“Ha, I can take your three if I like-I, your earl. What I choose is mine. Leave her be.”
“The loot should go to him who can best use it,” taunted Leea, not moving from Valgard’s lap. “And you have only one hand.”
The troll sprang from his seat, blind with rage and clawing after his sword; for trolls ate with weapons on. “Help me!” cried Leea.
Valgard’s axe seemed to leap of itself into his grasp. Ere Grum, awkward with his left hand, could draw blade, the changeling’s weapon sank into his neck. He fell at Valgard’s feet with blood spurting and looked up into the twisted white face. “You are an evil man,” said Grum, “but she is worse.” And he died.
Uproar arose in the hall, metal flashed forth and the trolls surged against the high seat. Some cried for Valgard’s death, others swore they would defend him. For a moment it was about to become a battle.
Then Valgard snatched the blood-smeared coronet, which had been Imric’s, from Grum’s head and set it on his own. He sprang on to the high seat and overrode the din with his shout for silence.
Slowly that stillness came, until naught but heavy breathing was heard. The bared weapons gleamed, the smell of fear was rank, and every eye rested on Valgard where he stood haughty in his strength.
He spoke, with iron in his tones: “This came somewhat sooner than I looked for, but it was bound to come. For what use to Trollheim was a cripple like Grum, unfit for battle, for anything save gobbling and bousing and sleeping with women that might have gone to better men? I, who come of blood as good as any in Trollheim, and who have shown I can win victory, am more fit to be your earl. Furthermore, I am now earl, by the will of my father King Illrede. Good will this be for all trolls, foremost those of England. I promise you victory, riches, high living and glory, if you hail me your earl.”
He pulled the axe out of Grum and lifted it. “Whoever gainsays my right must do it on my body-now,” he told them. “Whoever stands true will be repaid a thousandfold.”
At this, the men who had followed him to the siege let forth a cheer. Others, who wished not to fight, joined them one by one, so it ended with Valgard’s taking the high seat and the feast going on. Grum had not been very well liked, and what few kinfolk he had there were not close and were willing to take weregild.
Later, alone in his bedchamber with Leea, the changeling sat staring darkly at her. “This is the second time a woman has driven me to murder,” he said. “Were I wise, I would chop your body in three.”
“I cannot stop you, lord,” she purred, and laid her white arms about his neck.
“You know I cannot do it,” he said hoarsely. “Tis idle talk. My life is black enough without such peace as I can find in you.”
Still later he asked her: “Were you thus with the elves-with Skafloc?” She lifted her head over his so that the sweet-scented net of her hair covered both. “Let it suffice that I am thus with you, lord,” she whispered, and kissed him.
Now Valgard ruled Elfheugh for some time. Through the early winter he was often afield, breaking down elf strongholds and hunting the fugitives with hounds and men. Few garths remained unburnt, and when elves sought to make a stand he led his troops roaring over them. Some of those men whom he took alive he threw into dungeons or put to slave work, but most he killed, and he divided their women among his trolls. He himself took none, having lust for none but Leea.
Word came from the south that Illrede’s armies were driving the elves there before them. All Faerie parts of Valland and Flanders were held by the trolls. In the north, only the elves of Scania still were free; and they were hemmed in, and were being pawed away as fast as their deep woodlands allowed. Erelong the trolls would be entering the middle lands where the Elfking lay.
Men had some glimpse of these doings-distant fires, galloping shadows, storm-winds bearing a brazen clangor. And the loosed magic wrought much havoc, murrains on the livestock and spoilt grain and bad luck in families. Sometimes a hunter would come on a trampled, bloody field and half-see ravens tearing at corpses which had not the look of men. Folk huddled in lonely houses, laid iron beneath the thresholds, and called on their various gods for help.
But as the weeks wore on, Valgard came to sit more and more in Elfheugh. For he had been to every castle and hill-town he could find, he had harried from Orkney to Cornwall, and such elves as had escaped him were well hidden-striking out of cover at his men, so that not a few trolls never came home; sneaking poison into food and water; hamstringing horses; corroding arms and armour; calling up blizzards as if the very land rose against the invader.
The trolls held England, no doubt of that, and daily their grip tightened. Yet never had Valgard longed for spring as now he did.
XVIII
Skafloc and Freda took shelter in a cave. It was a deep hole in a cliff that slanted back from the seashore, well north of the elf-hills. Behind it was a forest of ice-sheathed trees which grew thicker towards the south and faded into moor and highland toward the north. Dark and drear was that land, unpeopled by men or Faerie folk, and thus about as safe as any place from which to carry on the war.
They could use little magic, for fear of being sensed by the trolls, but Skafloc did a good deal of hunting in guise of the wolf or otter or eagle whose skins Freda had brought, and he conjured ale from seawater. It was hard work merely to keep alive in that wintery world—the hardest winter that England remembered since almost the time of the Great Ice—and he spent most of his days ranging for game.
Dank and chill was the cave. Winds whittered in its mouth and surf pounded on the rocks at its foot. But when Skafloc came back from his first long hunt, he thought for a moment he had found the wrong place.
A fire blazed cheerily on a hearthstone, with smoke guided out a rude pipe of wicker and green hides. Other skins made a warm covering on floor and walls, and one hung in the cave mouth against the wind. The horses were tethered in the rear, chewing hay that Skafloc had magicked from kelp, and the spare weapons were polished and stacked in a row as if this were a feasting hall. And behind each weapon was a little spray of red winter berries.
Crouched over the fire and turning meat on a spit was Freda. Skafloc stopped in midstride. His heart stumbled at sight of her. She wore only a brief tunic, and her slim long-legged body, with its gentle curves of thigh and waist and breast, seemed poised in the gloom like a bird ready for flight.
She saw him come in, and from under tousled ruddy hair, in the flushed and smoke-smudged face, her great grey eyes kindled with gladness. Wordlessly she sped to him, with her dear coltish gait, and they held each other close for a while.
He asked wonderingly: “How did you ever do this, my sweet?”
She laughed softly. “I am no bear, or man, to make a heap of leaves and call that home for the winter. Some of these skins and so on we had, the rest I got for myself. Oh, I am a good housewife.” Pressing against him, shivering: “You were so long away, and time was so empty. I had to pass the days, and make myself weary enough to sleep at night.”
His own hands shook as he fondled her. “This is no stead for you. Hard and dangerous is the outlaw life. I should take you to a human garth, to await our victory or forget our defeat.”
“No-no, never shall you do that!” She grasped his ears and pulled till his mouth lay on hers. Presently, half laughing and half sobbing: “I have said I will not leave you. No, Skafloc, ’twill be harder than that to get rid of me.”
“Truth to tell,” he admitted after a while, “I do not know what I would do without you. Naught would seem worth the trouble any more.”
“Then do not leave me, ever again.”
“I must hunt, dearest one.”
“I will hunt with you.” She waved at the hides and the roasting meat. “I am not unskilled at that.”