Leea sings about the wind:
"Seaward blows the wind tonight..." (p. 66)
Women, hearth, kith and kin cannot hold men called to sea by the wind which Leea addresses as "...old wanderer..." (ibid.)
The wind that Valgard had released from a sack blows Skafloc's fleet into the same fjord where the elves find human longships and murdered men.
When they approach Illrede Troll-King's hall:
"Wind shrieked and cuffed them with cold hands." (p. 68)
That is what we expect! However, there is not much more wind in this chapter. During the battle in the hall, Skafloc Elven Fosterling and Valgard Changeling come face to face (the same face!) in combat but they are driven apart. Illrede, Valgard and some others flee. Skafloc frees the human prisoners, Asgerd and Freda, not knowing that they are his sisters.
When the elves, with the freed women, return to their ships, they expect attack because they hear troll horns:
"...blowing ragged on the wind." (p. 72)
Skafloc leads a wedge formation.
"...they saw the trolls massed black against the wan night-bridge of the gods..." (p. 73)
"Night-bridge" is yet another description of the Milky Way and the trolls are something else seen against it.
When the elven survivors escape, Skafloc's runes shift the wind in their favour.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I might have expected Skafloc and the elves to have had more sophisticated military formations akin to those of the Romans. But maybe that wedge was the best practicable in their circumstances.
Ad astra! Sean
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