The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson Page B

stood restless as a young stallion, eyes alight, the tawny hair tumbling down from his headband.
    “I know not-I know not.” Imric looked grave. “I feel, somehow, that no good will come of this trip, and would fain order it halted.”
    “If you do that, we will go anyway,” said Skafloc.
    “Aye, so you will. And I may be wrong. Go, then, and luck be with you.”
    On a night just after sunset, the warriors embarked. A moon newly risen cast silver and shadow on the crags and scaurs of the elf-hills, on the strand from which they rose, on the clouds racing eastward on a wind that filled heaven with its clamour. The moonlight ran in shards and ripples over the waves, which tumbled and roared, white-maned, on the rocks. It shimmered off weapons and armour of the elf warriors, while the black-and-white longships drawn up on the shore seemed but shades and light-gleams.
    Skafloc stood wrapped in a cape, the wind streaming his hair, awaiting the last of his men. To him, pale in the moonlight, with her tresses tossing cloudy and her eyes aglow, came Leea.
    ” ‘Tis good to see you,” cried Skafloc. “Bid me farewell and sing a song for my luck.”
    “I cannot give you goodspeed properly, for I cannot come up to that iron byrnie of yours,” she answered in her voice that was like breeze and rippling water and small bells heard from afar. “And I have a feeling my spells will avail naught against a doom that is set for you.” Her gaze sought his. “I know, with a sureness beyond proof, that you sail into a trap; and I beg you, by the milk I gave you as a child and the kisses as a man, to stay home this one time.”
    “That would be a fine deed for an elf chief, in command of a raid that may bring back his foeman’s head,” Skafloc said in anger. “Not for anyone would I do so shameful a thing.”
    “Aye-aye.” Sudden tears glimmered in Leea’s eyes.
    “Men, whose span is cruelly short, rush nonetheless to death in their youth as to a maiden’s arms. A few years ago I rocked you in your cradle, Skafloc, a few months ago I lay out with you. in the light summer nights, and to me, undying, the times are almost the same. And no different, in that blink of years, is the day your hacked corpse will await the ravens. I shall not ever forget you, Skafloc, but I fear I have kissed you for the last time.” And she sang:
    Seaward blows the wind tonight, and the seamen, never resting,
     rise from house to take their flight with the gulls, and spindrift’s questing.
     Woman’s arms and firelit hearth, kith and kin, can never hold them
     when the wind beyond their garth of the running tides has told them.
     Spume and seaweed shall enfold them.
    Wind, ah, wind, old wanderer, grey and swift-foot, ever crying,
     Woman curses, who, from her, calls forth Man to doom and dying.
     Seamen, kissed by laughing waves, cold and salt-sweet, hearts deceiving,
     shall be borne to restless graves when the sea their life is reaving.
     And their women will be grieving.
    Skafloc liked not this song, which smacked of bad luck. He turned and shouted to his men to get the ships afloat and get aboard them. But soon as he himself was waterborne, he lost every foreboding in renewed eagerness.
    “This gale has blown for three days now,” said Goltan, a comrade of his. “And it has a wizard smell about it. Mayhap some warlock sails eastward.”
    ” ‘Twas kind of him to spare us the trouble of raising our own wind,” laughed Skafloc. “However, if he has been three days eastbound, his ship is of mortal make. We travel at a better clip!”
    Masts and sails were raised, and the slim dragon-headed craft leaped ahead. Like the gale itself they went, like flying snow and freezing spindrift white under the moon, waves seething in their wake, a long easy bounding over the noisy waters. Swiftest of all in Faerie, afoot or on horse or in hull, were the elves, and ere midnight Finnmark’s cliffs loomed in sight.
    Skafloc’s teeth gleamed