Modern classics of fanta.., p.49
Modern Classics of Fantasy, page 49
Hauk stared long into emptiness. At last, “Oh, no,” he whispered. “What’s to be done?”
“We hoped you might know that, my son,” Thyra answered. “The moon will be full tomorrow night.”
His voice stumbled. “I am no wizard. If the gods themselves would not lay this ghost, what can I do?”
Einar spoke, in the brashness of youth: “We thought you might deal with him as you did with the werewolf.”
“But that was—No, I cannot!” Hauk croaked. “Never ask me.”
“Then I fear we must leave,” Thyra said. “For aye. You see how many have already fled, thrall and free alike, though nobody else has a place for them. We’ve not enough left to farm these acres. And who would buy them of us? Poor must we go, helpless as the poor ever are.”
“Iceland—” Hauk wet his lips. “Well, you shall not want while I live.” Yet he had counted on this homestead, whether to dwell on or sell.
“Tomorrow we move over to Leif’s garth, for the next three days and nights,” Thyra said.
Unn shuddered. “I know not if I can come back,” she said. “This whole past month here, I could hardly ever sleep.” Dulled skin and sunken eyes bore her out.
“What else would you do?” Hauk asked.
“Whatever I can,” she stammered, and broke into tears. He knew: wedding herself too young to whoever would have her dowryless, poor though the match would be—or making her way to some town to turn whore, his little sister.
“Let me think on this,” Hauk begged. “Maybe I can hit on something.”
His crew were also daunted when they heard. At eventide they sat in the hall and gave only a few curt words about what they had done in foreign parts. Everyone lay down early on bed, bench, or floor, but none slept well.
Before sunset, Hauk had walked forth alone. First he sought the grave of Atli. “I’m sorry, dear old friend,” he said. Afterward he went to Geirolf’s howe. It loomed yellow-gray with withered grass wherein grinned the skull of the slaughtered horse. At its foot were strewn the charred bits of the ship, inside stones which outlined a greater but unreal hull. Around reached stubblefields and walls, hemmed in by woods on one side and water on the other, rock lifting sheer beyond. The chill and the quiet had deepened.
Hauk climbed to the top of the barrow and stood there a while, head bent downward. “Oh, father,” he said, “I learned doubt in Christian lands. What’s right for me to do?” There was no answer. He made a slow way back to the dwelling.
All were up betimes next day. It went slowly over the woodland path to Leif’s, for animals must be herded along. The swine gave more trouble than most. Hauk chuckled once, not very merrily, and remarked that at least this took folk’s minds off their sorrows. He raised no mirth.
But he had Alfhild ahead of him. At the end of the way, he sprinted shouting into the yard. Leif owned less land than Geirolf, his buildings were smaller and fewer, most of his guests must house outdoors in sleeping bags. Hauk paid no heed. “Alfhild!” he called. “I’m here!”
She left the dough she was kneading and sped to him. They hugged each other hard and long, in sight of the whole world. None thought that shame, as things were. At last she said, striving not to weep, “How we’ve longed for you! Now the nightmare can end.”
He stepped back. “What mean you?” he uttered slowly, knowing full well.
“Why—” She was bewildered. “Won’t you give him his second death?”
Hauk gazed past her for some heartbeats before he said: “Come aside with me.”
Hand in hand, they wandered off. A meadow lay hidden from the garth by a stand of aspen. Elsewhere around, pines speared into a sky that today was bright. Clouds drifted on a nipping breeze. Far off, a stag bugled.
Hauk spread feet apart, hooked thumbs in belt, and made himself meet her eyes. “You think over-highly of my strength,” he said.
“Who has more?” she asked. “We kept ourselves going by saying you would come home and make things good again.”
“What if the drow is too much for me?” His words sounded raw through the hush. Leaves dropped yellow from their boughs.
She flushed. “Then your name will live.”
“Yes—” Softly he spoke the words of the High One:
“Kine die, kinfolk die,
and so at last oneself.
This I know that never dies;
how dead men’s deeds are deemed.”
“You will do it!” she cried gladly.
His head shook before it drooped. “No. I will not. I dare not.”
She stood as if he had clubbed her.
“Won’t you understand?” he began.
The wound he had dealt her hopes went too deep. “So you show yourself a nithing!”
“Hear me,” he said, shaken. “Were the lich anybody else’s—”
Overwrought beyond reason, she slapped him and choked, “The gods bear witness, I give them my holiest oath, never will I wed you unless you do this thing. See, by my blood I swear.” She whipped out her dagger and gashed her wrist. Red rills coursed out and fell in drops on the fallen leaves.
He was aghast. “You know not what you say. You’re too young, you’ve been too sheltered. Listen.”
She would have fled from him, but he gripped her shoulders and made her stand. “Listen,” went between his teeth. “Geirolf is still my father— my father who begot me, reared me, named the stars for me, weaponed me to make my way in the world. How can I fight him? Did I slay him, what horror would come upon me and mine?”
“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 oath-breaker?”
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 over-human 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. Turves, 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. Even 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.
* * * *
AVRAM DAVIDSON
Manatee Gal Ain’t You Coming Out Tonight
Here’s another story by Avram Davidson, whose “The Golem” appeared earlier in this anthology. Many a Grand Master produces weak or inferior work in the last few years of his life, but in this, as in so much else, Davidson was far from typical—in fact, toward the end of his long career, Davidson produced some of his best work ever, in a series of stories—that started appearing in the last years of the 1970s and continued through to the early 1990s (the last of them was published in 1993, just before his death)—that detail the strange adventures of Jack Limekiller.
The Limekiller stories are set against the lushly evocative background of “British Hidalgo,” Davidson’s vividly realized, richly imagined version of one of those tiny, eccentric Central American nations that exist in near-total isolation on the edge of the busy twentieth-century world … a place somehow at once flamboyant and languorous, where strange things can—and do— happen…
… as the brilliant story that follows, one of the best of the Limekiller tales, and one of the best fantasies of the 1970s, will amply demonstrate!
* * * *
The Cupid Club was the only waterhole on the Port Cockatoo waterfront. To be sure, there were two or three liquor booths back in the part where the tiny town ebbed away into the bush. But they were closed for siesta, certainly. And they sold nothing but watered rum and warm soft drinks and loose cigarettes. Also, they were away from the breezes off the Bay which kept away the flies. In British Hidalgo gnats were flies, mosquitoes were flies, sand-flies—worst of all—were flies—flies were also flies: and if anyone were inclined to question this nomenclature, there was the unquestionable fact that mosquito itself was merely Spanish for little fly.
It was not really cool in the Cupid Club (Alfonso Key, prop., LICENSED TO SELL WINE, SPIRITS, BEER, ALE, CYDER AND PERRY). But it was certainly less hot than outside. Outside the sun burned the Bay, turning it into molten sparkles. Limekiller’s boat stood at mooring, by very slightly raising his head he could see her, and every so often he did raise it. There wasn’t much aboard to tempt thieves, and there weren’t many thieves in Port Cockatoo, anyway. On the other hand, what was aboard the Sacarissa he could not very well spare; and it only took one thief, after all. So every now and then he did raise his head and make sure that no small boat was out by his own. No skiff or dory.
