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have named me coward, yet I will not touch that sword; nor will you, if you are wise. It will bring your
weird on you."
"What of that?" answered Skafloc moodily.
They heard the seething as the blade was quenched in venom. The fumes stung where they touched bare
skin. Bolverk's doom-song bellowed through the caverns.
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"Throw not your life away for a lost love," pleaded Mananaan. "You are young yet."
"All men are born fey," said Skafloc, and there the matter stood.
Time dragged-though they did not understand how the giant could be done as soon as he was, blind and
without help-until he shouted: "Enter, warriors!"
They came into the bloody light. Bolverk held forth the sword. Brightly gleamed the blade, a blue tongue
about whose edges little flames seemed to waver. The eyes of the dragon on the haft glittered, the gold
glowed as with a shiningness of its own.
"Take it!" cried the giant.
Skafloc seized the weapon. Heavy it was, but strength to swing it flowed into him. So wondrous was the
balance that it became like a part of himself.
He swept it in a yelling arc, down on a rock. The stone split asunder. He shouted and whirled the blade
about his head. It shone in the murk like a lightning flash.
"Ha, halloo!" Skafloc yelled. And he chanted:
Swiftly goes the sword-play! Soon the foe shall hear the wailing song of weapons. Warlock blade is
thirsty! Howling in its hunger,hews it through the iron, sings in cloven skullbones, slakes itself in
bloodstreams.
Bolverk's laughter joined his. "Aye, wield it in glee," said the Jotun. "Smite your foemen-gods, giants,
mortals, it matters not. The sword is loose and the end of the world comes nigh!"
He gave the man a scabbard bedight with gold leaf. "Best you sheathe it now," he said, "and draw it not
hereafter unless you wish to kill." He grinned. "But the sword has a way of getting drawn at the wrong
time-and in the end, never fear, it will turn on you."
"Let it strike down my enemies first," Skafloc answered, "and I care not overly much what it does later."
"You may ... then," said Mananaan under his breath. Aloud: "Let us be off. Here is no place to bide."
They left. Bolverk's eyeless face stared after them.
When they had won out-the hound on the chain shrank whimpering aside-they set swiftly down the
glacier. As they neared the bottom they heard a loud rumble and looked back. ,
Black against the stars, higher than the mountain, loomed three who strode down upon them. Mananaan
said, scrambling for the boat: "I think Utgard-Loki has somehow learned of your trick and wishes not that
you should fulfill whatever plans theAisir have. Hard will it be to get quit of this land."
XXIII
The war which Mananaan Mac Lir and Skafloc Elven-Fosterling waged on Jotunheim would be well
worth the telling. One should speak too of the struggle with berserk gale and windless mist, with surf and
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skerry and ice floe, with a weariness which grew so deep that only the image of Fand, bright against the
undying night, gave cheer. That best of boats should have been honoured with golden trim and a song.
Many were the enchantments whereby the Jotuns sought to do away with their visitors, and hard luck
did these two suffer on that account. But they worked out spells they could use here and wrought mightily
in return, not alonewarding off the worst of the giant magic but also turning storms loose to scourge the
land and singing mountainsides down on Jotun garths.
They never sought to stand in open fight against the giants, though twice when one alone fell on them
they killed him; but they coped with monsters of land and sea raised against them. Often their escapes
from pursuit were narrow, especially when they went foraging inland during the long times of foul winds,
and each would make a story in itself.
It should be told of their raid on a great steading to steal horses. In the end they left it ablaze and made
off with a booty of which the steeds were not all. The beasts they took were the smallest of ponies in that
land, but in the outer world would be reckoned the hugest and heaviest among stallions, shaggy black
hulks with fiery eyes and devil hearts. Yet they took well to their new masters and stood quietly in the
boat, which barely had room for them. And they feared neither daylight nor iron, even Skafloc's sword,
nor did they ever grow tired.
Not every Jotun was a giant, or hideous or hateful. After all, some of this blood had become gods in
Asgard. A lonely crofter might welcome guests who bore new faces, and not ask too closely what they
were about. No few women were of human size, well favoured and well disposed. Mananaan of the glib
tongue found the outlaw life not wholly bad. Skafloc did not look twice at any woman.
There is much else to tell, of the dragon and his golden hoard, of the burning mountain and the
bottomless chasm and the quern of the giantesses. It should be told of the wayfarer's fishing in a river that
ran from hell, and of what they caught there. The tales of the everlasting battle and of the witch in Iron
Wood and of the song they heard the aurora hissing to itself in the secret night-each is worth telling, and
would make a saga in itself. But since they are not in the main thread of the story, they must be left among
the annals of Faerie.
Suffice it to say that Skafloc and Mananaan got out of Jotunheim and sailed south on the waters of
Midgard.
"How long have we been gone?" wondered the man.
"I know not. Longer there than here." The sea king smelled the fresh breeze and looked up into a clear
blue sky. "And it is spring."
Presently he went on: "Now that you have the sword-and have already blooded it well-what will you
do?"
"I will seek to join the Elfking, if he still lives." Skafloc looked grimly ahead, over the racing waves to the
dim line of horizon. "Put me ashore south of the channel and I will find him. And let the trolls dare try to
stop me! When we have cleared mainland Alfheim of them, we will land in England and regain that.
Finally we will go to their home grounds and lay their cursed race beneath our heel."
"If you can." Mananaan scowled. "Well, you must try, of course."
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"Will the Sidhe lend no help?"
"That is a matter for the high council. Surely we cannot until the elves are in England, lest our country be
ravaged while its warriors are elsewhere. But it may be we will strike then, for the battle and glory as well
as to clear a menace from our flank." The sea king's proud head lifted. "However that goes-for the sake
of blood shed together, toil and hardship and peril in common, and lives owed each to the other,
Mananaan Mac Lir and his host will be with you when you enter England!"
They clasped hands, wordlessly. And soon Mananaan set Skafloc and his Jotun horse off, and sailed for
Ireland and Fand.
Skafloc rode his black stallion toward the distant Elfking. The horse was gaunt, still stepping high but
with hunger in his belly. Skafloc did not look rich himself, his clothes were ragged and faded, his armour
battered and rusty, the cloak he wrapped around his shoulders was worn thin. He had lost weight in his
farings, the great muscles lay just under the skin and the skin was drawn tightly over the big bones. But he
kept haughtily straight. Lines were graven deeply in his face, which had lost all youth and become like the
face of an outlaw god-its softest showing a faint mockery, and most times a harsh aloofness. Only the fair
wind-tossed hair was young. So might Loki look, riding to Vigrid plain on the last evening of the world. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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