Finally, what awaited us at the top of the dragon’s Anvil 9 страница

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From the first blow, the iron sang under the hammer. Tvalin sang along with it, pounding out the blade, long and straight and keen. He knew already this would be a noble sword, and it tore his heart to think who would own it.

He thrust the iron back into the forge, and said to his nephew, “Heat it up.”

Tulinn worked the bellows. Tvalin wiped his hands on his apron. His shoulders ached. He went to the back of the cave and got a stoop of ale. Galdor at least kept them well fed. Tvalin was soaked with sweat from the work, which felt good, and he loved the smell of the iron heating and the sound of the bellows.

He called the sword Tyraste, darling of the god of battles, but he never said the name aloud, to keep it strong. He said it in his mind often. He drank another long draught of the ale, and going back to the forge, he drew the white-hot blade from the coals. Lifting the hammer in his hand, he beat against the iron, and even through the tongs, the blade’s high voice rang true.

High overhead, a door creaked. Tulinn said, “He comes,” and backed away into the shadows. Tulinn was afraid of Galdor. Tvalin laid the sword across the anvil, between him and the stairs, and down the steps came the king, massive in his bearskins, his feet scraping on the stone, and his eyes like a snake’s. On his forefinger was a red jewel, and he carried a weight of gold around his neck.

The two dwarfs bowed down. Tvalin was cursing himself for allowing them to fall into Galdor’s hands. He said, “We are doing the work, King Galdor. We are keeping our end of the bargain.” Straightening, he gestured toward the sword on the anvil.

Galdor caught sight of it, and his face flushed red; his eyes gleamed. He said, “Ah, yes.” He put out his hand toward it, but the ungripped sword was still hot, and he drew back. Tvalin let out his breath between his teeth. Galdor faced him, narrow-eyed again.

“Finish it. And I will keep you no longer. Is that the bargain?” He looked from one dwarf to the other. Tvalin nodded. Galdor went back up the stair, heavy stepping.

Tvalin went back to the sword, cooling on the anvil, and laid it into the coals again. His chest felt too tight. He knew Galdor was treacherous and the king’s last words rang with lies. He turned the sword again in the coals, and drew it out, and worked the fore edge.

With each stroke he thought, Tyraste, be evil. Tyraste, do evil. Tyraste, kill Galdor.

They quenched the blade and honed it, fit on wooden grips and a pommel of a piece of ocean-blood. Galdor would change those anyway to something gaudier. Tvalin lifted the sword in his hand, the balance perfect, the blade eager, and his maker’s heart leapt at what he had done. Then the king came down again.

Tvalin laid the sword across the anvil and stepped back. Tulinn hovered next to him, wanting to be gone from here. Galdor threw back his cloak; he took the sword into his hand, and cocking it from side to side, he murmured under his breath.

“A prince of blades,” he said. “Tvalin, you are better even than your name.”

Tvalin swelled, pleased, and glanced at Tulinn to make sure he had noted that. Galdor said, “Now let’s test the edge.”

Too late, Tvalin saw what was happening. Galdor swung the sword around and in a single stroke sliced off Tvalin’s head and that of his nephew.

“See,” Galdor said, up there above them. “Now I don’t have to keep you. I’ll board this room up, so nobody bothers you.” With the sword in his hand, he went back up the stairs.

—

With his full strength Vagn hauled his oar again through the water. Night was falling, they should have made landfall long ago, and now they were deep into the narrows, here, between two coasts they didn’t know, with a storm bearing down on them. Around him his brothers and his friends were rowing as hard as he was, shouting the rhythm. A current fought them, the knarr jerking and bucking. Back over the stern he could see the rain blowing toward them, a shadow over the water. Above them a craggy headland loomed. The first rain struck him in the face. The light was bleeding out of the sky.

At the steerboard, his oldest brother suddenly called out and pointed. Vagn cast a quick glance over his shoulder and saw a light bobbing, in the dark below the headland, a signal, a buoy. His brother was already steering them that way. Vagn flung his body against the oar. The wind helped them, heaved them forward. The rain pounded his cheeks and his wet hair got in his eyes. He bent to his oar and the blade struck something, and just behind his bench he felt the hull shudder. The light had lured them into the rocks.

His brother yelled, “Hold on! Hold on!” Vagn cast his oar overboard and jumped after it.

He went feetfirst into the water, his hands out to fend off the rocks, and sank deep in over his head. When he came up a wave hurled him over, and with him the oar and a piece of a strake. In the murky darkness he could make out nothing but the waves’ slap and churn. Then something huge loomed up before him, and his feet touched bottom and he scrambled up onto the side of a rock. The storm wind battered him. He was shivering and he clutched his shirt around him.

Even through the wind and the sea, a scream reached his ears, and shouting. The torch on the shore cast a glow out onto the surging water. He leaned around the side of the rock and saw, against the uncertain light, bare hands raised against swords. He heard his oldest brother calling out, “No, no,” over and over. Then nothing. Men thrashed around in the shallows. A sharp voice rose, once, giving orders, directions—they were looking for pieces of the cargo. A keg bobbed in the slack water behind his rock. They would come to get that. He slid down into the rocking waves, in over his head, and waited there. Legs thrashed by him, close enough almost to touch, lifted the keg away, and moved on.

He raised his head above the surface and listened. He could hear voices, in there on the beach, but now they were moving off. He dragged himself up out of the water onto the rock, found a crevice out of the rain, and pulled his shirt around him as well as he could, and waited to die.

He did not die; the woolen shirt, which his mother had made, kept him warm, and this being midsummer, the sun was soon up again. The fierce waves of the night before had passed with the storm. He waded in through little ruffles to the beach. As he came in the seagulls rose in a cloud from his brothers and his friends. The robbers had taken even their clothes away.

He went from one to the other of the dead men, saying each name, noticing the wounds, and pulled them all together on the beach, as they had been on the knarr together. He sat for a while beside his oldest brother, who should have gotten them in to shore sooner, and should not have believed the light. His brother’s body was hacked and battered, he had fought hardest of any of them.

Vagn piled up rocks over the bodies, making a boat shape, and putting in what bits and pieces of the knarr had drifted in to the shore. There was nothing left of the cargo, the furs, the salted fish, the casks of honey and wax. As he went around, he stamped on crabs and ate them, ate seaweed, dug up clams, and drank water that seeped out of the cliff.

He did not, for a long while, look up at the top of the cliff.

When he was done, he sat down on the sand, and thought about his brothers and his friends and what had been done to them. Only he was left alive, which put a hard charge on him. Now he stood up, and looked up, at the top of the headland, and the tower there, looming behind its wall. He rinsed the salt out of his shirt, slept a little in the sun while it dried, and in the afternoon, he walked around the back of the headland and made his way up.

—

King Galdor, lord of the Vedrborg, walked out to his high seat and laid the sword on the table before him. Standing there, he looked out over the hall at his men, all on their feet, all their faces turned toward him, and he was still a moment, to feel his power, before he sat, and they could all sit. The slaves brought in the bread and the ale and they fell to feasting.

Galdor thought of his enemies. He wished like Odin he had no use for meat, and did not have to waste time in eating. A great dish came onto the table before him, a mess of fish, likely from the ship they had taken the night before. Peasants’ food. He laid his hands instead on the sword in its sheath, with its pommel and grips of chased gold.

The midsummer was on them, when Hjeldric the Dane had sworn to challenge him, to run the strait against his will, and Galdor meant to turn that to advantage. The Vedrborg grew too small for him. He wanted more than mere piracy. He pressed the sword under his hands. A man with his power should have a kingdom and not a rock and a handful of men. He longed to take the sword into his hand, to loose the strength he felt in it, on some cause great enough for him.

In the hall a stirring caught his eye. Someone had come in from outside. He talked to someone, who talked to someone else, the little passage of the words going up the hall along the outside of the table. At his place just below Galdor, his man Gifr heard it, nodded, and stood.

“There is a stranger here who asks to see you.”

“A stranger. A messenger?”

“No—just a wayfarer.”

Galdor lifted his eyes. In the middle of the hall, a half-grown gawky beardless boy stood, broad-shouldered, with curly black hair, startling blue eyes, in a filthy shirt.

Galdor said, “Come up in front of me. Who are you?”

The boy walked up to stand below the high seat, and spoke out, “My name is Vagn Akason. I have come over the sea because I have heard such of your power, King, that I would join you.”

Galdor leaned back in the high seat. He knew at once that this was both true and untrue. In this he sensed some witchwork: the boy was both a danger and an opportunity. He laid his hands on the sword again.

“Vagn: what kind of name is that?” An outlander. Galdor thought again of Hjeldric. He could always use another fighter if this one was apt.

“Well, perhaps you would prove your mettle?” He looked around the table. “Thorulf Grimsson, stand.”

At once, they all began to move. Thorulf got to his feet, a bear of a man, all hair and muscle. The others pulled the tables back to make room in the middle of the hall. The boy Vagn stood there looking around him, and when Thorulf lumbered toward him, drawing his sword, the boy wheeled toward Galdor.

“I have no sword.”

Among the men now grouped along the wall there gusted some laughter. Galdor said, “What then do you offer me?” He smiled, thinking, for all his big talk, the boy was trying to back out of this. “But there are other ways—bring out staffs, let them fight that way.” He nodded to the black-haired boy. “You still have your chance, see?”

He leaned on the arm of his high seat. He thought this could be amusing. Thorulf was a slacker and a stirpot. The boy was brawny and should have one good fight in him anyway. Galdor beckoned to the slave, who came quickly over to fill his cup again.

—

Vagn stood in the middle of the room, now a much wider space, and gripped the staff in both hands, his knuckles up. He had fought often with sticks with his brothers.

He knew the men who had killed his brothers were all around him.

The lumpy, shaggy man tramping across the floor toward him held the staff crosswise. They batted at each other a few times, shuffling around, and Thorulf didn’t change his grip. The men watching began to hoot and call out, spurring them on. Thorulf was already sweating. Vagn took a step to one side and struck, going high, over the upside-down grip, and Thorolf blocked it, and with his counterstroke knocked Vagn flat.

The breath went out of him, but even dazed he knew to keep moving. He rolled. The following blow cracked on the rush-strewn floor beside him. He staggered to his feet. He had dropped his staff. He had made a mistake. He had to be keener. Thorulf was strong and knew how to do this. The big man plunged toward him, jabbing his stick at Vagn’s belly, at his face, and Vagn dodged, ducked, jumped, flailing his arms out. The staff whipped past his ear and over his head. In the laughing, jeering crowd someone whistled. Thorulf was red-faced, panting, and his little eyes popped. Big as he was, he was already tired. He lunged around, swinging broad at Vagn’s head, and Vagn dove past him into the middle of the room, rolled, and coming to his feet grabbed his own staff up off the floor.

The crowd roared. Thorulf plodded after him, out of breath, and Vagn danced around him, luring him into another rush. When the big man charged Vagn stepped sideways and thrust his staff in between Thorulf’s knees and felled him like an ox.

A thundering yell went up from those watching. Thorulf sprawled across the rush-strewn floor, and Vagn bounded after him and battered at him until he crouched down, his knees to his chest, and covered his head with his arms.

Vagn swung the staff up. He knew Thorulf had been there the night before on the beach. He wanted to drive the staff straight through him. The men howling and stamping around him were ready for a death. But then he heard Galdor say, up there, “See if you can kill him.”

At that, he lowered the staff. His blood cooled. They were all around him, he couldn’t kill them all, now, anyway. He put out his hand to Thorulf to help him up. The other men yelled, disappointed, derisive, and Thorulf swatted away his hand and got to his feet and went off.

The other men were already moving the tables back into place, and the slaves were bringing in more food. Vagn stood watching all this. The others ignored him. He saw how they sorted themselves out, top to bottom, with Galdor up on the highest place. When everybody else had sat down again, he went to the lowest end of the table and sat on the end of the bench. The bread came to him and he ate. The ale came to him and he drank. Nobody paid him much attention.

He thought about what he had to do here. All these men were guilty of his brothers’ blood, but it was Galdor who was the head. He looked up at the high seat, where the king sat fondling the sword. Wait, Vagn thought to himself.

—

He slept the short night on some straw in a corner of the hall. In the morning, he expected someone to come to him with work, as would have happened at home, but nobody was doing much of anything. Men came and went in the hall, rolling up their blankets, talking together, and sitting down at the tables to play chess, and drinking. Galdor did not appear. A slave brought in some bread.

Vagn went off around the place, seeing what was there. As he had marked the day before, on his way here, the tower rose on the high point of the headland. A stout stone wall fenced off a wide half circle of space around the foot of it, running from cliff edge to cliff edge. One high gate, braced and hinged with iron, pierced the wall, closed and barred.

He went around the inside of the wall and found a little stable and some storerooms built along it. In the yard some of the men were pitching axes; they paid no heed to him. Firewood stood in stacks along the foot of the tower and tools lay around the yard. In the far corner, where the wall bent to meet the cliff, he came on the kitchen.

In his experience the three things he needed most, bread, clean clothes, and a warm look, all came from women, and women were usually found in kitchens. This one was a narrow room under a turf roof, with two ovens set in the stone wall and a row of split tree trunks for tables. People came and went through it steadily, and he found a corner at the top of a passageway, at the back of it all, where he lurked around until a wan, sullen girl noticed him.

He wheedled her into giving him some bread; he was glad to see that girls were the same everywhere. Like cats, they loved to be stroked. He stroked her more, and she smiled, and then was pretty. He said so. She flustered and fluttered and went off to her work, kneading dough, her hands dusty white and her cheeks bright red, but a few minutes later she brought him mead in a little flagon.

As he took this, thinking he could kiss her, a rattling sound came up from the passageway behind him. The girl gave a violent start, her hands flying up. He looked around, into the dark throat of a corridor, stacked high with wood for the ovens.

“Where does that go?”

She turned her wide eyes on him. “Nowhere. Stay away from there.” She leaned closer. “It’s haunted,” she whispered, and he kissed her.

Later, he squeezed in past the oven wood into the corridor. As he went he could hear the scurrying of rats and he thought that was the noise he had heard.

The corridor wound down steeply into the dark, but in a niche in the wall, under a dusty veil of cobwebs, he found a rush and a firebox. Someone had come down here often but not recently. He blew the dust off the rush and lit it and took it down into the dark.

Around a corner, he came to a door, blocked with a balk of wood. He moved the wood, and the door swung open. Holding the rush out before him he went down a long flight of steps, and the cold air that came to him smelled of an ancient fire, and of bricks, and of iron. This was a dead forge, hidden under the tower. He reached the last step and turned, looking around him.

Almost at his feet, something moaned.

He went cold. He could not move, every hair staring. The sound came again. Down on the thick dust of the floor lay a shaggy head.

Vagn knelt beside it. The head’s eyes were closed. Its long thick hair was filthy with dirt and old blood and its raddled beard trailed away beyond the reach of the rush light. He knew it was a dwarf by its beard and its bristling eyebrows, its plug of a nose. Its lips moved but only a moan came out. Vagn remembered the flagon of mead, and took it from his belt and moistened the dwarf’s lips.

The lips moved, greedy, and smacked. They spoke again, but he could not make out what they said, and he fed them more mead.

“Tyraste,” the dwarf whispered. “Tyraste, remember.”

“What.” Vagn put his head down closer. “What are you saying? Who are you?”

“Tyraste, remember,” the dwarf said, louder.

The rush light was going out. Vagn looked around to make sure he knew where the stair was. He bent to the dwarf’s head again. “Tell me what you mean!”

But all the dwarf said was, “Tyraste, remember.”

The light flickered out. Vagn turned and went up the steps, groping along in the darkness. At the top of the stair he shut the door and jammed the chunk of wood against it, and went on up to the light.

—

Beyond the kitchen a flight of steps went up the wall to a parapet overhanging the sea. Vagn climbed up there, to the highest place, and stood looking out over the strait, where the wrinkled water spread out far into the distance. From here, Galdor had seen the knarr coming, had seen from here that the little cargo ship was struggling, and gone down to lure it in.

A foot scraped behind him, startling him, and he whirled around. Thorulf Grimsson was coming up the stair. Vagn went stiff all over. Two steps from the top, Thorulf stopped and looked up at him, squinting into the sun.

“You’re going to need a sword. I’ll help you get one.”

Vagn said, “Very well. You go first.”

The big man turned and went down the steps ahead of him. At the bottom, Thorulf waited for him to catch up, and said, under his breath, “That was Galdor, yesterday, who did that.” He put his hand out, and said his name.

Vagn shook his hand. They were walking by the kitchen, by the passageway there. He said, “Who is Tyraste?”

“Is that a name? Some girl?” In the high stone wall beyond the kitchen was a wooden double-sided door. Thorulf pulled the two panels wide open. The sun shone in on a narrow room, the wheels and shafts of a wagon, a pile of round shields, and a barrel of sand. Out of the barrel there stuck up a forest of hilts and crosspieces. Thorulf gripped the barrel and rolled it forward; Vagn saw again how strong he was.

“Try this.” The big man pulled a sword out of the barrel and handed it to Vagn.

The hilt was neatly leather-wrapped, with a round pommel, but the blade felt heavy to him. He looked for something to try the sword against and Thorulf pointed him out the door. In the yard just beyond was a stump of wood, notched and splintered, the ground around it caked with sawdust. Vagn hacked at it; the battered chunk of tree was too low and the angle was bad.

Thorulf said, “Here. Use this edge, see, that’s the front edge. Try this one.”

The next blade was spotted with rust and had a big notch out of the blade near the crossbar, but it felt better in his hand. He struck at the stump again, crouching to get the angle, and Thorulf said, “Good. Stiffen your wrist. Like that.” He thumped Vagn hard on the back. “That’s it.”

Vagn stepped away from the stump, his breath short; he was thinking of his brother. Two other men came over toward them. “What, Thorulf,” said one, “teaching him to beat you worse?” And smirked.

Thorulf said, “That’s Ketil. Ketil Tooth. And that is Johan, who is not even Norse.”

Ketil grinned at Vagn, displaying a jagged eyetooth pointing straight out from the gum. He said, “Don’t get too cocky beating up on an old souse like him, boy.” The fair-headed Johan, not much older than Vagn, gave him a nod. He stood watching everybody, his eyes sharp, but said nothing.

“You’ll need a shield, too.” Thorulf went back into the storeroom.

Ketil said, “You won’t find much good steel in that barrel, boy.” He bumped into Vagn, as if by accident.

“Oh, this suits me,” Vagn said. He held his ground, and Ketil had to step back. Big Johan was staring at the sword in Vagn’s hand; he pointed at the blade, where below the hilt now Vagn saw some old runes in the iron.

“Gut,” Johan said. He nodded vigorously at Vagn. “Gut.”

“What is the work here?” Vagn asked.

Johan looked over at Ketil to answer; obviously he had little Norse. Ketil said, “It’s easy enough. We keep the narrows. All that come by must give us some of what they carry.” Ketil stuck his chin out, pointing east. “The big market lies beyond, where the river flows in. Through here is the quickest way there.”

Vagn knew this; he and his brothers had been on their way to this market. He had the sword in his hand. He could kill someone now. Thorulf brought him a leather sheath. Around him three of the men who had killed his brothers.

Then they stiffened, and all three were looking across the yard toward the hall. Vagn followed their eyes.

King Galdor had come out of the hall. He stood upon the threshold, his head thrown back. He wore a black bearskin cloak, a breastplate studded with metal. His sword swung at his hip. He stared at them a moment, saying nothing, and walked off across the yard. As he walked, his hand fell lightly to his sword. Thorulf muttered under his breath and made a sign with his fingers.

Ketil said, “Shut up, fool.”

“He’s after me,” Thorulf said. “He’s after me all the time.”

“That’s a fine sword,” Vagn said. “Galdor’s sword.”

“No other has such a sword,” Ketil said. “With that in his hand he does not lose.”

In Vagn’s mind the weapon in his hand shrank to a twig. A few other men walked out of the hall, yawned, stretched. Ketil and Johan started toward them, calling out. Vagn slid his new sword down into the scabbard. He could not kill them all. Galdor he should hate, not these. The girl from the kitchen was wandering by, a basket on her hip, her eyes not quite finding his. He followed Thorulf off to join the other men.

At undernmeal, he sat between Ketil and Thorulf, halfway up the table. While they were all eating, Galdor called out, “We should have some poetry. Thorulf! Give us a skalding!”

All around the hall the men laughed, and turned to stare at Thorulf, who had turned white as lambskin. He got to his feet. The jug was there and he took a big slurp of the ale. The laughing swelled, expecting some amusement. Galdor was lounging in his place, smiling.

“Give us a poem, Thorulf. Speak!”

Thorulf’s chest heaved. He said, “On the swan’s road—” and gulped. Around the room, the jeering rose; Vagn sat still, seeing this was an old practice. Thorulf’s eyes bulged. “The raven lord came—battle-sweat—unh—”

The yells of the other men rose to a roar, and from all sides they threw bread and bones and cheese at Thorulf, who flung his arms up to ward off the volleys, and sank down on the bench. He covered his head with his arms. The table in front of Vagn was littered with bits of food.

Up there, Galdor said, “Well, that was disappointing.”

The room hushed. Everybody waited, breathless, on the king, who looked around them all, and finally said, “Vagn Akason. Perhaps you can do better?”

Vagn stood up; he swiped the crumbs off his sleeves. He said, “Odin’s match is the Vedrborg’s king—”

A disappointed cheer rose. Beside Vagn, Ketil gave a cackle of a laugh. “Figured it out, did you?” On the high seat Galdor raised his head and beamed.

Vagn said, “Save he has both his eyes, his spears are bread, and his ravens are crows—”

The general mutter of approval broke off. Ketil snorted. Galdor’s smile froze. Vagn was cobbling up another line, trying to work in a comparison of Valhalla and the Vedrborg. On either side, Ketil and Thorulf yanked Vagn down onto the bench. Around them the table rumbled up a hard-smothered laughter. Galdor tilted forward from the high seat, staring down at Vagn across the room, and his hands went to the sword lying on the table before him. The laughter stopped.

“Mighty king!” On the far side of the room, another man leapt to his feet. “Ring-breaker, feeder of the eagles—”

Every head in the room swung toward this one, and he went on so, for many lofty words. Vagn sat still; he thought maybe he had shown himself too soon. But he was glad. Already Galdor was making a big point of sending this new poet a golden cup of mead. Next to Vagn, Thorulf clapped him on the shoulder and leaned toward his ear. “Keep watch,” he whispered. “Galdor won’t forget.” He straightened. Up there, Galdor had turned to glare at Vagn again. Ketil handed him the alehorn.

“You need this, fool?”

Vagn drank deep.

Later, he saw Galdor, still on his high seat, leaning on the arm to talk with a balding man, squat as a toad. After that one had gone away, Galdor sent a slave to fetch Vagn up. When Vagn stood before him, Galdor frowned at him.

“You are no skald. You annoyed me. So I want you to go up on the parapet and keep night-watch. It’s cold up there, in the wind, and it’s likely to rain. You can think about where your stupid tongue has gotten you.” He sat back. The sword lay on the table between them.

Vagn said, “Yes, King Galdor,” and went off.

There was some weather coming in, as the night fell; he could feel it in the air. He stood on the parapet, looking into the dark, listening to the wind boom and sigh over the walls around him. The rain began, light as a veil. He thought awhile of his brothers, dead down there, and he alive up here, and could not push this into any balance. He knew no one would come down the narrows on a night like this and he went down the stairs again, and away into the back of the kitchen, where the passage started down.

The kitchen slaves were asleep around the banked ovens. He took off his shoes, to make no noise, and kept watch on the yard. In the warmth he dozed a little. He dreamt of the dwarf, just down at the other end of the passage; he heard himself begging the dwarf to help him. He started awake, and heard someone scurry by outside, toward the stair.

He went up to the front of the kitchen, and saw the toad-man climbing up the stair; as he went he drew his dagger. Vagn climbed up two steps at a time behind him, his bare feet soundless. At the top, the toad was peering around.

“Looking for me?”

The toad wheeled, his dagger lashing out, but Vagn was already driving into him, shoulder first, hurling him back across the narrow walkway. The dagger nicked his cheek. The toad hit the waist-high parapet wall and tumbled over into the air. Vagn stood there a moment, and heard a thud. Then he went back down the stairs.

From the kitchen, the girl called him, and he went in there, and lay down with her in the warmth of the hearth.

—

Galdor came out of the hall door. The rain had stopped, and the sunlight blazed bright and clean over the world. To his surprise, across the yard, hacking at a barrel with a sword, was the black-haired boy Vagn Akason.

The king cast a look all around the yard, looking for his man Gifr, and didn’t see him. He called Vagn to him.

“I see you made a night of it,” he said, when the boy stood before him.