Elven Queen

by Bernhard Hennen

  But Alfadas preferred to be with Lambi and his men. The war jarl wore an impenetrable armor of grim humor. He gave his men the impression that nothing could knock him down, and it gave them courage. Somehow, one felt things could not get too bad if Lambi was close by.

  Alfadas wished that he was more like Lambi. The men of his army held him, their duke, to be invincible. That was a fragile claim to fame. He would much rather have been the man who, even in defeat, could come up with a bawdy joke about his enemy and make his men confident that the next fight would turn out differently. But their first defeat would erase the men’s trust in Alfadas. And how were you supposed to win against trolls?

  He kept his thoughts to himself, moved on, and helped the men set up camp. They stretched tarpaulins as protection against the wind. It was impossible to start a campfire on the bare ice, but the elves set up large copper bowls on legs and lit fires in those. And although no one was cold, the humans gathered around the braziers. Their light was the promise that the darkness would pass.

  Alfadas gave the order for several sheep to be slaughtered. The death of the blacksmith had shaken Alfadas’s men, but the smell of roasting meat was enough to raise their spirits again. They sliced the meat into broad strips and threw them onto the coals in the braziers until a dark crust formed.

  The duke saw how Ronardin, the watchman from the bridge in Phylangan, observed the humans with a mixture of fascination and repulsion. In all the centuries Ronardin had been alive, he had no doubt never eaten a piece of meat burned black on the outside and still raw and bloody inside.

  The elves passed around light apple wine that did not go to one’s head but was still delicious and herbed bread, dried meat, and a little honey.

  Alfadas heard Veleif’s voice at one of the fires. The skald was singing about a hunter who went out stalking one lonely winter’s night to save his family from starvation. All Veleif needed was two verses and everyone around him fell silent. Even the coarse laughter from Lambi’s men faded.

  Alfadas walked a short distance away from the camp, fleeing from thoughts of Asla and their children. If they were to be victorious, then he had to be like Count Fenryl. He had to think ahead. Lambi and Veleif would keep the men’s morale high. His job was to be coolheaded, to calculate how they could win against unequal enemies. It was good that, at first, they would only have to defend a fortress whose walls protected them from fighting the trolls hand-to-hand.

  Suddenly, the snow in front of him began to move. A figure rose from the white powder, well camouflaged inside a heavy white woolen cloak. Silwyna.

  “Why aren’t you in camp?” Alfadas asked in surprise.

  “Staring into a fire spoils your night vision.”

  “Do we need someone to watch over us tonight? Fenryl says the trolls are still far off.”

  Silwyna sniffed disdainfully. “He’s just a Normirga. I’m a Maurawan. I know that a hunter who underestimates his prey is no better than prey himself. In Vahan Calyd, everyone thought they were safe, too. Now I know that the trolls have returned to Albenmark, and I know that they want to return to their old homeland. Those are two good reasons not to just lie by a fire and sleep in the Snaiwamark.”

  Alfadas thought about how close the two of them had once been. “You’re always on guard, aren’t you? What did I do back then to make you leave me?”

  “This is neither the time nor the place to discuss that,” she said sharply, and turned away into the darkness.

  “Will there ever be a time and place to discuss it?” he shouted after her. But his anger was not just directed at her. He was just as angry at himself that only a few words with her were enough to make him lose his self-control.

  Silwyna stopped. Slowly, she turned back. “You speak truly, Alfadas. It will never be easy to talk about what was, and in a few weeks, we might both be dead. You have a right to know. Why do you think I came to you in the Other World?”

  Another question that Alfadas had asked himself often in recent weeks. He had found no answer.

  “Perhaps because Ollowain asked you to?”

  She was standing very close to him now. “No,” she said, smiling. “He would never do that. He was actually worried about taking me with him because he was afraid the sight of me would make you angry.” Her wolf-like eyes held his. She was as beautiful as ever. At least to him. “I went to the Other World to see what kind of father you are. I knew you had a wife and thought that you would probably also have children. I wanted to see them, wanted to know how you were raising them. How you are with them. How they look at you.”

  Alfadas felt a lump forming in his throat. He thought of Ulric, how he listened with a serious expression whenever Alfadas talked to him about how a man fought with honor. And he thought of how Kadlin’s exuberant laughter could dissolve his anger at all the small catastrophes she dragged Alfadas into.

  “You have another son,” Silwyna said softly. “His name is Melvyn.”

  That was impossible! Her words took his breath away like a fist to his gut. His mouth felt dry. “Humans and elves are not able to have children.” He could barely speak.

  “That’s what they say, isn’t it? It’s . . . unnatural? But he was conceived in love. Is that unnatural?”

  Again, a flash of anger overcame Alfadas. “Why did you run away? Why didn’t you say anything? You stole him from me. Why are you telling me about a child I will never see?”

  As suddenly as his anger came, it dissipated again. He thought of all the lonely hours of his own childhood in which he had wished for a father. Ollowain had truly done his best, but a father was something else.

  “I had to. Because of Emerelle.” Silwyna’s lips trembled. “Noroelle’s son. He was another child who should never have been conceived. A bastard, a half elf. She ordered his death, and she exiled Noroelle until the end of days. You know . . .”

  “Yes.” Alfadas’s voice was little more than a despairing croak. He knew what had happened. He was among those who had finally found Noroelle’s son, after all. And he’d been able to understand very well why Farodin and Nuramon had refused to carry out their queen’s order.

  “I was afraid that Emerelle would also condemn our child to death.” Silwyna was speaking quickly now, her voice breaking, and Alfadas realized how long she must have wanted to say these words. “My love for you never died, but I could not say a word to you. You would not have let me go, and if you had come with me, our secret would have been discovered. You were too closely bound to the queen’s court to simply go off to the Slanga Mountains with me. Emerelle would have found out what happened. But because no one knew about it and I disappeared one morning without a word of good-bye, everyone thought the moody Maurawan had simply gone off after the call of the wild, that she didn’t care a damn that she had broken the human’s heart. I know what the other elves think about my race. It’s safe to say that nobody at court was surprised at my disappearance.”

  “No,” Alfadas admitted. He remembered that even cold, aloof Emerelle herself had tried to console him. The Maurawan are like the wind, she had told him back then. They are simply not made to spend much time in one place. It had not helped. The only thing that had brought him back to life again was meeting his father. Going with Mandred on the search for Noroelle’s son was a welcome opportunity to get away from the queen’s court, where everything reminded him of Silwyna. In the end, he had turned his back on Albenmark and never returned.

  “What’s he like, my son?” he asked, and tried to imagine a child whose face blended Silwyna’s features with his own.

  “He has my eyes,” she said with a smile. She stroked his hair. “And your ears. He doesn’t like that. He thinks it’s a flaw that his ears look different from mine or the wolves’. I’ve never been able to convince him otherwise.”

  “Why does he compare himself to wolves?” Alfadas asked, perplexed.

  “Wolves look after their cubs well. The entire pack watches out for their young. If anything happens to the mo
ther, the other females in the pack raise the cub.”

  It took Alfadas a moment to understand what she was trying to tell him. “You . . . you gave my son to a wolf pack? That’s—tell me that isn’t true!”

  “It wasn’t like that. I went to the pack and became part of it myself. I hunted and lived with them. I did not hand Melvyn over to them, and I was almost always there.”

  “You raised him among wolves!” Alfadas could not believe what he was hearing. “Among beasts!”

  “Those beasts have never treated him like a half blood, despite how different he is. Of the litter he grew up with, only one old she-wolf is still alive. They accepted him as their brother, and he had his place in the pack. He would not have had that anywhere else! I never dared show him to my race, not once, because I did not know how they would react. They might have sided with Emerelle. There has never before been a boy that is half elf, half human. It was possible that even the Maurawan would have decided to kill him. So I withdrew to the forests at the foot of the Albentop. No one goes there. People think it is cursed. None of my people questioned it; it is not unusual for one of us to go off and live a solitary existence. They could accept that, but could they have accepted the boy, too? I don’t know. Telling anyone about Melvyn would have meant risking his life.”

  Alfadas tried to imagine an infant lying among wolf cubs. “They could have torn him to pieces. A child safe in a pack of ferocious wolves . . . how could you think of raising a child among animals? Are you so coldhearted? Does his life mean nothing to you?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Silwyna looked at him despondently. “You don’t really want to hear what I’m saying, do you? It doesn’t interest you.”

  “How can you say that? He’s my son. He—does he have more of me than just the ears?”

  Silwyna smiled mildly. “Yes. Much more. He asks about you all the time. That’s why I went to Vahan Calyd. I wanted to meet Ollowain and ask him to help me get to the human world.” She shook her head. “But he had a request for me instead. He entrusted me with watching over the woman I feared more than any other inhabitant of Albenmark: Emerelle, from whom I fled into the wilderness in the first place.”

  Alfadas looked around to make sure they were still alone. Only then did he ask, “Was it you? Did you shoot at the queen?”

  Silwyna looked at him for a long time without answering. With every passing heartbeat, Alfadas grew more uncertain. This was not like the Maurawan. In the past, she had invariably been open with him, her answers coming without second thoughts or second guesses. And she had always spoken the truth, though it might harm herself or others in the process. Was she struggling now with a lie?

  “I did not shoot at Emerelle,” she finally said. “She is the queen. It is not my place to kill her. Still, Ollowain could not have found a more unsuitable guard for her. I did, in fact, see the assassin on the quarterdeck of her ship, and I did nothing to stop him. Emerelle is a danger to our child, Alfadas. I cannot protect her.”

  “But you helped them escape the town. You . . .” Alfadas faltered.

  “I helped Ollowain because I trusted him to find a way out of the inferno, and he did. I didn’t care what happened to the queen. I wanted to survive, and . . . I wanted to get to you.”

  “But by helping Ollowain, you saved Emerelle,” Alfadas persisted. He did not want to believe that Silwyna had pitted herself against the queen.

  “That may be,” Silwyna said calmly. “But it counts for nothing because it was not my intention to help her. And she would do well never to rely on any help from me.”

  “Does Ollowain know this?”

  “He doesn’t have to. He doesn’t trust me, and he’s right not to.”

  Alfadas could not really grasp Silwyna’s thinking. She hated Emerelle and feared for their child. She did nothing to protect the queen, but she did not try to do anything to hurt her directly. “Where is my son now? Did you leave him with the wolves? And how old is he? He isn’t still at that mountain with such a terrible reputation that even the Maurawan won’t go near it, is he?”

  “Our son is experiencing his twelfth winter. And he is safe among the wolves. They would tear themselves apart to protect him. I . . .” Her voice failed, and she turned her face away. “I can’t trust anyone.”

  Alfadas stepped closer to her and stroked her cheek gently. “You can trust me.” As he touched her, all his anger melted away, and the thing he had feared the most came to pass: all the images of the half a year they had shared came back to him, vivid and unvarnished. It was the first time in his life that he had been truly happy.

  Asla had been the one to heal the deep wound that Silwyna had inflicted with her sudden disappearance. He had cursed the Maurawan, looking for her week after week. But even in the beginning of his search, he knew he would never be able to find her unless she wanted him to. When he finally gave up, he at least tried to understand her motivation, but even that was denied him. No one understood the Maurawan, it was said, and he had finally shared that opinion. And then his father had come. Riding with Mandred, leaving behind everything that reminded him of Silwyna, had been a welcome change. And it had brought him Asla. She loved him from the very first day. And he?

  Asla had been good for him. He found peace with her. But every time he looked up to the stone crown on top of the Hartungscliff, he was conscious of what he had done to her. She had had to fill the gap left by Silwyna. He loved his wife, but it was a different kind of love than what he felt for the elf woman.

  Silwyna kissed him. It was a fleeting touch, and yet filled with passion.

  “I will not stand in your way,” she said, her voice raw. With quick steps, she disappeared into the night.

  SKIRMISH IN THE STORM

  He had hardly slept in the night, and they were on the move again well before dawn. Heavy, driving snow hid the plain from sight and shrunk the world to just a few paces across.

  Alfadas thought of Asla. He had been happy with her all these years, though he could not shake his memories of Albenmark. Had he been fooling himself? He wished he had not made Silwyna talk to him the night before. Now he marched in the middle of his column of men, a lost black figure in a long row of black figures. He stared at the cloak of the man in front of him. The wind tore at the threadbare fabric. Snow gathered in the deep folds at the shoulders. The only good thing about this miserable weather was that they had been spared from having to wear the snow masks. With strips of leather over their eyes and only narrow slits to see through, it made little difference if one were really blind or not.

  He waited every moment for an emissary from Count Fenryl to arrive and request him to hand over command. How much heavier would the driving snow have to be before the elven prince saw it as a danger? It would be wiser to call a halt where they were.

  Alfadas stared at the back of the man in front. He told himself that when he could not see the folds of the man’s cloak clearly anymore, he would give the order to halt, whether the count was still vacillating or not.

  He pressed his fingers to his chest and felt the elven amulet beneath his chain mail shirt and padded leather vest. Without those enchanted small gold pieces, half of his men would probably have frozen to death in the night.

  However bad things looked for the elves at that moment, a race that could create such miracles would never be defeated by a mob of unwashed trolls. They had to win, just as they always had in the past!

  Mag came up and joined him. The war jarl’s cloak was crusted with snow, and he ducked slightly as he braced against the wind.

  Alfadas blinked at him. The snow stabbed his face like a thousand tiny daggers. “Everything all right?” He almost had to shout to make himself heard over the howling wind.

  “Yes,” the erstwhile ferryman said. Then he suddenly shook his head. “No. My men asked me something, and I don’t know how to answer them, so I wanted to put the question to you. Will we—the farmers, fishermen, and craftsmen—also enter Norgrimm
’s halls if we fight heroically? In the old stories, it’s always jarls and kings or at least famous fighters that Norgrimm calls to join him.” He took a deep breath. “And now that we’re here, so far from the Fjordlands, will we even be able to find a way to his Golden Hall?”

  “We’ll teach him that courage has nothing to do with a man’s standing in the world,” said Alfadas. He could see that his answer did not satisfy Mag. “Have you ever met someone who returned from the Golden Hall to report on it?”

  The young war jarl looked up in annoyance. “Of course not. The heroes will return to the Fjordlands with Norgrimm only when the last of all battles is fought. There’s no coming back before that.”

  “So how do we know about the eternal feast of the warriors and the magnificent hall of the war god? Only from his priests and from the skalds who tell us stories about the heroes. We have our own skalds, and Veleif Silberhand is considered the best in his guild. He will write a magnificent epic about us. And I can promise you that in his heroic saga, everyone who has fought bravely will find their way to Norgrimm.”

  Mag’s brow furrowed. “But is it the truth?”

  “Who save Luth, the weaver of fate, knows the truth? I don’t know if the Golden Hall of the gods exists, Mag. But I know one thing with certainty: when Veleif returns to the Fjordlands, then the grandchildren of our grandchildren will tell stories about the men who went to fight at the side of the elves. King Osaberg himself and all the other heroes have not earned more renown. Their stories have lived on beyond their deaths. Maybe that is what makes the Golden Hall—it is the place of the ones not forgotten.”

  Mag knocked the icy snow from his shoulders. “They say you don’t believe in the gods. Maybe I should have asked someone else for advice.”

  “You’re not asking for your men, are you? You came because of your brother Torad.”

  Mag looked at Alfadas in surprise. After some moments, he nodded. “Is my heart always so easy to read?”

  “Is it dishonorable not to be able to hide the truth?”