Writing Fantasy Heroes

by Jason M Waltz (ed)

  Look to the souls of Your own soldiers, God, who labor in Thine awful cause. Tempus hasn’t come here to lose lives. He’s come to save them.

  The Heroic Will

  Cecelia Holland

  The essence of the hero is his will. Many people fight, some very well, but the hero is distinguished among these by his illimitable drive to overcome everything in his way. He strives to dominate reality—than which there is no higher ambition—to impose his idea of order on the chaos of the world. That this is impossible is the glory of the hero, who will not allow anything above him, who will rule all, preferably by force, even in the face of inevitable failure.

  I love writing about heroes, an excuse for pure narrative, as the heroic force has to express itself in extremes of action. This that follows—a piece of my short story “The King of Norway” that appeared in the George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois edited Warriors (Tor Books, 2010)—relates the Battle of Hjorunga Bay, in the 990's, between the Jomsvikings under their leader Sigvaldi and the Tronders under Hakon of Lade, the Jarl of the Trond. The battle was part of the general century-long struggle to gather the Viking world into one great kingdom; behind it all Sweyn Forkbeard was pulling the strings, and as always, the local resistance was fanatic.

  As the excerpt begins, the battle is half over. The two fleets have taken a break from bashing at each other, and Hakon has gone to look for help.

  Conn turned his head toward Aslak. "What kind of help is Hakon looking for?"

  Aslak had a little skin of beer and he took a pull on it. He nodded with his head toward the island in the middle of the bay.

  "You see that island? It's called the Blessed Place. There are altars there half as old as the Ash Tree. Hakon may have a problem. He switched sides once too often. I've heard his patron goddesses are still angry with him for the time he turned Christian."

  He slung an arm around Conn's shoulders. "I'm glad to have you on board, boy—you're a damned good fighter."

  Conn flushed; to hide this pleasure he turned, and glanced around at what remained of his crew. That took the glow away. He had not realized how many were gone. He was losing everything—his ship, the crew that made her fly. He had to win now.

  He turned back to Aslak. "This Christian thing seems common enough. Even Sweyn's been prime-signed." He took the skin and drank, and leaned out to pass the skin to Raef, on the bench behind him.

  Aslak was sitting on the front bench, his knees wide, and his arms bent across them. "Hakon didn't stay a Christer very long—just until he got away from Bluetooth."

  "So he's betrayed everybody," Conn said.

  "Oh, yes. at least once. And beaten everybody. German, Swede, Dane and Norse. At least once." With a grimace Aslak stretched one leg out and rubbed his calf. Blood squished from the top of his shoe.

  Conn said, "But we are winning this one."

  Aslak said, "Yes, I think so. So far."

  In this narrative, Conn is in the process of becoming a real hero. One test after another confronts him; as he overcomes each challenge, his heroic persona intensifies. He's paying a high price for this; he's lost his ship and many friends, and the only justification for this is to win, and in the end, even that won't be enough.

  Hakon, favored of gods, victor in a dozen fights, is a worthy enemy, somebody Conn can prove himself against. The Jomsviking captain Aslak still treats him with some condescension here, the older man talking to the primy youth, but that will change.

  Writing battle scenes is fun, like being in your own video game. My trick to doing this is to choose one warrior's point of view and cleave to it, which gives you terrific focus and economy as well as maximum excitement. Show only what your man experiences, and that very harshly, and don't bother with the big picture. Instead you go for the immediate and violent, get right into the middle of the action, get him hacking and hewing.

  For this legendary battle I found Google maps very useful; there are also detailed descriptions of the battle in a couple of the old sagas. The trick is to know the battle really well, work it out on paper if necessary, so I know which way to turn, where the sun is, how the land lies and where the opponents are, and then cut close to the personal and immediate and let the broad outlines arise from the detail. If you take a reader through the middle of the scene he'll fill in a lot of the edges for himself.

  I had a lot of fun working on the details of how the Vikings fought ship battles. As the battle to control the North grew fierce, these big fleet engagements became more common, and the sagas described them in glorious detail.

  In the blazing sun of noon Hakon's ships gathered again; the Jarl's golden dragon was in the center. They came forward again across the bay, and the Jomsvikings swung into lines to meet them.

  Even as they rowed up a cold wind began to blast. Conn, pulling an oar in the front of Aslak's ship, felt the harsh slash of the air on his cheek and looked west and saw a cloud boiling up over the horizon, black and swelling like a bruise on the sky. His skin went all to gooseflesh. He knew what would happen next. This was his dream from the night before. The line of the Jomsviking ships swept on toward Hakon's fleet and the storm cloud climbed up over half the sky, heavy and dark, the wind ripping streamers from its top like hair. Under it the air flickered, thick and green.

  Conn bent to his oar. Up the center of Aslak's ship came four men with spears, which they cast, but the wind flung them off like splinters. A roll of thunder boomed across the sky. Inside the towering cloud lightning glowed. The first drops fell, and then all at once sheets of rain hammered down.

  Aslak was screaming the oar-chant, because of the mixed crew. Conn threw all his strength into each stroke. The rain battered on his head, his bare shoulders, streamed cold down his chest. Hakon's ships in their line loomed over them; he shipped the oar and drawing his sword wheeled toward the bow.

  As he rose the wind met him so hard he had to stiffen himself against it, and then, as if the sky broke into tiny pieces and fell on him, it began to hail.

  He stooped, half-blinded in the white deluge, feeling the ship under him rub another ship, and saw through the haze of flying ice the shape before him of a man with an axe. He struck. Raef was beside him, hip to hip. The axe came at him and he slashed again, blind, into the white whirling storm. Somebody screamed, somewhere. There was hail all in his beard, his hair, his eyebrows. Abruptly the booming fall stopped. The rain pattered away and the sun broke through, glaring.

  He staggered back a step. The ship was full of hailstones and water; Raef, beside him, slumped down on the bench, gasping for breath. Blood streamed down his face, his shoulders. Conn wheeled to look past the bow, toward Hakon's men.

  The Tronder fleet had backed off again, but they were not fleeing; they were letting Sigvaldi flee.

  Conn let out a howl of rage. Off toward the west, at the end of the Jomsviking line, Sigvaldi's big dragon suddenly had broken out of line, was stroking fast away up the bay, and behind it, the other Jomsviking ships were peeling out of their formation and following.

  Conn leapt up onto the gunwale of Aslak's ship, his hand on the dragon's neck, and shouted, "Run! Run, Sigvaldi, you coward! Remember your vow? The Jomsviking way, is it—I'll not run—not if I'm the last man here and he sends all the gods against me, I'll not run!"

  From behind him came a howl from Aslak's ship and the ships beyond. Conn pivoted his head to see them—back there all the other men shouted, and shook their fists toward Sigvaldi, and waved their swords at Hakon. Bui in their midst bellowed like a bull, red-faced. There were ten ships, he thought. Ten left, from sixty. Aslak stood before him, and put his hand on Conn's shoulder and met his eyes.

  "If it's my doom here, I'll meet it like a man. Let's show them how true Jomsvikings fight!"

  Conn gripped his hand. "To the last man!"

  "It will be that," Raef said, behind him.

  Bui shouted, from the next dragon, "Aslak! Aslak! King of Norway! Lash the ships together!"

  Aslak's head piv
oted, looking toward Hakon. "He's coming."

  "Hurry," Conn said.

  They drew all the ships together, gunwale to gunwale, and lashed them with the rigging through the oar holes; so all the men were free to fight, and the ships formed a sort of fighting floor. The Tronder fleet was spreading out to encircle them. Conn went back into the stern of Aslak's dragon, where Finn lay, his eyes closed, still breathing, and pulled a shield across him. Then he went back up beside Raef.

  Horns blew in the Tronder fleet, the sound rolling around the bay, and then the ships all at once closed on the Jomsvikings on their floating ship-island. The air darkened, the cold wind blasted. The rain began to fall, and like icy rocks the hail descended on them again. Conn could barely stand against the wind and the pelting hailstones. Through the driving white he saw a man with an axe heave up over the gunwale, another just behind, and he slashed out, and on the hail strewn floor he slipped and fell on his back. Raef strode across him. Raef slashed wildly side to side with his sword, battling two men at once, until Conn staggered up again, and cut the first axeman across the knees and dropped him.

  The hail stopped. In the rain they battered at a wall of axe blades trying to hack their way over the gunwale. Horns blew. The Tronders were falling back again. Conn stepped back, breathing hard, his hair in his eyes; his knee was swelling and hurt as if somebody was driving a knife into it. The sun came out again, blazing bright.

  On the next ship Bui swayed back and forth, covered with blood. Both hands were gone. His face was hacked to the bone. He stooped, and looped his stumped arms through the handles of his chest of gold.

  "All Bui's men overboard," he shouted, and leapt into the bay, the gold in his arms. He sank at once into the deep.

  As the battle turns against him, Conn's will rises in defiance. He cannot give up, it just isn't in him, and when he sees Sigvaldi fleeing, his reaction isn't dismay but scorn and contempt. This is the hero in him, which will not tolerate defeat. From battling other men, now he is battling the gods themselves, and never backing down.

  Bui fails the test of heroism, in a sense, choosing to drown himself rather than fight on, although one wonders how somebody fights with both hands missing. All this is of course straight out of the old saga. Bui allegedly turned into a dragon, sitting over his hoard of gold.

  Meanwhile, surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, Conn and the others defend against Hakon's methodical assault.

  The sunlight slanted in under a roof of cloud. The long sundown had begun. Beneath the clouds the air was already turning dark. Hakon's horns blew their long booming notes, pulling his fleet off.

  Aslak sank down on a bench. The side of his face was mashed so that one eye was almost invisible. Raef sat next to him, slack with fatigue. Conn went down the ship, whose whole side had taken the Tronder attack. He was afraid if he sat down his knee would stiffen entirely. What he saw clenched his belly to a knot.

  Arn lay dead on the floor, his head split to the red mush of his brain. The two men next to him were bleeding, but alive, were Jomsvikings, not his. Beyond them Rugr slumped, and Conn stooped beside him and tried to rouse him but he fell over, lifeless. Two other dead men lay on the floor of the ship and he had to climb across a bench to get around them. He went up to the stern, where Finn lay, still breathing, in the dark.

  Conn laid one hand on him, as if he could hold the life in him. He looked back along the ship, at the living and wounded, and saw no other face that had rowed on Seabird with him save Raef's. Along the length of Aslak's ship, he met Raef's eyes, and knew his cousin was thinking this too.

  The ship-fortress was sinking. All over the cluster of lashed hulls, men were dipping and rising, bailing out the water and ice. Several other men came walking across the wooden island, stepping from gunwale to gunwale. They were gathering down by Aslak and Conn went back that way, wading through a soup of hail and rainwater that got deeper toward the bow. He sat down next to Raef, with the other men, slumped wearily around Aslak.

  All save him and Raef were Jomsvikings. Havard had a skin of beer and held it out to Conn as he sat. Beside him another captain was looking around them. "How many of us are left?"

  Aslak shrugged. "Maybe fifty. Half wounded. Some really bad wounded." His voice was a little thick from the mess of his face.

  Conn took a deep pull on the skin of beer. The drink hit his stomach like a fist. But a moment later the warmth spread through him. He handed the skin on to Raef, just behind him.

  The Jomsviking across from Conn said, "Hakon will sit out the night on the shore, in comfort. Then they'll finish us off tomorrow, unless we all just drown tonight."

  Conn said, "We have to swim for it." He had a vague idea of reaching shore, and walking around and surprising Hakon from behind.

  Havard leaned forward, his bloody hands in front of him. "That's a good idea. We could probably make that side, there." He pointed the other way from Hakon.

  "That's far," Raef said. "Some of these men can't swim two strokes."

  Aslak said, "We could lash some spars together. Make a raft."

  Havard leaned closer to Conn, his voice sinking. "Look. The ones who can make it, should. Leave the rest behind—they're dying anyway."

  Conn thought of Finn, and the red rage drove to his feet. He hit Havard in the face as hard as he could. The Jomsviking pitched backward head over heels into the half foot of water on the floor. Conn wheeled toward the others.

  "We take everybody. All, or none."

  Aslak was grinning at him. The other men shifted a little, glaring down at Havard, who sat up.

  "Look. I was just—"

  "Shut up," Aslak said. "Let's get moving. This ship is sinking."

  It's in the nature of the hero to seek out the greatest challenge, to try himself against the ultimate adversary. Staring defeat in the face Conn refuses to submit, and now he stands defiant of death itself. The situation is hopeless, but he will not yield, and the Jomsvikings are all a little awed at his passionate courage. They make a raft and try to escape.

  In the slow-gathering dark they tied spars together into a square, and bound sails over it. The rain held off. On the raft they laid the ten wounded men who could not move by themselves, and the other men swam behind the raft to push it.

  The icy water gripped them. They left the sinking ships behind them. At first they moved steadily along but after a while men started to lag behind, to drag on the raft. Havard cried, "Keep up!" Across the way someone tried to climb onto the spars and the men beside him pulled him back.

  Next to Conn, Aslak said, "We'll never make it." He was gasping; he laid his head down on the spar a moment. Conn knew it was true. He was exhausted, he could barely kick his legs. Aslak lost his grip, and Conn reached out and grabbed hold of him until the Jomsviking could get his hands back to the spar.

  Raef said, breathless, "There's a skerry—"

  "Go," Conn said.

  The skerry was only a bare rock rising just above the surface of the bay. They hauled and kicked and dragged the raft into the low waves lapping it. The rock was slippery and it took all Conn's strength to haul Finn up off the raft. Raef dragged Aslak after them and above the waterline they lay down on the rock, and instantly Conn was asleep.

  Hail fell again in the night. Conn woke, and crawled over to Finn, to protect him from the worst of it. After the brief crash abruptly stopped he realized that the body under him was as cold as the rock.

  He thought of the other dead—of pop-eyed Gorm, and Odd, whose sister he had loved once, and Skeggi and Bjorn, Sigurd and Rugr—he remembered how only the night before, they were all alive, speaking of the battle to come, how its fame and theirs would ring around the world until the end of time—now who would even remember their names, when all those who knew them were dead with them? The battle might be a long-told story but the men were already forgotten.

  He would remember. But he would be dead soon himself. Hakon had beaten him. He put his face against the cold stone and shut his eye
s.

  In many ways the hero is in love with death, the final challenge, the battle nobody wins. The hero's life is a search for the great, defining fight, the clash that will prove him at last to be one over all, and death is the only worthy adversary. In his struggles he often deals death around him, so he's both death's opponent, and death's ambassador. He is familiar and comfortable with death. It's living on after failure he cannot abide, defeat and submission he cannot tolerate.

  And of course Hakon has not beaten Conn here. If you want to know how it comes out, read the story, and my novel Varanger (Forge Books, 2010) that follows Conn and Raef into Russia and south to the Black Sea, to do battle with the Byzantines themselves.

  Taking a Stab

  at Writing Sword and Sorcery

  Ian C. Esslemont

  co-creator of the world of Malaz

  Let’s face it: we writers of the fantastic (heroic sword and sorcery in particular) face the extraordinarily difficult task of establishing an entire new world for the reader. How to convey all the teeming details and information we have in mind? The temptation to jam in everything can be overwhelming. My purpose here is to argue against this ‘telling’ impulse.

  As a fellow writer and participant in various writing workshops, one of the most common traps I see in the writing of our genre, aspiring and veteran, is this irresistible urge to stuff one’s story with all the amassed background particulars of one’s world-building plans. All this history, geography, philosophy, and politics is of course what we call ‘exposition,’ or expository, prose. Simply put, it is the direct telling of information to the reader. More or less contrasting to this category of prose is what is called ‘dramatizing.’ Dramatization refers to all the work put into creating an actual physical scene for the reader to inhabit where the story, the drama, is enacted. Creating this dream experience of inhabiting another world is of course our main goal as fantasists, but relying too much on exposition (‘telling’ information), rather than dramatization (‘showing’ scenes), is not the way to achieve it. This is true for all writing but is especially important for heroic fantasy where visceral ‘bloody’ sensual evocation and participation is of course one main goal.