‘I come asking for a ship,’ went on Skafloc. ‘I ask in the name of what friendship there has been between Sidhe and elves, in the name of knightly honor, and in the name of mercy. Will you give it to me?’
There was a long silence. At last Lugh said: ‘It goes hard not to help you—’
‘And why not help?’ cried Dove Berg. His sword gleamed high in the air, he threw it up and let it twirl glittering back to his hand. ‘Why not call up all the hosts of the Sidhe and fare against barbarous Trollheim?’
Lugh stood towering forth. ‘You are our guest, Skafloc Elf’s-Foster,’ he said. ‘You have sat at our board and drunk our wine. We cannot refuse this boon. Also,’ his head lifted arrogantly, ‘I am Lugh of the Long Hand, and the Tuatha De Danaan do as they please without asking Aesir or Jötuns.’
At this, a great shout went up in the council, weapons blazed forth, swords, dinned on shields, and the bards swept out wild ancient war-chants on their shuddering strings. But cool and soft-spoken in the surging tumult, Mananaan Mac Lir said to Skafloc:
‘I will lend my own best boat to your faring. And as she is tricky to handle, and the perilous journey will be of interest, I will come along myself.’
At this, Skafloc was glad, for the sea god would make the best of shipmates on a hard and desperate trip. ‘Then tomorrow—’ he began.
‘Not so swiftly, hot-head,’ smiled Mananaan. His sleepy-seeming eyes were inscrutable as he studied Skafloc. ‘We will rest and hold feast for a while. I see you need some mirth, and a voyage to Giant Land is not to be lightly undertaken.’
Skafloc turned away. He could not say aught against it, but inwardly he raged at waiting. He would have no joy of the feast, wine simply made him remember—
He felt a light touch on his arm, and turned to face Fand, the wife of Mananaan.
Tall and stately and utterly beautiful were the women of the Tuatha De Danaan, for they were goddesses born. There were no words to tell of their radiant loveliness. Yet even in that company Fand stood out.
Her silken hair, golden as sunlight at evening, swept from her coronet to her feet. She wore a shimmering robe that clung to the curves of her body, and her white round arms blazed with jeweled rings, yet she herself outshone all her gorgeous apparel.
Her wise violet eyes seemed to look past Skafloc’s tormented blue gaze, into the emptiness of his heart. She smiled, and her low voice was music.
‘Would you have fared to Jötunheim alone?’
‘Of course, my lady,’ said Skafloc.
‘No living human ever went there and returned, save Tjalfi and Roska, and they went in company with Thor. You are either very brave or very reckless.’
‘What difference?’ he shrugged. ‘If I die in Jötunheim, it is the same as anywhere else.’
‘And if you live—’ She shivered. ‘If you live, you will bring back the unleashed demon which is the sword – a demon that must turn on you?’
He nodded, nor did he care.
‘I think you look on death as your friend,’ she murmured. ‘It is a strange friend for a young man to have.’
‘The only faithful friend in all the world,’ he said bitterly. ‘Death is the only one sure to be at your side.’
‘I think you are fey, Skafloc Elf’s-Foster, and that is a great sorrow. Not since Cu Chulain—’ for a moment pain flickered in her eyes – ‘not since him has so great a warrior as you might become lived among mortals. Also, it grieves me to see the merry mad boy I remember grown so dark and lonely. A worm gnaws in your breast, and the pain drives you to seek death.’
He said naught, but folded his arms and looked beyond her.
‘But even sorrow dies,’ she said. ‘You can outlive your grief. And I will seek by my arts to shield you, Skafloc.’
‘That is fine!’ he snarled, unable to stand more. ‘You magicking for my body and she praying for my soul!’
He swung away toward the wine bowls. Tears glimmered in Fand’s eyes as she watched him.
‘You sail with sorrow, Mananaan,’ she said to her husband.
The sea king shrugged. ‘Let him mope as he wishes. I will enjoy the trip.’
22
It was some three days later that Skafloc stood on the beach under tall gray crags and saw Mananaan’s boat sculled forth by a leprechaun from the sea-cave where she was berthed. She was a small slender craft, her thin silvery hull seeming all too frail for the angry seas of winter. The mast was inlaid with ivory, and the sails and cordage were broidered with silk. Proud and gallant and beautiful, the golden image of Fand seemed to leap from the prow.
The goddess herself saw them off. There was no one else about in the cool gray mists of morning. The fog glittered in little dewdrops in her braided hair, and her eyes were brighter and deeper than before, violet depths of mystery, as she bade Mananaan farewell.
‘Luck be with you in your faring,’ she said to him, ‘and may you soon return to the green hills of Erin and the golden streets of Tirnam-Og. My eyes shall be bent seaward by day and my ears shall listen to the wild song of the waves by night for news of Mananaan’s homecoming.’
Skafloc stood aside, looking seaward. He thought dully how he might have been bade such a goodbye by Freda, and he quoth to himself:
Luckless is the lad who
leaves without his dearest
sweetheart farewell saying
softly, in the morning.
Colder than her kisses
comes the blowing spindrift.
Heavy is my heart – but
how could I forget her?
‘Now let us away,’ said Mananaan. He and Skafloc sprang into the boat and raised the bright sail. The man took the steering oar, and the god struck a wailing, rippling melody from his carven harp and sang:
Wind, I call thee, thou unresting,
from the deeps of sea and sky.
Blow me outward on my questing,
answer me with eager cry.
From the hills of home behind me,
out through restless leagues of sea,
blow, wind, blow! My song shall bind thee.
South wind, sea wind, come to me.
Come to set my vessel free.
At his music, a strong breeze came as he willed, and the boat sprang from the snowy hills out into running waves, cold and green, with salty spindrift blowing keen in the face. Swift were the ships of Mananaan, even elf craft lagged behind them, and erelong the gray land was not to be told from gray clouds on the horizon.
‘It seems to me finding Jötunheim will mean more than simply sailing north,’ said Skafloc.
‘That is true,’ replied Mananaan. ‘It will need certain spells. Still more will it need a brave heart and a stout arm.’
He looked ahead into the cloudy north. The chill wintry wind tossed his hair about his face that was at once majestic and merry, keen and slumbrous. ‘The first faint breath of spring is on the lands of men,’ he said. ‘It has been a cruel long and hard winter, and I think the reason is that Jötun powers have been abroad. We sail into the everlasting ice of their own home.’
His eyes turned back to Skafloc. ‘It is past time that I should make this voyage to the edge of creation. Am I not a king of the sea? Yet I should not have waited so long, but gone when the Tuatha De Danaan were still full gods and had all their powers. Now we are only half-gods at best.’ He shook his head. ‘Even the Aesir, who are still gods, came not unscathed back from their few voyages to Jötunheim. As for us two – I know not. I know not.’
Then recklessly: ‘But I sail where I will! There shall be no sea in all the nine worlds which has not been plowed by the keels of Mananaan Mac Lir.’
Skafloc stood at the steering oar and made no answer, wrapped as he was in his own thoughts. The boat handled wondrous easy, like a live thing. The steady south wind harped in the rigging, and spray sheeted in a rainbowed veil about the beautiful figurehead of Fand. The sea shouted around them, under a cold blue sky filled with wind and scudding clouds.
Despite himself, Skafloc felt the freshness of the morning touch his heart. He quoth softly:
Clear the day is, coldly
calling with a wind-voice
to the sea, where tumbles
titan play of billows.
Stood you by my side now,
sweetheart, on the deck-planks,
life were full of laughter.
(Long you for me, Freda?)
Mananaan looked strangely at him. ‘This is a voyage which will need all a man’s heart,’ he said. ‘Sometimes, though, a woman can tear a heart out and leave only emptiness behind.’
Skafloc flushed angrily. ‘It was not I who first set out on this venture,’ he replied curtly.
‘The man who has naught to live for is not the most dangerous to his foes,’ quoth Mananaan. And then quickly he took his harp and sang one of the wild old war-songs of the Sidhe. Strangely did it ring in the empty vastness of sea and sky and rushing wind. For a moment Skafloc thought he saw cloudy hosts galloping to battle, the sun ablaze on plumed helmets and ranked forests of spears, banners flying and horns shouting and the dreadful scything wheels of the war-chariots booming over the sky.
Now they sailed steadily for three days and nights. Ever the wind blew behind them, and the boat rode the waves like a soaring bird. They took turns to steer, neither sleeping much, and lived on stockfish and cheese and whatever else of supply was aboard. There were few words between them, for Skafloc was of no heart for idle chatter and Mananaan had all an immortal’s satisfaction in his own thoughts. But they had each a respect for the other that grew with the long weary work, and they sang certain powerful spells together to get through the sorcerous barriers of Jötunheim.
Swiftly went the boat, swift as the crying gale behind her, for even more than with elf vessels had the skill of her builders removed all sea-drag from her. They could feel the cold and gloom deepen almost hour by hour as they sped tirelessly north into the heart of winter.
The sun lowered until it was a far pale disc on a sullen horizon, briefly seen through hurrying storm-clouds. The gathering cold was a relentless, searing presence, the soul of those grim waters; it gnawed through clothes and flesh and bone into the very soul. Sea-spray hung in icicles on the rigging, and the golden beauty of Fand on the prow was veiled in rime. To touch metal was to peel the skin from the fingers, and breath froze in the mustache.
More and more did it become a world of night, where they sailed over darkened silver-sparked seas between the drifting moon-ghostly mountains of the icebergs. The sky was a tremendous vault of utter blackness, frosted with uncounted bitter-brilliant stars, and between the constellations leaped the silent spectral flames of the northern lights. Only the drone of wind and the rush of sea had voice in that stupendous frozen stillness, only they had life in the darkened world.
They did not cross the borders of Jötunheim all at once. It was just that they sailed farther than mortal ship would have gone ere sighting land, into seas that grew ever more chill and dead and gloomy, until at last they had only stars and moon and the shuddering aurora for light. Skafloc thought that the lands of the ice giants, like those of gods and demons, must not lie on earth at all, but in strange dimensions reached only by spells, out near the edge of all things where creation plunged into primal chaos. He had the eerie notion that it was the Sea of Death on which he now sailed, outward bound from the world of life to the realm of ancient night.
Now, after those three days where they saw the sun, they lost track of time. There was no time in the unending immensity of wheeling stars and running seas. There was only the wind and the moon and the frightful, deepening cold. But presently Mananaan’s spells began to fail as he reached the edge of seas where his power held good. Contrary winds came, against which few craft other than his own could have sailed. Snow and sleet blew blindingly on crazy gales, and the boat pitched and rolled and shipped water of numbing chill. The icebergs loomed monstrously out of snow or death-silent fog, towering beyond sight and breathing forth cold, and barely did they save themselves from shipwreck.
Perhaps it was the fog which was most terrible – windless, sound-choking, dripping and freezing gray damp, blinding vision half an arm away, creeping its still, steady way through clothes to shivering skin. It was like a malignant ghost. The boat lay moveless, rocking ever so faintly to unseen waves, and the only sound was their muffled slap and the fog dripping from ice-sheathed ropes. Skafloc and Mananaan, stumbling and cursing, teeth clapping in their heads, sought to break such weather with spells – to little avail. They had the feeling that monstrous and watchful powers crept through the grayness, just outside of vision, and stared hungrily inboard.
Then the screaming fury of a storm might come, like as not from the wrong direction, and there would be unending eons of struggle. Ice-slick lines and rudder fought demoniacally, the dark white-frothed combers roared over the rails, and the boat mounted one wave toward the raving sky only to slide down its trough as if into hell.
Skafloc quoth:
Black and cold, the breakers
bellow, thunder inboard.
Ropes are snapped, and rudders.
Roaring winds are sleet-cloaked.
Seamen weary stumble,
sick with cold and hunger.
Bitter is the brew here:
beer of waves is salty.
Then he threw himself back into the work. Mananaan, who thought a plaint about evil weather better than one about a lost love – for one could fight a storm – smiled into the galing sky.
But there came a time at last when they raised land. Skafloc saw a grim and desolate coast under the mighty sky, lit by unwinking stars and a noiseless cold flame of bitter-blue aurora leaping and flickering over gaunt mountains and greenly flashing glaciers. The sea roared on looming cliffs behind which the land climbed steeply to the stars, a lifeless gigantic world of crags and ice-fields and wind screaming over ancient snow.
Mananaan nodded slowly as the boat neared. ‘ ’Tis Jötunheim,’ he said, his voice almost lost in the sullen crashing of distant surf and the booming of wind under the hollow sky. ‘Utgard, nigh which you say the giant bides, should by my reckoning lie to the east of here.’
‘As you say,’ muttered Skafloc. He had long since lost his way, nor did any elf know much more than frightened rumors about these coasts.
He felt weariness no longer, he was past that. It was as if he went on like a ship with lashed rudder, because there was naught else to do and no one to care if it foundered. His breast seemed dark and void, with a deep smoldering pain its only light, but his mind was cold and keen and steady.
It came to him, as he stood there looking at the terrible face of Giant Land, that Freda could not be less unhappy than he. More so, perhaps, since he could lose himself in the quest of the sword and know she was safe, while she only knew he was on a hopeless and deadly journey, and had little to do save think about it.
‘That thought had not come to me before,’ he whispered in surprise, and he felt, of a sudden, tears freezing on his cheeks. He quoth:
Late will I the lovely
lost one be forgetting.
Ways that I must wander
will be cold and lonely.
Heavy is my heart now,
where she sang aforetime.
Greatest of the griefs she
gave me is her sorrow.
And he fell again to brooding. Mananaan let him be, having learned it was no use trying to hasten his rousing from such fits, and the boat ran eastward on a harrying wind.
Naught seemed to stir in this waste of rock and ice, naught save the tumbling breakers and the snow-devils whirling on the mountains and the leaping auroral fires. But he could feel the nearness of vast and ancient presences, looming up toward the stars and watching the little intruders with eyes of night.
By the time Skafloc had shaken off his gloom, the boat had sailed a long way, and Mananaan was steering close to every fjord in search of sign of their goal. The sea kin
g was growing uneasy, for he could almost smell the evil lairs of Utgard now, and even the reckless Sidhe did not care to near that dark city.
‘Bölverk dwells in a mountain, I was told,’ said the man. ‘That would mean a cave.’
‘Aye, but this cursed land is riddled with caverns.’
‘A big one, I should think,’ went on Skafloc thoughtfully. ‘And with signs of smithery about.’
Mananaan nodded, and steered for the next inlet. As they neared the sheer cliffs rising out of the sea, Skafloc began to understand the size of them. Up they towered, up, up, storming the stars in such a cataract of height that he grew dizzy trying to see their tops. A few aurora-lit clouds sailed over them, and he had the feeling that those walls of rock were toppling on him – now the sides of the world were sundering as it sank into the sea!
Ant-like, the boat crawled under the foot of the cliffs and peered into the fjord. It ran past sight, a maze of holms and skerries and jutting rock faces high enough to block out the stars. But Skafloc’s nostrils tingled to a faint scent blown on the cruel wind – smoke, hot iron, and he heard the remote banging of a hammer.
There was no need for words, and Mananaan steered into the fjord. The boat had not gone far ere the cliffs had shouldered all wind aside, so that the seamen had to scull. They went right swiftly, but so huge was the fjord that they scarce seemed to move.
The vast and ominous stillness seemed even deeper here, as if sound had frozen to death and the aurora danced on its grave. A few noiseless snowflakes circled down out of the great starry sky. The cold ate and ate at living flesh. It seemed to Skafloc that the moveless quiet was that of some great beast of prey crouched for a spring, taut and still, with hungrily glittering eyes and a lashing auroral tail. He knew with blind certainty that eyes were on him.
Slowly, slowly, the boat won around the many twists and bends in the fjord. Deeper into the stark land it crept. Once Skafloc heard a slithering over ice and ancient crusted snow, keeping pace. The wind yowled, far above the cliffs, so high that it might almost have been blowing between the great white stars.
The Broken Sword Page 17
