Wall of Serpents

by L. Sprague De Camp

  He dragged a pair of clumsy, two-edged blades out of the baggage and handed one to each, then sat down on a root, evidently prepared to enjoy himself. "Cut at him, O Valtarpayart!'* he said. "Try to take his head off."

  "Hey!" said Shea, with a glance at the woebegone faces of his companions. "This won't do. They don't know anything about this business and they're likely to cut each other up. Honest."

  Lemminkainen leaned back. "Or they learn the swordsman's business, or they go with me no further."

  "But you said they could come. That isn't fair."

  "It is not in our agreement," said the hero firmly. "They came only by my permission, and that has run out. Either they practice with the swords or turn homeward."

  He looked as-though he meant it, too, and Shea was forced to admit that legally he was right. But Belphebe said, "In Faerie, when we would teach young springalds the use of blades without danger to themselves, we use swords of wooden branch."

  After some persuasion, Lemminkainen agreed to accept this as a substitute. The pair were presently whaling away at each other under his scornful correction with single-sticks made from saplings, and lengths of cloth wound round their hands for protection. Bayard was taller and had the better reach; but Brodsky's ju-jitsu training had made him so quick that several times he rapped his opponent smartly, and at last brought home a backhand blow on the arm that made Bayard drop his stick.

  "An arm was lost that time," said Lemminkainen. "Ah, well—I suppose not everyone can be such a swordsman and hero as Kaukomieli."

  He turned away to harness up the reindeer again. Belphebe laid a hand on Shea's arm to keep him from reminding the hero of their own little bout.

  The afternoon was a repetition of the morning's journey through country that did not change, and whose appearance was becoming as monotonous as the bumping that accompanied their progress. Shea was not surprised when even Lemminkainen wanted to camp early. With Bayard and Brodsky he set about building a triangular lean-to of branches, while Belphebe and the hero wandered off into the woods in search of fresh game for their evening meal.

  While they were picking the bones of some birds that resembled a chicken in size and a grouse in flavor, Lemminkainen explained that he had to make this journey to Pohjola because he had learned by magic that they were holding a great wedding feast there and he had not been invited.

  "Crashing the party, eh?" said Brodsky. "I don't get it. Why don't you just give those muzzlers the air?"

  "It would decrease my reputation," said Lemminkainen. "And besides, there will be a great making of magic. I should undoubtedly lose some of my magical powers if I allowed them to do this unquestioned."

  Belphebe said, "We have bargained to accompany you, Sir Lemminkainen, and I do not seek to withdraw. But if there are so many present as will be at a great feast, I do not see how even with we four, you are much better than you would be alone."

  Lemminkainen gave a roar of laughter. "O you maiden, O Pelviipi, you are surely not quick-witted. For all magics there must be a beginning. From you and your bowstring I could raise a hundred archers; from the active Harolainen set in line a thousand swordsmen—but not until you yourselves were present"

  "He's right, kid," said Shea. "That's good sympathetic magic. I remember Doc Chalmers giving me a lecture on it once. What have you got there?"

  Lemminkainen had picked up several of the long wing and tail feathers from the out-size grouse and was carefully smoothing them out. His face took on the expression of exaggerated foxiness it had worn once or twice before.

  "In Pohjola they now surely know that the greatest of heroes and magicians approaches," he said. "It is well to be prepared for all encounters with something that can be used." He tucked the feathers in one of his capacious pockets, glanced at the fire, which was beginning to show brightly in the gathering dusk, and lumbered off to bed.

  Bayard said, "It strikes me, Harold, that the magic in this continuum is quantitatively greater and qualitatively more potent than any you have reported before. And if Lemminkainen can turn you into a thousand swordsmen, can't the other people do something like that? I should say it's rather dangerous."

  "I was just thinking of that," said Shea, and went to bed himself.

  -

  The next day was a repetition of the first, except that Brodsky and Bayard were so stiff they could barely drag themselves from their deerskin blankets to go through the sword-exercises on which Lemminkainen insisted before breakfast. There was not much conversation in the sled, but when they assembled around the fire in the evening, Lemminkainen entertained them with a narrative of his exploits until Shea and Belphebe wandered off out of earshot.

  It was followed by more of the same. On the fifth day, the single-stick practice at noon had progressed so far that Lemminkainen himself took a hand and promptly knocked Brodsky out. It appeared to improve relations all around; the detective took it in good part, and the hero was in the best of humor that evening.

  But soon after the start the next morning, he began weaving his head from side to side with a peering expression and sniffing. "What's the trouble?" asked Shea.

  "I smell magic—the strong magic of Pohjola. Look sharp, Valtarpayart."

  They did not have to look very sharp. A glow soon became visible through the trees, which presently opened out to reveal a singular spectacle. Stretching down from the right and losing itself round a turn in the distance, came a depression like a dry river-bed. But instead of water this depression was filled with a fiery red shimmer, and the stones and sand of the bottom were glowing like red-hot metal. On the far side of this phenomenon rose a sharp peak of rock, where sat an eagle as big as a beach-cottage.

  As Shea shielded his face against the scorch, the eagle rotated its head and gazed speculatively at the party.

  There was no necessity to rein in the Elk of Hiisi. Lemminkainen turned to Bayard. "What do you see, eyes of Ouhaiola?"

  "A red-hot pavement that looks like the floor of Hell, and an eagle several times the size of a natural one. There's a kind of shimmer—no, they're both there, all right."

  The giant bird slowly stretched one wing. "Oh-oh," said Shea. "You were right, Walter. This is ..."

  Belphebe leaped from the sled, tested the wind with an uplifted finger and began to string her bow; Brodsky looked round and round, pugnacious but helpless.

  Lemminkainen said, "Save your arrows, dainty Pelviipi. I myself, the mighty wizard, know a trick worth two of this one."

  The monster eagle leaped into the air. Shea said, "I hope you know what you're doing, Kauko," and whipped out his epee, feeling how inadequate it was. It was no longer than one of the bird's talons and nowhere near so thick.

  The eagle soared, spiralled upward, and then began to come down on them in a prodigious power dive as Bayard gasped. But Lemminkainen left his own weapon hanging where it was, contenting himself with tossing into the air the feathers of the big grouse, chanting a little staccato ditty whose words Shea could not catch.

  The feathers turned themselves into a flock of grouse, which shot off slantwise with a motorcycle whirr. The eagle, almost directly over them—Shea could see the little movements of its wing-tips and tail-feathers as it balanced itself on the air—gave a piercing shriek, flapped its wings, and shot off after the grouse. Soon it was out of sight beyond the treetops westward.

  "Now it is to be seen that I am not less than the greatest of magicians," said Lemminkainen, sticking out his chest. "But this spelling is wearisome work, and there lies before us this river of fire. Harol, you are a wizard. Do you make a spell against it while I restore myself with food."

  Shea stood gazing at the redness and pondered. The glowing flicker had a hypnotic effect, like a dying wood-fire. A good downpour ought to do the trick; he began recalling a rain-spell he and Chalmers had been working up, in the hope of putting down the flaming barrier around Castle Carena during their adventures in the world of the Orlando Furioso.

  He muttered his spe
ll and made the passes. Nothing happened.

  "Well?" said Lemminkainen, with his mouth full of bread and cheese. "When does the spell begin?"

  "I tried," said Shea, puzzled, "but ..."

  "Fool of Ouhaiola! Must I teach you your business? How do you expect a spell to work when you do not sing it?"

  That's right, thought Shea. He had forgotten that in this Kalevalan magic, song was an indispensable feature. With his own ability at versification, the passes Lemminkainen did not know how to make, and singing, this spell ought to be a humdinger. He lifted his arms for the passes again and sang at the top of his voice.

  The spell was a humdinger. As he finished it, something black seemed to loom overhead, and the landscape was instantly blotted out by a shower of soot-lumps as heavy and tenacious as snowflakes. Shea hastily cancelled the spell.

  "Truly, a wonderful wizard!" cried Lemminkainen, coughing and trying to slap the clinging stuff from his clothes. "Now that he has shown us how to make soot of the river of fire, perhaps he will tell us how to bring fog to Pohjola!"

  "Nay," said Belphebe, "you shall not be so graceless to my lord. I do declare him an approved sorcerer—but not if he must sing, for he cannot carry one note beyond the next." She reached out one hand comfortingly.

  Brodsky said, "If I could flag down a right croaker to fix my scimozz, maybe we could work something together."

  "I must even do it myself then," said Lemminkainen. He tossed soot-contaminated beer from his mug, drew a fresh fill from the keg, took a prodigious swig, leaned back, meditated a moment, and sang:

  -

  "Ice of Sariola's mountains,

  Ice of ten years' snow compacted,

  Forged into Turja's glaciers,

  Glaciers ever downward flowing,

  In the sea with thunder breaking ..."

  -

  For a while it was not clear what he was driving at Then a shimmering something appeared in the air over the fiery trench, and gradually hardened with a sparkle of color. A bridge of ice!

  But just as Lemminkainen reached the climax of his song which should have materialized the ice and welded it into a solid structure, there was a slip. Down into the trench roared the bridge of ice in fragments, to shatter and hiss and fill the landscape with vapor.

  Lemminkainen looked sour and started again. Everyone else held his breath, watching. This time the bridge melted and vanished even before it was complete.

  With a yell of rage, Lemminkainen hurled his cap on the ground and danced on it. Bayard laughed.

  "You mock me!" screamed the wizard. "Outland filth!" He snatched up his beer-mug from where he had put it and flung the contents in Bayard's face. There was less than an inch of beer remaining, but even so it was enough to produce a lively display of suds.

  "No!" cried Shea, reaching for his epee as Belphebe grabbed her bow.

  But instead of leaping up in anger, instead of even wiping the beer from his face, Bayard was staring fixedly at the trench of fire, blinking and knitting his eyebrows. At last he said, "It's an illusion after all! There isn't anything there but a row of little peat-fires made to look big and only burning in spots. But I don't see how I came to miss it before."

  Shea said, "Must be the alcohol in the beer. The illusion was so strong that you couldn't see through it until you got the stuff in your eyes. That happened to me once in the continuum of the Norse gods."

  "The spells of Pohjola grow stronger as we approach their stronghold," said Lemminkainen, his anger forgotten. "But what counsel shall we take now? For I am too undone with spell-working to undertake the labor of breaking so powerful a magic."

  "We could wait till tomorrow when you'd have your punch back," suggested Shea.

  Lemminkainen shook his head. "They of Pohjola will surely know what has happened here, and if we are checked by one magic, another and stronger will grow behind, so that at each step the way becomes more impassable. But if now we break through, then their magic becomes weaker."

  "Look here," said Bayard. "I think I can resolve this. If you'll give me some beer for eyewash, I can lead the way through. There's plenty of space, even for the sled."

  The Elk of Hiisi snorted and balked, but Lemminkainen was firm with him as Bayard walked ahead, dipping his handkerchief in a mug of beer and applying it to his eyes. Shea found that although he was uncomfortably warm, he was not being cooked as he expected; nor did the sled show any signs of taking fire.

  On the far side, they went up a little slope and halted. Bayard started back toward the sled and then halted, pointing at a tall dead pine. "That's a man!" he cried.

  Lemminkainen leaped clumsily from the sled, tugging at his sword, Shea and Brodsky right behind him. As they approached the pine, its branches seemed to collapse with a gentle swoosh; then they were looking at a stocky man of about Lemminkainen's own proportions, his face wearing an expression of sullen bitterness.

  "I had thought there must be someone near us for illusion-making," roared Lemminkainen, happily. "Bow your head, magician of Pohjola."

  The man looked around quickly and desperately. "I am Vuohinen the champion, and I challenge," he said.

  "What does he mean?" asked Shea.

  "A true champion may always challenge, even in another's house," said Lemminkainen. "Whoever wins may take off the head of the other or make him his serf. Which of us do you challenge?"

  Vuohinen the champion looked from one to the other and pointed to Bayard. "This one. What is his art?"

  "No," said Lemminkainen, "for his art is the seeing eye that penetrates all magics, and if you challenge him, you have already lost, since he penetrated your disguise. You may have Harol here, with the point-sword—or the shield-maiden Pelviipi with the bow, or Piit in wrestle, or myself with the broadsword." He grinned.

  Vuohinen looked from one to die other. "Of the point-sword I know nothing," he said, "and while there is doubtless no bowman in the world half as good as myself, I have other uses for women than slaying them. I choose Piit in open wrestle."

  "And not the lively Kaukomieli!" said Lemminkainen with a laugh. "You think you have chosen safely. But you shall see what unusual arts lie among the out-land friends of Kalevala. Will you wrestle with him, Piit?"

  "Okay," said Brodsky, and began shucking his shirt. Vuohinen already had his off.

  They circled, swinging their arms like a pair of indifferently educated apes. Shea noticed that Vuohinen's arms reminded him of the tires of a semi-trailer truck, and the detective looked puny beside him. Then Vuohinen jumped and grabbed. Brodsky caught him by the shoulders and threw himself backward, placing the sole of his foot against Vuohinen's midriff and shoving upward as he fell, so that his antagonist flew over him and landed heavily on his back.

  Lemminkainen gave a bellow of laughter. "I will make a song about this!" he shouted.

  Vuohinen got up somewhat slowly and scowling. This time he came in more cautiously, then when at arm's length from Brodsky, suddenly threw himself at the detective, the fingers of his left hand spread straight for the other's eyes. Shea heard Belphebe gasp, but even as she gasped, Brodsky jerked his head back and, with a quickness wonderful to behold, seized the thumb of the clawing hand in one of his, the little finger in the other and, bracing himself, twisted powerfully.

  There was a crack; Vuohinen pinwheeled through the air and came down on his side, then sat up, his face contorted with pain, feeling with the other hand of a wrist and fingers that hung limp.

  "There was a creep in Chi tried to pull that rat caper on me once," said Brodsky pleasantly. "Want any more, or have you got the chill?"

  "It was a trick," Vuohinen bleated. "With a sword ..."

  Lemminkainen stepped forward cheerfully. "Do you wish his head as trophy or himself to serve you daily?"

  "Aw," said Brodsky, "I suppose he ain't much use as a patsy with that busted duke, but let's let him score for the break. The pastor would put the run on me if I hit him with the lily." He walked over to Vuohinen and kicked h
im deliberately. "That's for the rat caper. Get up!"

  -

  Vuohinen made the sled more crowded than ever and, as Brodsky had said, was of no great value as a servant, but he did make lighter the job of collecting firewood in the evening. Moreover, Brodsky's victory had improved relations with Lemminkainen. He still insisted that Bayard practice daily with the detective— they were at the point where they used real swords now—but now the hero himself practiced jujitsu falls and holds and tumbles almost daily. He was an apt pupil, too.

  Around the travelers the air was colder; plumes of vapor appeared at their nostrils and those of the reindeer. The sun never seemed to break through the overcast any more. The trees became sparser and stunted, growing scattered among little grassy hillocks. Sometimes Belphebe brought home no game at all in the evening. More often than not, it would be two or three rabbits, which sent Lemminkainen back to the stored provisions after he had eaten his share.