The Sword & Sorcery Anthology

by David G. Hartwell

  Then, for one moment while the torch flames whipped low and blue in a physical wind that seemed to blow through the mortised stones of the buried chamber...for one moment while the torturers and guards dropped the tools of their trades...for one indelible moment of hate fulfilled and revenge accomplished, Mouse saw the strong, square face of Duke Janarrl shake in the agitation of ultimate terror, the features twisted like heavy cloth wrung between invisible hands, then crumpled in defeat and death.

  The strand supporting Mouse snapped. His spirit dropped like a plummet toward the buried room.

  An agonizing pain filled him, but it promised life, not death. Above him was the low stone ceiling. The hands on the wheel were white and slender. Then he knew that the pain was that of release from the rack.

  Slowly Ivrian loosened the rings of leather from his wrists and ankles. Slowly she helped him down, supporting him with all her strength as they dragged their way across the room, from which everyone else had fled in terror save for one crumpled jeweled figure in a carven chair. They paused by that and he surveyed the dead thing with the cool, satisfied, masklike gaze of a cat. Then on and up they went, Ivrian and the Gray Mouser, through corridors emptied by panic, and out into the night.

  The Tale of Hauk

  POUL ANDERSON

  A man called Geirolf dwelt on the Great Fjord in Raumsdal. His father was Bui Hardhand, who owned a farm inland near the Dofra Fell. One year Bui went in viking to Finnmark and brought back a woman he dubbed Gydha. She became the mother of Geirolf. But because Bui already had children by his wife, there would be small inheritance for this by-blow.

  Folk said uncanny things about Gydha. She was fair to see, but spoke little, did no more work than she must, dwelt by herself in a shack out of sight of the garth, and often went for long stridings alone on the upland heaths, heedless of cold, rain, and rovers. Bui did not visit her often. Her son Geirolf did. He too was a moody sort, not much given to playing with others, quick and harsh of temper. Big and strong, he went abroad with his father already when he was twelve, and in the next few years won the name of a mighty though ruthless fighter.

  Then Gydha died. They buried her near her shack, and it was whispered that she spooked around it of nights. Soon after, walking home with some men by moonlight from a feast at a neighbor’s, Bui clutched his breast and fell dead. They wondered if Gydha had called him, maybe to accompany her home to Finnmark, for there was no more sight of her.

  Geirolf bargained with his kin and got the price of a ship for himself. Thereafter he gathered a crew, mostly younger sons and a wild lot, and fared west. For a long while he harried Scotland, Ireland, and the coasts south of the Channel, and won much booty. With some of this he bought his farm on the Great Fjord. Meanwhile he courted Thyra, a daughter of the yeoman Sigtryg Einarsson, and got her.

  They had one son early on, Hauk, a bright and lively lad. But thereafter five years went by until they had a daughter who lived, Unn, and two years later a boy they called Einar. Geirolf was a viking every summer, and sometimes wintered over in the Westlands. Yet he was a kindly father, whose children were always glad to see him come roaring home. Very tall and broad in the shoulders, he had long red-brown hair and a full beard around a broad blunt-nosed face whose eyes were ice-blue and slanted. He liked fine clothes and heavy gold rings, which he also lavished on Thyra.

  Then the time came when Geirolf said he felt poorly and would not fare elsewhere that season. Hauk was fourteen years old and had been wild to go. “I’ll keep my promise to you as well as may be,” Geirolf said, and sent men asking around. The best he could do was get his son a bench on a ship belonging to Ottar the Wide-Faring from Haalogaland in the north, who was trading along the coast and meant to do likewise overseas.

  Hauk and Ottar took well to each other. In England, the man got the boy prime-signed so he could deal with Christians. Though neither was baptized, what he heard while they wintered there made Hauk thoughtful. Next spring they fared south to trade among the Moors, and did not come home until late fall.

  Ottar was Geirolf’s guest for a while, though he scowled to himself when his host broke into fits of deep coughing. He offered to take Hauk along on his voyages from now on and start the youth toward a good livelihood.

  “You a chapman—the son of a viking?” Geirolf sneered. He had grown surly of late.

  Hauk flushed. “You’ve heard what we did to those vikings who set on us,” he answered.

  “Give our son his head,” was Thyra’s smiling rede, “or he’ll take the bit between his teeth.”

  The upshot was that Geirolf grumbled agreement, and Hauk fared off. He did not come back for five years.

  Long were the journeys he took with Ottar. By ship and horse, they made their way to Uppsala in Svithjodh, thence into the wilderness of the Keel after pelts; amber they got on the windy strands of Jutland, salt herring along the Sound; seeking beeswax, honey, and tallow, they pushed beyond Holmgard to the fair at Kiev; walrus ivory lured them past North Cape, through bergs and floes to the land of the fur-clad Biarmians; and they bore many goods west. They did not hide that the wish to see what was new to them drove them as hard as any hope of gain.

  In those days King Harald Fairhair went widely about in Norway, bringing all the land under himself. Lesser kings and chieftains must either plight faith to him or meet his wrath; it crushed whomever would stand fast. When he entered Raumsdal, he sent men from garth to garth as was his wont, to say he wanted oaths and warriors.

  “My older son is abroad,” Geirolf told these, “and my younger still a stripling. As for myself—” He coughed, and blood flecked his beard. The king’s men did not press the matter.

  But now Geirolf’s moods grew ever worse. He snarled at everybody, cuffed his children and housefolk, once drew a dagger and stabbed to death a thrall who chanced to spill some soup on him. When Thyra reproached him for this, he said only, “Let them know I am not altogether hollowed out. I can still wield blade.” And he looked at her so threateningly from beneath his shaggy brows that she, no coward, withdrew in silence.

  A year later, Hauk Geirolfsson returned to visit his parents.

  That was on a chill fall noontide. Whitecaps chopped beneath a whistling wind and cast spindrift salty onto lips. Clifftops on either side of the fjord were lost in mist. Above blew cloud wrack like smoke. Hauk’s ship, a wide-beamed knorr, rolled, pitched, and creaked as it beat its way under sail. The owner stood in the bows, wrapped in a flame-red cloak, an uncommonly big young man, yellow hair tossing around a face akin to his father’s, weatherbeaten though still scant of beard. When he saw the arm of the fjord that he wanted to enter, he pointed with a spear at whose head he had bound a silk pennon. When he saw Disafoss pouring in a white stream down the blue-gray stone wall to larboard, and beyond the waterfall at the end of that arm lay his old home, he shouted for happiness.

  Geirolf had rich holdings. The hall bulked over all else, heavy-timbered, brightly painted, dragon heads arching from rafters and gables. Elsewhere around the yard were cookhouse, smokehouse, bathhouse, storehouses, workshop, stables, barns, women’s bower. Several cabins for hirelings and their families were strewn beyond. Fishing boats lay on the strand near a shed which held the master’s dragonship. Behind the steading, land sloped sharply upward through a narrow dale, where fields were walled with stones grubbed out of them and now stubbled after harvest. A bronze-leaved oakenshaw stood untouched not far from the buildings; and a mile inland, where hills humped themselves toward the mountains, rose a darkling wall of pinewood.

  Spearheads and helmets glimmered ashore. But men saw it was a single craft bound their way, white shield on the mast. As the hull slipped alongside the little wharf, they lowered their weapons. Hauk sprang from bow to dock in a single leap and whooped.

  Geirolf trod forth. “Is that you, my son?” he called. His voice was hoarse from coughing; he had grown gaunt and sunken-eyed; the ax that he bore shivered in his hand.

  “Yes, father, ye
s, home again,” Hauk stammered. He could not hide his shock.

  Maybe this drove Geirolf to anger. Nobody knew; he had become impossible to get along with. “I could well-nigh have hoped otherwise,” he rasped. “An unfriend would give me something better than straw-death.”

  The rest of the men, housecarls and thralls alike, flocked about Hauk to bid him welcome. Among them was a burly, grizzled yeoman whom he knew from aforetime, Leif Egilsson, a neighbor come to dicker for a horse. When he was small, Hauk had often wended his way over a woodland trail to Leif’s garth to play with the children there.

  He called his crew to him. They were not just Norse, but had among them Danes, Swedes, and English, gathered together over the years as he found them trustworthy. “You brought a mickle for me to feed,” Geirolf said. Luckily, the wind bore his words from all but Hauk. “Where’s your master Ottar?”

  The young man stiffened. “He’s my friend, never my master,” he answered. “This is my own ship, bought with my own earnings. Ottar abides in England this year. The West Saxons have a new king, one Alfred, whom he wants to get to know.”

  “Time was when it was enough to know how to get sword past a Westman’s shield,” Geirolf grumbled.

  Seeing peace down by the water, women and children hastened from the hall to meet the newcomers. At their head went Thyra. She was tall and deep-bosomed; her gown blew around a form still straight and freely striding. But as she neared, Hauk saw that the gold of her braids was dimmed and sorrow had furrowed her face. Nonetheless she kindled when she knew him. “Oh, thrice welcome, Hauk!” she said low. “How long can you bide with us?”

  After his father’s greeting, it had been in his mind to say he must soon be off. But when he spied who walked behind his mother, he said, “We thought we might be guests here the winter through, if that’s not too much of a burden.”

  “Never—” began Thyra. Then she saw where his gaze had gone, and suddenly she smiled.

  Alfhild Leifsdottir had joined her widowed father on this visit. She was two years younger than Hauk, but they had been glad of each other as playmates. Today she stood a maiden grown, lissome in a blue wadmal gown, heavily crowned with red locks above great green eyes, straight nose, and gently curved mouth. Though he had known many a woman, none struck him as being so fair.

  He grinned at her and let his cloak flap open to show his finery of broidered, fur-lined tunic, linen shirt and breeks, chased leather boots, gold on arms and neck and sword-hilt. She paid them less heed than she did him when they spoke.

  Thus Hauk and his men moved to Geirolf’s hall. He brought plentiful gifts, there was ample food and drink, and their tales of strange lands—their songs, dances, games, jests, manners—made them good housefellows in these lengthening nights.

  Already on the next morning, he walked out with Alfhild. Rain had cleared the air, heaven and fjord sparkled, wavelets chuckled beneath a cool breeze from the woods. Nobody else was on the strand where they went.

  “So you grow mighty as a chapman, Hauk,” Alfhild teased. “Have you never gone in viking…only once, only to please your father?”

  “No,” he answered gravely. “I fail to see what manliness lies in falling on those too weak to defend themselves. We traders must be stronger and more war-skilled than any who may seek to plunder us.” A thick branch of driftwood, bleached and hardened, lay nearby. Hauk picked it up and snapped it between his hands. Two other men would have had trouble doing that. It gladdened him to see Alfhild glow at the sight. “Nobody has tried us twice,” he said.

  They passed the shed where Geirolf’s dragon lay on rollers. Hauk opened the door for a peek at the remembered slim shape. A sharp whiff from the gloom within brought his nose wrinkling. “Whew!” he snorted. “Dry rot.”

  “Poor Fireworm has long lain idle,” Alfhild sighed. “In later years, your father’s illness has gnawed him till he doesn’t even see to the care of his ship. He knows he will never take it a-roving again.”

  “I feared that,” Hauk murmured.

  “We grieve for him on our own garth too,” she said. “In former days, he was a staunch friend to us. Now we bear with his ways, yes, insults that would make my father draw blade on anybody else.”

  “That is dear of you,” Hauk said, staring straight before him. “I’m very thankful.”

  “You have not much cause for that, have you?” she asked. “I mean, you’ve been away so long… Of course, you have your mother. She’s borne the brunt, stood like a shield before your siblings—” She touched her lips. “I talk too much.”

  “You talk as a friend,” he blurted. “May we always be friends.”

  They wandered on, along a path from shore to fields. It went by the shaw. Through boles and boughs and falling leaves, they saw Thor’s image and altar among the trees. “I’ll make offering here for my father’s health,” Hauk said, “though truth to tell, I’ve more faith in my own strength than in any gods.”

  “You have seen lands where strange gods rule,” she nodded.

  “Yes, and there too, they do not steer things well,” he said. “It was in a Christian realm that a huge wolf came raiding flocks, on which no iron would bite. When it took a baby from a hamlet near our camp, I thought I’d be less than a man did I not put an end to it.”

  “What happened?” she asked breathlessly, and caught his arm.

  “I wrestled it barehanded—no foe of mine was ever more fell—and at last broke its neck.” He pulled back a sleeve to show scars of terrible bites. “Dead, it changed into a man they had outlawed that year for his evil deeds. We burned the lich to make sure it would not walk again, and thereafter the folk had peace. And…we had friends, in a country otherwise wary of us.”

  She looked on him in the wonder he had hoped for.

  Erelong she must return with her father. But the way between the garths was just a few miles, and Hauk often rode or skied through the woods. At home, he and his men helped do what work there was, and gave merriment where it had long been little known.

  Thyra owned this to her son, on a snowy day when they were by themselves. They were in the women’s bower, whither they had gone to see a tapestry she was weaving. She wanted to know how it showed against those of the Westlands; he had brought one such, which hung above the benches in the hall. Here, in the wide quiet room, was dusk, for the day outside had become a tumbling whiteness. Breath steamed from lips as the two of them spoke. It smelled sweet; both had drunk mead until they could talk freely.

  “You did better than you knew when you came back,” Thyra said. “You blew like spring into this winter of ours. Einar and Unn were withering; they blossom again in your nearness.”

  “Strangely has our father changed,” Hauk answered sadly. “I remember once when I was small, how he took me by the hand on a frost-clear night, led me forth under the stars, and named for me the pictures in them, Thor’s Wain, Freyja’s Spindle—how wonderful he made them, how his deep slow laughterful voice filled the dark.”

  “A wasting illness draws the soul inward,” his mother said. “He…has no more manhood…and it tears him like fangs that he will die helpless in bed. He must strike out at someone, and here we are.”

  She was silent awhile before she added: “He will not live out the year. Then you must take over.”

  “I must be gone when weather allows,” Hauk warned. “I promised Ottar.”

  “Return as soon as may be,” Thyra said. “We have need of a strong man, the more so now when yonder King Harald would reave their freehold rights from yeomen.”

  “It would be well to have a hearth of my own.” Hauk stared past her, toward the unseen woods. Her worn face creased in a smile.

  Suddenly they heard yells from the yard below. Hauk ran out onto the gallery and looked down. Geirolf was shambling after an aged carl named Atli. He had a whip in his hand and was lashing it across the white locks and wrinkled cheeks of the man, who could not run fast either and who sobbed.

  “What is this?” br
oke from Hauk. He swung himself over the rail, hung, and let go. The drop would at least have jarred the wind out of most. He, though, bounced from where he landed, ran behind his father, caught hold of the whip and wrenched it from Geirolf’s grasp. “What are you doing?”

  Geirolf howled and struck his son with a doubled fist. Blood trickled from Hauk’s mouth. He stood fast. Atli sank to hands and knees and fought not to weep.

  “Are you also a heelbiter of mine?” Geirolf bawled.

  “I’d save you from your madness, father,” Hauk said in pain. “Atli followed you to battle ere I was born—he dandled me on his knee—and he’s a free man. What has he done, that you’d bring down on us the anger of his kinfolk?”

  “Harm not the skipper, young man,” Atli begged. “I fled because I’d sooner die than lift hand against my skipper.”

  “Hell swallow you both!” Geirolf would have cursed further, but the coughing came on him. Blood drops flew through the snowflakes, down onto the white earth, where they mingled with the drip from the heads of Hauk and Atli. Doubled over, Geirolf let them half lead, half carry him to his shut-bed. There he closed the panel and lay alone in darkness.

  “What happened between you and him?” Hauk asked.

  “I was fixing to shoe a horse,” Atli said into a ring of gaping onlookers. “He came in and wanted to know why I’d not asked his leave. I told him ’twas plain Kilfaxi needed new shoes. Then he hollered, ‘I’ll show you I’m no log in the woodpile!’ and snatched yon whip off the wall and took after me.” The old man squared his shoulders. “We’ll speak no more of this, you hear?” he ordered the household.

  Nor did Geirolf, when next day he let them bring him some broth.

  For more reasons than this, Hauk came to spend much of his time at Leif’s garth. He would return in such a glow that even the reproachful looks of his young sister and brother, even the sullen or the weary greeting of his father, could not dampen it.