The Broken Sword Read Online Free Page B

learned the hidden ways of wood and meadow, trails through sun-spattered shade and myriad tiny signs which told a story to one who knew the full use of his senses. From the otter he learned of the world about lake and stream, he learned to swim like his supple teacher and to sneak through cover which would scarce hide half his body. But he got to know the other animals as well. The most timid of birds would come sit on his finger when he whistled in its own tongue; the bear would grunt a welcome when he trod into its den. Deer, elk, hare, and grouse became wary of him after he took up hunting, but with some special ones he made peace. And the story of all his farings among the beasts would be lengthy.
    And the years swung by, and he was borne along. He was out in the first shy green of spring, when the forests woke and grew clamorous with returning birds, when the rivers brawled with melting ice and a few little white flowers in the moss were like remnant snowflakes. The summer knew him, naked and brown with flying sun-bleached hair, chasing butterflies uphill toward the sky, rolling back down through the grasses for sheer joy; or out in the light nights which were a dreamy remembrance of day, stars overhead and crickets chirring and dew aglitter beneath the moon. The thunderous rains of autumn washed him, or he wove a crown of flame-coloured leaves and stood in sharp air filled with the calls of departing birdflocks. In winter he flitted among the snowflakes, or crouched under a windfall while storm bellowed and trees groaned; sometimes he would stand on moonlit snowfields and hear the lake ice boom in the cold, a toning that rolled between the hills.

V
    When Skafloc’s limbs began to lengthen more swiftly, Imric took him in charge, only a little at first, but more and more with time until he was being raised wholly as a warrior of Alfheim. Being short-lived, humans could learn faster than the people of Faerie, and Skafloc’s knowledge grew with even more haste than his body.
    He learned to ride the horses of Alfheim, white and black stallions and mares of an eerie quicksilver grace, quick and tireless as the wind, and erelong his night gallops were taking him from Caithness to Land’s End with the cloven air singing in his ears. He learned the use of sword and spear and bow and axe. He was less fleet and lithe than the elves, but grew to be stronger than any of them and could bear war-gear as many days on end as needful; and as for grace, another mortal man would have been a clod beside him.
    He hunted wide over the land, alone or in company with Imric and his followers. Skafloc’s bow twanged death to many a tall-antlered stag;, his spear stopped many a long-tusked boar. There was other and trickier game, chased crazily through the woods and across the crags, unicorns and griffins which Imric had brought from the edge of the world for his pleasure.
    Skafloc learned also the manners of the elves, their stateliness and their unending intrigue and their subtle speech. He could dance to harps and pipes in the drenching moonlight, naked and abandoned as the wildest of them. He could himself play, and sing the strange lilting lays older than man. He learned the skaldic arts so well that he talked in verse as easily as in common speech. He learned every language of Faerie and three of man’s. He could discriminate among the rare viands of the elves, the liquid fires which smouldered in spider-shrouded bottles beneath the castle, but for all that his taste for the hunter’s black bread and salt meat, or the rainy sunny earthy savour of berries, or upland springs, was not blunted.
    After the first soft beard was on his cheeks, he got much heed from the elf women. Without awe of gods, and with few children, the elves knew not wedlock; but their nature was such that their women had more wish for lovemaking and their men less than among humans. Thus Skafloc found himself in great favour, and many a good time did he have.
    The