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This Leifr somebody I don’t know.”

“Maybe we’ll become friends, when you get to know me as

Leifr, instead of Fridmarr.”

“Maybe. Leifr fights like Fridmarr, brave as Fridmarr, looks like

Fridmarr. But Raudbjorn always miss Fridmarr, somehow.”

“Me, too,” Leifr replied with a sigh. “I wanted to ask you about

the grindstone, Raudbjorn. I have two days to find it and return it to

Hjaldr, or my life will be cut short as if I were a common horse thief.

Do you remember where Sorkvir hid the grindstone?”

Raudbjorn heaved a regretful sigh. “In rocks. Rocks all

Raudbjorn remember. Raudbjorn search tomorrow and maybe find

grindstone for Leifr. Maybe find Sorkvir and Dokkalfar too.” His

teeth gleamed in the moonlight, and he strummed the edge of his

halberd with his thumb to test its sharpness.

During the night, Ljosa prepared Fridmarr’s body for burial, as

well as she was able with such limited resources. The news of his true

identity and his death swept through the encampment almost

immediately. At dawn, the ragged assembly gathered before the open

barrow to pay their last respects and hear Thurid give his funeral

recitation. Then Leifr and three of the stoutest of the former prisoners

carried the remains on a pallet to an open barrow for burial, with the

others streaming behind, singing skalds. Ljosa stood beside Leifr as the

barrow opening was filled with stones. When it was done, she turned

away with a sigh.

“I saw you limping as you carried him,” she said. “Your knee

must be very painful.”

“No, not at all,” Leifr lied manfully.

She walked beside him in silence, darting him a covert glance

now and then. At last she said, “Fridmarr is dead. You don’t have to

maintain the pretense of being infatuated with me.”

“It never was a pretense. If I really were Fridmarr—-if Fridmarr

had come back as himself—would you have forgiven him then, instead

of waiting until he was dying?”

Ljosa let her blowing hair screen her face as she bent her head. In

a broken voice she replied, “I don’t think I have ever been humble in

my life, until now. Nothing Sorkvir could do to me broke my pride. I

vowed I would never forgive Fridmarr because of Bodmarr’s death. I

didn’t know if my hard heart could forgive him. But to think of him

living just a few miles away, all those years, and never saying

anything!” She wiped her eyes on a tatter of her cloak and walked a bit

faster. Then she turned abruptly and asked, “Did he do this all for me?

You knew him better than anyone else, so you should know what

his reasons were.”

Leifr considered carefully and slowly shook his head. “No, he did

it because he knew that something had to be done and he was the only

one with the knowledge to get it done. Gotis— Fridmarr was tormented

by his past and he knew that nothing could take the pain away

altogether.”

Ljosa bowed her head, nodding in assent. “I’m glad he was doing

it for the sake of lightness and not just to prove himself to me. He

must have suffered greatly under the burden of his guilt. I don’t think I

will ever forget this pain— no more than you can forget your knee.”

“Many people walk with a limp,” Leifr said. “It’s better than not

walking at all.”

Ljosa darted him a small smile through the curtain of her hair.

“That must be Scipling wisdom. Yours must be an enduring and

determined race of people.” Leifr shrugged, never having thought

harsh as Skarpsey is.”

about it before. “We have to be, as

The thralls gathered near the open barrow where Fridmarr had

died, and Thurid divided them into groups for searching Grittur-

grof, reserving the western section for himself, Raudbjorn, and Leifr,

since that was where he expected to encounter the Dokkalfar. As they

saddled their horses, Ljosa also saddled a horse and rode forward to

join them with such a set, composed expression that even Thurid dared

not contradict her. He stuffed a handful of rune wands back into his

satchel and disentangled a dowsing pendulum.

“Silence, please,” he commanded, extending the pendulum at

arm’s length. “Think of nothing but the grindstone, so your mental

powers will assist me.”

Raudbjorn obediently squeezed shut his eyes, but after a few

moments he gave it up with a groan. “Nothing but food in Raudbjorn’s

mind,” he grumbled.

Thurid glared at him as a fresh source of aggravation and

thrust the pendulum in his pocket. “I shall try later when there is less

interference. Raudbjorn, doesn’t anything at all look familiar to you?”

Raudbjorn slowly shook his head. “Grittur-grof all the same

everywhere. Nothing but rocks and barrows.”

“Rocks and barrows,” Thurid muttered witheringly, darting a

covert glance at Leifr, perhaps the thousandth one since he had learned

that Leifr was not Fridmarr. With a huffy snort, he urged his horse along

faster.

Leifr prodded Jolfr into a trot, overtaking Thurid so he could ride

beside him and look at him as he asked, “Why do you keep on staring at

me like that? Don’t you think I can be trusted?”

Thurid’s eyes slid over him uneasily. “It’s just that I’ve never

seen a Scipling before and I feel as if I’ve been betrayed somehow by

having one deceive me for so long. I don’t know how I could have

mistaken you for Fridmarr. You’re nothing alike. I had a strange

nagging feeling all along that something was wrong, but I was too

stupid to see what was right before my nose. I suppose it was a clever

hoax. You must feel awfully proud.”

“I can’t say that I do,” Leifr replied. “I’m sorry if my being a

Scipling upsets you, but I’d like to remind you that we’ve spent a long

time together, and I, at least, have grown to trust you. Am I not the

same person I was when I first came to Dallir?”

“No, you’re not,” Thurid answered decisively. “You were

Fridmarr then, and now you’re a strange Scipling. It will take me a

while to get used to the idea. I’d always though there was something

rather evil about Sciplings; I’m trying to decide what it is.“ He rode a

few moments in moody silence, then burst out with, ”You might have

confided in me! Didn’t you think I was worth trusting?“

“Not at first, no,” Leifr replied.

Thurid sniffed indignantly, “You weren’t fair to me at all.” He

paused and dismounted to make another attempt to dowse with the

pendulum, darting a murderous glare at Raudbjorn. “Ride to the

other side of that barrow, Raudbjorn. I don’t want any more of your

mutton and duck than I’m already forced to endure.”

Thurid struck his pose, concentrating magnificently, but he had

scarcely got into it when Raudbjorn rode back from the other side of the

barrow.

“Something strange, something strange!” he babbled.

Thurid put the pendulum back in his pocket with jerky, irritated

movements, muttering, “What’s the use of trying to think with this

brute in our midst? Sorkvir was wise in palming him off on us, I’m

beginning to think.”

Raudbjorn pointed upward. “Look! Clouds!”

“Clouds!” Thurid seethed, but he glanced upward nevertheless.

Black masses of clouds with a greenish tinge boiled up at the

horizon, spreading over the rocky face of Grittur-grof like

advancing night. Thurid leaped off his horse and dug frantically into

his bundle of rune sticks, selecting one with shaking hands and reading

it over several times in great haste. Extending his staff, he spoke the

words of the spell in a loud voice. A jet of white cloud hissed from

his staff into the sky, but the black clouds rolled over it with a crackling

of thunder and lightning. Several more times, in quick succession,

Thurid tried to halt the advance of the storm, until the black clouds were

almost overhead, blotting out the sun and half the sky.

“Blast!” Thurid muttered, rummaging through the rune wands in

a frenzy of impatience. “That’s one I must have copied wrong! I can’t

get enough power into it! I hope there’s another way to stop those

clouds, or we’ll have a battle such as no Scipling has ever seen and

lived to tell about.”

A deadly cold wind lashed at the horses’ manes and tore at

everyone’s cloaks. Thurid tried another spell, which happened to be the

sputtering firebolt that had failed so drastically inside the tunnels of

Bjartur.

“Look!” Raudbjorn gripped Thurid’s arm in the middle of

another spell, turning him around to look to the west. “Sorkvir!”

Sorkvir and a long line of Dokkalfar rode slowly toward

them, spanning much of Grittur-grof. The thralls sprang from their

hiding places like flushed rabbits, retreating from the grim apparition of

the masked Dokkalfar and the menacing clouds.

Determined not to retreat so ignominiously, Leifr rode to the top

of a barrow and waited, armed with a heavy pickaxe from Dokholur, a

weapon he had learned to respect and use with good effect against

prowling trolls.

Sorkvir and his men halted within shouting distance, and Sorkvir

rode ahead alone until Leifr advised him, “Come no closer. What you

have to say can be heard from there.”

Sorkvir unmasked himself, after a glance upward to note the

progress of the clouds. When he revealed his face to Leifr, he was

grinning with maniacal glee.

“Fridmarr is dead,” he hissed malevolently. “I heard it from one

of my spies. “You are nothing but a lowly Scipling.”

He laughed a harsh and bitter laugh that the wind carried

away across the barrows. “Now you’ll know the meaning of my wrath,

Scipling. With Fridmarr gone, I have nothing to fear by destroying you.

The Pentacle is still mine. Fridmarr might have saved himself the

trouble of coming back and suffering as he did, I am indestructible, and

your Rhbu wizard is a contemptible, inept amateur.” He shook his head

in disgust as another of Thurid’s failed spells fizzled overhead,

showering the barrows with a spray of harmless sparks.

Leifr glanced at Thurid, who did not bother to conceal his

desperation; rune sticks lay scattered around his feet. His hair

streamed in the icy wind, and his eyes had a mad, furious glaze. Leifr

signaled silently to Raudbjorn to take Ljosa and depart. Raudbjorn

nodded, and Leifr turned back to Sorkvir, who was still preening

himself with monstrous self-satisfaction.

“Our dispute rests in the hands of fate,” Leifr said. “You don’t

know that a Scipling won’t be your bane. I was not brought here to

fail.”

“Nor have I raised this empire of mine to fail,” Sorkvir

retaliated. “Half of my assurance lies in a good defense. You won’t

have the chance to kill me, Scipling. Your bones will rot here in

Grittur-grof with the remains of the Rhbus and the Ljosalfar.” He

raised one arm aloft and the clouds responded with an earth-shaking

explosion of thunder. Needles of greenish lightning struck the tops

of the barrows nearby, blasting fragments of rock in all directions,

which lent great impetus to the fleeing thralls.

Sorkvir masked himself and drew his sword. With a

defiant roar of challenge, he spurred his horse down the side of the

barrow, with the Dokkalfar thundering close behind, clashing weapons

and shields.

Leifr fought to control his frightened horse, winding his pickaxe

around his head and letting it fly just as Sorkvir’s horse came plunging

up the barrow. The pick struck Sorkvir in the chest, knocking him

backward off his horse and sending his sword flying end over end into

the rocks.

Thurid suddenly struck upon a workable spell with a wild yell

of exultation. A wall of flame sprang up, towering before the

charging Dokkalfar. Their horses veered and stumbled, shooting

several riders off over their necks.

Sorkvir was rising to his feet slowly, shaking both fists in the air

and saying the words of some spell directed toward the roiling black

clouds.

The clouds glowed with an eerie, lurid light, churning into the

shapes of horses and riders galloping through the flying turmoil of

clouds with a mighty thundering roar.

“Storm giants! Take cover!” Thurid shouted, scuttling into the