The Elven

by Bernhard Hennen

  They rode back down the path from the cliff. About halfway down, a group of elderly warriors came toward them carrying wicker baskets full of arrows on their backs. Liodred reined in his black horse and waved to a man wearing an eye patch. “Hey-o, Gombart, what drags you away from your pretty wife?”

  “I heard you’d invited every old dog around town to shoot a few knights.” He regarded the king with a toothless grin and patted the black cloth patch bound over his left eye. “Besides, they say they’ll be so packed together that not even I could miss. And for every one we cut down, there’s a horn full of mead waiting for us in your golden hall.”

  Liodred roared with laughter. “That’s hardly a story my cupbearer would be spreading, but I’ll take you at your word, my men. A horn full to the brim for every Tjured knight.” He grinned broadly. “But don’t think I don’t know you for a pack of crooks. I’ll be aboard the Albenstar down there and counting every one.”

  The men laughed and joshed among themselves awhile. Liodred waved one last time, then he spurred his big black horse on down the cliff track.

  “Sometimes I think it is better for a man to die young and in full possession of his powers,” said Liodred when they were out of earshot.

  “No,” Mandred contradicted him. “The greatest gift is to be able to see your children grow up. Believe me, I know.” He thought bitterly of how little time he had had with Alfadas.

  On the final stretch of the path down to the bay, where a rowboat was waiting for them, each man of the party was silent, deep in his own thoughts. Where were the elves? Mandred wondered. Would they leave Firnstayn to fend for itself?

  On the beach stood Valgerd, Liodred’s wife. She was tall and blond and wore a dress the color of sunflowers, held together at the shoulders by two golden clasps. On her arm she carried a child, no more than five moons old. His name was Aslak, Liodred’s son.

  The king went to them and kissed the boy tenderly on his forehead. Then he untied a knife in a gold-clad sheath from his belt and handed it to Valgerd. She nodded.

  Liodred passed his hand gently through her hair, then he moved down to the boat where Mandred was already waiting for him. The jarl felt ill. Was the king afraid of dying? Was that a parting gift for a son who might never know his father? Liodred was so close to all the people here. He was loved by each and every one of them. Nothing will happen to him, Mandred swore.

  The two men climbed into the little rowboat. The oarsmen greeted their king, who tousled the hair of the youngest in passing. Then they pushed off from the beach and rowed hard for the flagship.

  “An heirloom?” asked Mandred.

  Liodred was jolted from his musings. “What?”

  “The knife.”

  “Yes . . . that, too.”

  “What else?”

  Liodred lowered his voice. “I know what these priests are like. It is . . . Should they win this battle, Valgerd will try to escape. But in case . . .”

  “She should kill the boy?”

  “And herself,” said Liodred. “It will be for the best.” He looked out over the dark water of the fjord. “Will they come? The elves?” he asked, his voice still low.

  “Of course,” said Mandred, but he could not look Liodred in the eye as he said it.

  On board the Albenstar, Liodred was like a new man. He joked with the soldiers and gave instructions for who should be in the front line. This Albenstar had little in common with the ship that had once carried Mandred and the elves to Noroelle’s island. It was much larger, with space for a hundred oarsmen.

  On all thirty ships in the blockade, the masts had been unstepped and laid in the longships to prevent them becoming a hindrance in the impending battle. The rudders, too, had been pulled on board and stowed. In the stern of the longship, a pole had been placed, and on it fluttered the old banner from the original Albenstar: a blue star on a silver ground.

  Two soldiers helped Liodred don his armor, the beautifully worked elven armor that had once been worn by Alfadas and, here, was without equal. All of the other soldiers on board wore chain mail tunics and round helmets with long nasals.

  Mandred allowed himself to be helped into a knee-length mail tunic. As he was putting on his helmet, Liodred came to him. “I always wanted to ask you if it was true that each one of the braids in your hair stood for a man that you slayed in battle. That is what our skalds tell us.”

  “It’s true,” the jarl said.

  “You’re a dangerous man.”

  “You’ll need dangerous men today.”

  Horns sounded from the cliff tops. The first of the knights’ ships was sailing into the fjord. It was a stately three-master with a high stern. Moments later, four more swung into the fjord entrance.

  Mandred looked apprehensively at the high forecastles of the ships. The attackers would be several paces higher than the Firnstayners’ defenses. The crow’s nests on the Tjured vessels looked huge. Each carried five crossbowmen. From up there, they could pick their targets across a wide field.

  A salvo of arrows flew from the western cliff, but the ship was holding to the center of the channel and the arrows fell short by a good fifty paces.

  Liodred handed Mandred a large, round shield painted red. “You’ll be needing that, Forefather.”

  The jarl pushed his left arm through the broad leather loops and pulled them tight. The shield felt solid on his forearm.

  “Let’s welcome these lily-white priests!” Liodred roared and raised his shield in front of his chest. Then he slammed the flat of his axe against the curved boss in the center of the shield. Soldiers along the entire battle line followed his lead, and an earsplitting din echoed from the cliffs along the fjord.

  The clanging and the cries of the soldiers got the blood pumping in Mandred’s veins. Let the damned Tjured priests come. In the men of the Fjordlands, they would find their betters.

  More and more ships appeared in the entrance of the fjord. They fanned out into an extended line, still four hundred paces distant. Mandred could see the helmets of the Tjured knights glinting behind the bulwarks shielding the forecastle.

  “Watch over us, Norgrimm,” Liodred bellowed. “Make our wall of wood strong, and may the courage of our enemies founder on it.”

  Fanfares sounded from the caravels, and there was movement in the ships’ bows.

  “Shields high!” Mandred cried, even as arrows rained down onto the longships.

  The large, round shields quickly formed a protective roof. Arrows thudded into the wood. Here and there, a man went to the deck, screaming, but the battle line across the longships did not waver.

  Salvo followed salvo. From beneath the shields, it was impossible to see how close the caravels were coming. Mandred had the feeling of an eternity passing. Hot sweat ran down the back of his neck. The point of an arrow pierced his shield and missed his arm by a hair. In places, the sand strewn across the decks of the longships was red with blood. Again and again, arrows found a gap in the wall of shields.

  Suddenly, the blockade of ships heaved. Several men near Mandred were knocked off their feet, and gaps appeared in the shield wall. The caravels had rammed the longships. The ships of the Northmen and the Tjured knights were hull to hull, like rival stags whose antlers have become wedged in a duel.

  “On your feet!” Liodred roared. “Archers ten paces back! Bring down the crossbows in the crow’s nests!”

  The lightly armed archers had sought shelter beneath the roof of shields during the hail of arrows. Now they ran back, and it was their turn to attack the enemy.

  A spear thwacked into the deck close to Mandred and stayed there, vibrating in the blood-smeared planking. Now that the rows of shields had broken, the jarl could once again see their foes. Wide planks with iron spikes on their ends slid down from the caravels. The spikes dug into the deck like fangs.

  All along the ba
rricade, boarding ramps were sliding down. Above Mandred, soldiers in white tabards appeared, ducked low behind long, drop-shaped shields. Every shield bore the crest of the burned oak.

  “For Tjured!” came the cry from a thousand throats. Then the knights of Tjured stormed down the boarding ramps.

  Shield to shield, they charged the battle lines of the defenders in a wild rampage. Mandred’s axe swung down in a glittering arc, carving through the shield and the helmet of the first of the attackers. The jarl jerked his axe free and swung it backhand over the edge of the next knight’s shield. With a crunch, the elven steel sliced through the nasal of his adversary’s helmet.

  Beside him, Liodred fought like an enraged bear. Soon, the deck was covered with the dead and the dying.

  A blow from a sword split Mandred’s shield, but the blade wedged in the wood, and Mandred tore it away from his attacker. Mandred’s axe swung into the knight’s uncovered flank, striking him beneath the ribs.

  Mandred jumped onto one of the boarding ramps. He threw the destroyed shield aside and took hold of his axe in both hands. He raged up the bridge like a berserker, fighting every step of the way to the enemy’s forecastle. Close behind him followed three of the Mandridians, using their shields as best they could to cover him from enemy arrows.

  When he reached the end of the ramp, the Tjured soldiers were massed so thickly in the forecastle that it was almost impossible for them to even raise their shields to protect themselves. In a blind rage, Mandred hewed into them. Swords and spears shattered under the impact of elven steel. Then he leaped into the midst of the enemy. He rammed the spike at the top of the axe shaft under the edge of the helmet of a tall knight, through his jaw, and into his brain. As the giant fell, he took down two more Tjured fighters with him. Panic broke out on the forecastle. Screaming, the knights tried to flee to safety. Some even jumped over the bulwarks into the water, though under the weight of their mail tunics, it was a leap to certain death.

  Moments later, the entire forecastle was under the control of the Northmen. Gasping for breath, Mandred looked down over the main deck. The surviving knights had retreated, and now they were looking up at him, their eyes wide with fear. From the rear of the fleet, more caravels were pushing into the mass of wedged ships, bringing fresh troops.

  “We have to pull back,” came a raw voice at his side. Liodred, too, had fought his way aboard the caravel. The king pointed to the east. “They’ve managed to get over the reef. The ebb tide won’t come. They’ve lost only a single ship there so far.”

  From the forecastle, Mandred had a good view of the fighting. The battle line of the Northmen had held, but Death had taken a rich harvest among them.

  On both sides of the blockade, individual caravels had managed to get through the rocks. One of the priests’ ships was on fire, ignited by the burning brands. A black column of smoke rose into the bright summer sky. Three of the little fire boats were engaged in a fearless attack, but the knights were fending them off with long poles while the crossbowmen aloft shot at the crews below.

  Two caravels were trying to board the longships kept back as reserves. But another seven ships would soon round the barricade and attack it from the rear.

  “Back to the longships!” Liodred cried. “We’ll form a double line!”

  With a heavy heart, Mandred descended the boarding ramp. Behind them, he heard the shouts of the knights ridiculing them. The jarl thought of the gold-studded dagger that Liodred had given his wife. “Send us the elves, Luth,” he murmured in despair. “Send us our allies, and I will never touch a horn of mead again.”

  Aboard the Queen’s Ship

  Nuramon stood at the railing of the Elflight, the queen’s flagship. From the starboard side, he could see the Firnstayner ships, chained together and closing off the entrance to the fjord like a wall. Beyond the longships billowed the huge sails of the enemy fleet, each with the symbol of the Tjured, the black tree. Approximately half the Tjured ships were locked in battle with the longships. In the narrow fjord, the Tjured could not exploit their superior numbers. Liodred and Mandred had forced the enemy into a bloody man-to-man battle, and it was impossible for Nuramon to estimate how well the Fjordlanders were holding out. All he could see was that there was movement on the ships, a close-fought melee.

  Several of the enemy ships were attempting to sail around the Fjordlanders’ barricade, trying to pick a channel through the rocks between the longships and the cliffs. One of the caravels was already on the rocks with its hull ripped open. The crew seemed to have gone overboard, but the fate of one caravel was apparently no deterrent to the rest. Other ships were still searching for a way through, to encircle the Fjordlanders or to attack the queen’s ship.

  Nuramon hoped that nothing had happened to Mandred or Liodred. Battles like this obeyed a different set of rules than one man fighting another. Pure chance could decide between life and death. If only the Elflight were faster. Nuramon looked back along the rows of oars that disappeared beneath him into the side of the ship. There must have been forty rows altogether. He had seen some two hundred oarsmen disappear below the deck. He had no doubt that they were doing their best down below, but the queen’s huge ship made only slow headway. The small galleys from Reilimee were far ahead of them and would soon reach the Fjordlanders. Nuramon had heard that the sorceress of the sea, whose name no one knew, had equipped the boats. Behind the galleys sailed triremes from Alvemer. Nuramon was surprised at how fast the ships of Albenmark had been able to put to sea. It had taken just twelve days to equip and assemble the fleet.

  The gate they had sailed through had already closed again. The wonderful play of colors over the seas of Albenmark that Emerelle had created with her magic was forever engraved in his memory. The gate was so wide that at dawn, the entire fleet had sailed through in one line.

  Among the soldiers on board, rumors flew about Emerelle. Some thought the fact that the Elflight sailed with no accompanying ships was an attempt to draw the enemy to them. When Nuramon looked around now, he could believe this was true. The Elflight was like a floating battlefield. The oarsmen sat at the oars down below, and the fighters were assembled on the decks. More than three hundred elven warriors were waiting for battle, gathered in a space of sixty paces from stem to stern. To get more fighters on board, the queen had left behind the crew who would normally have handled the sails. In this battle, there would be no need for them, and the masts of the huge galley had been stepped and lashed on deck.

  The ship was holding course for the Fjordlanders’ left flank, to support them on that side. Obilee had explained the strategy to Nuramon: she and the fighters from the other galleys would board the Fjordlanders’ longships to relieve their allies at the battle line, who could then retreat to the galleys and recuperate, then return to the battle later.

  Someone laid a hand on Nuramon’s shoulder. He turned and saw Master Alvias. “The queen would like to see you,” he said.

  Nuramon took his bow and followed Emerelle’s counselor back through the throng of warriors. Alvias looked unusually warlike in his leather armor, with a sword at his hip. It was said that he fought beside the queen in the first troll war.

  Alvias led him to the quarterdeck, in front of which Emerelle and Yulivee were surrounded by guards. The queen was giving instructions to her officers. She wore the gray robes of a sorceress, the same she had worn the night she had given him her counsel to prepare him for the elfhunt.

  Nuramon saw Obilee there, too. She seemed to be waiting for final instructions ahead of the battle. She was wearing the same armor she wore when he saw her in the Royal Hall.

  Little Yulivee greeted Nuramon with a playful wave. She was also dressed in a gray robe, like the queen. It still bothered Nuramon that the queen had brought the little sorceress with them. He was worried about her. This was no place for a child, however powerful Yulivee might be.

  The queen spoke to Obi
lee, and then she waved Nuramon to her. She greeted him kindly, then said, “I see that you are concerned for Yulivee, but believe me when I say that there is no safer place for her here than at my side.”

  Nuramon replied with a brief nod. The queen was right. But he still would have been happier if Yulivee had remained in the palace in Albenmark.

  “Nuramon, I would like you to go with Obilee,” said the queen. “She will be in command on the forecastle once Dijelon and Pelveric have reached the Fjordlanders.”

  “Yes, my queen.”

  “Then go.”

  Yulivee left Emerelle’s side and came to Nuramon. “You’re coming back, aren’t you?” she asked.

  Nuramon went down on one knee. “Is that concern I see on your face?”

  She looked away from him, but nodded.

  “Have no fear. Stay with the queen. You heard what she said.” He kissed her on the forehead. “Now go.”

  Without another word, Yulivee returned to the queen. There she grinned and held aloft a quiver. In it were the arrows that Nuramon had found along with the bow when he had visited the dwarves. At first, he had wanted to take them with him into this clash, but the queen had advised him to use regular arrows and to save these for special battles.

  “We have to go, Nuramon,” said Obilee, laying one hand on his shoulder.

  Nuramon looked one last time at Yulivee, then he went forward to the bow with Obilee. The warrior woman seemed dejected.

  “What’s the matter, Obilee?” he asked.

  “It’s only . . . ,” she began but stopped, as if she did not trust herself to say the words. Then she looked him in the eye and said, “I should not be the one leading you, Nuramon.”

  “You are not the young girl you once were,” he said. “You are a warrior, a great warrior, far more important than I will ever be. You have already proved yourself in so many battles. I admire you.” Obilee’s lips quivered. “Don’t be sad because of me, or Noroelle. Death is not the end. Nothing can stop me from finding Noroelle, in this life or the next. And what do you think she will say to you when she sees you again? She will be just as proud of you as I am.”