‘So I see,’ said Anna Blaume.
Alfric dumped his bagsack on to the same counter, spilling gold across the beerspit wood.
‘It’s patrimony,’ said Alfric.
‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ said Sheila.
‘How would I know?’ said Alfric.
‘You mean you haven’t looked!’ said Anna Blaume. ‘That means you — oh Alfric! The poor thing’s probably been wet for — grief, men!’
‘Blood of the Gloat,’ muttered Alfric. ‘A hero’s welcome, is it? Give me a beer. ’
While Alfric was drinking, his wife came downstairs on the arm of a common-born bruiser. The pair sat on a table. Du Deiner brought them drinks, and caught Alfric’s eye, and smirked. This was an invitation for Alfric to make a scene: to threaten the bruiser and perhaps to kill him. With Bloodbane in his hands, Alfric could kill every man in the inn if he chose to go to war.
But…
Alfric found himself totally incapable of rousing himself to the fury which convention demanded. If his wife was committing adultery — what of it? Such wilful disloyalty suggested she wanted a divorce. Very well. She could have it. Alfric felt marriage had been a mistake, a descent into organic life which had distracted him from his career.
Besides, Viola Vanaleta was lowborn, and he could not have her as his wife if he was to become king. As king, he would need a wife from one of the Families; for only thus could he truly command the loyalties of the Yudonic Knights. If Alfric won the throne, Vanaleta would have to go whether she liked it or not, for to keep her would be to insult every Yudonic Knight in Wen Endex. So, at this stage, a complete abscission of their relationship would not be untimely.
With that decided, Alfric finished his beer then left the Green Cricket, sparing not a glance for Vanaleta as he strode from the inn. Once out in the night, he looked around warily, just in case the brothers Norn might be waiting in ambush. But they were not. So down the street he went, the murder-blade Bloodbane sheathed at his side and, swaggersticked in his hand, the scabbarded silversword, Sulamith’s Grief.
As he walked along, he saw nothing unusual. As his fear of the brothers Norn faded, he became buoyant. Moonglitter brightened mudpuddles and mullioned windows alike, and the moon sharpened his every sense. So that, when passing one sidestreet He smelt something.
Something female.
Strong was that scent, and he knew what it was, and knew he should not venture into the sidestreet shadows, and knew what he would find if he did. But the brightburning moon commanded him, and, helpless to resist, down the sidestreet he went, and found what he had expected, a cart heavy-laden with the corpse of a huge wolf. Black was the fur of the beast, and black was the blood which had thickened on the fur around the heartwound, and black was the stump of the quarrel which had found the creature’s heart.
The crossbow which had hurled that lethal bolt had been tossed into the cart, and by the wolf it lay. And Alfric smelt the stench of the killer upon the crossbow, and was afraid, and full of hate.
Then Sudden as the savagery of his fist-battering angers- The fit was upon him, and, unable to help himself, he threw back his head and howled. Deep-throated the sound, bloodbarbaric, the gut-threat challenge of a forest marauder. And scarcely had the howl died away when a doorway nearby was thrown open with a bang. Out stumbled a man with a hatchet in one hand, a lantern in the other.
And Alfric was minded to savage the fork-legged thing on the spot, to skullcrunch its head and scrabble its guts, to maul it and gnaw it, to take revenge for the murder of the she.
‘What was that?’ said the citizen, wide-eyed with alarm.
And Alfric smelt the man, smelt his stale sweat, his beerbelch breath, his rich-larded fat and musty stupidity; smelt adultery’s grease and buttock-cleft filth; and knew this, this, this thing had killed the she, with his stupid concoction of warped wood and wire he had killed her dead, and for that he deserved to die, surely, it would be but the work of the moment to rend him and tear him.
So Alfric — shuddered and — closed his jaws decisively.
Then shuddered again, got a grip on himself and spoke:
‘It was a dog. A dog at the meat. I kicked it away. Now I bid you guard or remove this animal, my good man, or I’ll have you arrested for creating a public menace.’
So saying, Alfric touched the hilt of his sword; and a bloodlust urge from the deathsword Bloodbane incited his heart to murder. But that he resisted easily, for he knew it was the sword speaking to him. And, once he had seen the citizen remove the wolf to a bam and secure it against dogs and such, Alfric went on his way.
As he stalked through the streets of Galsh Ebrek, Alfric kept his head down, deliberately ignoring the moon, and by the time he reached his home he felt more like a man and less like a wolf. But the shock of what had very nearly happened was still upon him; and he decided, in a coldblooded way, to drink himself into oblivion. For otherwise he did not think he could sleep.
However, he was only in the early stages of this project when his father arrived. Alfric explained what he was about — though he did not say why — and Grendel Dranbrog expressed a wish to join him. When Grendel made it clear he thought his son’s drinking was the consequence of woman trouble, Alfric did nothing to disabuse him of this notion. So the two of them drank together, and ran down women as they did so.
‘If only,’ said Grendel, in a moment of unprecedented misogamy, ‘they could all be killed as we kill Herself.’
‘Have we killed Herself?’ said Alfric.
‘Not yet,’ said Grendel. ‘But that will come. In time. The Wormlord’s sworn it, has he not?’
‘So he has,’ said Alfric. ‘So I swear it too. With all three quests complete, I’ll march with the Wormlord. I’ll dare Her lair and hack off Her head.’
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ said his father.
Alfric realized he might have committed himself unwisely, but he scarcely cared. For surely killing Herself would be but a small feat compared to that which awaited him next. For next he must dare the vampires in their lair and rescue the third of the saga swords.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Alfric presented the silversword Sulamith’s Grief to the Wormlord in Saxo Pall, the king of Wen Endex gave him in return the bright blade Chalingrad, arbiter of many deaths. This was a blade truly blessed with success, for well the weapon knew the bloody kiss of victory. And it was this ring-embellished sword that Alfric took with him when he rode forth on his third and final quest.
Chalingrad was doubtless a lesser weapon than Bloodbane; but, after due consideration, Alfric had decided to leave the deathblade at home, for he deemed the thing to be as much a menace to the owner as to anyone else. He would not be able to outfight the vampires, however valorous his swordarm; so a sword which was ever tempting him to murder would not be an asset on this quest.
For the expedition, Alfric had been given a broken-down horse not possessed of a name, which suggested that Anna Blaume did not expect him to return alive from the vampires’ lair. Fair enough. He had his own doubts about his survival.
But he put those doubts out of mind as he rode through the globble-glubble mires of the streets of Galsh Ebrek, and then by the nightwaters of the Riga Rimur River where waterworms dwelt in dreams of drenching, and then down a shatterstone road through winterfallow farmlands. Then forest claimed him, cold forest where ice broke krintalkrastal beneath the hooves of his horse.
His journey was long; and before the end he was weary, and chilled by the night’s bitter cold. The ground’s stones and the sky’s stars alike were hard and comfortless, tokens of an inimical cosmos. He tried to keep himself awake by revising the lemmas of ursury, the delicate mathematics of enrichment. But he began to sleep in spasms, dreaming brief dreams of seasalt fish and tramping elephants, waking time and again to save himself from tumbling from the saddle.
Alfric at last reached the cliffs which were his destination. Tall and gaunt they rose; with, beyond them, rising
