Elven Queen Read online

  “What do you think, Mandrag?”

  The aging troll looked out over the plain for a long time before he answered. “I think the elves must be desperate if they have to use humans as allies.”

  Orgrim nodded his acknowledgment. He hadn’t looked at the situation from that standpoint.

  “We should catch one of the humans,” Birga said. “I’m sure he’ll tell me everything.”

  “The question is, who would understand him?”

  The shaman eyed Orgrim calmly. “Forget not who I am, whelp. I can speak ten thousand tongues if I want. I understand the sighing of the trees and listen to the whisperings of the crows on the battlefield. Get me one of those humans, and I’ll tell you where they come from and why they’re here.”

  “I did not mean to offend you,” Orgrim said, eager to reassure her. He wished he could look the ugly hag in the face and read her expression, but as always, her face was hidden behind a leather mask.

  “Look! Something’s happening out on the ice.”

  Boltan’s words gave Orgrim a welcome opportunity to turn away from Birga. Orgrim shaded his eyes with his hand. The clouds had dispersed. The tips of spears glinted in the sunlight.

  “Riders,” Orgrim said.

  “No, centaurs,” Brud corrected him. “About three hundred, I’d say.”

  Gran laughed. “More to slaughter. Let’s get off this hill and cut them to pieces.”

  “No,” Orgrim said decisively.

  “Lost your courage just because our scouts were surprised by a few men?” Gran goaded him. “Send the warriors down there, and you’ll see. This time, we’ll win.”

  “Didn’t you run from the fight, too?” Orgrim asked, smiling.

  “I didn’t run. I followed the order to retreat. A good warrior knows to obey.”

  “And a good leader owes his warriors victories,” Orgrim replied. “The arrival of the centaurs has shifted the balance. If we go down and attack, we might win, but at what cost? Our casualties would be high. They may wipe us out entirely. But if we stay up here, we can only win.”

  “That sounds like the yammer of a coward!” Gran turned to face Orgrim’s retinue. “I can only win if I sit on my ass and do nothing,” he said, aping the pack leader’s voice. “You know what we lose if we follow this order? Our honor. And our pride as warriors.”

  “Did the humans kill off your common sense in that last little skirmish?” Orgrim said. He cursed the day he’d decided to take Gran on board the Wraithwind. “If we stay here on the hill, we force our enemy to make a decision they don’t want to make. If they attack, their losses will be far worse than if they defend an attack by us. And if they stay down there on the plain and wait to see what we do, then we are tying up an entire army that I can tell you with certainty has something better to do than sit there and watch us. If they retreat, it will look like they’re running from us, and it will demoralize their fighters. An enemy that runs once will run again. On top of that, Brud will follow them and make sure they don’t sleep a single easy night. Did that go through your thick skull?”

  “I don’t like deciding battles like this,” Gran grumbled. “There’s no dignity in it for a warrior.”

  “Dignity is something that each of my warriors decides for himself, through his actions. The dignity of the pack leader lies in one thing: victory.”

  “Well spoken,” Birga said, unexpectedly backing him. “You should keep your mouth shut now, Gran.”

  On the plain, there was movement in the enemy ranks. The centaurs swung out to the right flank while a mass of foot soldiers mustered in the center. Spear tips gleamed above their heads. The enemy’s left flank seemed to be their weakness, guarded by two small groups of fighters.

  “Are your men ready?” Orgrim asked his artillery chief, Boltan.

  The pack leader looked with pride over the formation of his troops. The battle had certainly gone differently than expected, but it made no difference—the elves and their allies would fall into his trap. The long caravan of refugees had re-formed and was moving clear of the battlefield. But if he were victorious in the hours ahead, he would catch up with them again.

  His warriors stood in a long double row along the crest of the hill. Behind them, out of sight from the plain below, waited eight of the new catapults they had looted from the battles at Reilimee. The first salvo would take the enemy completely by surprise.

  Orgrim looked at the looted weapons with satisfaction. Boltan had jacked the catapults onto heavy wooden feet, making them easier for the trolls to operate. The cocking levers on the winch had also been reinforced. The catapults were built for stones the size of an elf’s head. When a locking lever was released, the stone was pulled along wooden rails. The catapult arms were made of silver steel. They were inserted into two drums that held what looked like lengths of rope twisted into each other. The bronze drums protected the ropes from moisture. Orgrim had been there when the artillery chief had opened one of the drums. He had wanted to find out what was behind the extraordinary tensile force of the catapults. When Boltan released the twisted ropes, however, he managed to destroy the drums, and one of his assistants had been decapitated in the process by the whiplike cords. The artillery chief could neither reconstruct the drum with its ropes nor understand the mechanism. In the end, Boltan decided he could live without the knowledge, or he would end up with no useful catapults left.

  He had turned his attention to ammunition instead. The elves fired beautiful polished spherical stones, each one laboriously crafted. For a field campaign, however, they were unsuitable because they were too difficult to replace and too heavy to carry in large numbers.

  Boltan had carved wooden molds in which he could make balls of ice. In the cold of the Snaiwamark, they would not melt, and the ammunition could be replaced in a matter of hours. The balls of ice would certainly do little against a fortress or even a ship, but against softer targets—the bodies of elves, for example—they were as deadly as any stone ball.

  When they had landed in Whale Bay, they had loaded the catapults onto cargo sleds. It had taken time and energy to get the heavy sleds over the coastal ranges, but Orgrim was convinced that the effort would be worth it.

  The pack leader watched as the enemy’s formations advanced. He could now clearly see the spears of the large mass of the humans in the center of the battle lines. They were unusually long. Orgrim had never seen spears like them before. Apparently, the humans had thought about how to make up for their lack of strength in a battle against the trolls. He could not allow them to get too close!

  “Aim at the centaurs first!” Orgrim ordered his artillery chief.

  Boltan nodded. The catapults, standing in a row on the top of the hill, swung a little to the side and realigned.

  A cloud of arrows came down on his men. Archers had concealed themselves behind the spearmen and were now firing at the battle lines of the trolls.

  Orgrim raised the heavy wooden shield that lay in front of him in the snow and pushed his left arm into its broad leather loops. Then he gave the trumpeter a signal. Two long blasts sounded. The lines of trolls moved forward ten paces and halted.

  Pride filled Orgrim. His warriors were the best in Branbeard’s army. No other detachment of trolls could have been brought to a halt once they were in motion toward the enemy.

  A second hail of arrows hissed down. Most of them buried themselves uselessly in the warriors’ large shields.

  The catapults returned fire. Balls of ice exploded in silvery showers. The first salvo was low, just in front of the centaurs. Shards of ice slashed between the manhorses’ legs. Many went sprawling. Their orderly formation fell apart. The second salvo was already on its way, but this time Boltan had instructed his soldiers to fire a little higher.

  The balls of ice carved bloody gaps in the centaurs’ rows but also fanned their thirst for battle. They surged forward in a wild gallop, leaving the ranks of the humans behind them. A single blast of the trumpeter’s horn was the com
mand for the trolls to advance.

  Orgrim took his place among his warriors. A third salvo hissed overhead. This time, the mass of spearmen was the target. The archers had stopped firing, as the centaurs now blocked their view.

  The opposing forces plowed into one another with a deafening roar. Many trolls went down. The centaurs’ hooves stomped them where they fell. The air was filled with screams and the clash of weapons.

  At close quarters, Orgrim could not swing his war hammer well. He rammed the hammer’s head forward into the chest of the centaur in front of him. The bearded manhorse dropped to his knees. A strike with the shaft of the hammer hit him above his ears, and he went down completely. Orgrim set the edge of his shield on the manhorse’s neck and leaned on it. His weight was enough to all but separate the centaur’s head from his shoulders.

  Another centaur saw that Orgrim had opened his cover and took his opportunity. A spear thrust caught the pack leader in his upper arm, and the thin blade of the weapon sliced a bloody furrow in his flesh. Orgrim jerked his shield upward, shattering the shaft of the spear. Then he dropped his war hammer and snatched at his enemy’s weapon, wresting it effortlessly from him. He turned the shaft in his fingers and stabbed the shattered end into the centaur’s chest.

  The ranks of the centaurs began to falter. Their hooves found little grip on the ice. The trolls forced them back, and panic suddenly spread among them. Orgrim saw a black-bearded fellow with a longsword cursing and trying to hold the battle line together. But finally he, too, had to accept the inevitable. The attack had been repulsed.

  The trolls all around him hurled insults after the fleeing centaurs and set upon the wounded. The humans had also retreated to escape the lethal catapults. The dead lay all around on the ice.

  COURAGE

  Alfadas had ordered his men to retreat on the double from the small group of hills. A charge against the catapults’ position would have been tantamount to suicide. He had been unable to hold back the centaurs, and they had paid heavily for their eagerness. Breaking off the attack had been the right thing to do. All his plans had been turned upside down. The trolls were supposed to charge their pike formation beneath a deadly rain of arrows, but instead the enemy commander had forced them to attack. Who is he? Alfadas wondered, and he’d had to admit that everything he had previously thought about the trolls had been profoundly wrong. Until today, he had considered them to be something like predatory beasts, creatures driven by nothing but instinct. But whoever was in charge on the other side knew what it meant to think, and though the attack should have taken the trolls by surprise, their commander had managed to turn everything to his advantage.

  The retreat had shaken the men’s morale. Yes, they had saved the fleeing caravan of elves from the trolls, but then they had run from the enemy themselves—the same enemy they had trained so hard to fight. Alfadas knew that he had to speak to the men. The way things looked to them now, all the long, hard days of training had been for naught, and they were facing an enemy able to butcher them without even getting close enough for hand-to-hand combat. He could not allow the night to pass without buttressing the men’s courage!

  They stretched heavy tarpaulins and set up a number of braziers as they had the evening before, giving themselves some shelter. The refugees, too, arranged themselves for the night. Some of the children watched the humans curiously. Some brought small gifts as thanks for being saved. But few of them were able to make themselves understood to the strangers.

  Alfadas was about to climb onto one of the sleds to deliver a bracing speech when Lambi held him back.

  “Don’t do it, Commander. You make good decisions, and you don’t owe anyone an explanation. You’ll only hurt yourself if you apologize now.”

  “Something has to be said,” Alfadas insisted. “They can’t think of themselves as failures.”

  Lambi rubbed his mutilated nose. “The way I see it, the orders you gave saved us from defeat. Let me talk to the boys. I’ll straighten their heads out. Trust me!”

  Alfadas hesitated. When a villain like Lambi said “Trust me,” the words had exactly the opposite effect. Lambi seemed to be well aware of that.

  Smiling, Alfadas eyed Lambi as if the war jarl could see into his mind. “Speak,” he finally said. They would only survive this battle if they did what Lambi asked: they had to trust each other.

  Thirty-seven fighters had fallen to the catapults. The losses had left a deep gash in the men’s confidence. Maybe Lambi was the healer they needed? The fighters under Lambi’s command, at least, had taken the retreat in stride. They were already laughing around their fires.

  The war jarl climbed onto the sled. He cleared his throat, but only a few of the men took any notice. It was worse than Alfadas had expected. Most of the fighters did no more than stare into the flames. They didn’t want to hear anything.

  “I was actually planning to tell you about a woman who’s waiting to get laid,” Lambi called out, and he let out a laugh. “But I can already see I’m going to have her all to myself.”

  “Are you planning to ride the king’s whore?”

  The war jarl laughed again. “Not tonight! I’m talking about a woman so temperamental that I’m damn sure our old king wouldn’t be able to ride her anymore. I’m talking about Svanlaug, Norgrimm’s daughter, mistress of victory. She’s laughed in all our faces today. But when I see you moping ’round the fires like that, then what am I to think? Am I in an army of the blind? Did none of you see that glorious woman at all?”

  “All I saw was a mob of cowards creeping off,” called a deep voice from the cover of the crowd.

  “Damn right, man! Let’s talk about cowards and not about women. I’ll be straight with you. I only used Svanlaug to get your attention. D’you really think old Lambi would tell you how to get to that strapping young wench? That road’s just for me, because when I meet Svanlaug, the last thing I need is a few hundred horny goats breathing down my neck. Especially if they’ve still got their noses, and compared to me, they’re as pretty as a virgin’s tits! So let’s talk about cowards. Today I came across the biggest coward I’ve ever faced as a soldier. And I really do mean the biggest, because next to those gray-skinned brutes, we look like babes in arms. I’m telling you here and now, I shit my breeches full when I saw the first of ’em in the snowstorm.”

  “Then you should have took ’em off afterward, y’old stinker,” shouted the red-bearded warrior from Lambi’s squad. Several men around him laughed. The tension began to ease.

  “Hey, I thought I’d be seeing Norgrimm himself today, and I’d rather meet a god in shitty breeches than none at all. The god of war knows well enough that men let themselves go in their last battle. I’m sure of that. But if I was to stand in front of him with no trousers on, he might think I’ve given up the ghost midhump.”

  “You’d have to find a blind whore for that!” Ragni shouted.

  Lambi gripped his chest theatrically. “Just ’cause I’m the deadliest soldier in this motley mob, you think I don’t have a heart, Jarl? Jests like that cut me to the quick. But I forgive you, because I hear in your words that when it comes to the trials of love, you’re still as green as a leaf in spring, or you’d know you can have a lot of fun without having to look your woman in the face.”

  “Shut up about women, Lambi, and see things for what they are!” Ragni puffed angrily. “For me, the cowards are the one who slunk off the battlefield with their pricks between their legs.”

  Lambi grabbed himself by the crotch. “Everything’s still in one piece here, greenleaf. Nothing pinched, nothing jammed. And I’m wondering, were we even in the same place today? I was there when a man—a man who was a baker’s assistant just a few days ago, mind you—damn near hacked a troll’s head off. I saw hundreds of men march with courage, though they knew a terrible enemy was waiting somewhere in the driving snow.” He slapped one hand to his forehead. “Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. I saw a troop of trolls, too. Must have been two hundred or more.
They stood on a hill and didn’t have the balls to come down off it. They’re bigger than cave bears but didn’t have the guts to come down to a plain defended by bakers, farmers, and ferrymen. We stood down here and waited for ’em. And what did they do? They shot chunks of ice at us from a distance. That was as far as their courage went.”

  “And then the brave men ran away,” Ragni shouted back.

  Lambi raised his hands to the sky. “Oh, Luth, what did I do to you? Why do you send me so many idiots and so few beautiful women? What does courage have to do with making yourself a target for trolls, Ragni? Thank the gods our commander is blessed with more brains than some of his war jarls! I don’t see myself as a coward because I didn’t wait around for a few trolls to shoot my head off. If we’d stayed put, we’d have gifted the trolls an easy victory.” Lambi pointed out into the darkness. “But where are they, the supposed victors? They don’t even have the guts to follow us, those brave stoneskins. Look around. I see dozens of elven women, children, elders. The trolls’ booty. We stole them from under the trolls’ noses! Can you call a man a loser if he leaves the battlefield with the loot?”

  “No!” cried someone in the crowd. “No!” several other voices chorused. “No!”

  Lambi spread his arms wide to settle the rising voices. “Maybe they’ll send a few scouts after us, skulking through the night to try to frighten us. That’s the way of cowards afraid of the daylight. The trolls will only earn my respect again when they face us in battle. Before they get close enough for me to see the whites of their beady eyes, I spit on ’em for the gutless brutes they are!” The war jarl sniffed noisily and spat in the snow. Then he looked around with a grin. “The brighter ones among you might’ve noticed that I’m rather a disrespectful fellow, and I’m damned glad that I’m a war jarl, because I don’t like dancing to anyone else’s tune. There’s only one man that this don’t apply to: the man who managed to turn a useless mob of layabouts and laborers into an army even the trolls fear. Until today, I was damned sure that my last day would come when we met the troll host that wiped out an elven city.” Lambi pointed at Ragni. “I know you hate my guts, Jarl, but I’m willing to bet, on this one point, that you and I didn’t think any differently this morning. Nor you, Veleif Silberhand—you thought the same, didn’t you? And you, Rolf Svertarm. And you, Yngwar.”