“O-o-oh,” broke from Alfhild. She sank to the ground and wept as if to tear loose her ribs.
He knelt, held her, gave what soothing he could. “Now I know,” she mourned. “Too late.”
“Never,” he murmured. “We’ll fare abroad if we must, take new land, make new lives together.”
“No,” she gasped. “Did I not swear? What doom awaits an oathbreaker?”
Then he was long still. Heedlessly though she had spoken, her blood lay in the earth, which would remember.
He too was young. He straightened. “I will fight,” he said.
Now she clung to him and pleaded that he must not. But an iron calm had come over him. “Maybe I will not be cursed,” he said. “Or maybe the curse will be no more than I can bear.”
“It will be mine too, I who brought it on you,” she plighted herself.
Hand in hand again, they went back to the garth. Leif spied the haggard look on them and half guessed what had happened. “Will you fare to meet the drow, Hauk?” he asked. “Wait till I can have Grim the Wise brought here. His knowledge may help you.”
“No,” said Hauk. “Waiting would weaken me. I go this night.”
Wide eyes stared at him—all but Thyra’s; she was too torn.
Toward evening he busked himself. He took no helm, shield, or byrnie, for the dead man bore no weapons. Some said they would come along, armored themselves well, and offered to be at his side. He told them to follow him, but no farther than to watch what happened. Their iron would be of no help, and he thought they would only get in each other’s way, and his, when he met the overhuman might of the drow. He kissed Alfhild, his mother, and his sister, and clasped hands with his brother, bidding them stay behind if they loved him.
Long did the few miles of path seem, and gloomy under the pines. The sun was on the world’s rim when men came out in the open. They looked past fields and barrow down to the empty garth, the fjordside cliffs, the water where the sun lay as half an ember behind a trail of blood. Clouds hurried on a wailing wind through a greenish sky. Cold struck deep. A wolf howled.
“Wait here,” Hauk said.
“The gods be with you,” Leif breathed.
“I’ve naught tonight but my own strength,” Hauk said. “Belike none of us ever had more.”
His tall form, clad in leather and wadmal, showed black athwart the sunset as he walked from the edge of the woods, out across plowland toward the crouching howe. The wind fluttered his locks, a last brightness until the sun went below. Then for a while the evenstar alone had light.
Hauk reached the mound. He drew sword and leaned on it, waiting. Dusk deepened. Star after star came forth, small and strange. Clouds blowing across them picked up a glow from the still unseen moon.
It rose at last above the treetops. Its ashen sheen stretched gashes of shadow across earth. The wind loudened.
The grave groaned. Turfs, stones, timbers swung aside. Geirolf shambled out beneath the sky. Hauk felt the ground shudder under his weight. There came a carrion stench, though the only sign of rotting was on the dead man’s clothes. His eyes peered dim, his teeth gnashed dry in a face at once well remembered and hideously changed. When he saw the living one who waited, he veered and lumbered thitherward.
“Father,” Hauk called. “It’s I, your eldest son.”
The drow drew nearer.
“Halt, I beg you,” Hauk said unsteadily. “What can I do to bring you peace?”
A cloud passed over the moon. It seemed to be hurtling through heaven. Geirolf reached for his son with fingers that were ready to clutch and tear. “Hold,” Hauk shrilled. “No step farther.”
He could not see if the gaping mouth grinned. In another stride, the great shape came well-nigh upon him. He lifted his sword and brought it singing down. The edge struck truly, but slid aside. Geirolf’s skin heaved, as if to push the blade away. In one more step, he laid grave-cold hands around Hauk’s neck.
Before that grip could close, Hauk dropped his useless weapon, brought his wrists up between Geirolf’s, and mightily snapped them apart. Nails left furrows, but he was free. He sprang back, into a wrestler’s stance.
Geirolf moved in, reaching. Hauk hunched under those arms and himself grabbed waist and thigh. He threw his shoulder against a belly like rock. Any live man would have gone over, but the lich was too heavy.
Geirolf smote Hauk on the side. The blows drove him to his knees and thundered on his back. A foot lifted to crush him. He rolled off and found his own feet again. Geirolf lurched after him. The hastening moon linked their shadows. The wolf howled anew, but in fear. Watching men gripped spearshafts till their knuckles stood bloodless.
Hauk braced his legs and snatched for the first hold, around both of Geirolf’s wrists. The drow strained to break loose and could not; but neither could Hauk bring him down. Sweat ran moon-bright over the son’s cheeks and darkened his shirt. The reek of it was at least a living smell in his nostrils. Breath tore at his gullet. Suddenly Geirolf wrenched so hard that his right arm tore from between his foe’s fingers. He brought that hand against Hauk’s throat. Hauk let go and slammed himself backward before he was throttled.
Geirolf stalked after him. The drow did not move fast. Hauk sped behind and pounded on the broad back. He seized an arm of Geirolf’s and twisted it around. But the dead cannot feel pain. Geirolf stood fast. His other hand groped about, got Hauk by the hair, and yanked. Live men can hurt. Hauk stumbled away. Blood ran from his scalp into his eyes and mouth, hot and salt.
Geirolf turned and followed. He would not tire. Hauk had no long while before strength ebbed. Almost, he fled. Then the moon broke through to shine full on his father.
“You…shall not…go on…like that,” Hauk mumbled while he snapped after air.
The drow reached him. They closed, grappled, swayed, stamped to and fro, in wind and flickery moonlight. Then Hauk hooked an ankle behind Geirolf’s and pushed. With a huge thud, the drow crashed to earth. He dragged Hauk along.
Hauk’s bones felt how terrible was the grip upon him. He let go his own hold. Instead, he arched his back and pushed himself away. His clothes ripped. But he burst free and reeled to his feet.
Geirolf turned over and began to crawl up. His back was once more to Hauk. The young man sprang. He got a knee hard in between the shoulderblades, while both his arms closed on the frosty head before him.
He hauled. With the last and greatest might that was in him, he hauled. Blackness went in tatters before his eyes.
There came a loud snapping sound. Geirolf ceased pawing behind him. He sprawled limp. His neck was broken, his jawbone wrenched from the skull. Hauk climbed slowly off him, shuddering. Geirolf stirred, rolled, half rose. He lifted a hand toward Hauk. It traced a line through the air and a line growing from beneath that. Then he slumped and lay still.
Hauk crumpled too.
“Follow me who dare!” Leif roared, and went forth across the field. One by one, as they saw nothing move ahead of them, the men came after. At last they stood hushed around Geirolf—who was only a harmless dead man now, though the moon shone bright in his eyes—and on Hauk, who had begun to stir.
“Bear him carefully down to the hall,” Leif said. “Start a fire and tend it well. Most of you, take from the woodpile and come back here. I’ll stand guard meanwhile…though I think there is no need.”
And so they burned Geirolf there in the field. He walked no more.
In the morning, they brought Hauk back to Leif’s garth. He moved as if in dreams. The others were too awestruck to speak much. Even when Alfhild ran to meet him, he could only say, “Hold clear of me. I may be under a doom.”
“Did the drow lay a weird on you?” she asked, spear-stricken.
“I know not,” he answered. “I think I fell into the dark before he was wholly dead.”
“What?” Leif well-nigh shouted. “You did not see the sign he drew?”
“Why, no,” Hauk said. “How did it go?”
“Thus. E
ven afar and by moonlight, I knew.” Leif drew it.
“That is no ill-wishing!” Grim cried. “That’s naught but the Hammer.”
Life rushed back into Hauk. “Do you mean what I hope?”
“He blessed you,” Grim said. “You freed him from what he had most dreaded and hated—his straw-death. The madness in him is gone, and he has wended hence to the world beyond.”
Then Hauk was glad again. He led them all in heaping earth over the ashes of his father, and in setting things right on the farm. That winter, at the feast of Thor, he and Alfhild were wedded. Afterward he became well thought of by King Harald, and rose to great wealth. From him and Alfhild stem many men whose names are still remembered. Here ends the tale of Hauk the Ghost Slayer.
The Caravan of
Forgotten Dreams
MICHAEL MOORCOCK
1
Bloody-beaked hawks soared on the frigid wind. They soared high above a mounted horde inexorably moving across the Weeping Waste.
The horde had crossed two deserts and three mountain ranges to be there and hunger drove them onwards. They were spurred on by remembrances of stories heard from travelers who had come to their Eastern homeland, by the encouragements of their thin-lipped leader who swaggered in his saddle ahead of them, one arm wrapped around a ten-foot lance decorated with the gory trophies of his pillaging campaigns.
The riders moved slowly and wearily, unaware that they were nearing their goal.
Far behind the horde, a stocky rider left Elwher, the singing, boisterous capital of the Eastern World, and came soon to a valley.
The hard skeletons of trees had a blighted look and the horse kicked earth the colour of ashes as its rider drove it fiercely through the sick wasteland that had once been gentle Eshmir, the golden garden of the East.
A plague had smitten Eshmir and the locust had stripped her of her beauty. Both plague and locust went by the same name—Terarn Gashtek, Lord of the Mounted Hordes, sunken-faced carrier of destruction; Terarn Gashtek, insane blood-drawer, the shrieking flame bringer. And that was his other name—Flame Bringer.
The rider who witnessed the evil that Terarn Gashtek had brought to gentle Eshmir was named Moonglum. Moonglum was riding, now, for Karlaak by the Weeping Waste, the last outpost of the Western civilisation of which those in the Eastlands knew little. In Karlaak, Moonglum knew he would find Elric of Melniboné who now dwelt permanently in his wife’s graceful city. Moonglum was desperate to reach Karlaak quickly, to warn Elric and to solicit his help.
He was small and cocky, with a broad mouth and a shock of red hair, but now his mouth did not grin and his body was bent over the horse as he pushed it on towards Karlaak. For Eshmir, gentle Eshmir, had been Moonglum’s home province and, with his ancestors had formed him into what he was.
So, cursing, Moonglum rode for Karlaak.
But so did Terarn Gashtek. And already the Flame Bringer had reached the Weeping Waste. The horde moved slowly, for they had wagons with them which had at one time dropped far behind but now the supplies they carried were needed. As well as provisions, one of the wagons carried a bound prisoner who lay on his back cursing Terarn Gashtek and his slant-eyed battlemongers.
Drinij Bara was bound by more than strips of leather, that was why he cursed, for Drinij Bara was a sorcerer who could not normally be held in such a manner. If he had not succumbed to his weakness for wine and women just before the Flame Bringer had come down on the town in which he was staying, he would not have been trussed so, and Terarn Gashtek would not now have Drinij Bara’s soul.
Drinij Bara’s soul reposed in the body of a small, black-and-white cat—the cat which Terarn Gashtek had caught and carried with him always, for, as was the habit of Eastern sorcerers, Drinij Bara had hidden his soul in the body of the cat for protection. Because of this he was now slave to the Lord of the Mounted Hordes, and had to obey him lest the man slay the cat and so send his soul to hell.
It was not a pleasant situation for the proud sorcerer, but he did not deserve less.
There was on the pale face of Elric of Melniboné some slight trace of an earlier haunting, but his mouth smiled and his crimson eyes were at peace as he looked down at the young, black-haired woman with whom he walked in the terraced gardens of Karlaak.
“Elric,” said Zarozinia, “have you found your happiness?”
He nodded. “I think so. Stormbringer now hangs amid cobwebs in your father’s armoury. The drugs I discovered in Troos keep me strong, my eyesight clear, and need to be taken only occasionally. I need never think of traveling or fighting again. I am content, here, to spend my time with you and study the books in Karlaak’s library. What more would I require?”
“You compliment me overmuch, my lord. I would become complacent.”
He laughed. “Rather that than you were doubting. Do not fear, Zarozinia, I possess no reason, now, to journey on. Moonglum, I miss, but it was natural that he should become restless of residence in a city and wish to revisit his homeland.”
“I am glad you are at peace, Elric. My father was at first reluctant to let you live here, fearing the black evil that once accompanied you, but three months have proved to him that the evil has gone and left no fuming berserker behind it.”
Suddenly there came a shouting from below them, in the street a man’s voice was raised and he banged at the gates of the house.
“Let me in, damn you, I must speak with your master.”
A servant came running: “Lord Elric—there is a man at the gates with a message. He pretends friendship with you.”
“His name?”
“An alien one—Moonglum, he says.”
“Moonglum! His stay in Elwher has been short. Let him in!”
Zarozinia’s eyes held a trace of fear and she held Elric’s arm fiercely. “Elric—pray he does not bring news to take you hence.”
“No news could do that. Fear not, Zarozinia.” He hurried out of the garden and into the courtyard of the house. Moonglum rode hurriedly through the gates, dismounting as he did so.
“Moonglum, my friend! Why the haste? Naturally, I am pleased to see you after such a short time, but you have been riding hastily—why?”
The little Eastlander’s face was grim beneath its coating of dust and his clothes were filthy from hard riding.
“The Flame Bringer comes with sorcery to aid him,” he panted. “You must warn the city.”
“The Flame Bringer? The name means nothing—you sound delirious, my friend.”
“Aye, that’s true, I am. Delirious with hate. He destroyed my homeland, killed my family, my friends and now plans conquests in the West. Two years ago he was little more than an ordinary desert raider but then he began to gather a great horde of barbarians around him and has been looting and slaying his way across the Eastern lands. Only Elwher has not suffered from his attacks, for the city was too great for even him to take. But he has turned two thousand miles of pleasant country into a burning waste. He plans world conquest, rides westwards with five hundred thousand warriors!”
“You mentioned sorcery—what does this barbarian know of such sophisticated arts?”
“Little himself, but he has one of our greatest wizards in his power—Drinij Bara. The man was captured as he lay drunk between two wenches in a tavern in Phum. He had put his soul into the body of a cat so that no rival sorcerer might steal it while he slept. But Terarn Gashtek, the Flame Bringer, knew of this trick, seized the cat and bound its legs, eyes and mouth, so imprisoning Drinij Bara’s soul. Now the sorcerer is his slave—if he does not obey the barbarian, the cat will be killed by an iron blade and Drinij Bara’s soul will go to hell.”
These are unfamiliar sorceries to me,” said Elric. “They seem little more than superstitions.”
“Who knows that they may be—but so long as Drinij Bara believes what he believes, he will do as Terarn Gashtek dictates. Several proud cities have been destroyed with the aid of his magic.”
“How far away is this Flame Bring
er?”
“Three days’ ride at most. I was forced to come hence by a longer route, to avoid his outriders.”
“Then we must prepare for a siege.”
“No, Elric—you must prepare to flee!”
“To flee—should I request the citizens of Karlaak to leave their beautiful city unprotected, to leave their homes?”
“If they will not—you must, and take your bride with you. None can stand against such a foe.”
“My own sorcery is no mean thing.”
“But one man’s sorcery is not enough to hold back half a million men also aided by sorcery.”
“And Karlaak is a trading city—not a warrior’s fortress. Very well, I will speak to the Council of Elders and try to convince them.”
“You must convince them quickly, Elric, for if you do not Karlaak will not stand half a day before Terarn Gashtek’s howling blood-letters.”
“They are stubborn,” said Elric as the two sat in his private study later that night. “They refuse to realize the magnitude of the danger. They refuse to leave and I cannot leave them for they have welcomed me and made me a citizen of Karlaak.”
“Then we must stay here and die?”
“Perhaps. There seems to be no choice. But I have another plan. You say that this sorcerer is a prisoner of Terarn Gashtek. What would he do if he regained his soul?”
“Why he would take vengeance upon his captor. But Terarn Gashtek would not be so foolish as to give him the chance. There is no help for us there.”
“What if we managed to aid Drinij Bara?”
“How? It would be impossible.”
“It seems our only chance. Does this barbarian know of me or my history?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Would he recognise you?”
“Why should he?”
“Then I suggest we join him.”
“Join him—Elric you are no more sane than when we rode as free travelers together!”
The Sword & Sorcery Anthology Page 13