Poul Anderson by The Broken Sword

Author:The Broken Sword
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-11-24T11:53:10+00:00

“Save himself who can!” cried Skafloc. He leaped out on to the slippery stone and over into a neck-deep water. Seal-swift he darted for the beach. His comrades were with him, except those too badly hurt to move. They must stay in the breaking hull and drown in sight of land.

The rest waded ashore, and they were well past the troll line. Some of the riders saw them and galloped off to kill.

“Scatter!” shouted Skafloc. “Most can escape!”

Running into the snowstorm, he saw elves spitted on lances or trampled under hoofs.

But the bulk of his little band were getting away. High swung the sea-mew.

And down on the bird stooped a mighty erne. Skafloc groaned. Crouched behind a rock, he saw the erne bear the mew to earth, and there they became Illrede and Imric.

Troll clubs thudded on to the elf-earl. He lay limp in a pool of his blood while they bound him.

If Imric was dead, Alfheim had lost one of its best leaders. If he lived-woe for him!

Skafloc slithered off through the snow-covered ling. He scarcely felt weariness, or cold, or his stiffening wounds. The elves were beaten, and now he had but one goal: to reach Elfheugh and Freda ahead of the trolls.

XVI

Illrede’s folk took sun-shelter and rested through a couple of days, for the struggle had worn them down too. Thereafter they set south, half by land and half by sea. The ships reached Elfheugh harbour the same night. Their crews went ashore, plundered what buildings they found in the open, and waited around the castle for their fellows.

The land troops, with Grum and Valgard at the head, went more slowly. Horsemen scoured the countryside, and whatever small bands of elf warriors sought to fight were slain-not without loss to the trolls. Outlying garths were looted and burned, their folk chained into long lines that stumbled neck linked to neck and wrists lashed together, with Imric in the lead. The trolls made merry with food and drink and women of Alfheim, and did not unduly hasten to reach Elfheugh.

But by their arts, or by the mere lack of word from their men, the castle dwellers knew at dawn of the battle night that Imric had lost. Later, looking down from their high parapets to the campfires that ringed them in, to the black ships drawn up on the strand or riding at anchor in the bay, they knew it had been no double loss but a dear victory for the invaders.

As Freda stood thus staring out of a window in her bedchamber, she heard the faintest rustle of silken garments. She turned and saw Leea behind her. In the elf woman’s hand gleamed a knife.

Pain and malice were on Leea’s face, making it no longer the face of an idol carved in ivory by an ancient southland master. She said in human speech: “You weep dry tears for one whose love is raven food.”

“I will weep when I know he is dead,” answered Freda tonelessly. “But there was too much life in him for me to believe that he is now lying stark.

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