The Hammer of the Sun

by Michael Scott Rohan

  Then out of the cloud, as it seemed, a voice answered him. His guards heard it, as they came running up behind him. And though it had seemed to them till then that no voice could be more terrible than Nithaid's in his torment, yet this one stopped them in their very stride as they came spilling into the forge. Where his was crazed, it echoed bleakly calm; where his screamed, it spoke in tones elegiac, dark and measured. But they quailed all alike at the pain it bore, and the judgement it pronounced remorseless, final as a passing bell.

  Unworthy borrower of your name!

  Oppressor of the land you rule!

  King without honour, truth or shame!

  The measure of your crimes is full!

  Nithaid beheld, in that last instant, a dark shape rise amid the glowing centre of the cloud, shadowy, formless, unlike a man's. Then with a last deafening roar the floor before it split with a line of fire and collapsed, caved inward beneath him in a roar of incandescent smoke. Into the gap slid benches and tables, sweeping men with them. The wheels and engines, baked dry by long heat, burst into flames and toppled; the troughs split and the water blasted out into scalding steam. Tongues of flame roared against the roof and fired it. Great cracks raced up the walls, and they too sagged and split; before any in the forge could move those immense timbers of the roof shook free and dropped like the very props of the sky itself. Then toppled the upper walls, and with a crash and a roar the whole forge crumbled like a hollow coal and fell inward in a thunderous fountain of smoke and flame. All the soldiers outside sprang back, dragging with them comrades who had leaped free at the last moment, escaping with bruise and burn. But they knew their lord was within, and they did not flee. Not at once, not until one cried and pointed, and they saw the figure that rose out of that incandescent ruin.

  In man's shape it was, yet more than man; for on immense wings, pinions of shining black shot with gleams of gold, anchored in harness set with glittering crystals, it arose radiant into the rich evening light. Most fled at the very sight of it; but some stayed to cast their spears or shoot, for they were brave men. But from one outstretched arm, sheathed in metal, a spear of fire sprang that blasted the grass before them. Then all who could turned and ran for their ship.

  But Elof, rejoicing in the surge and power of wings once more, paid them no heed; for he was searching the wreckage, and called aloud the name "Gorthawer!" A gleam like a night of stars shone out in answer, and a faint, broken hail. Men, looking back, saw him glide down like a gigantic eagle, and they shuddered and ran on. But Elof came low, and hovered, and made out amid a great mass of rubble that shimmer of darkness, and not far from it Nithaid's tortured face. One side of it was crushed and eyeless, the heavy locks matted dark with ashes; yet he lived, and saw, and as the wind of the vast wings blew back the dust around him his lips moved.

  " Your … armour ... was made well! Yet… your revenge ... better! Leave… my people… lordless before the Ice!"

  Elof reached down among the rubble and plucked out the black sword, unmarked, unmarred; and the silver of the hilt poured a healing marshland coolness into his hands so sorely burned. "No, king!" he cried. "For better or for worse, I go now to bring them a worthier lord. Die in peace!

  In the ashes there lie with your kin!

  For them you fought

  And schemed so long -

  Now together you all may find rest!"

  Slowly now he arose, higher and higher into the sky. And as he gained full mastery of the great work he had laboured on so long he turned as a bird turns, and flew off westwards, towards the setting of the sun.

  Chapter Nine - The Airs of Freedom

  On and up the wings drove him, soaring towards the white clouds while the land plummeted away beneath and the airs of the heights streamed by, cool and exhilarating as new wine. The very power of their beat was intoxicating, awesome, for they felt almost like limbs of his own, and in those moments the maiming of his legs diminished in his mind, the shadow it had cast over him dispersed. In the face of such overwhelming strength and freedom it scarcely seemed to matter any more; what he had lost was made good a thousandfold. He shouted aloud and sang for the sheer joy of it; he had passed through the fires, and was made whole again. A soft air surged beneath him, rising from the sun-warmed land, and he spread his wings and rode it easily as any bird.

  It came to him as an instinct; had he not worn bird's shape many a time? Few who had not could have mimicked their flight so closely, none controlled it, for the wings were made in every detail as he remembered them, able to move in the same complex patterns, to sweep and angle and shift their shape. He had modelled them on the feather Kara left him, even to the tiny barbs that link each frond of the quill into a single surface; his material the dark substance of the filament light yet strong, with traces of gold to line it that could bear the virtues he needed. Yet though he flew thus as he had flown before, it was different, better. Now he was not cramped by the helm's powers into the mask of another shape, nor did it tell upon his strength, save to guide the flight with slight shifts of shoulder and thigh; for not even his steely arms could have freed him so from the clutch of earth. It was the gems of the corselet, drinking in the radiance of the sun as they had the furnace glare, that through the subtle virtues of the gold caused the woven web to shift and stiffen, expanding and contracting as the thews of a living frame.

  He was stronger and greater now than anything else that took the air, save a dragon or some other unnatural fosterling of the Ice. Even the eagles of the Nordenbergen, shadows across the moon in his childhood, even the condors of the Meneth Scahas that came drifting down like dark clouds upon the slain of many battles, had scarcely half that awesome span. The shadow he cast was huge, and looking down and back he saw it pass at an incredible speed over the darkening blue waters of the Great River, over golden shores and green fields and forests and brown walls of town and tower, as free as himself. He did not then notice, not consciously, the dark specks against the distant clouds that kept pace with him nonetheless.

  That first night took him far from Elan Gorhenyon; how far, he had no idea. As the sun sank, so the power in his wings began to dwindle and the high airs grew colder; he had expected this, and looked for a place to settle. He chose at last to land on the outskirts of a lonely wood, far beyond the towns, on a narrow spot of riverbank protected by thorn thickets. Drink he had from the river, but he had not had time to bring any food; save for a few coins in his belt, he had carried off only his precious toolpack, the arm-ring and seal at his breast and Gorthawer at his side once more, and that seemed to him more than enough. Above all, he had his freedom. As darkness fell he folded his wings about him, and was surprised at how sheltering and warm they were. A great weariness took him then, and he slept.

  Lulled by the soft ripple of the stream, the whisperings of the trees, he did not dream. Birdsong awoke him, and he laughed to find himself spreading wings of his own in the dim light; he washed swiftly and drank, finding his burns healing cleanly, and kindled a great fire with his flints to feed his wings. The gems drank it to dark ashes in minutes, and he sprang up with the sun, high into its first light. He felt hollow with hunger, light as a foam-bubble, and still did not notice the distant followers; what concerned him was food. When he saw two peasants breakfasting outside a cottage he swooped down to them, but they bolted like maddened horses in opposite directions. Fortunately they left their food; it was rough country fare, coarse bread, goat cheese and summer fruits, but to his heightened senses no less than a feast. He ate swiftly between gulps of rough wine, impatient to be aloft once more, and ere he rose again he threw down one of his gold coins in payment. It occurred to him, though the coin might have bought the cottage twice over, that for all their fright it might mean even more to them to have such a tale to tell.

  It was then, beating up through the sky once more in a great spiral, that he first truly noticed the wings far off; but he thought no more of them all that day, so full was his mind of the joys of freedom,
and of the heights. He tested his wings to the full, riding ever higher on the warm air-streams till he was among the clouds, sporting in and out of their chill contours as he might in water, and at last rising higher still, to where the sunlight grew sharper and the air thinner, till a tight band began to close about chest and temples, and his wings seemed to be losing their force. Then he plunged down, down in a long sweeping glide towards a swirling fountain of clouds, awaiting the moment when they would part like curtains before him and the great Vale of Kerys burst out like a bright banner beneath.

  Suddenly he was in trouble. The sun was blotted out, and for a moment of horror he thought he had somehow fallen back into his crumbling forge. Sulphur boiled in his mouth and nose, hot ashes stung his eyes, cindery particles lit agonizingly upon flesh too recently raw; a vast exhalation seemed to fill the universe, louder than a stormwind but all too like the last breaths of a man half buried. He could have believed himself in the clutch of ghosts then, save that far beneath him there sounded a deafening explosion; the floating dust was blasted upward, branding his skin with new pain, and behind it the air filled with enormous masses whose passage he felt as much as saw, huge flowing gobbets the size of a house cutting the air with an eerie whistle, trailing a wake of red-hot turbulence that tumbled him madly down the sky. Another blast, and this time a shower of such gobbets almost smashed into his left wingtip. He knew now where he was, and that he must flee or die; he folded his wings and dived like a swimmer through the mirk. Another concussion, and a spraying bolt passed where he had been a tenth-second before, sent him spinning like the merest leaf away and out, out of the cloud and into clean sky. The air seemed to sing around him as he spread his wings and fought to brake his descent, the huge pinions lashing the air. Low over the waters of the Yskianas he swooped till it seemed he must be sent skipping across their crests as a boy will skim a stone, but at the last he managed to pull up, and take the sun on his shoulders once again. He looked back as he circled for height beneath the spreading ashcloud, riding on the very airs that had threatened his doom, and saw the fire-mountain blast again, spewing its glowing lava skyward. A volley of small stones passed beneath him, and he banked hurriedly across a glowing torrent of earthfire to ride the heat that rose from it. It was an eruption greater than any he had heard of before in those lands, as great as any he knew of in the Nordenbergen where he grew up. The ashcloud towered over the mountain, hanging as if motionless in the air, high enough to mask the sun from the lands beyond; its shadow lay far across them in the likeness of an arm, upraised and threatening. Around a widening spiral he flew, and was high enough now to catch a glimpse of startling contrast in the distance, the ramparts of the Ice glittering beneath the sun in all their deathly stillness.

  A contrast indeed, each with an awesome ability to destroy and lay waste; abilities totally opposed, but with the same results, a land blasted and sterile. Strange that so often they should lair together, and at their fiercest -Ice and earthfires in the Nordenbergen, and now here… Could there be some link? Could Louhi be out to make use of them somehow? If there were Powers of the fires - or whether there were or not, could there be some more material link? The fires had grown worse here as the Ice advanced, as it ground down the land, crushing it beneath its overwhelming weight… His spiral swept him through the shadow of the cloud; he shivered violently, and his wings seemed to falter, though they had plenty of power left them. These windy airs, the sun's warmth banished, were suddenly bitterly cold…

  He passed out of the shadow, into sunshine so warm and bright it felt almost like a caress. The chill remained with him, nonetheless, sinking deep into his bones. He shifted his weight a little, and without seeking greater heights he struck out to the westward again. He had begun to understand.

  The land sped by beneath him, the clean air whistled past and soothed his burns once more, and his mood of exaltation returned. Less concerned now with the sheer marvel of his flight, he began to enjoy the view, to seek the sight of places he recognised or had been told of. Only now did the full extent of the land of Kerys come home to him, only now did he begin to understand the might upon which that great city was founded. A vast land opened beneath him, an expanse even that first sight from the cliffs had not prepared him for; there, where the Vale was narrowest, he had seen only a miniature, a model of the true extent of the land. From the height he now enjoyed he could look across great sweeps of field and forest to the northern wall of Kerys Vale, and the Wild Lands beyond; or he could turn his gaze southward, and see for the first time the Yskia-nas' farther shores, and the different hues of the warmer southlands, the grassy meadows yellowed by midsummer, the light green of orchard and wood, the grain fields fast ripened to gold, and above them, on the slopes of the Vale, the long stretches of dark green olive grove and fig orchard, the brown of vineyard and scrubby goat pastures. So clear was the air that he could make out among them the larger coastal towns, with their walls lime-washed in dazzling white and their roof-tiles green rather than red; Kerbryhaine had adopted that style. In the south man's dominion did not stop at the margins of the Vale, but went on further than the eye could reach, into the shimmering haze of distance where the southern deserts began. Once it had been so in the north also, beyond the cliff tops a tamed country, rustic but civilized, much like Nordeney that had been his home and settled by the ancestors of its folk. Now it was the haunted half-barrens he and Roc had escaped through, helpless before the inexorable advance of the Ice; and the scars of war that had made it so had spread down into the very Vale itself.

  He slept that night beneath the trees of an outlying orchard, overgrown and neglected this season; it yielded him some food, and its fallen boughs a sweet-scented fuel for his ascent next morning. By noon that day, less than two days after the fall of the forge, he reckoned he had come the distance it had taken Trygkar's cog well-nigh seven days to sail. Prompted by that thought, he looked up and down the Great River, but there were few ships of any size abroad. He saw the distant wings then, a pair of flyers as fast as himself, and curiously he swung towards them; but they scattered in panic, as what birds might not before something as huge as he? Ever westward as he flew he saw more signs of war, at first those that the greater towns were inflicting upon themselves in their frantic haste to build new fortifications on his pattern; many an ancient building was torn down for the materials, and the lands about gouged up with trench and dyke. But soon he came upon sharper devastations, wide slashes brown and black across the green earth below where holt and hamlet had been overrun and fired, walls tumbled or whitened with flame, fields trampled to muck, pastures empty of beast and herdsman. A wide ring of such ruin marked out many of the greater towns from afar.

  That next evening he slept well in a proper bed with blankets, high in an abandoned tower; but he slept hungry. Every morsel of food seemed to have been stripped from the lands around; hardly a bird sang, and no small creatures disturbed the undergrowth in darkness. At dawn, as he was kindling a fire upon the towertop, he heard the approach of horses, and looking out saw a patrol of horse-soldiers, come to investigate the smoke. He had no wish for trouble with them; but he had little cause to worry. When he spread his wings across the tower-top the horses neighed madly and bolted, their riders making no great effort to restrain them. Elof was surprised at how fearsome he seemed to be; perhaps word of the sorcerer who had slain the king and flown away had reached them - yet why should he scare the horses? Puzzled, he kicked the ashes apart, and rising upon the parapet, he launched himself out in a great glide. His quest for rising airs took him far out over the Yskianas, and when he passed high over two large cogs beating southward he decided to try diving down towards them; one might be Trygkar's, and if not he could at least see how the sailors reacted. It was almost the end of him, for even as he came gliding down the sky, confident in his invulnerability aloft, he saw a flurry of activity at the lee gunwales, but was slow to realise what it must be. He lurched aside just in time as the spurt of flame r
oared up at him. His swooping escape took him across the other ship's sails, and so only arrows were launched at him; but he left them far behind, and soared high to safety once again, very thoughtful. They had fired before they could possibly have made out what he was, the moment they had seen something with wings. What had they learned to fear, out here in what had become the forward lines of the war?

  That night he huddled, hungrier than ever, in the lee of four broken walls, and burned the fallen timbers for his morning fire in the damp dawn; the scoured land offered little else. Yet this was still within the lines; no enemies had passed here save a few reivers. Even the defending forces had left desolation in their wake. And not only they; for as he took to the air again he saw snaking across the land ahead what seemed the worst and ugliest scar of all. But it was not long before he could recognise it for the great line of defences he himself had planned, yet never seen. It held still, for the banners of Kerys flew bravely above its battlements; but it was severely marked as by repeated assaults, and in places its outer lines looked from above as if someone had beaten on them with a vast cudgel. Bodies unburied were strewn like chaff about all the ground before, partly burned but still all too recognisable. He did not dare dive closer, lest the fire be turned on him also.

  Westward still he flew, and followed over many a forest and field the bruising tracks of wholesale war, the devastation that attends the passage of great armies, and their meeting. Long swathes of grey-black ash streaked the hills, and he knew that his fire-weapons had been at work here; at times the devastation was so wide-swept it seemed as though duellists had slashed at each other with vast swords of flame. Nothing moved in the land below him, and save for distant dots now and again the airs were no less empty. Here and there, all too often, his wings shadowed low mounds set about with rusting spears, to mark where men who would defend their soil had at last become part of it. As in a vision a sound of lamentation rose to him, faint but clear, the weeping of countless voices, the groans of overburdened hearts, and he never knew whence it came, whether by some trick of the airs he heard what passed far beneath, or whether, as one blended out of many, the voice of Kerys itself cried out to him. The earth had swallowed blood here, and sickened of it. It was a land laid waste, marred as a swordcut mars a fair face; and healing was a long way off. The winds that hissed through the shattered forests called after him, bidding him make haste; the rolling music of the wide waters below urged him on. Fly, Elof! Fly! You are destiny now! He had no reply; he could only speed on his way, chasing the sun down the sky till evening. There lay his only hope; he could do no more for the land.