by Glen Cook
Bragi and Yselda covered most of the distance to the wizard's camp before nightfall. Yselda had ridden silently the afternoon long, eyes always on the northman. He grew wary of the hungers he saw there. He had his own desires, and one of the strongest was to avoid antagonizing Aristithorn.
But there was no avoiding the trap—all too well did the woman know how to bait it. Bragi was a long time getting to sleep. And rode with guilt next morning. He was surprised when the wizard greeted him pleasantly.
"Hai!" the old man cried when they rode up. "So Norton can be beaten. Wonderful—wonderful—wonderful! Hello, my dear. Did you have a pleasant journey?"
"Indeed I did, Thorny," she replied, sighing. "Indeed I did."
A suspicious look passed across Aristithorn's face, but he was too eager to waste time worrying. "Thank you, thank you," he said to Bragi. "I hope you did well too."
Grinning, the northman held up a sack with the mark of the Itaskian Treasury.
"Ah, good. My friend, you've helped an old man beyond all hope of repayment. If you ever need a friend, drop by my castle in Necremnos. It's the one with the chained chimeras guarding the gates and the howls coming from inside—I suppose I'll give that up, now I'm retiring. Drop by any time. I've got to go. The silence will end when I do. One more magick, then I'll get to the business of renouncing my vows."
The wizard was so excited he flubbed his incantation three times. The fourth, while Bragi watched, saw woman, sorcerer, cart, and two donkeys vanishing in a fearsome cloud of smoke.
Shrugging the affair off as profitable and amusing, but of no great import, Bragi returned to Itaskia. He stopped by the Red Hart Inn for a stoop with old friends.
But the story did not end so easily. Bragi found himself outlawed for his part in the affair. Off he went, on an adventure into Freyland where he planned to liberate a fortune said to be lying in the heart of a certain mountain. The treasure he found—and the dragon guarding it. The worm won the ensuing battle handily.
The singed northman, outlawed all along the western coast, decided to impose upon Aristithorn's hospitality. The wizard welcomed him warmly, immediately took him to see his children. Yselda had recently given birth to a pair of sturdy little blond, blue-eyed sons.
Innocently, Bragi asked, "How old are they?"
"Two months," Yselda replied. Confirmation of his suspicions was in her face.
Aristithorn said something about it being time to feed the vampires in the basement. He shuffled off. Bragi and Yselda went for a walk in the garden.
"Is he the man he claimed?" the northman asked.
"Indeed! A one-man army on that battlefield. There's a problem, though. He abstained so long he can't father children. He doesn't know, I'm sure." A strange light twinkled in the Princess's eyes as she added, "It's a pity. He wants more children. So do I, but I just don't know how we'll manage . . . ."
"If I can be of any help . . . ."
Deep in the dungeons, Aristithorn hummed to himself as he tossed wriggling mice to his vampire bats while watching a garden scene in a magical mirror . . . .
He'd lied when he said he was retiring.
Celibacy has nothing to do with his kind of magic.
He'd known of his sterility.
Trust a wizard no more than a King. They're all chess players.
Finding Svale's Daughter
After completing two vast, never published, lethally influenced by Tolkien, Eddison, and the Victorian fantasists, inscribed in a nineteenth-century writing style trilogies, I became intrigued by the simple storytelling of folk tales. I was especially fond of the folklore of Norway. That became a powerful influence in the creation of both Bragi Ragnarson and his native Trolledyngja. The first few centuries after Norway's at-point-of-sword conversion to Christianity gave rise to many interesting tales as the Old Gods receded—much more slowly in the mountains and remote provinces, naturally. The Old Ones lived on as lesser, wicked supernatural beings. The Oskorei is sometimes identified with the Aesir. A character type identifiable as Thor can be found in tales as late as the first half of the twentieth-century—though the Thunderer has been demoted all the way to drunken troll.
This story, appearing for the first time, and "Silverheels" later, fit equally well into the Trolledyngja of the Dread Empire world or that of twelth-century Norway.
From small bricks like this, never-to-see-the-light novels like The King of Thunder Mountain and two others would arise—and in their turn provide the soil from which A Shadow of All Night Falling sprang. Nepanthe and the Storm Kings, Varthlokkur and others, had a long, quiet history ere ever they stepped onto the public stage.
Tröndelag was wild country inhabited mainly by trolls and huldre-folk. Hifjell Mountain frowned down on Alstahaug village like a brooding giant. On Hifjell's skirts Dark Wood began, a dense pine forest where wolves prowled and the Hidden People spent summer nights in dances to the wicked Old Gods. Few Alstahaugers were brave enough to climb the mountain. Especially not Svale Skar, the village chieftain.
There was one old man, Ainjar, though, who came and went in Dark Wood. He had courage enough for all the villagers. They believed him almost as brave as the King.
Ainjar had no family save a one-eyed dog name Freki. He made his living hunting in Dark Wood. When he needed something that the forest could not provide he brought furs to town.
Grownups did not trust Ainjar because of the dark places he walked, but their children loved him. He always had time to describe a huldre wedding or trolls brawling by throwing boulders from wall to wall of canyons deep in the mountains. They thought his tales were tall but he told them well.
Svale Skar awaited Ainjar's coming from Dark Wood with deepening dread.
When a lamb or chicken disappeared everyone knew the huldre had been up to mischief and thought little more of it. It was the way of the land and the forest dwellers. But this had been an evil year all round. Right here in Tröndelag, at Stikklestad, there had been a great battle. The King himself had fallen. Before his death he had built bridges and strongholds, had bested giants and trolls, and had driven the wickedest things deep into the mountains or the icy northern wastes. Now he was gone. The new conqueror king, far, far away, had no time to shield his remote new subjects.
The old evils had begun to return.
Sons and daughters and wives had begun to disappear.
Svale's little girl, Frigga, was among the missing.
"Ainjar," he said when the old man finally came down from the mountain, "you wander Dark Wood. You have converse with the huldre-folk. Have you heard anything of my little Frigga?"
The old man's dog regarded him with bared teeth.
No one liked Svale Skar. He was a troublemaker. He always drank too much, then started something.
"Svale, you talk too loud, you brag too much, and you're cruel to your wife and children. The huldre wise would say you deserve your suffering. So you surprise me now, showing this spark of goodness. For the first time in your life, I think, you want to ask something not for your own sake. I'll ponder that while I deliver my furs to Fat Jens."
Ainjar returned from the furrier's with a smaller pack and lighter step. "Svale, I can give you no good news. This evil plagues the Hidden Folk, too. The huldre wise say the Oskorei has returned."
"The Oskorei? The Terrible Host?"
It was an army of evil spirits. The fallen King had banished it northward, to the realms of always cold. Old tales told of the oskoreien raging through the night, astride fire-breathing black stallions whose hooves struck lightning off the sides of mountains, hunting souls unlucky enough not to be safely home by dark. Their hunting horns could still be heard mourning on winter's bitterest northern winds.
"The Wild Hunt!" Svale stammered, frightened. "What can we do?"
Ainjar stared up the dusty path, tugged his ragged gray beard. "I wonder, are there any brave men left? Men like Hatchet-Face Svien, who plundered the Hifjell troll? Somebody who could lay hands on an iron sword?"
Hatchet-Face Svien had lived in nearby Aalmo. Svale often bragged that Alstahaug's cowards were braver than Aalmo's heroes.
His bluff had been called. He owned the only sword in Alstahaug. He had it of his grandfather, whose father had taken it a-reaving in the old days. He had always considered it only a keepsake.
"I have an iron sword."
Ainjar pretended surprise. "Yes? Good. I'll wait here."
Svale was scared but his neighbors had overheard. He got the rusty sword, a blanket, and a bag of food. He could do nothing but shake and stammer Frigga's name when his wife asked where he was going.
A mile into Dark Wood they found a fairy ring. Seven worn, rune-carved stones stood round its edges. Svale thought he saw shadows darting amongst the trees in the twilight.
"I've brought the man," Ainjar said.
Seven old huldre stepped into the circle from behind the standing stones. They were the wise of the Hidden People.
The oldest said, "So. Bold Svale Skar himself. In Dark Wood. Though I live another thousand years, no greater wonder shall I see. We have brought the hulder."
A young hulder entered the circle. He carried a spear with a silver head.
"This is Sköl," said the chieftain. "He's taken a vow not to speak till his son is free."
"We go, then," Ainjar said. "To Thunder Mountain. Fetch me my staff and cloak."
Svale started shaking all over again. Thunder Mountain lay far inland. The ancient stronghold of the Oskorei supposedly lay at its heart.
Ainjar led. Svale followed. Sköl came last. Freki ranged ahead. After four hard days, in forests that Svale thought haunted, they reached the foot of Thunder Mountain.
Svale had thought Dark Wood menacing when seen from Alstahaug, then terrifying once it surrounded him. On Thunder Mountain it was worse. There the forest grew dense as night, up to the snow line, and seemed eager to gulp him up. Wolves called on the mountainside.
"How much farther?" Svale's feet ached. Like most people of his time, he had never before strayed more than a few miles from home.
"To the snow line. Where that small hump sticks out like a nose. And now I must leave you."
"But . . . ."
"But me no buts, Svale Skar. Freki!"
"But . . . ."
"You will know what to do when the time comes."
"But . . . ." He found himself talking to Ainjar's back. And Sköl had started climbing the mountain. He ran to catch up, his sword clanking.
Sköl did not camp with sundown. Huldre-folk were at home with night. But he did slow for Svale's sake.
They heard children and women crying as they neared the hump. The weeping came from a patch of deep darkness. Then there was evil laughter and the sounds of terrible horns, followed by a clatter and clank like a whole kitchen of pots and pans rattling together. Sköl guided Svale into hiding behind some ragged bushes.
A full orange moon rose. Sköl waited as patiently as the mountain. Svale tried not to fidget and scratch. His sword scraped against something every time he twitched.
The pots and pans noise got louder.
Suddenly, from the patch of darkness, a stream of horsemen galloped, all troll-huge and dark. The horses were bigger than any Svale had ever seen. Their eyes burned red. Their breath came in tongues of fire. Their hooves rang like thunder and struck fountains of sparks before, with a blast of horns, the Terrible Host stampeded across the sky like a flight of snow geese trails bits of fire.
Sköl touched Svale's arm, pointed.
Crossing the moon was something Svale had thought less probable than the return of the Oskorei.
"Linnorm," he murmured. The great northern dragon.
Astride it, vast cloak flapping, a rod of fire in one hand, was a man. "The Dragon King," Svale whispered, awed. He hadn't ever believed those old stories.
Wings beating with the sounds of gongs, the dragon raced after the Terrible Host. In moments, over westward peaks, there were rumbles and flashes as if a sudden, savage storm had rolled in off the sea.
Sköl pointed toward the cave. Shaking, Svale followed him inside.
The dark veil parted. They could see by torches burning within. Svale understood. Silver and iron were the banes of magic.
Echoed weeping drew them deeper into the earth, to a great cavern that was furnished like a castle's interior.
The missing wives and children were chained to its walls, weeping like lost souls. The stewpots of the Oskorei were deep.
Troll women, slaves of the Terrible Host, tended fires and their masters' housekeeping.
Svale spied Frigga sleeping in the lap of a woman from Aalmo.
He had bad habits, but he was not stupid. He did not run to the child. He knew the troll women would seize him and shove him into a cook pot. His old sword would not scratch their stony hides.
They were a problem.
Svale had a thought. It must be near dawn outside.
All trolldom resented what Hatchet-Face Svien had done to their cousin on Hifjell.
"Halvor laughed when the white cock crowed," Svale shouted. "But Hatchet-Face runs like the wind." The trolls dropped their work. Svale scampered back up the tunnel, singing as he went.
Sköl turned toward the wall. He became invisible. Huldre-folk can vanish anywhere. The trolls rushed past without seeing him at all.
Svale ran. His blisters became big as eggs. His legs grew heavy. But he ran all the way to the cave entrance, then down into Dark Wood. The troll women were so angry they chased him till Old Sun rose and turned them to stone.
Leading them away was the bravest thing Svale had ever done.
Climbing Thunder Mountain and descending to its heart again was the hardest. Day was almost done when, on feet that were coals of pain, Svale penetrated the dark veil again. It was fully dark when, with Sköl and the prisoners, he came out again. He was cheerful despite his misery, and undaunted by the journey yet to be made homeward.
He and Sköl found their way blocked by a dark rider on a dark horse. The chieftain of the oskoreien. His armor was badly battered, his mount was wounded in a dozen places, but both were alive and angry. Smoke trailed from the stallion's nostrils. The King of the oskoreien's eyes were ruby coals behind his slitted visor.
The prisoners shrieked and fled into the cavern.
Sköl gripped his spear and braced himself.
Svale started to run but found his Frigga looking his way from the cave's mouth. He could not flee before her very eyes. He turned and readied his sword.
Their enemy drew a great black blade. Bloody fires flickered along its edge. And by that token they knew the Dragon King had been slain.
Silver and iron. Not even the lord of the Oskorei's magic could withstand that combination. Svale's old sword rang and reeled beneath the enemy's strokes, yet shattered that black, haunted blade. The shards scattered across the mountainside, starting small fires where they fell. Sköl stabbed with his spear. It squealed through a chink in battered dark armor. The lord of the Oskorei roared, clutched his side. Lightning and thunder ripped across the night. A sudden, hard rain began to fall. The great black stallion reared, screamed, then galloped into the sky, trailing fire as he carried his master to the safety of his ice castle beneath the midnight sun.
Lightning and thunder continued to rip the night. The rain squelched the fires on Thunder Mountain.
Svale and Sköl laughed and hugged one another, and congratulated one another on how brave they were, and in small soft voices each admitted that he was lying, that he had been scared to death. It made a bond of brotherhood, that shared fear.
Then they called their people out of the mountain and Sköl guided them home.
Svale Skar returned to Alstahaug a changed man. His neighbors did not want to believe his story, but could not help themselves. He no longer started trouble. Neither did he drink to excess, brag, nor treat his family unkindly. It seemed that, in the crucible of his adventure, he had learned to appreciate things of real value
.
He pursued no new adventures, though now he no longer feared Dark Wood. He became a quiet man and wise chieftain who, once each year, went to Hifjell Mountain where he and Sköl would join in a journey to a cairn the Hidden People had built for Ainjar and Freki.
After the great storm-battle in the sky the night the two raided Thunder Mountain the huldre-folk had found the old man and dog mysteriously slain in the forest.
Only Svale and Sköl and, perhaps the huldre wise, suspect whom Ainjar and Freki really were.
Never again did the Terrible Host rage through the mountains and valleys of Tröndelag, though the old folks say you can still hear the devil drumbeats of fiery hooves and the wail of evil horns from the snowfields and glaciers of the far north. They say that when the northern lights are dancing the King of the Oskorei is remembering and breathing fire.
Ghost Stalk
This story appeared in the May 1978 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It was the first of a series of novelettes about the crew of Vengeful Dragon. At one time I attempted to cobble them together into a fix-up novel but there were no takers. The story was well-received critically and garnered a number of Nebula Award recommendations.
I
It seemed we had been aboard the Vengeful D. forever, madly galloping the coasts from Simballawein to The Tongues of Fire. We looked toward land with the lust of stallions for mares beyond a twelve-foot fence. But our barrier was far less visible. It consisted solely of Colgrave's will.
"Going to the Clouds of Heaven next time I hit Portsmouth," said Little Mica, bending over his needle. He was forever patching sail. "Best damned cathouse on the coast. Best damned cats. Going to make them think Old Goat God himself has arrived." He giggled.
It was Subject Number One with Little Mica. It was with most of us. I had never met a sailor who was not drunk or horny. He would be both if he had his feet on dry land
"Runt like you couldn't satisfy a dwarf's grandmother," Student remarked from behind the inevitable book. They dueled with insults awhile. There was little else to do. We were running before a steady breeze.
