the beaches waited a line of trolls, mounted on their great black horses and ready for any who landed.

  A sea-mew flew out of the snow, shook himself, and was Imric. ‘We have done well,’ said the elf-earl grimly. ‘Nigh half the troll fleet is destroyed. But that half is mostly their mercenaries and allies, and we – we are all broken. Such of our ships as can still be sailed are in full flight, while others like this await their final doom.’ Suddenly tears glimmered in his chill strange eyes. ‘England is lost. And I fear me Alfheim is lost.’

  Firespear gripped the shaft of his lance. ‘We will go out fighting,’ he vowed. His voice was hollow with weariness.

  Skafloc shook his tawny-maned head, and as he thought of Freda waiting in Elfheugh something of strength and will flowed back into him. ‘We will go on fighting,’ he answered. ‘But first we must save our ow
n lives.’

  ‘ ’Tis a good trick if you can do it,’ said Firespear doubtfully.

  By rowing, and reaching out with boathooks, the elves brought their ships together so that all could assemble in one. Then they raised sail. The approaching trolls were downwind, and both ships were close to the rocky shore.

  Skafloc fought the steering oar and sent his ship quartering shoreward. The trolls dug in oars, seeking either to cut off the elf vessel’s escape or drive it onto the rocks.

  ‘ ’Twill be a tight squeeze,’ said Imric.

  ‘Tighter than they think!’ Skafloc grinned a mirthless skinning of teeth and squinted into the rushing snow. He saw a white spuming of surf where waves dashed themselves to death on fanged skerries – but beyond these were the shallows.

  Too late, the trolls sought to veer. Skafloc rammed them with a shock at which timbers groaned. The enemy vessel was borne into the thundering surf, against the reefs – caught and smashed!

  Skafloc’s elves pulled like madmen, seeking to swing their own craft. He had no hope of saving it, but he was trying to hit as easily as he could. When the ship struck and began to break up, there was only a narrow spine of rock between it and the shallows.

  ‘Now save himself who can!’ cried Skafloc. He leaped out onto the slippery rock and over into neck-deep water. Seal-swift he darted for the beach, and the other elves were with him – save the wounded, who drowned there in sight of land.

  They waded ashore, and they were well past the end of the troll line. But some of those saw the elves and galloped down on them.

  ‘Scatter!’ shouted Skafloc. ‘Some at least must escape!’

  As he ran into the snowstorm he saw elves spitted on lances or trampled under hoofs, but most of his little band were getting away. High up swung the sea-mew.

  And down on the bird stooped a mighty erne. Skafloc groaned, his heart going cold. Crouching behind a rock, he saw the erne bear the mew down to the ground, and there they became Illrede and Imric.