The Brothers Lionheart

by Astrid Lindgren

  “You two, you are our comfort and our hope, you are all we have,” they said when they came creeping to Mathias’s house in the evenings, although they knew how dangerous it was.

  “Because they want to hear about the storm of liberation just as children want to hear sagas,” said Mathias.

  The day of the battle was the only thing they thought about or longed for now. This was not all that strange, for after Orvar’s escape, Tengil had grown crueller than ever, every day finding new ways of tormenting and punishing Wild Rose Valley, which was why they hated him even more passionately than before and why even more weapons were being forged in the valley.

  From Cherry Valley, more and more freedom fighters came to help. Sofia and Hubert had an army camp in the deepest depths of the forest, near Elfrida. Sofia sometimes came through the underground passage at night, and in Mathias’s kitchen they made their battle plans, she and Orvar and Jonathan.

  I lay there, listening to them, as I was sleeping on the sofa-bed in the kitchen, now that Orvar needed a place in the hideout. Every time Sofia came, she said:

  “Here’s my savior! I didn’t forget to thank you, did I, Karl?”

  Then Orvar said each time that I was the hero of Wild Rose Valley, but I could only think about Jossi out in the dark waters and feel sad.

  Sofia also arranged for a supply of bread for Wild Rose Valley. It was brought over the mountains from Cherry Valley in wagons and was smuggled through the underground passage. Mathias went around with a pack on his back and in secret, shared it among the houses. I hadn’t known before that people could be made so happy with nothing but a little bit of bread. Now I saw it, because I went with Mathias on his walks, and I saw how the people in the valley were suffering and I heard them talk about the battle they were longing for so much.

  I was frightened of that day, and yet I almost began to long for it in the end, I too, for it was unbearable to go on waiting, and dangerous, Jonathan said.

  “You can’t keep so much so secret for so long,” he said to Orvar. “Our dream of liberation could be crushed so easily.”

  He was certainly right in that. It needed only one Tengilman to find that underground passage, or a renewed search of houses, for Jonathan and Orvar to be discovered in the hideout. I shuddered at the very thought of it.

  But the Tengilmen must have been both blind and deaf, or they would surely have noticed something. If they had listened just a little, they would have been able to hear how that storm of liberation was beginning to rumble, the storm that was soon going to shake the whole of Wild Rose Valley. But they didn’t.

  The night before the day of the battle, I was lying in my sofa-bed, unable to sleep because of the storm outside, and because of my own anxiety. It had been decided hat the battle would start at dawn the next morning. Orvar and Jonathan and Mathias were sitting at the table talking about it, and I was lying there listening. Orvar spoke the most; he talked and talked, his eyes glowing. he was longing for the morning more than anyone else.

  This was how it was to go, as far as I could make out from their talk. the guards at the main gateway and the river gateway were to be struck down first, so that the gates could be opened for Sofia and Hubert, who would then ride in with their forces, Sofia through the main gateway, Hubert through the river gateway.

  “And then we must be victorious together, or die,” said Orvar.

  It must go quickly, he said. The valley must be freed of all Tengilmen and the gateways close again before Tengil had time to bring Katla, for there were no weapons against Katla. She could not be defeated in any other way except starvation, Orvar said.

  “Neither spears nor arrows nor swords affect her,” he said. “And one tiny lick of her fire is enough to paralyze or kill anyone.”

  “But if Tengil has Katla over there in his mountains, what’s the use of liberating Wild Rose Valley?” I said. “With her, he can suppress you again, just as he did the first time.”

  “He has given us a wall to protect us, don’t forget that,” said Orvar. “And the gateways that can be shut against monsters. Kind man that he is.”

  I need no longer worry about Tengil, Orvar said, for in the evening he and Jonathan, Sofia and some others were to penetrate into Tengil’s castle, overwhelm his guard and finish him off there, before he was even aware of the rebellion in the valley. Then Katla would be chained up in her cave until she grew so weak and starved that they could kill her.

  “There’s no other way of getting rid of such a monster,” said Orvar.

  Then he again spoke of how swiftly they must rid the valley of all Tengilmen, and Jonathan said:

  “Rid? You mean kill?”

  “Yes, what else would I mean?” said Orvar.

  “But I can’t kill anyone,” said Jonathan. “You know that, Orvar.”

  “Not even if it’s a question of your own life?” said Orvar.

  “No, not even then,” said Jonathan.

  Orvar couldn’t understand that, and neither could Mathias.

  “If everyone were like you,” said Orvar, “then evil would reign forever.”

  But then I said that if everyone were like Jonathan, there wouldn’t be any evil.

  Then I didn’t say anything else, for the rest of the evening, except when Mathias came and tucked me in. Then I whispered to him:

  “I’m frightened, Mathias.”

  Mathias patted me and said:

  “So am I.”

  All the same Jonathan had to promise Orvar that he would ride around in the confusion of the battle to give other people the courage to do what he himself could not or would not do.

  “The people of Wild Rose Valley must see you,” said Orvar. “They must see both of us.”

  Then Jonathan said:

  “Well, if I must, I must.”

  But I saw how pale he was in the light of the one little candle in the kitchen.

  We had to leave Grim and Fyalar in the forest with Elfrida, when we had come back from Katla Cavern. But it had been decided that Sofia was to bring them with her when she rode through the main gate on the day of the battle.

  What I was to do had also been decided. I was to do nothing, only wait until it was all over. Jonathan had said that. I was to sit all alone at home in the kitchen and wait.

  No one slept much that night.

  Then the morning came.

  Yes, then the morning came and, with it, the day of the battle. Oh, how sick at heart I was that day! I saw and heard more than enough of blood and cries, for they were fighting on the slopes below Mathias’s house. I saw Jonathan riding around, the storm tearing at his hair, and all about him nothing but fighting and flashing swords and whistling spears and flying arrows and cries and cries; and I said to Fyalar, if Jonathan dies, then I want to die too.

  Yes, Fyalar was with me in the kitchen. I had thought of not telling anyone about it, but I had to have him there. I couldn’t be alone, I just couldn’t. Fyalar also looked out of the window at what was happened on the slopes below. Then he whinnied. I didn’t know whether that was because he wished to join Grim or whether he was as frightened as I was.

  I was frightened, frightened, frightened.

  I saw Veder fall to Sofia’s spear, and Kader die by Orvar’s sword, Dodik too, and several more, falling right and left, and Jonathan riding there in the middle of it all, the storm tearing at his hair, his face growing paler and paler, and my heart grew more and more sick within me.

  And then the end came!

  Many cries were heard in Wild Rose Valley that day, but one came that was like no other.

  In the middle of the battle, a battlehorn sounded through the storm and a cry went up:

  “Katla’s coming!”

  Then the scream, Katla’s scream of hunger, which everyone knew so well. Swords and spears and arrows fell to the ground and they who were fighting could fight no more, for they knew there was no saving them now. Nothing but the thunder of her storm and Tengil’s battlehorn and Katla’s screa
ms could be heard in the valley, and then Katla’s fire hissed out, killing everyone whom Tengil pointed at. he pointed and pointed, and his cruel face was dark with evil; now I knew that the end of Wild Rose Valley had come.

  I didn’t want to look, I didn’t want to look—at anything. Except Jonathan. I had to know where he was, and I saw him just below Mathias’s house, sitting there on Grim, pale and still, the storm tearing at his hair.

  “Jonathan,” I cried. “Jonathan, can you hear me?”

  But he didn’t hear me and I saw him spur on his horse and fly down the slope like an arrow, flying faster than anyone in heaven or on earth had ever flown, I know. He was flying toward Tengil...and he flew past him...

  Then the battlehorn sounded again, but it was Jonathan who was blowing it now. He had snatched it out of Tengil’s hand and was blowing it so that it resounded, so that Katla should know that she had a new master.

  Then it was quite quiet, even the storm was dying down. Everyone fell silent, just waiting. Tengil was sitting taut with fear on his horse, waiting. Katla was waiting too.

  Once again Jonathan blew on the horn.

  Then Katla screamed and turned in rage on the man she had once obeyed so blindly.

  “Tengil’s time will come one day,” Jonathan had said, I remembered.

  It had come now.

  That was the end of the day of battle in Wild Rose Valley. Many people had given their lives for the sake of freedom. Yes, their valley was free now, but the dead were lying there and did not know it.

  Mathias was dead and I no longer had a grandfather. Hubert was dead, the first to fall. He had never even got through the river gateway, because there he had met Tengil and his soldiers; and worst of all, he had met Katla. Tengil had brought her with him that very day to punish Wild Rose Valley for the last time for Orvar’s escape. He had not known it was the day of battle, though when he realized it, no doubt he had been glad Katla was with him.

  But he was dead now, Tengil, just as dead as the others.

  “Our tormentor is no more,” said Orvar. “Our children will be able to live in freedom and be happy. Soon Wild Rose Valley will be as before.

  Chapter 16

  No, Jonathan didn’t kill Katla. Karm did. And Katla killed Karm. In front of our very eyes. We saw it. No one else but Jonathan and I had seen two monsters from ancient times destroy each other. We saw them fight to their deaths in Karma Falls.

  When Katla let our that scream and disappeared, at first we could not believe it. It was impossible to believe that she was really gone. Where she had sunk, we saw nothing but whirling foam. Nothing more. No Katla.

  But then we saw the serpent. He raised his green head out of the foam and his tail whipped up the water. Oh, he was terrible, a giant serpent, as long as the river is wide, just as Elfrida had said.

  The sea serpent of Karma Falls that she had heard sagas about when she was small was no more a saga than Katla. He existed and was a monster as horrible as Katla herself, his head swaying in all directions, searching...and then he saw Katla. She floated up out of the depths and was suddenly in the middle of the whirlpools, and the serpent threw himself headlong at her and coiled himself around her. She spurted her death-dealing fire at him, but he squeezed so hard that the fire went out in her breast. Then she snapped at him and he snapped back. They snapped and bit, both of them wanting to kill. I suppose they had longed for this since ancient times. Yes, they snapped and bit like two raging creatures, hurling their terrible bodies at each other in the swirling water, Katla screaming between bites, Karm snapping quite silently, black dragon blood and green serpent blood floating out into the white foam, coloring it dark and sickly.

  How long did it go on? It seemed to me as if I had stood there on that path for a thousand years and had never seen anything else but those two raging monsters in their ultimate battle.

  It was a long and terrible battle, but it came to an end at last. A piercing shriek came from Katla, her death cry, and then she was silent. Karm had no head left by then, but his body did not let her go and they sank together, closely intertwined, down into the depths. And then there was no Katla and no Karm; they were gone as if they had never existed. The foam was white again, and the poisonous monster blood was rinsed away by the mighty waters of Karma Falls. Everything was as before, as it had been since ancient times.

  We stood gasping there on the path, although it was all over. We could not speak for a long while, but at last Jonathan said:

  “We must leave! Quickly! It’ll be dark soon and I don’t want night to fall on us in Karmanyaka.”

  Poor Grim and Fyalar. I don’t know how we got them to their feet or how we got away. They were so tired they could hardly life their legs.

  But we left Karmanyaka and rode for the last time across the bridge. Then the horses could no take another step. As soon as we reached the other side of the bridge, they sunk down and just lay there, as if they were thinking, now that we’ve helped you into Nangiyala, that’ll have to do.

  “We’ll make a campfire at our old place,” said Jonathan, meaning the cliff here we had been during the thunderstorm night, when I had seen Katla for the first time. I still shuddered when I thought about it, and I would have preferred to camp elsewhere. But we couldn’t go any farther now.

  The horses had to be watered first before we could settle down for the night. We gave them some, but they didn’t want to drink. They were too tired. I was worried.

  “Jonathan, there’s something peculiar about them,” I said. “Do you think they’ll be better after some sleep?”

  “Yes, everything will be better when they’ve had some sleep,” said Jonathan.

  I patted Fyalar, who was lying with his eyes closed.

  “What a day you’ve had, poor Fyalar,” I said. “But tomorrow, everything will be all right, Jonathan says.”

  We built a fire on exactly the same place where we had made our first one, and the thunderstorm cliff was indeed the best place you could think of for a campfire, if only you could forget that Karmanyaka was so near. Behind us there were high mountain walls, still warm from the sun, and shelter from all winds. In front of us, the precipice fell straight down into Karma Falls, and the side nearest the bridge was also a steep slope down toward a green meadow, which from here looked like a tiny green speck, far, far below.

  We sat by our fire and watched dusk fall over the mountains of The Ancient Mountains and the river of The Ancient Rivers. I was tired and thought that I had never lived through such a long hard day in my life. From dawn to dusk, there had been nothing but blood and fear and death. There are adventures that shouldn’t happen, Jonathan had once said, and we had had more than enough of that kind that day. The day of the battle—it had indeed been long and hard, but now it was over at last.

  Yes our grief had not ended. I thought about Mathias. I grieved for him very much, and as we sat by the fire, I asked Jonathan:

  “Where do you think Mathias is now?”

  “He’s in Nangilima,” said Jonathan.

  “Nangilima, I’ve never heard of that,” I said.

  “Yes, you have,” said Jonathan. “Don’t you remember that morning when I left Cherry Valley and you were so afraid? Don’t you remember what I said then? ‘If I don’t come back, we’ll meet in Nangilima’ That’s where Mathias is now.”

  Then he told me about Nangilima. He hadn’t told me stories for a long time because we had had no time. But now as he sat by the fire and talked about Nangilima, it was almost as if he were sitting on the edge of my sofa-bed at home in town.

  “In Nangilima...in Nangilima,” said Jonathan in that voice he always used when he was telling stories. “It’s still in the days of campfires and sagas there.”

  “Poor Mathias, so there are adventures there that shouldn’t happen,” I said.

  But Jonathan said that Nangilima was not in the day of cruel sagas but in days that were happy and full of games. The people played there; they worked, too, of course, a
nd helped each other with everything, but they played a lot and sang and danced and told stories, he said. “Sometimes they scared the children with terribly cruel sagas about monsters like Karm and Katla and about cruel men like Tengil. But afterward they laughed.

  “Were you afraid, then?” they said to the children. “They’re only sagas. Things that have never existed here. Not here in our valleys, at least.”

  Mathias was happy in Nangilima, Jonathan said. He had an old farm in Apple Valley, the most beautiful farm in the loveliest and greenest of Nangilima’s valleys.

  “Soon it’ll be time to pick the apples in his orchard,” said Jonathan. “Then we should be there to help him. He’s too old to climb ladders.”

  “I almost wish we could go there,” I said. I thought it sounded so pleasant in Nangilima and I longed to see Mathias again.

  “Do you think so?” said Jonathan. “Well, we could live with Mathias. At Mathias Farm in Apple Valley in Nangilima.”

  “Tell me what it would be like,” I said.

  “Oh, it’d be fine,” said Jonathan. “Well, we could ride around in the forests and build campfires here and there—if only you knew what the forests around the Nangilima valleys were like! And deep in the forests lie small clear lakes. We could build a campfire by a different lake every evening and be away for days and nights and then go back home to Mathias again.”

  “And help him with the apples,” I said. “But then Sofia and Orvar would have to look after Cherry Valley and Wild Rose Valley without you, Jonathan.”

  “Well, why not?” said Jonathan. “Sofia and Orvar don’t need me and longer. They can put things right for themselves in their valleys.”

  But then he fell silent and told no more stories. We were silent, both of us, and I was tired and not at all happy. It was no comfort to hear about Nangilima, which was so far away from us.

  Dusk grew deeper and deeper and the mountains blacker and blacker. Great black birds swayed above us and cried so dismally that everything seemed desolate. Karma Falls was thundering away and I was tired of hearing it. It made me remember what I wanted to forget. Sad, sad, everything was, and I’ll never be happy again, I thought.