The Wizard And The Warlord (27 page)

“To be sure, she certainly deserved it,” Sigurd stuttered.

“Ah! I’m glad to hear you say so!” Mori turned a handstand on the table. “I believe you and I are going to be great friends, as long as you let me wreck the kitchen every night. You’ve brought me a fine assistant from Bjarnhardr, that Hross-Bjorn. Only that wizard of Bjarnhardr’s could be clever enough to think of such a beast. It changed itself into a flayed cat and suffocated a thrall earlier tonight. Tell me, what did you do to earn Bjarnhardr’s hatred so thoroughly?”

Sigurd could scarcely think with Mori’s hard, bright eyes boring into him. “I don’t know, exactly. I’d thought Hross-Bjorn was from someone else—”

“Oh, no, no, he’s not! It takes a sending to know a sending, I always say, and I know a Svinhagahall sending when I see one. Here’s one now.” Mori hugged himself.

Just then the front door shook under a heavy, single knock, and Sigurd seized his axe. Mori cackled at Sigurd. “There’s old Vigbjodr wanting to get in. He’ll go away in a minute and you’ll hear the other night-walkers. We get old Skuma shrieking for help behind the sheepfold, where she was murdered about fifty years ago. In a moment, she’ll be scratching at the door and pleading most pitifully for you to let her in, but if you do, she’ll drag you away to her grave and that will be the last we’ll see of you—alive, anyway. And the infants that died of exposure on this farm scream the loveliest choruses—”

Sigurd’s hairs lifted in terror as the draug Skuma began scratching and moaning at the door, begging to be let in so she wouldn’t die. When her desperate cries finally faded away, he heard other wails and shrieks coming from the barrows surrounding the farm buildings.

Another heavy, single knock jolted the door in its hinges, and Mori chuckled appreciatively. “Vigbjodr is getting impatient. Would you like to let him in?”

“No! Don’t!” Sigurd gasped, as the sending made a move toward the door. “I don’t fancy wizard draugar any more than I do you—I mean to say—if he was manufactured by Bjarnhardr—”

“It’s the gold he wants to come to look at, you know,” Mori whispered, with a wider grin than ever. “Ha! I see by your eyes that you do fancy gold. But there’s something there that you’ll like better. I know a great deal about you, my friend, and because I like you, I’ll tell you what it is and how you can get it. But first you’ve got to promise not to say a word to your nosy friend Mikla. Him I don’t like at all. Do you promise?“ He leaned forward suddenly to glare malevolently into Sigurd’s face.

Sigurd edged away slightly. “Well, suppose you tell me first what it is that I want so dreadfully, and whether it will be very hard to steal. I’ve never stolen anything from a draug before, and there’s only one thing I’d even consider worth the risk—”

“What is it?” Mori demanded, leaning farther forward and grinning horribly.

“A sword,” Sigurd said, and Mori fell off the table in another laughing fit. When the paroxysm passed, Mori climbed up the table leg and solemnly shook hands with Sigurd.

“A sword it shall be, then, my friend,” Mori said with an unpleasant leer. “To fight that Hross-Bjorn, I wager! What a battle that will be. But you promise not to say one word to your wizard friend Mikla? He’s mighty young for the kind of power he wields, and you don’t like him much anyway, do you?”

“I don’t like him at all. He stole my sword and refuses to give it back to me. If I could get another one, I would do almost anything, even steal it from a draug. I give you my word I won’t say a thing to Mikla.” Sigurd shook hands again with Mori, whose grin couldn’t be stretched wide enough.

“It’s a pact, then, between the two of us. I’ll help you get your sword from Vigbjodr’s secret treasure trove, and you shall help me be a nuisance to Coalbrow and his family. Ha, listen to old Vigbjodr knocking away at the door! Tomorrow night we’ll let him in and you shall see your sword. And just for the fun of it, why don’t you sleep in his bed?”

“Because he’ll kill me if I do,” Sigurd said in alarm.

“Ridiculous. He’ll only kill you if you don’t do what I say. Take a bunch of knives and arrange them around the bed so all the points go inward, and he won’t touch you.”

Sigurd answered with a skeptical grunt. “I’d be safer sleeping on the floor, wouldn’t I? Not that I doubt your word, but—”

Mori sat down and crossed his stumpy legs. In a reproving tone he said, “Now, you should know that I wouldn’t lie to you. I’m a friend of your friend Bjarnhardr. Come on, I dare you to try it. The door will be shut, so old Vigbjodr won’t get in. I’ll help you arrange the knives. Bjarnhardr wants you to have this sword.”

Reluctantly Sigurd agreed to try it, as soon as Rolfr took his place watching, and politely suggested that Rolfr might not be as friendly to sendings as he was; if he saw Mori upon awakening at midnight, he was liable to scream and wake up Mikla. Mori took the hint. “Then I’ll be going. I don’t like Mikla. I’ll have to make some mischief for him, to be sure I will. Good night, my dear friend. Watch for me tomorrow night. Don’t forget the knives, points aiming inward. Farewell!”

Sigurd felt rather foolish lining the edges of his bed with sharp knives, and hoped he wouldn’t forget they were there or thrash out in his sleep and cut himself. Rolfr stared sleepily at his preparations and went away to wake himself up in the cold draft coming in under the door.

“Did you see anything strange, Siggi?” he mumbled, with a yawn.

“No, nothing at all,” Sigurd answered, from the depths of the extraordinary eider on Vigbjodr’s bed. “Just some rats in the kitchen, I think.” He was suddenly so sleepy he couldn’t keep his eyes open another instant. Helplessly he listened to a loud snore from Rolfr’s post at the door, which was echoed by a snicker from the smoke hole in the roof, where a wizened old infant’s face was peering down into the room. Even Mikla was so drugged by sleep that he never heard the bolts on the door slide back and the hinges creak slightly as the heavy door swung ajar.

A great shout jarred Sigurd from his sleep. He leaped out of the bed, barely remembering the knives in time to avoid slashing his legs to ribbons.

“Halloo! Is anyone alive in here?” Kambi Coalbrow bellowed, holding up a lantern to look around from his position in the doorway.

It was dark, but Sigurd knew it was morning. “We’re still here,” he said rather snappishly. “Is this the way you awaken your people every day?” He saw Rolfr leap up from his cramped sleeping position with a guilty expression on his face.

“The door was standing wide open,” Kambi declared. “Surely you had the good sense to lock it last night after we left.”

“Of course we locked it,” Mikla said, lighting the fire with a quick flick of his hand. “Rolfr, it was locked when you stood watch, wasn’t it?”

Rolfr was silent with misery. “It was before I fell asleep. I don’t know what came over me, but all at once I couldn’t keep my eyes from closing. I’ve never slept on guard duty before.”

“It was Mori,” Kambi said gloomily. “That’s his idea of a joke. What good luck none of you were killed.”

“The draug of Vigbjodr didn’t appear then,” Sigurd said with a sigh of relief, and started to step down the steps of the bed.

“Stop! Don’t come forward!” Kambi shouted suddenly, sweeping the light of his lantern across the floor. “There, do you see that dirt? It looks like footprints coming into the hall and across it; they stopped beside the bed.”

Sigurd looked at the lumps of mud tracking across the floor and his skin crawled. Mikla shone the light of his staff at the dirt and said, “It’s grave-mold. Whoever steps into that will be in the draug’s power.” He stared at Sigurd, his face owlish and pale in the flickering light. “What I can’t understand is why Sigurd is still alive at this moment. The draug stood only a few inches away from him.”

Sigurd sank back into the bed carefully. “Knives,” he said rather weakly.

“A clever trick,” Mikla said. “I wonder if it will work next time.” He looked suspiciously at Sigurd and seemed on the point of asking him some questions, but Kambi was anxious to get on with the day’s work. He was obviously accustomed to the capricious pranks of the draugar inhabitants of his farm, and since there was no harm done, he was ready to forget it.

During the dark hours of the morning, Sigurd kept a watchful eye turned for signs of Mori. He saw Hross-Bjorn roosting on a ridge above the sheepfold and watching him with baleful eyes, a black shadow against the struggling pale dawn. Sigurd thought he had never seen such a gray and desolute place as Thufnavellir that morning, and he earnestly wished they hadn’t come here. Even some of the fences were made of bones, huge stark whale ribs, as if a monster had crept up to the hall and died. Sigurd decided to go up on the hillside a little way from the shearing and sit down to rest a bit, in a hopeless effort to cheer himself up by talking to Tofa, one of Kambi’s daughters. Scarcely had they begun to talk when Tofa stopped suddenly and pointed down the hill. A stray gust of wind was blowing some dead leaves and a dried lump of dung, which came tumbling merrily up the hillside toward Sigurd and Tofa.

“It’s Mori,” Tofa said nervously. “He follows my father around like that all the time. I think I’ll go back down to the others, if you don’t mind. We can talk later.”

Sigurd could only gape in astonishment and dismay as the ball of dung tumbled to rest against his boot.

“Mori! Is that you?” he whispered sternly, making sure nobody could see him talking to it.

With a curious swirl of dust and rags, Mori appeared before his eyes, squatting in the dirt and turning a few somersaults for good measure. “Why, hello! How did you sleep last night, my friend?”

“Very cold, especially when Vigbjodr stood beside my bed and breathed his cold draug’s breath on me. That wasn’t a friendly thing to do, opening our door that way.” Sigurd felt much bolder, knowing the sun would be up in a half hour or so.

Mori grinned and winked. “But he didn’t touch you. I was right, wasn’t I? Tonight I’ll give you a look at the sword—unless you’re afraid, of course. You’re not frightened, are you?” He giggled tauntingly and made faces.

“Certainly not,” Sigurd snapped, not certain at all.

“I thought you weren’t,” Mori answered, rolling himself into a ball again and preparing to tumble away. “Be ready when I put your friends to sleep, and I shall be there when Vigbjodr sounds his knock. You’d better have something for me to eat or I’ll make a mischief for you.” With a final, wheezing cackle, the ball of horse dung rolled away down the hillside. When Kambi plodded around the corner of the barn in his heavy manner, the sending made a sharp turn to follow at his heels.

During the day, Sigurd saw several examples of Mori’s work, which Tofa pointed out to him. Something frightened the sheep and they bolted away into the fell, where one broke its leg. One of the other daughters cut her hand, and the gates to the sheepfold would never stay shut, so the sheep were always escaping or getting mixed with the wrong flocks. A neighbor had trouble with his horse when he came to collect his sheep that had mingled with Kambi’s sheep, and nothing he could do would persuade the horse to go through a certain gate. When the afternoon waned toward twilight, the neighbors who had come for their sheep hurried away anxiously, glad to escape from Thufnavellir before darkness descended.