Gods of the North
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GODS OF THE NORTH
By ROBERT E. HOWARD
[Transcriber's Note: Originally published in March 1934 in "The Fantasy Fan". This etext was prepared from the reprint in Fantastic Universe December 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Publisher's Note: _The publication of this strange story by Robert E. Howard, author of the Conan stories, so much a part of the Living Library of Fantasy, represents a departure for this magazine. Without abandoning our policy of bringing you, month after month, the best in NEW Science Fiction and Fantasy, we will, from time to time, publish material such as this, hitherto known to only a few students of the field! GODS OF THE NORTH was published in 1934, in Charles D. Hornig's THE FANTASY FAN, which had a circulation of under a hundred! We thank Sam Moskowitz, Editor and SF historian, who showed us this story._
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She drew away from him, dwindling in the witch-fire of the skies, until she was a figure no bigger than a child.
The clangor of the swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughterwas hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The pale bleak sun thatglittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow-covered plainsstruck sheens of silver from rent corselet and broken blade, where thedead lay in heaps. The nerveless hand yet gripped the broken hilt:helmeted heads, back-drawn in the death throes, tilted red beards andgolden beards grimly upward, as if in last invocation to Ymir thefrost-giant.
Across the red drifts and mail-clad forms, two figures approached oneanother. In that utter desolation only they moved. The frosty sky wasover them, the white illimitable plain around them, the dead men attheir feet. Slowly through the corpses they came, as ghosts might cometo a tryst through the shambles of a world.
Their shields were gone, their corselets dinted. Blood smeared theirmail; their swords were red. Their horned helmets showed the marks offierce strokes.
One spoke, he whose locks and beard were red as the blood on the sunlitsnow.
"Man of the raven locks," said he, "tell me your name, so that mybrothers in Vanaheim may know who was the last of Wulfhere's band tofall before the sword of Heimdul."
"This is my answer," replied the black-haired warrior: "Not in Vanaheim,but in Valhalla will you tell your brothers the name of Amra ofAkbitana."
Heimdul roared and sprang, and his sword swung in a mighty arc. Amrastaggered and his vision was filled with red sparks as the bladeshivered into bits of blue fire on his helmet. But as he reeled hethrust with all the power of his great shoulders. The sharp point drovethrough brass scales and bones and heart, and the red-haired warriordied at Amra's feet.
Amra stood swaying, trailing his sword, a sudden sick wearinessassailing him. The glare of the sun on the snow cut his eyes like aknife and the sky seemed shrunken and strangely far. He turned away fromthe trampled expanse where yellow-bearded warriors lay locked withred-haired slayers in the embrace of death. A few steps he took, and theglare of the snow fields was suddenly dimmed. A rushing wave ofblindness engulfed him, and he sank down into the snow, supportinghimself on one mailed arm, seeking to shake the blindness out of hiseyes as a lion might shake his mane.
A silvery laugh cut through his dizziness, and his sight cleared slowly.There was a strangeness about all the landscape that he could not placeor define--an unfamiliar tinge to earth and sky. But he did not thinklong of this. Before him, swaying like a sapling in the wind, stood awoman. Her body was like ivory, and save for a veil of gossamer, she wasnaked as the day. Her slender bare feet were whiter than the snow theyspurned. She laughed, and her laughter was sweeter than the rippling ofsilvery fountains, and poisonous with cruel mockery.
"Who are you?" demanded the warrior.
"What matter?" Her voice was more musical than a silver-stringed harp,but it was edged with cruelty.
"Call up your men," he growled, grasping his sword. "Though my strengthfail me, yet they shall not take me alive. I see that you are of theVanir."
"Have I said so?"
He looked again at her unruly locks, which he had thought to be red. Nowhe saw that they were neither red nor yellow, but a glorious compoundof both colors. He gazed spell-bound. Her hair was like elfin-gold,striking which, the sun dazzled him. Her eyes were neither wholly bluenor wholly grey, but of shifting colors and dancing lights and clouds ofcolors he could not recognize. Her full red lips smiled, and from herslim feet to the blinding crown of her billowy hair, her ivory body wasas perfect as the dream of a god. Amra's pulse hammered in his temples.
"I can not tell," said he, "whether you are of Vanaheim and mine enemy,or of Asgard and my friend. Far have I wandered, from Zingara to the Seaof Vilayet, in Stygia and Kush, and the country of the Hyrkanians; but awoman like you I have never seen. Your locks blind me with theirbrightness. Not even among the fairest daughters of the Aesir have Iseen such hair, by Ymir!"
"Who are you to swear by Ymir?" she mocked. "What know you of the godsof ice and snow, you who have come up from the south to adventure amongstrangers?"
"By the dark gods of my own race!" he cried in anger. "Have I beenbackward in the sword-play, stranger or no? This day I have seen fourscore warriors fall, and I alone survive the field where Mulfhere'sreavers met the men of Bragi. Tell me, woman, have you caught the flashof mail across the snow-plains, or seen armed men moving upon the ice?"
"I have seen the hoar-frost glittering in the sun," she answered. "Ihave heard the wind whispering across the everlasting snows."
He shook his head.
"Niord should have come up with us before the battle joined. I fear heand his warriors have been ambushed. Wulfhere lies dead with all hisweapon-men.
"I had thought there was no village within many leagues of this spot,for the war carried us far, but you can have come no great distance overthese snows, naked as you are. Lead me to your tribe, if you are ofAsgard, for I am faint with the weariness of strife."
"My dwelling place is further than you can walk, Amra of Akbitana!" shelaughed. Spreading wide her arms she swayed before him, her golden headlolling wantonly, her scintillant eyes shadowed beneath long silkenlashes. "Am I not beautiful, man?"
"Like Dawn running naked on the snows," he muttered, his eyes burninglike those of a wolf.
"Then why do you not rise and follow me? Who is the strong warrior whofalls down before me?" she chanted in maddening mockery. "Lie down anddie in the snow with the other fools, Amra of the black hair. You cannot follow where I would lead."
With an oath the man heaved himself upon his feet, his blue eyes blazinghis dark scarred face convulsed. Rage shook his soul, but desire for thetaunting figure before him hammered at his temples and drove his wildblood riotously through his veins. Passion fierce as physical agonyflooded his whole being so that earth and sky swam red to his dizzygaze, and weariness and faintness were swept from him in madness.
He spoke no word as he drove at her fingers hooked like talons. With ashriek of laughter she leaped back and ran, laughing at him over herwhite shoulder. With a low growl Amra followed. He had forgotten thefight, forgotten the mailed warriors who lay in their blood, forgottenNiord's belated reavers. He had thought only for the slender white shapewhich seemed to float rather than run before him.
Out across the white blinding plain she led him. The trampled red fieldfell out of sight behind him, but still Amra kept on with the silenttenacity of his race. His mailed feet broke through the frozen crust; hesank deep in the drifts and forged through them by sheer
strength. Butthe girl danced across the snow as light as a feather floating across apool; her naked feet scarcely left their imprint on the hoar-frost. Inspite of the fire in his veins, the cold bit through the warrior's mailand furs; but the girl in her gossamer veil ran as lightly and as gailyas if she danced through the palms and rose gardens of Poitain.
Black curses drooled through the warrior's parched lips. The great veinsswelled and throbbed in his temples, and his teeth gnashedspasmodically.
"You can not escape me!" he roared. "Lead me into a trap and I'll pilethe heads of your kinsmen at your feet. Hide from me and I'll tear apartthe mountains to find you! I'll follow you to hell and beyond hell!"
Her maddening laughter floated back to him, and foam flew from thewarrior's lips. Further and further into the wastes she led him,