The Wizard And The Warlord (44 page)

Sigurd averted his eyes. “I’m thankful you weren’t killed.”

Halfdane pulled an amulet from his throat, a small hammer made of gold. “Adills once gave me this as protection. I don’t know if that saved my life, or the healing physicians of Arnljotrshof. It’s no easy thing to kill tough old warlords such as I am. If you’d practiced harder, you might have done it. However, it was near enough.”

“You’re being too kind. I was a stupid fool and you knew it. I realize now that what I overheard in the horse barn was only Dagrun telling you that you should tell me who I was, but—” He halted with a bitter sigh. &rldquo;I don’t suppose I would have believed it then.”

“No, I didn’t think you would, if Jotull could help it,” Halfdane replied. “He could have easily convinced you that I was lying, even if I had opened the box and shown you the gauntlet.”

Sigurd nodded his head. “How could I have been so weak?”

“Not weak, just deceived. It happens to everyone sometime. If not for Jotull’s clever lies, I believe you would have seen the truth easily. But Jotull convinced you that you were abused and he was the only person who befriended you. And I, too, made a mistake. I was too proud and too fearful that you wouldn’t want to be my son. I waited too long for the right time to tell you—a severe tactical error for an experienced warrior.” He knit his brows as he considered his mistake in a military aspect. “I should have told you the first time I saw you on the fell in the rain that day, but your grandmother had told me that Ashildr’s son had died long ago. I, too, have difficulty recognizing a lie when it comes from someone I trust.”

Sigurd looked away to the west, thinking of Thongullsfjord. “It wasn’t her fault. She was afraid I would leave her alone. I was all she had after my mother died.”

Halfdane sighed in his heavy, moody way. “Yes, poor Bergdis never wanted her daughter taken away by an Alfar, and she fixed the blame on me for her death. I came to take you back with me as the tradition demands, knowing that Bjarnhardr would be looking for you and the gauntlet soon. When matters worsened in Thongullsfjord, I began to suspect the truth. Bjarnhardr’s trolls drove away everyone who might have protected you, but still Bergdis did not ask for my help. I don’t believe even now that she meant to be so bitter, but she never forgave me for my wrongs. Much could have been averted if I had been at Hrafnborg when Bjarnhardr arrived with his mob.” His face darkened with the memory. “And Jotull. I wished a thousand times for just a jot more proof and I would have cut him down in an instant. It’s hard to tell about wizards. I was a fool to think he wouldn’t try spiriting you away to Bjarnhardr at the first opportunity.”

“Jotull was repaid,” Sigurd answered. “And Bjarnhardr won’t escape either.” He took the box from an inner pocket and turned it over in his hands a few times, looking at it. “This belongs to you. I’m returning it now. The gauntlet is inside.”

“No, it’s yours to use however you wish.” Halfdane’s gaze was hard and bright as he looked toward the lowlands. “It will take both of us to reclaim what we once lost. That has been my dream since the day you were born. Now my dream has become Bjarnhardr’s nightmare.” He gathered up his reins and nodded to Rolfr, Mikla, and Ragnhild. “A hero’s welcome is awaiting you in Hrafhborg. Dagrun was the only one who knew from the start who the Scipling really was.” His face, lined with griefs and hatreds, softened into a cautious smile.

“I don’t feel like any sort of a hero,” Sigurd replied rather anxiously. “Are you sure they forgive me?” He scowled toward Hrafnborg, clinging to its rocky perch on the fellside.

“I’m sure,” Halfdane answered, extending his hand to Sigurd. “You have my word of honor.”

Sigurd returned his handshake fervently. Looking into his father’s face at last, he did not doubt that their future as father and son would be one of mutual satisfaction, in spite of the disputes that were sure to surface between two characters who shared so many of the same personality traits and faults.

The plague raged in Skarpsey, driving the contaminated remnants of the Dokkalfar back to their underground retreats, carrying the contagion with them. The prosperous settlements and mining areas were all but deserted, except for the most stubborn of the luckless Dokkalfar, who inevitably sickened and died. Some still fled before the approach of the plague, but the places that were not already cursed were growing fewer and fewer as the months passed. After a year, a Ljosalfar could ride almost anywhere in Skarpsey without much fear of the sickly and scarce Dokkalfar he might encounter, and after a year and a half the word spread that not a single Dokkalfar remained aboveground. The few who had prudently never abandoned their old tunnels for Bjarnhardr’s promises were not likely to risk catching the plague by prowling around above-ground.

Not without some regret, the Alfar of Hrafnborg made preparations to return to the lush valleys of the lowlands and rebuild their old way of life. The first objective they planned was the reconstruction of the original hall at Hrafnborg, which Bjarnhardr had burned. Halfdane’s courageous warriors would become his retainers, sworn to follow him in the defense of their homes, fields, and flocks, should danger arise again.

In the midst of packing carts, sledges, and horses—and the goodbyes which came almost daily, along with promises that almost everyone would soon reunite at the new Hrafnborg—a grim reminder of the past arrived on Sigurd’s doorstep. Ragnhild, his wife of nearly a year, opened one of the back doors early one morning and nearly tripped over a wretched bundle of rags huddled in the scanty shelter of the doorway. She took one swift look at it and hurried back inside to find Sigurd and Halfdane. They looked up from their conversation with Rolfr and Mikla in some surprise as she spoke.

“There’s a dying creature at the kitchen door. It looks to me like a very old Dokkalfar with the plague.” She spoke calmly, but the mention of the plague always made everyone feel uneasy, even though they knew it was destined to curse only the Dokkalfar.

“I’ll have the creature sent to the stable to do his dying,” Sigurd said, rising to summon Dagrun from the main hall, where once he had taken his meals with the rest of the men.

“No, wait. Let’s have a look at him first,” Halfdane said, his brows drawn down in a familiar scowl, a reminder of the old days when he’d done a great deal more scowling than he had of late. “I have the most singular impression—but no, what a ridiculous notion. Come along, Mikla, what are you waiting for? Let’s examine this creature. It may be the last Dokkalfar we see for a long time.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with that, if you ask me,” Rolfr declared a little nervously.

“Then you can sit here by yourself, if you wish,” Mikla replied, “but it would be better for your reputation if it weren’t known that Ragnhild is braver than you are.” He grinned at Rolfr and gave him a push toward the kitchen, where Ragnhild was stooping down to look at the dying Dokkalfar, her fists cocked on her hips critically.

“He looks as if he used to be a person of some importance,” she announced to Sigurd. “Let’s carry him in beside the fire.”

Sigurd frowned. “What, and carry the plague into our house? Isn’t the stable quite good enough for him, Ragnhild?”

“Let me see his face first,” Halfdane said, kneeling beside the ragged, huddled creature and turning the emaciated body slightly so its wasted countenance was exposed. “It’s the plague, of course; you can tell immediately. This one seems to have been a cripple to start with, a hunched shoulder and—” His voice trailed away as he observed that one of the fellow’s legs was a worn wooden peg.

The Dokkalfar’s papery eyelids fluttered open and the cracked lips whispered, “Halfdane? Is it you?”

“Bjarnhardr!” Sigurd gasped, and Halfdane echoed him.

“Aye, it’s Bjarnhardr,” the wretch wheezed, with a shiver. “I’ve come to die with my enemies, since my friends are already dead—if I ever had any. Are you here, too, Sigurd? This will be a happy day for you, I believe, seeing the end of me and the sending you turned against me. Are you still as stupid as you used to be?”

“Yes, but now I know it,” Sigurd retorted, “so it’s not such an inconvenience any more. Is there anything we can fetch you to ease your last moments? Even I would hesitate to add to your torment, much as I would have liked to at one time.”

“There’s nothing like triumph to make a man generous,” Mikla grumbled. “We don’t want to make him so comfortable that he decides not to die, Sigurd.”

Bjarnhardr shook his head slightly and shut his eyes. “Oh, you needn’t concern yourselves about my lingering on,” he whispered. “You should know that, once a curse of yours has got its fangs into a body, there’s no road back. But I wouldn’t mind dying with a last taste of good stout ale, Halfdane. There are no regrets between us, are there now? We did our best to destroy one another, and you have won. Ah well, so it goes.“

“Yes, so it goes.” Halfdane cradled his old enemy’s head on his arm and poured the ale down his throat, although Bjarnhardr was able to swallow very little of it. Sigurd looked on with amazement as Halfdane made Bjarnhardr as comfortable as he might be under the circumstances and watched beside him for the rest of the day. When Sigurd returned from an errand at sundown, he learned that Bjarnhardr had died.

Halfdane ordered a fire to be built; Bjarnhardr was burned and the ashes were scattered to the four winds by Halfdane and Mikla, who had watched all the proceedings with a slightly disapproving eye.

“You certainly made it easy for him at the last,” Sigurd observed. “And we’ve all lost too much sleep keeping the fire going.” He looked at Ragnhild scattering the hot coals briskly, scolding Rolfr vehemently for falling asleep during the long watch.

“We’re finished now.” Halfdane leaned upon a staff to watch the rising sun coloring the low-hanging clouds. “It’s true, he didn’t deserve to die with someone watching over him, someone to give him a decent burning or burying. But it wasn’t so much for him I did it, as for myself. I’m no sentimental idiot. I wouldn’t have minded seeing the crows and foxes picking Bjarnhardr’s bones.”

“Then why—” Sigurd bit off his inquiry when Ragnhild bestowed a warning look upon him, which she often did when Sigurd demanded too many answers to questions he probably oughtn’t ask. With a grunt, he changed the subject. “It’s too bad we burned the earth here so drastically. It looks as if it had been blasted, doesn’t it? I wonder if it will ever be green again.”

Halfdane looked at him fondly. “Oh, it will heal.” He prodded at the deeply charred and barren earth. “It will heal.”

Elizabeth Boyer began planning her writing career during junior high school in her rural Idaho hometown. She read almost anything the Bookmobile brought, and learned a great love for Nature and wilderness. Science fiction in large quantities led her to Tolkien’s writings, which developed a great Curiosity about Scandinavian folklore. Ms. Boyer is Scandinavian by descent and hopes to visit the homeland of her ancestors. She has a B.A. from Brigham Young University, at Provo, Utah, in English Literature.

After spending several years in the Rocky Mountain wilderness of central Utah, she and her ranger husband now live in a rural Utah community. They met on a desert servival trip in the canyonlands of southern Utah, which they love accordingly and visit often. Sharing their home are two daughters, and an assortment of animals. Mrs. Boyer enjoys backpacking, cross-country skiing, and classical music.

TK - scanned and proofed June 2015. html(v1.0)