Spellbreakers (42 page)

Later, in the same hunters’ home that Leal and her
companions had occupied in their former visit, Hawkeneye paced up and down
around the hearth in barely contained fury. His pale eyes blazed with passion.
Leal stared at him and realized that since she had met him, he had never been
fully alive before. It was as if during their trip south from the Ice Waste he
had still been caught in the nightmare of his captivity and enchantment,
perhaps because the timeless spell-world where she had first met him was so
similar to the living but lonely glaciers and moors of Dalarna. But here he had
met with people again, and re-joined the flow of the world, and suddenly the
injustice of it all had hit him for real.

According to Ljung’s whispered explanations, the best
bard in Elverhjem had sung his deeds and his lineage and welcomed him back to
the land of the living.
 
She had sung the
praise for his victory, a song that had been sung all through the northern
kingdoms for almost a hundred years, but that he himself, in his ice tomb, had
never heard.

He was finally fully awake to the present now, and he
was earnestly, genuinely wrathful.

“One hundred years they left me to rot in an ice tomb,
one hundred fucking years, doing nothing but singing to the flowers and the
stars, and now they expect me to jump to their command like a well-trained
pooch. They might have gotten me out a tad sooner, you’d think!”

“You rotted fairly well my friend, all considered,”
said Ljung trying to lighten the mood a bit.

“Maybe I was destined,” put in Leal, without much
hope.

“Perhaps they might have tried, but—” said Daria
timidly.

“They didn’t try hard enough!” shouted Hawkeneye,
turning round like an enraged beast and glaring at them all through eyes as
cold and sparkling as sunlit ice. He must have been a fearsome leader in his
day, thought Leal, not a captain you’d like to cross lightly. The kind of man
seldom moved to anger, but deadly if seriously outraged. She cringed somewhat.
Daria was busily studying her own feet, trying to appear unconcerned and
failing. Ljung just stared at him through a tangle of dark hair with a slightly
disapproving expression.

“The fact is nobody knew you were there,” he said.
“They thought you were dead, killed in an ambush, or a storm. Nobody imagined
you were under the Ice Waste, until Leal thought of asking the Shining Ones
about you.”

“Actually it was my uncle’s idea,” said Leal in a
small voice.

Hawkeneye strove to get a grip on himself and coughed
once or twice, embarrassed.
 
Then he gave
a long shuddering sigh, and somehow he was master of himself again.

“Forgive me,” he said, in a rather hoarse voice, “I
didn’t mean to snap at you.
Any of you.”

Leal shook her head, and Daria waved a hand
dismissively.

Hawkeneye turned to Ljung.

“What do they want from me now, anyway? Do you have
any idea?”

Ljung looked up uneasily and took a deep sigh.

“I think I can guess.” He didn’t seem able to go on.

There was a silence. Leal felt that something very
painful was slowly unfolding within him. She took his hand and squeezed it.

“When we met the Elders, they said that greater evils
than the Ice Queen were growing elsewhere. And they said that you knew
something about it. Is that so?”

Ljung stared at the fire for a while.

When he spoke his voice was little more than a broken
whisper.

****

“Thirty years ago,” he said finally, in a distant,
flat voice, “
a darkness
came on the Itaanvaelta’a, the
homeland of the free elvers, far in the east, where I lived with the old
wandering elvren clans. It came upon us from the south, armies of fell
creatures, wargs and trolls, but also knights at arms, and soldiers of sorts
... but not like any men or elvers we had ever seen.
A
twisted, evil people, changed by dark spells, driven by rage and a fell fear.
Some called them
draugar
, but they were not ghosts, not dead, just ...
changed. Bit by bit they claimed all the lands of the old Vaelta’a, all the way
to the White Seas in the north. And then they began moving west. They could not
be stopped. Sorcery and black spells drove them. Some of us ran west towards
Kareli and the northern kingdoms, other east, to the far Vaelta’a, or north to
the Snow harbors. Other stood their ground and fought and died. Thousands were
just lost. Villages were burnt down, and people were killed, taken as slaves,
or worse,
turned
. That’s what we called it. The best warriors, if they
did not die in battle, they were taken, and
changed
. They forgot their
homes and friends, and became one of them. We tried to fight back, but the
elvers of the Vaelta’a are scattered far and wide. I lost all my companions
trying to find the black magician that commanded the fell hosts. We were
defeated and broken, and it was all I could do to save my skin in the end and
flee west as well as I could, always hiding, always afraid that I may be
captured and changed into something ... soulless.”

He took a deep breath. Daria gazed at him in shock.

“Sweetheart,” she said, gently touching his arm.

Ljung shrugged, too deep in painful memories to be
comforted just then.

He did not mention Naya. He did not want to say her
name, ever more. That darkness would blot out the light of his world, if he
spoke out those memories now. He strove not to think of that last day, when he
had found her finally. He had found her, but she was ... different. He could
still see the emptiness in her eyes as she shot arrow after arrow at him. The
first had cut a line of fire in his scalp. His hair had grown grey along that
cut, ever after. The second arrow had pierced his shoulder. The third had stuck
in his chest, an inch closer to his heart. Then he had thrown his knife. It had
not been enough. She was so quick and strong. They had struggled. She had
pounded his chest and face with blows. He still remembered the crack of his
nose breaking. Life was ebbing out of both of them. His left arm was useless.
His only advantage was his weight and size. It had been summer, but the sky had
been raining tears for weeks. He had pressed her face in the mud until she had
stopped struggling.

The last memory he had of her was a head of fiery
hair, caked with dirt and his own blood. He should have turned her over to get
his dagger back. He had not dared. There were so many dead. So many daggers
free for the taking.

He shook out of his inner darkness like a dog shaking
out of the water. He breathed deep.

They were all three watching him, mute, aghast.

“I crossed the width of the near Vaelta’a on foot,
warning people to be on their guard, to prepare for flight or war. I kept
moving west. I thought that Kaleva and the Elverlaen might have the power to
fight back, but they didn’t even listen,” he said. “I don’t think they believed
my tale, at the time. I had run far ahead of the news. I am not proud of it.
But what could I do but run? There was nothing left for me, nothing. I was
hurt, and I was hunted like a beast. In the end when I got to Elverhjem, I
thought I might as well live in peace here. But now more exiles are coming from
the east, and they say the black armies are advancing once more. The day is
coming near when the northern kingdoms must go to war again or be swept away,
and I doubt whether they can win. And if Kareli and Kaleva are taken, the
Elverlaen and even Hassia might well be next. The Narrows will not stop them.
The Karelian plains neither. If they are the same people that conquered the
Itaanvaelta’a already, nothing but a magic more powerful than those black
spells will stop them. But I think that is why the Elders helped Leal bring you
back. Your name alone still commands awe and respect. You might bring Kaleva’s
men and the Elverlaen together, as you once did.
And maybe the
other kingdoms, too.
They would rise for a great captain, one whose name
is legend.”

****

Ljung finished his story in the same flat tone of
voice. Leal could see that he had shorn it to the core, and left out something
even more painful and horrible. She held his hand again, and he finally
returned the grip with some warmth, as if he had just come out of a dark dream.
Daria hugged him. He let himself be held for a minute then gently disengaged
himself. It was obvious that he didn’t want to dwell on his past, and also that
he was the sort of man who finds it easier to offer comfort than to accept it.

Hawkeneye’s frowned, his eyes thoughtful and troubled.
He put a hand on Ljung’s shoulder, and a slow look of respect and understanding
passed between them.

“I’ll be damned. I’ll be twice damned. I am sorry,
brother. The world
comes
tumbling down, and all I can
think of is that I have been out for a hundred years and nobody bothered to
wake me up earlier. I wish I could help. I wish I had been there and helped your
people.” He hung his head with a sigh.
“Black magic, again.
What is it with me and sorcerers? Why me? I might be a Warlord worth a song or
two, but I am no magician. How close are these dark armies?”

Ljung answered in a more nearly normal voice. It was
as if he had closed the past back into a black casket in his heart, out of
harm’s way, and he could deal with the present again, now.

“Not so close. They travel slowly.
Using
the land as they go.
They put even trees to evil uses. They might stop a
year in a place and three in
another,
and the forests
turn grim and dangerous. I think you can go south with Leal, win the Challenge
for her, and come back. But I believe, and the scouts sent east believe so,
too, that in five years at most, they will be upon us, unless they can be
stopped sooner, or they settle down somewhere.”

Hawkeneye nodded. “Fine, that’s decided then.”

Daria cleared her throat and opened her mouth twice to
speak. At the third attempt she actually got her question out.

“Do you think the Elders sent us to the Ice Waste to
fetch their Warlord back, with the intention of ... of stealing him from us
before he could win the Challenge for Escarra?”

Hawkeneye smiled at that. It was a grim smile at
first, but it melted in a curious expression of amused tenderness as he looked
down upon her.

“I would not put it past them, Daria. They’ll put the
safety of the Elverlaen before their own skin and honor, if they have to. It’s
their job. They swore an oath to lay down their lives and souls for the land.
But they didn’t take into account my opinion on the matter. I may be the oldest
elver alive now, but I am not technically an Elder yet, and I am free to follow
my own heart, for a little while at least. I, too, have a responsibility to the
land, but I will come to Escarra first, fear not.”

He paced up and down the room for a moment. He was
deep in thought, but his eyes looked straight ahead of him, full of energy and
purpose.

“Aside from any other consideration, should Escarra
fall, Hassia will immediately make a move to cross the Llers and
march
south. That would never do. If the near Vaelta’a
falls, Kareli will be the next, together with Kaleva. Hassia and Kareli have
always been close. If Kareli joins us in the war they can bring the whole power
of the Hassian armies over to us. But not if the rich plains of Andalou are
open to the south. No, Escarra must
not
fall. Hassia must march north,
not south.”

Leal was speechless. Kalevans, even well-travelled
ones like Ljung, had only the vaguest idea of the geography and politics of the
southern lands, but Hawkeneye had immediately seized on a complexity of
strategical details that even she had not thought about.

“My goodness,” she said. “You
are
a true
Warlord.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Of course they didn’t leave at dawn the next day. They
were all four exhausted and hungry. There were a huge feast and endless
visiting. They found their Escarran mare in good shape, and Kaywinnith happily
munching grass and apples in a fine pasture. Julie had a thousand questions
about the color of the Ice. Leif wanted to know all about the glacier’s upper
regions. Hawkeneye needed gear more fitting to the forest, to the warmer lands
across the Narrows, and to this century. Many elvers were eager to see him and
congratulate him on his past deeds and his return.

In the end, they spent three days in Elverhjem.
Hawkeneye spent most of the first day just hiding in the house. He was not
quite up to the crowd’s unceasing attentions yet, and he said he’d take a good
sleep in a bed for the first time in a hundred years, and he’d rather not be
disturbed. They gave over the small bedroom to him, and saw to it that he’d be
left alone.

“He’s quite something, that Hawkeneye. I thought he
was only half alive, and no use to man or beast anymore, until he got so angry.
Nothing like a good rant to get back into the swing of things,” said Daria
cheerfully when Hawkeneye had retired.

They were sitting companionably around a table laden
with delicious food and drinks, and they had not been so relaxed and companionable
together since the first time they had all three made love in the forest. Ljung
smiled. Leal laughed. She felt light headed and strangely relieved. Free.