The Wizard And The Warlord (14 page)

“Well, of course!” Adills declared. “Send for Mikla at once— but not Jotull. I don’t want him anywhere near me.”

Mikla looked more solemn than usual when he arrived. Without saying much, he went to work on the spell, between times looking at Rolfr and Sigurd with displeasure.

“This is a complex spell,” he said at last with a sigh. “It will take a long time to unravel it, and Jotull won’t permit me much free time—especially when it will be to his best interests if Adills’ back remains crippling.”

“That miserable nikur is to blame for it,” Adills growled. “Jotull won’t permit me to banish it before it does some harm.”

“I don’t think it’s such a great idea, either,” Mikla agreed, with another frown on Rolfr and Sigurd. “I’ll be watching, but there’s little any of us can really do once Jotull has made his mind up to interfere. I wish you hadn’t asked him to help you with this stupid plot, Sigurd.”

“It’s not stupid,” Sigurd snapped at once, with more vehemence than real conviction, but he felt the need to defend himself. “Rolfr thought it was a good idea. You don’t see him trying to put all the blame on me, before anything has even happened.”

Mikla put his magical apparatus into his satchel. “I shall come back when I can to resume our treatment, Adills. I’ll find someone to sit with you until you’re back on your feet. I expect tomorrow may be rather lonely for you, with almost everyone watching the riding games.” With a last severe glance at Rolfr and Sigurd, he departed, closing the door firmly behind him.

Later, when Adills was either asleep or absent in his fylgja form of the little hawk, Sigurd asked Rolfr, “Are you worried about something very bad happening to Ragnhild tomorrow? Maybe I shouldn’t have asked Jotull’s advice.”

“Well, I’m a little concerned. But I tell myself Jotull won’t do anything too dreadful, or he might lose his hold over you by frightening you completely away from him.”

“Me, frightened of him? Hah!” Sigurd paused a moment, staring at the coals in the hearth. “Why should I be afraid of him? And what sort of hold does he have over me?”

“Once you ask a favor of someone, he can ask one of you,” Rolfr replied, rather sleepily.

Sigurd pondered quite a long time, before asking, “Well? What do you think he would ask of me?” His eyes rested on the hearthstone, which still concealed the carven box. “Rolfr? Are you awake?”

Rolfr was not, and Sigurd was left to his own uneasy thoughts as the room grew darker and darker and more chill as the night advanced.

In the morning, the preparations for the games and races in honor of Ragnhild’s birthday began before daybreak. Borgill’s mismatched troop of young lads planned a grand parade, relay races, and demonstrations of their rather unskillful riding skills, which promised, as Sigurd and Rolfr watched, to offer the most comic entertainment of the day. The other patrols planned jumps and maneuvers to show off their talents, as well as a mock battle. Prizes would be awarded for the best in each event, and also for the worst performance, since the Alfar loved a good loser almost as much as a winner. Tne last events of the day would be the races, beginning with heats for the least experienced riders, which included women and girls from the community. Ragnhild scorned to race with them. She would consider nothing less than the last race of the day, which was among the greatest rivals in the hill fort, the four patrol leaders and several others whose horses were fast enough to make it a good competion. Halfdane’s huge iron-gray stallion was the favorite to win, if Halfdane returned early enough in the day to let his horse rest for the race at sunset.

During the circus atmosphere of the day, Sigurd thought more often of Jotull than of Adilis, although he heard from Mikla that Jotull would not attend the games. He managed to lose his apprehensions in the festivities and even to carry away a prize in his category for jumping, where anyone who stayed on his horse’s back for the entire course was awarded a prize.

By noon, when everyone stopped for a tremendous dinner, hopes of seeing Halfdane’s horse win the race were dimming. Halfdane’s patrol had not yet returned, and the most pessimistic Alfar were beginning to worry. Delays were not uncommon, however, so the spirit of the celebration was not much diminished, as long as there was plenty of ale to drink in Ragnhild’s honor. She was twenty now and of an age to marry when she chose, but Ragnhild had spent a good many years assuring everyone that there wasn’t a male in Hrafnborg that was anywhere near her mark.

At last the games, races, and general silliness were over, and the final racers were loping their horses in circles to warm them up before the race. Ragnhild was clad in a fine, red outfit, stiff with embroidery from the high collar of her short jacket to the elegant stitching on her deerskin boots. The white nikur capered and pranced, fanning its long tail and tossing its mane like seafoam. As the sun descended toward the horizon, everyone took a place along the course of the race, and Rolfr and Sigurd rode to the small lake which the track encompassed. There a low cliff rose almost directly out of the water, and the race course lay along the top of that.

No one else cared to come so far from the hill fort. With the lengthening shadows and cool evening breeze, Sigurd suddenly realized how alone they were. The lake looked dark and definitely cold. He couldn’t see the bottom.

“Here they come!” Rolfr chortled, hiding himself among the rocks that lay along the cliff a short distance opposite the edge. “Half the hill fort is following. They’ll all see her ignoble splash.”

The horses came pounding along the narrow track on the cliff, with Ragnhild well in the lead of the others. Their reflections pursued them in the water below. The mounted spectators galloped farther behind, cheering on their favorites. As Sigurd watched, the white nikur suddenly tossed up its head and began to rear and plunge in an unmanageable manner. The other horses thundered by on both sides, narrowly avoiding dangerous collisions. The spectators gave a shout of alarm from the other side of the lake where they had halted to watch the horses race around the water. The nikur stood on its hind legs, whirling and plunging despite Ragnhild’s skillful attempts to get it under control.

Rolfr and Sigurd scrambled from their perches in the rocks to help her. The water below the cliff edge was too great a drop for safety and jagged with black boulders that could break both horse and rider. They reached her, dodging the flying hooves of the nikur, and tried to catch the beast’s bridle. In the midst of its snorts and evil-tempered grunting, Sigurd heard a faint voice shouting. “Nikur! Nikur!” it called, and the nikur redoubled its efforts to plunge off the cliff. Sigurd grabbed one of the creature’s ears and twisted it in the accepted manner for pacifying an unruly horse, but the nikur gave a final powerful spring, carrying Sigurd with it. Ragnhild screamed as they sailed toward the rocks and water below; in the next instant, the black water closed over Sigurd’s head. By a miracle he missed the rocks in his descent. When he floundered his way to the surface, he saw Ragnhild struggling for a precarious handhold on a rock. The shoreline offered little purchase because of its steepness, and the turbulent water battered at them mercilessly in their efforts to save themselves. Sigurd pulled Ragnhild to a slightly sheltered place where they could hold on long enough to be rescued. From his place above on the cliff, Rolfr was bellowing for help at the top of his lungs, unable to do anything more constructive to aid his friends. As far as Sigurd could judge, no one else would be much use either, without a rope long enough to reach them.

“So cold!” Ragnhild gasped through chattering teeth. “I can’t hold on much longer!” Her hands were blue with cold and raw from clawing for handholds on the rough rock. “Do you see my horse anywhere, or is he dead?”

Sigurd risked a quick glance around them and saw no horse. All he saw were increasing waves, driven by the wind, and the sun sinking prematurely under a thick blanket of black cloud. In a very short while, their would-be rescuers would not be able to see them in the water below.

“We’ve got better things to worry about than that cursed beast,” Sigurd replied, hoping his voice didn’t sound as frightened as he felt. Occupied with the agony of his cold, battered fingers and his determination not to let Ragnhild slip away into the rough water, he hadn’t time to dwell on the voice he had heard shouting “nikur” in the cliffs above the lake, but the remembrance of it haunted him with a very nasty premonition. He looked up at their rescuers, who were shouting encouragement and risking their lives and limbs trying to climb down to them while someone rode to the hill fort for ropes. It would be full dark within a matter of minutes.

“What’s that?” Ragnhild cried suddenly. “There in the water, almost behind us. It looks like my horse floating up to the surface again, the poor creature.”

Sigurd twisted around to look. It was indeed a horse’s long, slender head, with the eyes still open and the pale mane floating softly around it. Then Sigurd saw two other heads not far behind and a coiling mass of scaly necks and twisting tentacles. Ragnhild also saw the monster and screamed, hurling herself away from the protecting rock and floundering toward a more distant one farther from the shoreline. Sigurd swam after her with difficulty, weighted down by his sodden clothing and the axe in his belt, which seemed to pull him down like an anchor. He overtook Ragnhild and caught the back of her jacket as the voluminous mass of her clothing thwarted her efforts to stay afloat. She flailed and clawed at him in terror, half-choked with water, but he held onto her securely, knowing she could drown them both in her panic. He reached the rock and looked back for the sending. It circled, keeping between them and their rescuers. One head reached its muzzle out of the water to bare its fangs in a grisly snarl, and Ragnhild shrieked, cringing against the rock, not wanting to see the thing but yet unable to stop staring at it. With a burbling chuckle, it floated gently closer, its six eyes glowing with a watery light beneath the surface.

“It’s me that it wants, not you,” Sigurd panted, unsheathing his axe. “Slide around to the other side of the rock and stay out of sight. I can hold it off quite awhile, I think, if I can get solid rock beneath my feet.” His toes found a slight, slippery purchase on the rock, and he gripped the axe double-handed, but his enemy presented no target better than a shapeless dark mass in the black water.

“Don’t be absurd,” Ragnhild said sharply, with a sob. “It won’t be content until it has killed both of us. I don’t want to be left here alone, so you’d better let it kill me first. I can’t bear the sight of—” She ended with a scream of horror as a slimy tentacle flicked across her shoulder and brushed her face. She and Sigurd struggled toward another rock outcropping, and Sigurd thought his feet touched the bottom once. Rolfr had mentioned that the lake wasn’t much deeper than the horse pond—except for the area by the cliffs. The sending still had plenty of water to maneuver in. As it drove them from the protection of each rock, and space between the rescuers and the victims became even greater. The lake was surrounded now by small fires, and almost everyone in the hill fort was shouting himself hoarse, making it difficult for anyone to hear cries coming from the lake.

At last Sigurd and Ragnhild reached a final pinnacle. They could retreat no further. Sigurd managed to shove Ragnhild out of the water onto its sloping top, where she dug in her fingers weakly, unable to do much more than moan each time she slipped downward a bit. The sending’s eyes gleamed in the dark, knifing toward the rock where its victims waited. Sigurd held his axe in one hand, clinging to the rock with the other. When the first long, pale face came within range, he threw the axe with all his might. The sending heaved itself half out of the water with a terrifying roar, lashing its snaky limbs in a writhing mass that glistened in the last blood-red glimmerings of the sun. As it Savored its fury and triumph, churning the water to foam and bellowing savagely, a slim dart of flame suddenly hissed from the darkness and lodged in the neck of one of the three heads. With a screech, the sending attempted to extinguish the fire by submerging, but the flame subsided into a sullen, burning coal, eating into the monster’s flesh.

“Halfdane!” Sigurd shouted into the windy darkness. He had been thinking of the warlord and his gauntlet since the creature had begun driving them from rock to rock.

As if in answer, a halo of pale flame burst around the image of a horse and rider across the lake. The horse plunged into the breast-deep water, plowing it before him like the prow of a ship, leaping clear of the water several times in powerful showers of spray until the horse and rider seemed to be flying across the surface. The rider was swinging an axe in a gleaming arc, plunging almost into the swirling maze of snakelike tentacles before hurling the weapon with deadly aim. The sending engulfed the axe with a furious roar and retreated, except for a few lashing appendages which Halfdane parried away with his sword. Sigurd recognized him by the gauntlet, which seemed to glow with an aura of power as he wielded his weapons.

The sending retreated further, nursing its wounds with sullen growls and chopping sounds of its three sets of teeth. Halfdane’s horse stood unsteadily on a submerged ledge while its rider peered into the dark at the sending’s eyes.

“I don’t think it will attack again,” Halfdane said. “It knows now what a taste of the gauntlet will do for it, but its courage won’t be long in returning, I fear. Put Ragnhild in the saddle and you ride behind her. When you get to the shore, send Atli back for me. He’s a brave horse, but he can’t carry the three of us at once.”

Sigurd lifted Ragnhild into the saddle, but then he said, “Only a nithling would leave a man alone in the middle of a lake to face a sending. I can hold to the horse’s tail, or to the stirrup and let him pull me along.”

“No. I order you to take Ragnhild and go.”

“I won’t do it,” Sigurd retorted, his teeth chattering. “I can swim to shore. Look at Ragnhild; she’s freezing. We can’t argue about it any longer.”

Halfdane looked at her swiftly, sagging in the saddle with her face in the horse’s mane. “You’re right. But you shall ride, and I shall swim. You’ve had enough water for one night.”