The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (37 page)

Ulf looked back at him, flat-eyed. At last he gave a brief crow-
peck nod and swung himself out of the saddle. He looped both sets
of reins on a small fir. Then, while Johann dismounted clumsily, he
loosed the cord from his saddle and took it in his axe hand. The men
walked forward without speaking.

“There...” Ulf breathed.

The barrow was only a black-mouthed swell in the ground, its size
denied by its lack of features. Such trees as had tried to grow on it
had been broken off short over a period of years. Some of the stumps
had wasted into crumbling depressions, while from others the wood
fibers still twisted raggedly. Only when Johann matched the trees on
the other side of the tomb to those beside him did he realize the scale
on which the barrow was built: its entrance tunnel would pass a man
walking upright, even a man Ulf’s height.

“Lay your fire at the tunnel mouth,” the berserker said, his voice
subdued. “He’ll be inside.”

“You’ll have to let me go—”

“I’ll have to nothing!” Ulf was breathing hard. “We’ll go closer,
you and I, and you’ll make a fire of the dead trees from the ground.
Yes....”

The Northerner slid forward in a pace that was cat soft and never
left the ground a finger’s breadth. Strewn about them as if flung
idly from the barrow mouth were scraps and gobbets of animals, the
source of the fetid reek that filled the clearing. As his captor paused
for a moment, Johann toed one of the bits over with his sandal. It
was the hide and paws of something chisel-toothed, whether rabbit
or other was impossible to say in the moonlight and state of decay.
The skin was in tendrils, and the skull had been opened to empty the
brains. Most of the other bits seemed of the same sort, little beasts,
although a rank blotch on the mound’s slope could have been a wolf
hide. Whatever killed and feasted here was not fastidious.

“He stays close to hunt,” Ulf rumbled. Then he added, “The long
bones by the fence; they were cracked.”

“Umm?”

“For marrow.”

Quivering, the priest began gathering broken-off trees, none of
them over a few feet high. They had been twisted off near the ground,
save for a few whose roots lay bare in wizened fists. The crisp scales
cut Johann’s hands. He did not mind the pain. Under his breath he
was praying that God would punish him, would torture him, but at
least would save him free of this horrid demon that had snatched him
away.

“Pile it there,” Ulf directed, his axe head nodding toward the stone
lip of the barrow. The entrance was corbeled out of heavy stones, then
covered over with dirt and sods. Like the beast fragments around it,
the opening was dead and stinking. Biting his tongue, Johann dumped
his pile of brush and scurried back.

“There’s light back down there,” he whispered.

“Fire?”

“No, look—it’s pale, it’s moonlight. There’s a hole in the roof of
the tomb.”

“Light for me to kill by,” Ulf said with a stark grin. He looked over
the low fireset, then knelt. His steel sparked into a nest of dry moss.
When the tinder was properly alight, he touched a pitchy faggot to it.
He dropped his end of the cord. The torchlight glinted from his face,
white and coarse-pored where the tangles of hair and beard did not
cover it. “Bless the fire, mass-priest,” the berserker ordered in a quiet,
terrible voice.

Stiff-featured and unblinking, Johann crossed the brushwood and
said, “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.”

“Don’t light it yet,” Ulf said. He handed Johann the torch. “It may
be,” the berserker added, “that you think to run if you get the chance.
There is no Hell so deep that I will not come for you from it.”

The priest nodded, white-lipped.

Ulf shrugged his shoulders to loosen his muscles and the bear
hide that clothed them. Axe and shield rose and dipped like ships in
a high sea.

“Ho! Troll! Barrow fouler! Corpse licker! Come and fight me, troll!”

There was no sound from the tomb.

Ulf’s eyes began to glaze. He slashed his axe twice across the empty
air and shouted again, “Troll! I’ll spit on your corpse, I’ll lay with your
dog mother. Come and fight me, troll, or I’ll wall you up like a rat with
your filth!”

Johann stood frozen, oblivious even to the drop of pitch that sizzled
on the web of his hand. The berserker bellowed again, wordlessly,
gnashing at the rim of his shield so that the sound bubbled and
boomed in the night.

And the tomb roared back to the challenge, a thunderous BAR
BAR BAR even deeper than Ulf’s.

Berserk, the Northerner leaped the brush pile and ran down the
tunnel, his axe thrust out in front of him to clear the stone arches.

The tunnel sloped for a dozen paces into a timber-vaulted chamber
too broad to leap across. Moonlight spilled through a circular opening
onto flags slimy with damp and liquescence. Ulf, maddened, chopped
high at the light. The axe burred inanely beneath the timbers.

Swinging a pair of swords, the troll leapt at Ulf. It was the size of a
bear, grizzled in the moonlight. Its eyes burned red.

“Hi!” shouted Ulf and blocked the first sword in a shower of sparks
on his axehead. The second blade bit into the shield rim, shaving a
hand’s length of copper and a curl of yellow linden from beneath
it. Ulf thrust straight-armed, a blow that would have smashed like
a battering ram had the troll not darted back. Both the combatants
were shouting; their voices were dreadful in the circular chamber.

The troll jumped backward again. Ulf sprang toward him and only
the song of the blades scissoring from either side warned him. The
berserker threw himself down. The troll had leaped onto a rotting
chest along the wall of the tomb and cut unexpectedly from above
Ulf’s shield. The big man’s boots flew out from under him and he
struck the floor on his back. His shield still covered his body.

The troll hurtled down splay-legged with a cry of triumph. Both
bare feet slammed on Ulf’s shield. The troll was even heavier than
Ulf. Shrieking, the berserker pistoned his shield arm upward. The
monster flew off, smashing against the timbered ceiling and caroming
down into another of the chests. The rotted wood exploded under
the weight in a flash of shimmering gold. The berserker rolled to his
feet and struck overarm in the same motion. His lunge carried the
axehead too far, into the rock wall in a flower of blue sparks.

The troll was up. The two killers eyed each other, edging sideways
in the dimness. Ulf’s right arm was numb to the shoulder. He did not
realize it. The shaggy monster leaped with another double flashing
and the axe moved too slowly to counter. Both edges spat chunks of
linden as they withdrew. Ulf frowned, backed a step. His boot trod on
a ewer that spun away from him. As he cried out, the troll grinned
and hacked again like Death the Reaper. The shield-orb flattened as
the top third of it split away. Ulf snarled and chopped at the troll’s
knees. It leaped above the steel and cut left-handed, its blade nocking
the shaft an inch from Ulf’s hand.

The berserker flung the useless remainder of his shield in the troll’s
face and ran. Johann’s torch was an orange pulse in the triangular
opening. Behind Ulf, a swordedge went
sring!
as it danced on the
corbels. Ulf jumped the brush and whirled. “Now!” he cried to the
priest, and Johann hurled his torch into the resin-jeweled wood.

The needles crackled up in the troll’s face like a net of orange
silk. The flames bellied out at the creature’s rush but licked back
caressingly over its mats of hair. The troll’s swords cut at the fire. A
shower of coals spit and crackled and made the beast howl.

“Burn, dog-spew!” Ulf shouted. “Burn, fish-guts!”

The troll’s blades rang together, once and again. For a moment it
stood, a hillock of stained gray, as broad as the tunnel arches. Then it
strode forward into the white heart of the blaze. The fire bloomed up,
its roar leaping over the troll’s shriek of agony. Ulf stepped forward.
He held his axe with both hands. The flames sucked down from the
motionless troll, and as they did the shimmering arc of the axehead
chopped into the beast’s collarbone. One sword dropped and the left
arm slumped loose.

The berserker’s axe was buried to the helve in the troll’s shoulder.
The faggots were scattered, but the troll’s hair was burning all over
its body. Ulf pulled at his axe. The troll staggered, moaning. Its
remaining sword pointed down at the ground. Ulf yanked again at his
weapon and it slurped free. A thick velvet curtain of blood followed
it. Ulf raised his dripping axe for another blow, but the troll tilted
toward the withdrawn weapon, leaning forward, a smoldering rock.
The body hit the ground, then flopped so that it lay on its back. The
right arm was flung out at an angle.

“It was a man,” Johann was whispering. He caught up a brand and
held it close to the troll’s face. “Look, look!” he demanded excitedly.
“It’s just an old man in bearskin. Just a man.”

Ulf sagged over his axe as if it were a stake impaling him. His frame
shuddered as he dragged air into it. Neither of the troll’s swords had
touched him, but reaction had left him weak as one death-wounded.
“Go in,” he wheezed. “Get a torch and lead me in.”

“But...why—” the priest said in sudden fear. His eyes met the
berserker’s and he swallowed back the rest of his protest. The torch
threw highlights on the walls and flags as he trotted down the tunnel.
Ulf’s boots were ominous behind him.

The central chamber was austerely simple and furnished only with
the six chests lining the back of it. There was no corpse, nor even a
slab for one. The floor was gelatinous with decades’ accumulation
of foulness. The skidding tracks left by the recent combat marked
paving long undisturbed. Only from the entrance to the chests was a
path, black against the slime of decay, worn. It was toward the broken
container and the objects which had spilled from it that the priest’s
eyes arrowed.

“Gold,” he murmured. Then, “Gold! There must—the others—in
God’s name, there are five more and perhaps all of them—”

“Gold,” Ulf grated terribly.

Johann ran to the nearest chest and opened it one-handed. The
lid sagged wetly, but frequent use had kept it from swelling tight to
the side panels. “Look at this crucifix!” the priest marveled. “And the
torque, it must weigh pounds. And Lord in heaven, this—”

“Gold,” the berserker repeated.

Johann saw the axe as it started to swing. He was turning with a
chalice ornamented in enamel and pink gold. It hung in the air as he
darted for safety. His scream and the dull belling of the cup as the axe
divided it were simultaneous, but the priest was clear and Ulf was off
balance. The berserker backhanded with force enough to drive the
peen of his axehead through a sapling. His strength was too great for
his footing. His feet skidded, and this time his head rang on the wall
of the tomb.

Groggy, the huge berserker staggered upright. The priest was a
scurrying blur against the tunnel entrance. “Priest!” Ulf shouted
at the suddenly empty moonlight. He thudded up the flags of the
tunnel. “Priest!” he shouted again.

The clearing was empty except for the corpse. Nearby, Ulf heard
his roan whicker. He started for it, then paused. The priest—he could
still be hiding in the darkness. While Ulf searched for him, he could
be rifling the barrow, carrying off the gold behind his back. “Gold,”
Ulf said again. No one must take his gold. No one ever must find it
unguarded.

“I’ll kill you!” he screamed into the night. “I’ll kill you all!”