The Wizard And The Warlord (41 page)

Some of those in the room stood stock-still in astonishment, then turned to their neighbors to exclaim over it. In that moment, Sigurd opened the box, snatched out the contents, and hurled himself across the room to the shelf where he had placed Bjarnhardr’s sword. His chest was so tight he could scarcely breathe as he drew on the black gauntlet, the mate to the one Halfdane had carried under his belt and used to confound Jotull and Hross-Bjorn. In an instant, he felt its power; when he grasped the cursed sword, the effect was like putting red-hot metal into water.

With a yell that bespoke all his years of yearning for a father and a name, he leaped across the table straight into an icy blast of Jotull’s that shattered around him like arrows glancing off armor. Not at all deterred by the blast, Sigurd’s next leap carried him face to face with the astonished Jotull, whose last word was the beginning of the escape spell, and whose last glimpse was of Halfdane’s long-missing gauntlet grasping the sword that was dripping with his own blood. Mortally wounded, Jotull fell against Bjarnhardr.

Bjarnhardr scrabbled desperately to get away from Jotull’s limp weight before Sigurd could reach him. The stunned Dokkalfar churned forward, but the smiths halted them with hammers and fire. Sigurd chopped at Bjarnhardr as he scuttled for the protection of his Dokkalfar, who seized their warlord and ran from the awful sword and gauntlet that scythed down anyone foolish enough to linger in its path. The few brave Dokkalfar who attempted to withstand Sigurd’s wrath delayed him long enough that Bjarnhardr and the others reached their horses and fled into the night, badly reduced in number and totally stripped of pride.

Sigurd would have taken one of the gray stallions and raced after them, but Bergthor gave orders to close the outer doors. “Let the cowards go for now, Sigurd. You’ll know where to find Bjarnhardr when you want him. There’s not enough of us to pursue them, and they could hurt you with a spell. Come now, you got Jotull; that should be a comfort to you.”

Sigurd slid down from the back of the gray stallion, still holding the sword, which had fulfilled Its curse of three murders several times over. He strode to the forge where the coals still burned hot and red beneath the ash. Thrusting the sword into the coals, he beckoned to one of the apprentices to apply himself to the bellows. Then he turned to a puzzled and aghast Bergthor and said, “There is no comfort. I killed my own father with that sword.”

Bergthor gazed at him in great sorrow, but could find nothing to say. Rolfr and Mikla likewise were silent, pitying Sigurd in the horror of his situation.

“Melt the sword down,” Sigurd commanded in a strained but steady voice. “Make sure that no piece of it will ever find its way into human hands again, or bad luck is sure to follow whoever tries to use it.”

Bergthor nodded. “I know of a deep fissure that reaches the fires and molten stone of Muspellheim. No one will ever reclaim the metal if I drop it down there.”

Sigurd nodded rather vacantly, looking at the gauntlet still on his hand and suddenly feeling hollow without his terrible anger and despair. He began to experience a different sort of anger, which was directed against himself. Slowly he removed the gauntlet and tossed it on Bergthor’s cluttered workbench, too drained of strength even to watch as his slain enemies were hauled away. He slumped on a low stool and watched dully as the sword was heated and bent and hammered into a shapeless lump by Bergthor’s capable hands.

“Tomorrow I’ll take it to the fissure and dispose of it properly,” Bergthor said, looking sweaty and much more cheerful. “Nothing like a good bit of work to soothe one’s spirits. I’m ready for food and drink; how about you, Rolfr? Mikla? Sigurd?”

Rolfr and Mikla promptly agreed, but Sigurd shook his head. “You fellows go on ahead. I just want to sit here and stare at the coals in the forge for a while. Then I think I’ll go to bed.”

“Aye, it’s getting late,” Bergthor agreed. “I wouldn’t mind sitting by the forge for a while myself. I’ve always thought it was a good place to be after a day’s work, sitting beside the anvil and watching the coals glowing in the dark. I’ll have the housekeeper fetch us our supper and we’ll eat it right here.”

Sigurd only shrugged without looking at him. Rolfr and Mikla ate their supper, and the soothing warmth of the forge soon put an end to their desultory conversation and sent them to sleep. Presently Bergthor too nodded and dozed, finally succumbing to sleep after a long battle to stay awake. He slept heavily, dreaming wretched dreams, and suddenly awakened when a cool draft touched him. He started awake with a snort and glanced around suspiciously, thinking perhaps a bad dream had awakened him. Then he leaped to his feet and shook Rolfr and Mikla awake.

“Get up and get ready to go out,” he commanded, and bestirred an apprentice or two for good measure. “Sigurd’s gone, leaving his box and gauntlet behind.”

Sigurd’s first idea was to find Hross-Bjorn and let him finish the task Bjarnhardr had him created for. He found the sending easily enough, once he had left the safety of Svartafeil‘’s forge, but Sigurd’s own natural power rebuffed the attacks of Hross-Bjom. The creature had learned caution, and the precipitous withdrawal of Bjarnhardr and his Dokkalfar seemed to have further alarmed Hross-Bjorn. After a few rushing charges, which were more for effect than for real intent to do any murdering, the sending retreated to a watchful distance. Hross-Bjorn kept his distance throughout the following days of Sigurd’s wanderings, but never allowed the man to escape his surveillance, hoping perhaps for an opening when Sigurd’s natural power was weak or off guard.

Suspecting that his well-meaning friends would search for him, Sigurd sought out the most isolated and dangerous region of the Dvergarrige to lose himself in. By day he skulked in pursuit of small game, after discovering to his disgust that he even lacked the will to starve himself to death, and by night he discouraged the predations of hungry trolls. By the time winter returned, he was almost as wild and fierce as the trolls who stalked him—no longer for food, but as a rival.

By Midwinter Sigurd had allowed his desire for mere survival to supercede his self-hatred for killing Halfdane. Food was scarce in the harsh fells, so the trolls moved their hunting grounds nearer the Dokkalfar settlements in the lowlands. Sigurd followed, knowing his survival depended upon attacking the trolls and stealing their stolen booty from them. Sigurd felt no remorse at eating the mutton of the Dokkalfar farmers who had turned him and his companions away when he had first passed their way.

The trolls feared him with almost supernatual awe, a feeling which the furious demonstrations of Hross-Bjorn certainly fostered, particularly when the sending had the good fortune to get his teeth into the hides of several trolls. After killing perhaps a dozen of them, Hross-Bjorn earned for himself the status of a virtual deity of destruction, a principle much appreciated by the trolls, despite the fact that they were the ones who suffered.

When the crisis of the dark, hungry winter was at its apex, and the easiest prey had been taken and eaten long ago, Sigurd and the trolls began to experience the desperation of imminent starvation. With food scarce and wild game nonexistent, the trolls stalked Sigurd. The ensuing battles provided both stalkers and prey with an abundance of roast troll, a tough but hearty fare which promised to last until winter’s end, as long as Sigurd was able to defend himself with Halfdane’s axe and Hross-Bjorn had teeth and hooves to batter the attackers into lifeless lumps.

Thus it was that Sigurd finally managed to kill the leader of the trolls, a huge, shaggy beast with both ears chewed off and one eye missing from a recent confrontation with Hross-Bjorn. Sigurd had need for a good warm cloak, so he thriftily skinned the troll leader and slung the hide over his shoulders while the remainder of the trolls watched him from a respectful distance. Backing warily into a cleft in the rocks, Sigurd watched the trolls industriously carve their fallen leader into steaks and chops for roasting, wasting nearly as much as they salvaged. After the fire was built and the meat more or less cooked, Sigurd was astonished when the trolls made offers of peace to him, along with a sizable hunk of roast meat, which was as tough and flavorless as Sigurd had suspected it would be. The numbers of the troll band had decreased to the point where even they realized that something else would have to be done if any of them were to survive until spring. What they wanted was a clever leader to help them prey upon the Dokkalfar of the lowlands. After a moment’s consideration, Sigurd agreed to be their new leader.

For the rest of the long winter, Sigurd and the trolls ruled the lowlands with a reign of terror, sparing only the farms of the rebellious Ljosalfar. The trolls grew fat and gathered many recruits, and Sigurd took increasing satisfaction from tormenting the Dokkalfar. He thought of Bjarnhardr in Svinghagahall with increasing frequency, and began to wonder if he could move his troll band westward next winter.

The Dokkalfar did not submit gracefully to being plundered. They set traps and organized massive hunting parties. Word spread of a man who ruled the trolls, which gave rise to all manner of dreadful and totally false legends about him. A reward was posted for his capture by Bjarnhardr himself, which was not nearly as effective as the threats which soon followed if the troll-man were not captured without further delay.

The increased vigilance of the Dokkalfar might have been an inconvenience, but the winter was drawing to an end and the fells were again alive with natural game to sustain the trolls between attacks on the settlements. Sigurd planned carefully and managed to attack when most of the Dokkalfar were hunting for him elsewhere and thus unable to defend their sheep and cattle.

His luck came to an abrupt end one spring night, however, when his band ran unexpectedly into a group of troll hunters lying in ambush in the cliffs above the trolls’ habitual path. In the following barrage of arrows and spears, Sigurd was wounded in the leg with an arrow. He couldn’t keep up with the retreating trolls, who abandoned him without much regret in true troll fashion when they discovered his efficiency impaired, and the magic of his unassailable leadership vanished almost instantly.

Left alone, Sigurd tied up his wound with the remains of his very ragged shirt and hobbled down the ravine away from his pursuers as fast as he was able to go. During the day, he hid by a small waterfall and rested. While he lay there, he let his thoughts travel backward over his past follies and acquaintances, wondering if this would finally be the end which he had once so much sought. Hross-Bjorn hovered nearby, watching and waiting with unflagging patience while Sigurd grew weaker. Sigurd eyed the sending, thinking of Bjarnhardr and the revenge he ought to have taken upon him. Sadly he thought of Rolfr and Mikla, wishing that he had realized from the beginning that they were his true friends, not Jotull and Bjarnhardr. With even more bitter regret, he thought of his father, Halfdane, and of Ragnhild, forever removed from him now because of his stupid, blind pride. It seemed to him as he lay helplessly bleeding to death among the unforgiving boulders of the ravine that he had betrayed every person he ought to have trusted and he had allowed his enemies to flatter and deceive him with ridiculous ease. Dying miserably like a wounded troll would be a fitting end for him, particularly if the vengeful Dokkalfar were lucky enough to find him still alive.