Had it not been for those sounds of admiration, had the boy come in private to Odoac with this plan, then Odoac might have adopted it and claimed it as his own. As it was, the words threw him into another towering rage. "What womanish, weakling words are these? Could the fierce Thungians ever follow such a simple-ton? No such coward could be born of our royal line, and I am minded to cut you from it!" So saying, Odoac lurched to his feet and began to draw his sword. His men rushed to restrain him, and forced him back into his throne.
A senior counselor turned to Leovigild. "Best get you gone, lad. We'll not let the king harm you, but you cannot stay here now." Ashen-faced, Leovigild strode from the hall. After a time, Odoac grew calm enough to be released.
"That boy tries me beyond my patience," said Odoac
at length. '"Best that he is exiled. He is treacherous as well as cowardly. I thank you for restraining me," he said piously. "I should never wish to shed the blood of a kinsman, be he never so disloyal." The warriors let this pass in eloquent silence.
"What of the custom, my liege?" asked a grim-faced man. "Now you have no heir. The people must have an heir to the throne, or there must be trouble."
Odoac shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Think you I am so old that I may not set this matter aright? As soon as we have settled the problem of the Cambres, then I shall take a new wife, be it Alcuina or some other. Then you shall have an heir within the year, vow."
"That is good to hear, my king," said the same man, and Odoac was not sure that there was no mockery in the voice. "Now, what of this black-haired champion of Alcuina's that we have heard something of? Is this fellow likely to cause us trouble?"
Happy to be off the subject of the succession, Odoac said, " have spoken with the trader Dawaz about this man. He is a mere sellsword, an adventurer from afar with neither kin nor friend here. He seems to possess some small skill with his weapons, and with a bit of luck he managed to slay Agilulf. I have also heard that he disappeared on the same night as Alcuina, as did the wizard Rerin. All the more reason why we should move now. The Cambres have lost queen, champion, and sorcerer. When shall we have such an opportunity again?" He looked around and saw only battle-lusting faces. "See to sharpening your weapons, then." He turned to a trusted retainer named Wudga. "Go you to all the outlying steadings and summon the warriors. It has been many years since there has been a winter hosting, so remind them that every man must bring as much preserved food as may feed him for at least a fortnight. After that we should be feasting upon the stores of the Cambres!"
A ferocious cheer went up at these words, the unfortunate Leovigild forgotten for the moment. Odoac sat back and smiled with satisfaction. Few problems, however thorny, were not to be solved with a little warfare and prospect of loot.
Leovigild rode for many hours, unsure where he might go. No man had pursued him from the hall, none had sought to molest him as he bundled his few belongings onto a packhorse and rode from the garth. Immediate death at the hands of Odoac's men might have been preferable. He was an exile, driven from hearth and hall, denied the protection of his family. In the North, a man without clan or kin was under virtual death sentence.
His small, shaggy mount pushed patiently through the snow, twin jets of steam streaming from his nostrils. Mane and tail swept almost to the snow as the surefooted beast picked its way among the serried drifts, its hooves crunching musically through the hard crust left by the great freeze.
Where could he go? He had his two horses, his sword, helm and cuirass of finely worked bronze. On the packhorse were his hunting clothes and his feast clothes, two long spears, a short javelin, and his shield of painted wood and leather. With the clothes he now wore, these were his total resources. It never crossed his mind to take the protection of some landholder and serve as a peasant farmer. Starvation was preferable. An armed warrior of good blood could always join the war-band of some chieftain. That was at least honor-
able, but it would have to be far from here, and a lone man was not likely to survive the journey. Besides, he was rightful heir to the lordship of the Thungians, and he had no intention of relinquishing his claim.
His gloomy thoughts turned to Alcuina of the Cambres. If the reports were true, she now was in some form of exile as well. If the loathsome liima was behind it, Alcuina's situation was far more dire than his own. He had never met her, but rumor had it that she was a great beauty. The thought of such a lady wed to his uncle was repellent, although honor and loyalty forbade his expressing the thought while in the garth.
He wished to avoid the men of the Tormanna and of the Cambres. Times were even more unsettled than usual, and there was no law to protect lone wanderers. Captors might wish to make sport with him before killing him, and many a man who was laggard on the battlefield made up for it by fiendish ingenuity in the treatment of prisoners.
He remembered a small valley in the hills to the north. He had found it years before when hunting alone. It was uncultivated and snaked along the ill-defined border between the lands of the Cambres and the Tormanna. If he could pass between the two nations unseen, he might find a place to hide, perhaps taking service with a petty chieftain until he might return to claim his birthright. Surely Odoac could not live much longer.
That evening he bedded down on the level ground near the mouth of the valley. It was a wild place, frequented only by hunters or herdsmen in search of strayed stock. With the flint and steel from his belt pouch he kindled a fire. There was scant likelihood that he would be seen in this wild spot.
As he was about to bed down in his warm cloaks, he was startled to see ghostly lights flittering among the trees within the narrow valley. His hand went to the protective amulet that hung at his neck, and he chanted out a quick spell to ward off evil. The lights came no nearer and seemed no more menacing than the fire, which was now a small heap of coals before him.
"Ymir!" he muttered in a near whisper, "am I a child to hide my head for fear of will-o'-the-wisps?"
With a short, forced laugh he bundled into his cloaks and was soon asleep. Nothing molested him, but his sleep was fitful, troubled by vague, menacing dreams.
The next morning, remounted, Leovigild peered into the narrow, growth-choked valley. Little of the snow lay there, but the density of the tree canopy could have explained that. Still, it was an ill-looking place. It took some urging on his part to force the horses into the tangled draw. When he had visited this place before, he had been on foot. That had been in the days of high summer, but even then the darkness of the valley had oppressed him. He had spent a morning in halfhearted pursuit of a wounded stag, and turned back hastily when its tracks ended in a welter of blood and broken brush. Some dire predator dwelled in the valley, but he was older and betterrarmed now.
The air was still and warmer than that outside the valley. The growth of plants was different as well. Here, instead of pine and fir, broad-leafed oak predominated. The trees were stunted but of luxuriant growth, and once he was well into the valley the undergrowth Sunned, and the traveling was easier. The valley floor was uneven, a tiny stream meandering over a gravel bed in its center. The heavy growth of stunted trees and
thick vines, the great mossy boulders, all lent the valley a certain wild beauty, marred by the gloomy dimness.
Leovigild watched for game to supplement the scant rations in his saddlebags, but he saw little sign of larger animals, and the smaller ones would be passing the winter in sleep. Still, he kept his bow strung, its handle of hide-wrapped yew comforting to his hand.
He was beginning to regret his decision to travel by this route. The men of Totila and Alcuina would never accost him in this place, but it had the aspect of an abode for dragons and giants. His imagination peopled the copses and caves with witches, and behind the mossy boulders he thought he glimpsed ragged dwarfs ducking from sight. He tried to shake off the uncanny mood.
"Tales to frighten children," he muttered. "It is men I must be wary of, not goblins from old stories."
; Having thus reassured himself, Leovigild urged his horse forward. There was a tiny clearing in the overhead cover, and a heap of snow lay before him. It was the first sizable drift he had encountered since entering the valley. Then a great many things happened at once. As he guided his horse around the drift the heap of snow burst upward, flinging white clumps far and wide.
Leovigild's mount reared screeching, casting the youth to the ground with enough force to half stun him. Towering above him was a creature of nightmareits wedge-shaped head reared high upon a sinuous trunk as thick as a man's body. Its unblinking, slit-pupilled eyes fixed malevolently upon the helpless Leovigild, and he knew that he had no chance against this thing from the earth's youth.
"Snow serpent!" he gasped.
Travelers claimed to have seen the giant, white-furred snakes in the lands north of the forest belt, where the sun rose not for half the year, nor fully set in the other half. Never had he heard of such in the woodlands of his people.
His packhorse bolted toward the upper end of the valley, but his mount fidgeted, too paralyzed by terror to pick a direction and run. With Leovigild motionless, the primitive brain of the serpent was distracted by the terrified beast. Its jaws gaped, and yellow slime dripped from its fangs to hiss upon the snow. It lunged forward, and Leovigild heard the doomed beast's shrill neigh cut short by a horrible sound of crunching bones.
With a wrenching, painful effort, the youth raised himself enough to see a writhing, white-furred coil from which protruded the twisted legs of his mount. Horror thrilled his spine as the serpent's head reared from the writhing mass, its jaws grotesquely distended. The horse's head and part of its forequarters had already disappeared into the gaping maw, and he realized that the monster intended to swallow the horse whole.
Now, he knew, was his chance to escape. Even so immense a monster must need some time to swallow an entire horse. He tested his limbs and found them all relatively sound. It would be some time before he was hale enough to run, but he could creep painfully upon hands and knees.
As Leovigild began to drag himself away the serpent turned to fix its eyes once more upon him. It shook its head, trying to rid itself of the carcass, but its backward-curving fangs would not release it. It had to swallow the horse or die with the carcass in its jaws. Gradually it lost interest in the lesser prey and went back to its task.
Leovigild was gasping with a mixture of pain and
relief when he pulled himself to his feet with the aid of a small sapling. He bled only from small scrapes, although he felt as if King Odoac's hall had fallen upon him. As he made his slow, halting way up the valley he took stock of his situation.
If he had felt poor and abandoned upon setting out, he was in far worse condition now. He had the clothes he wore, his sword and knife, and a relatively undamaged body. His packhorse with his other belongings was somewhere ahead. With luck, he might recover them. Only the thought that he might have ended as snake food himself kept him from cursing his luck.
He paused to catch his breath. Painfully he bent and touched .the earth. "Father Ymir, I thank you that I have escaped as cheaply as I did." He suspected that Ymir took no interest in his doings, but it did no harm to keep on good terms with the gods.
"A pious sentiment, for so young a man."
Leovigild whirled at the sound of a human voice, causing himself great pain in so doing. He saw nobody. "Show yourself!"
"I am here before you."
Leovigild peered into the gloom and saw a lump of mossy stone a few paces before him. It had an oddly regular look to it, a semblance of a human face below the long strands of lichen hanging from its crest. In deep-shadowed pits he saw a pair of unmistakable eyes. At another time it might have sent prickles of horror up his spine. So soon after his encounter with the snow serpent, it was a mere curiosity.
"What manner of creature are you?" he asked.
"I might ask the same of you, O foolish one."
Leovigild could now see that it was a small, gnarled man sitting atop the boulder. So twisted and irregular was his shape that he seemed more a part of his surroundings than a living man, and whether he was covered with ragged garments, hair, or moss was equally uncertain.
"I am Leovigild, heir to the lordship of the Thungians. My pack-beast was slain by a great white serpent, and I now search for my mount."
"And what brings you hither, to a place avoided by men since your breed first came to these wooded hills?" An oversized, knobby hand emerged from the rags and scratched at a bark-brown cheek.
"My business is my own. I but seek passage up this valley and intend to leave it two days' journey to the north. That at least was my intention. The loss of my horses may cause me to tarry here a while longer."
"You may stay here far longer than you had intended," said the ugly little man.
Uncomfortably Leovigild thought of old tales he had heard as a child, of places outside human ken. There were said to be barrows and hills where unwary travelers were drawn by mysterious lights or music, to spend a night feasting with the small people, only to emerge with the dawn and find that twenty or more years had passed.
"Would you seek to ensorcell me?" His hand went to his sword hilt. After his battering he was far from his best fighting form, but he had little doubt that he could defeat this homunculus.
The creature laughed, a sound like two boulders rubbing together. "The pause of death is the longest delay of all. You men are a short-lived race." The creature spoke slowly, as one who never felt the press of passing time.
"I must find my, packhorse," said Leovigild impa―
tiently. "This is your valley, and I would be grateful for your aid in tracking the beast. But if you will not aid me, then at least hinder me no further." Painfully and stiffly he turned to trudge off.
"Be not so hasty, youth."
Leovigild turned back to see the dwarfish figure ris-ing from its rock. Standing, the creature stood no higher than Leovigild's waist, but it was easily twice as broad through the body. The long arms were roped with heavy coils of muscle, and the youth was no longer so sanguine about besting the little man in combat.
"Let us go and find your animal. I warrant you would not live long alone in this valley."
The dwarf picked up a club and shouldered it. The bludgeon was a knobby-headed oaken cudgel as long as Leovigild's leg, old and hand-polished. The creature handled it as lightly as a willow-wand. He set off at an easy walk, his stubby legs adjusting to the irregularity of the footing with the effortlessness of long custom.
"What manner of man are you?" Leovigild asked once more. "I have never encountered your like, though you live so close to my homeland."
"I am no man at all. I am a Niblung, and my people lived in these Northlands long before men arrived with their long legs and their short lives. Your kind have encountered us seldom because we wish it so. This valley has such an aspect that few wish to venture hither, and those who camp nearby are troubled with strange dreams. Those who enter soon turn back, bothered by strange fears they cannot explain."
"Such was my experience," Leovigild said, nodding. "I persisted only because I had no safe route through the lands of my foemen." The words were out before he could stop them. He had not intended to reveal his fugitive status.
"It may be," said the little man, "that we of this valley shall help you. I am Hugin. Follow close behind me, young Leovigild. There is danger for you in much that seems harmless in this valley."
"I have already encountered some of the peril of this place," Leovigild said.
"Aye. And if you failed to see a thing as huge as the snow serpent, how will you see the things that are small but just as deadly?" His shaggy, mossy eyebrows flapped up and down like the wings of a bat.
"How came that creature to this small valley?" Leovigild asked. "They are figures out of our oldest tales and are said to live only in the lands of eternal snow in the farthest north." They scrambled over a litter of fallen logs, a legacy of some mighty storm of ye
ars past.
"Such of the breed as are left inhabit those lands," Hugin agreed. "Yet once they were numerous and wide-spread. Far back in the mists of time, longer ago than you humans can remember, the world was covered with unending snow and great sheets of ice. Then the land was ruled by such as the snow serpent, and the great hairy tuskers, and the giant white apes. The ice re-treated to the north, and the great snow-beasts with it. Once in a great while, though, some ancient instinct stirs in the brain of one of those fell creatures, and they are driven to wander south. In time they return to the north, unable to bear the heat or to find food to suit them. The serpent would have returned soon, but your horse has provided it a good meal, and it will sleep for many days."
It seemed incredible to Leovigild that no more than an
hour's walk to either hand were the familiar pine forests of his homeland. This was a slice from another time and place set amid his accustomed surroundings.
Not all its dangers were as outlandish as the snow serpent. Silently Hugin pointed to a writhing nest of vipers in a hollow beside the little stream. They were of a breed Leovigild had never seen before. Unwarned, he might have trod in their midst. From time to time tracks in the mud assured him that they were still on the trail of his packhorse.
At midday they picked their way gingerly around a thicket from which came regular snortings. Leovigild could not keep from peering within, .despite Hugin's silent urgings to leave well enough alone. To his amazement he saw a sleeping boar, large as a full-grown bull. Its curling tusks were longer than his forearm. The sight made him long for his boar-spear, but he knew that all the boar-spears and nets in Odoac's hunting lodges might not suffice to slay so terrific a beast. There would be great carnage among the huntsmen, at best.
Something occurred to Leovigild. "Hugin, a few days ago, the queen of the Cambres disappeared. Her name is Alcuina, and she is said to be a woman of great beauty. It may be that she is accompanied by her champion, a huge black-haired outlander, who I have heard is more than commonly handy with his sword. Have they passed hither?"
The Conan Compendium Page 473
