The Brothers Lionheart

by Astrid Lindgren

  “Not yet, Rusky,” said Jonathan. “Tonight, when darkness has fallen, I’ll give you every drop. But not before.”

  For a long while he sat there quite still and dispirited, but in the end he said:

  “It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack, I know. But we must try, all the same.”

  “Try what?” I said.

  “To find out where Katla got out,” he said.

  Though I could see he didn’t really believe in it himself.

  “If we had a year,” he said. “Then we might. But we’ve got only a day.”

  Just as he was saying it, something happened. In the narrow crevice where we were sitting, a few bushes were growing at the far end by the mountain wall, and out of those bushes a terrified fox suddenly appeared, slunk past us, and was gone almost before we had time to see him.

  “Where on earth did that fox come from?” said Jonathan. “I must find out.”

  He vanished behind the bushes. I stayed where I was, waiting, but he was so long and so quiet, I grew uneasy in the end.

  “Where are you, Jonathan?” I cried.

  And then I really got an answer. He sounded quite wild.

  “Do you know where that fox came from? From inside the mountain! Do you see, Rusky, from inside Katla Mountain! There’s a big cave in there.”

  Perhaps everything had already been decided in the ancient days of the sagas. Perhaps Jonathan had been named as Orvar’s savior even then, for the sake of Wild Rose Valley. And perhaps there were even some secret saga-beings who guided our footsteps without knowing it. Otherwise how could Jonathan have found a way into Katla Cavern precisely where we had happened to put our horses? It was just as strange as when among all the houses in Wild Rose Valley, I happened to find Mathias’s and none either.

  Katla’s exit from Katla Cavern; that must be what Jonathan had found; we could not believe otherwise. It was a passage straight into the mountainside, not at all large, but large enough for a starving female dragon to make her way along, said Jonathan, if she had awakened after thousands of years and found her usual path closed by a copper gate.

  And large enough for us. I stared into the dark hole. How many sleeping dragons would there be in there, who would wake if you went in and happened to step on them? That was what I wondered.

  Then I felt Jonathan’s arm around my shoulders.

  “Rusky,” he said. “I don’t know what’s waiting in there in the dark, but I’m going in there now.”

  Jonathan stroked my cheek with his forefinger, as he used to do sometimes.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to wait here with the horses?”

  “Haven’t I told you that wherever you go, I go, too?” I said.

  “Yes, you told me that,” said Jonathan, and he sounded quite glad.

  “Because I want to be with you,” I said. “Even if it’s in an underground hell.”

  Katla Cavern was an underground hell. Creeping along that black hole was like creeping through an evil, black dream which you cannot wake up from; like going from sunlight into eternal night.

  The whole of Katla Cavern was nothing but a dead old dragon’s nest, I thought, reeking of wickedness from ancient times. No doubt thousands of dragon’s eggs had been hatched out there, and cruel dragons had crawled out in hordes to kill everything in their way.

  An old dragon’s nest was just the kind of place Tengil would think of as suitable for a prison. I shivered when I thought of everything he had done to people in here. The air seemed to me to be thick with old dried wickedness, whisperings from far away inside the cave, which seemed to be about all the torment and tears and death which Katla Cavern had experienced during Tengil’s reign. I wanted to ask Jonathan if he could hear the whisperings too, but I didn’t, because I was probably imagining them.

  “Now, Rusky, we’re going on a walk that you’ll never forget,” said Jonathan.

  It was true. We had to get right through the mountain to reach the prison cave where Orvar was just inside the copper gate. It was that cave that people meant when they spoke of Katla Cavern, Jonathan said, because they didn’t know of any other cave. We didn’t even really know whether it would be possible to reach underground. But we knew that the way there was going to be a long one, for we had walked that stretch before up on the mountain, and it would be seven times worse making our way down here though dark rambling passages, with only the light from the torches we had with us.

  Oh, how terrible it was to see the torchlight flickering over the cave walls, only lighting up a little of the great darkness around us, and so everything outside the light seemed even more dangerous. Who knows, I thought, perhaps there were dragons and serpents and monsters galore lying in wait for us in their dark caves. I was also frightened that we would lose our way in the passages, but Jonathan made black soot marks with his torch as we went on so that we could find our way back.

  Walk, Jonathan had said, but we didn’t do much walking. We crept and crawled and climbed and swam and jumped and clambered and struggled and toiled and fell, that’s what we did. What a walk! And what caves! Sometimes we came to huge caverns so vast that we could see no end to them, except for the echo which told us what huge rooms they were. Sometimes we had to go through places where you couldn’t even stand up but had to crawl on your stomach like any other dragon. Sometimes the way was barred by underground streams which we had to swim across. And worst of all, sometimes great gaping chasms appeared at our feet. I nearly fell into one of these. I was carrying the torch and I tripped, dropping the torch. We saw it falling like a stream of fire, farther and farther and farther down, until at last it disappeared, and we were left in the dark, the worst and darkest darkness in the world. I dared not move or talk or even think I tried to forget that I existed, standing there in the black darkness on the edge of a chasm. But I heard Jonathan’s voice beside me. He lit the other torch we had with us, meanwhile talking to me, talking and talking quite calmly, so that I wouldn’t go mad with terror I suppose.

  So we toiled on, for how long I don’t know, for in the depths of Katla Cavern there was no time. It seemed as if we had been wandering around for an eternity, and I began to fear that we wouldn’t get there until it was too late. Perhaps it was too late already, perhaps darkness had already fallen out there, and Orvar...perhaps he was with Katla now?

  I asked Jonathan if he thought so too.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But don’t think about it now if you don’t want to go mad.

  We had come to a narrow, twisting path, which never seemed to come to an end, but simply grew narrower and more confined, bit by bit, shrinking in height and width until we could hardly go on, and finally it became just a hole into which you had to crawl to get through.

  But on the other side of the hole we were suddenly in a large cavern, how large we couldn’t tell, for the light from the torch did not reach very far. But Jonathan tested the echo.

  “Ho-ho-ho,” he called, and we heard the echo replying “ho-ho-ho” many times in many different directions.

  But then we heard something else, another voice far away in the dark.

  “Ho-ho-ho,” it mocked. “What do you want, you who come in such strange ways with torches and light?”

  “I’m looking for Orvar,” said Jonathan.

  “Orvar is here,” said the voice. “And who are you?”

  “I am Jonathan Lionheart,” said Jonathan. “And with me is my brother, Karl Lionheart. We’ve come to save you, Orvar.”

  “Too late,” said the voice. “Too late, but thanks all the same.”

  Hardly had the words been uttered when we heard the copper gate opening with a screech. Jonathan threw down his torch and stamped on it so that it went out; then we stood still and waited.

  Through the gateway came a Tengilman with a lantern in his hand. I began to cry silently to myself, not because I was afraid, but for Orvar’s sake. How could things be so cruel that they were coming to take him away at this very m
oment!

  “Orvar from Wild Rose Valley, prepare yourself,” said the Tengilman. “In a moment you’ll be taken to Katla. The black escorts are on their way.”

  In the light of the lantern, we could see a large wooden cage made of rough timbers, and we realized that inside that cage, Orvar was imprisoned like an animal.

  The Tengilman put the lantern down on the ground by the cage.

  “You may have a lantern for your last hour. In his mercy, Tengil has decided that, so that you will get used to the light again and be able to see Katla when you meet her, which I’m sure you want to.”

  He cackled with laughter and then vanished through the gate, which fell back behind him with a crash.

  By then we were already up to the cage and Orvar, and we could see him in the light of the lantern, a wretched sight, as he could hardly move, but he crawled up to the bars and stretched out his hands toward us through the timbers.

  “Jonathan Lionheart,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you at home in Wild Rose Valley. And now you’re come here.”

  “Yes, now I’ve come here,” said Jonathan, and then I heard that he too was crying a little because of Orvar and his wretchedness. But then he whipped out the knife he kept in his belt and began hacking at the cage.

  “Come on, Rusky! Help, now,” he said, and I hacked with my knife too, though what could we do with two knives? What we needed was an ax and saw.

  But we hacked away with our knives until our hands were bleeding. We hacked and wept, for we knew we had come too late. Orvar knew it too, but perhaps he wished to believe that it wasn’t true, for he was panting with excitement inside his cage, mumbling now and again:

  “Hurry! Hurry!”

  We hurried so that the blood ran. We hacked away wildly, every moment expecting the gate to open and the black escorts to come in. Then the end would have come for Orvar and for us and for the whole of Wild Rose Valley.

  They won’t be fetching only one, I thought. Katla will have three tonight.

  I felt that I couldn’t endure much more; my hands were shaking so that I could hardly hold the knife, and Jonathan was shouting with rage, rage against those timbers that would not give way, however much we hacked at them. He kicked them, shouted and kicked and hacked again and kicked again, and then at last there was a crash—at last one timber gave way. And then another. It was enough.

  “Now, Orvar, now!” said Jonathan, but there was nothing but a gasp in reply. So Jonathan crawled into the cage and pulled out Orvar, who could neither stand nor walk. Neither could I, almost, by then, but I reeled ahead of them with the lantern, and Jonathan began to drag Orvar away toward our rescue hole. He was tired now and panting, too; yes, we were panting like hunted animals, all three of us, which was exactly what we felt like, too; at last I did.

  However he managed it, Jonathan succeeded in dragging Orvar right across the cavern, squeezing into the hole and in some amazing way taking Orvar with him, now more dead than alive, as I felt then, too. Now it was my turn to creep through the hole, but I didn’t get that far, for then we heard the screech of the gate and it was as if all the energy ran out of me and I couldn’t move at all.

  “Quick, quick, the lantern!” gasped Jonathan, and I handed it to him, although my hands were shaking. The lantern had to be hidden; the slightest glimmer would betray us.

  The black escorts—they were already in the cavern, and more Tengilmen with lanterns in their hands. It grew terrifyingly light, but over in our corner it was dark and Jonathan bent down and grabbed my arms and pulled me through the hole into that dark passage behind, and there we lay, all three of us panting and listening to their cries.

  “He’s gone! He’s gone!”

  Chapter 14

  That night we carried Orvar through hell. Jonathan did. He dragged Orvar through hell; there was no other way of describing it. I only managed to drag myself, and only just that.

  “He’s gone! He’s gone!” they had cried, and when silence fell, we expected them to pursue us, but they didn’t. Yet even Tengilmen must have been able to reckon that there was a way out of Katla Cavern through which we had gone, and that wouldn’t have been all that difficult to find. But they were cowardly, the Tengilmen, daring to face the enemy when in a herd, but not daring to be the first to crawl into a narrow passageway where an unknown enemy was lying in wait. No, they must have been too cowardly, for otherwise why had they let us get away so easily? No one had ever escaped from Katla Cavern before, and how would they explain Orvar’s flight to Tengil, I wondered? But that was their problem; we had quite enough of our own. Not until we had dragged ourselves through the long narrow passageway did we dare stop for a while to get our breathe back, which we had to for Orvar’s sake. Jonathan gave him goat’s milk, which was sour, and bread, which was wet, but even so, Orvar said:

  “I’ve never had a better meal.”

  Jonathan rubbed Orvar’s long legs to bring some life back into them and be began to revive, though the couldn’t walk, only crawl.

  Jonathan told him which way we had to go, and asked him if he still wanted to go on that night.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said Orvar. “I’ll crawl all the way home to Wild Rose Valley if necessary. I don’t want to lie here waiting for Tengil’s bloodhounds to come howling along the passageways after us.”

  It was already noticeable who he was; no subdued prisoner, but a rebel and freedom fighter, Orvar of Wild Rose Valley. When I saw his eyes in the light of the lantern, I understood why Tengil was afraid of him. Weak though he was now, he had a kind of burning fire inside him, and it was probably that fire which carried him through that night of hell, for all of the nights in the whole world, none could have been worse.

  It seemed like an eternity, full or terrors, but when you’re sufficiently exhausted, you don’t worry about anything, not even whether there are bloodhounds after you; yes, we did hear the hounds coming, howling and baying, but I hadn’t the energy to be afraid. Anyhow, they soon fell silent, for not even bloodhounds dared penetrate far into the depths where we were crawling.

  We crawled along for a long, long time, and when we eventually came out into the daylight by Grim and Fyalar, battered and sore, bloodstained and soaked to the skin, almost dead with exhaustion, the night was over and the morning already there. Orvar stretched out his arms as if embracing the earth and the sky and everything he could see, but then his arms fell and he was asleep. We sank into a coma, all three of us, and we were unconscious until it was almost evening. Then I awoke. It was Fyalar nudging me with his nose He no doubt that I had slept long enough.

  Jonathan was also awake.

  “We must get out of Karmanyaka before dark,” he said. “After dark; we won’t be able to find the way.”

  He woke Orvar, and when Orvar came to life and sat up and looked around and realized he was no longer in Katla Cavern, tears came into his eyes.

  “Free,” he mumbled. “Free.”

  He took Jonathan’s hands and held them in his for a long time. “My life and my freedom—you’ve given them back to me,” he said, and he thanked me too, although I had done nothing and had mostly been in the way.

  Orvar must have felt much as I had when I was released from all pain and had come to Cherry Valley. I longed for him to reach his valley alive and free, but we weren’t there yet. We were still in the mountains of Karmanyaka, now probably seething with Tengil’s soldiers searching for him. It was fortunate enough that they hadn’t found us sleeping in our crevice.

  We sat there eating the last of our bread, and after a while Orvar said:

  “Just think, I’m alive! I’m alive and free!”

  For he alone of the prisoners in Katla Cavern was alive; all the others had been sacrificed one by one to Katla.

  “But you can trust Tengil,” said Orvar. “Believe me, he’ll see to it that Katla Cavern isn’t empty for long.”

  Again tears came into his eyes.

  “Oh, Wild Rose Valley of mine,” he said, “h
ow much longer will you have to sigh under Tengil?”

  He wanted to know everything that had happened in the valleys of Nangiyala during his imprisonment; about Sofia and Mathias and everything Jonathan had done. Jonathan told him about Jossi too. I thought Orvar would die then, right in front of our eyes, when he heard that he had suffered for so long in Katla Cavern because of Jossi. There was a long pause before he pulled himself together and could speak again, and then he said:

  “My life means nothing. But what Jossi has done to Wild Rose Valley can never be expiated or forgiven.”

  “Forgiven or not, he’s probably been punished by now,” said Jonathan. “I don’t think you’ll ever see Jossi again.”

  But rage had fallen over Orvar. he wanted to leave, it was almost as if he wished to start the struggle for freedom that very evening, and he swore at his legs because they carried him so badly, though he tried and tried and at last succeeded in getting up on them. He was quite proud when he was able to show us that, and he was certainly a sight as he stood there, swaying backward and forward as if he might be blown over any moment. We had to smile as we watched him.

  “Orvar,” said Jonathan. “Anyone can see from a long way that you’re a prisoner from Katla Cavern.”

  It was true. All three of us were blood-stained and dirty, but Orvar looked the worst, his clothes in rags and his face scarcely visible what with his beard and hair. Only his eyes were visible, his strange, burning eyes.

  There was a stream running through our crevice, so we rinsed all the dirt and blood off us there. I dipped my face into the cold water, again and again. It was wonderful; we felt that we were rinsing away the whole of Katla Cavern.

  Then Orvar borrowed my knife and cut off a lot of his beard and hair, so that he looked less like an escaped prisoner, and Jonathan took out of his pack the Tengil helmet and cloak that had got him out of Wild Rose Valley.

  “Here, Orvar, put these on,” he said. “Then perhaps they’ll think you’re a Tengilman who has taken two prisoners and you’re on your way somewhere with them.”