{"sf1_id":1713909,"sf2_id":"YnLNz3eL","title":"Ragnarok - III","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":1876,"posted_at":"2021-05-03T16:43:00.000Z","tags":["Epic","Iambic pentameter","Poetry","blank verse"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1713909-ragnarok-iii","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/YnLNz3eL","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/a9/7b/a97b1e70-7b5c-41b5-bc40-ce8b092dd160","description":"#4 of Ragnarok\n\nIf I were to write this these days I'd be more careful about use of gendered language. But this was written, mostly, while I was still living with deeply bigoted family, enrolled in a conservative college, and under an explicit 'there is no legitimate reason to ever know any information about queer people or feminist theory' policy, so the only gay people I'd ever met had either been in secret over the internet or unbeknownst to me.\nSo I'm gonna say that the admittedly archaic use of gendered language is a touch of artisanal aging, to make the whole work feel more like something older than the reader. Because the alternative would require more rewriting than I have in me at this point.\nAnd ask your patience with my younger ignorance.","content":"\"These ruins have been empty for too long.\n\nThey ring no more with scarlet laughing flags.\n\nThey echo not the peal of sparring arms,\n\nNor cries of joyful brotherhood of war.\n\nThey were not always silent. Once they shone\n\nUndusty, undecrepit, unalone:\n\nWhen I woke here, the second sound I heard,\n\nAfter the wind that carried them aloft,\n\nWere cries of those already seeking me.\n\nThat place was far from here, and not like this.\n\nI woke amid high crags above a plain;\n\nA maze of mountains canyon-cut by clouds,\n\nAn archipelago of granite peaks\n\nAbove a sea of grass. When we had met,\n\nThey led me down along a waterfall\n\nGrown sevenfold at every cataract.\n\nThe plains ate greedily the miles. The moon\n\nWaned thin and waxed again, and I spoke up.\n\nI asked them who they were. They said, 'Your friends.'\n\nI asked them where we were. They answered, 'Here.'\n\nI asked them who had sent them. They said, 'One\n\nWho better answers has.' Said they no more.\n\nUntil we came with welcome weariness\n\nOver a lip of stone, and saw below\n\nSpread crowded like a banquet on a board\n\nA valley like a stadium. Great stones\n\nOf grim grey, like thick thunderclouded steel,\n\nLay sprawled, like chessmen halfway through the game.\n\nAround their ankles, grass, so vibrant green\n\nThat but to glimpse it was to feel the cool,\n\nRich, dewy touch of it upon your face,\n\nLay clinging like the water to an oar\n\nThat pulls free of the ocean; so it seemed\n\nAs if the earth had been a stormy sea\n\nTransformed to turf. There on the greatest stone;\n\nThe chessboard king and emperor, as high as more\n\nThan twenty-seven men; there was a hall.\n\nThough it had spires and staircases, although\n\nIt had courtyards and colonnades, although\n\nTurrets and battlements adorned the roof,\n\nMore than aught else, it was a feasting hall,\n\nFor I have seen enough of them to tell.\n\nWhen through the weighty gates they led me in\n\nI felt a shiver, like the vertigo\n\nOn looking down upon a rising tide\n\nDark, hungry, cold, unstoppable, that mounts\n\nAcross green land and crushes it. No more\n\nWas it than shivers at the cold stone flags,\n\nAnd yet it ever lingers in my mind.\n\nI thought to see a throne, or coat of arms,\n\nOr dais hung with tapestries. Instead\n\nThey brought me to a shaded, shuttered room,\n\nEmpty, save for an old man with his back\n\nToward me, peering through the window chink.\n\nI thought he did not notice me, until\n\nHe raised a hand and said, 'The sun goes down.\n\nFor centuries, I have watched every night\n\nTo see if it burned blue, as does a flame\n\nUpon a candle crown, when dead shades near.\n\nThe sunset ever has been wholly red,\n\nAnd I can sleep at night.' He turned and looked\n\nO'er me appraisingly and with double\n\nThe grimness of a drillmaster, but half\n\nThe vision: his left eye was covered up\n\nIn sable cloth. I had no time to guess\n\nWhat lay beneath, for he said 'I know all\n\nYour past, Varr Last-to-flee. I know your strength.\n\nI know your bravery. You need not give\n\nAccount to me, but rather ask account\n\nOf me. You must be puzzled at this place.\n\nAsk what you will, and I will answer you.'\n\nSo many wonders crowded to my tongue.\n\nTastes of aphasia and doubt they bore, and I\n\nCould barely think what question to ask first.\n\nHe seemed amused. I think he must have seen\n\nSuch paralysm many times before.\n\nAt last I broke the spell and said, 'Great lord,\n\nFor so you must be, having such a hall,\n\nI know not how I came here, where here is,\n\nOr what I am to do. Yet most I strain\n\nMy intellection out to know your name.\n\nWho are you?' 'You are wise,' the old man said,\n\n'As well as brave and strong. That question holds\n\nAll others. Yet I cannot say, so near\n\nTo what may be the doom of all, for names\n\nHave power, Last-to-flee, which should be spent\n\nBut carefully. But I will tell as much\n\nAs may be told. Be seated, and take ease.'\n\nThus saying, he went to a chest, and took\n\nA cask from it, and goblets, and he said,\n\n'We keep no servants here. There once were maids\n\nOf honey hair and sapphire satin eye,\n\nAs strong in arm as any lumberjack,\n\nAs gentle as a kitten in their hearts,\n\nAs terrible and splendid in their pride\n\nAs lightning on a summer night. No more.\n\nTheir laughter was like sleep after a watch.\n\nThey bore to us great mugs of mead. No more.\n\nMy lady, all the others: now no more.\n\nIt was not safe, though they were warriors too.\n\nIt was not safe. Now we wait on ourselves.'\n\nHe passed a goblet, but did not pour yet,\n\nAnd said, 'There was a legend, to the south,\n\nOf an Old Man, who built a wondrous court\n\nIn desert mountains inaccessible.\n\nThere would he smuggle, by some secret paths,\n\nYoung men of warrior caste, drugged fast asleep.\n\nThey would awake in splendor, in a place\n\nAlike to paradise, and there they found\n\nRich food, rich ornament, and gardens cool,\n\nWilling maidens, treasures multifold,\n\nAnd drugs to cloud the reason. Then this man\n\nWould thither smuggle them again, and tell\n\nThe tale that for a week, they had been dead\n\nAnd had had but a taste of heaven. If\n\nThey died fighting for him, they would go back\n\nForever. What he was in counterfeit,\n\nI am in truth.' I stared agape. 'Then I am dead?\n\nOr do you mean to send me back alive\n\nTo fight for you, as this Old Man once did?'\n\n'Not so,' the Old Man said, 'There is no path\n\nBy which the dead can cross back into life.\n\nHow often I have wished that there could be!\n\nBut no, the fight is here, among the dead.\n\nOur company are those whose mighty deeds\n\nDid bear their spirits up as their breath ceased.\n\nAll those who nobly end in battle's dance\n\nCome to my hall, for here is work to do\n\nFit for their prowess. Here is honor won.\n\nHere is enacted epic. Here is war.\n\nAnd here are needed warriors such as you.'\n\nHis speech so stirred my blood, I nearly drew\n\nMy sword, and begged command from him to fight\n\nHowever hopeless be the cause. And even now\n\nI feel their force again. Yet as they drummed\n\nAgainst my ears from inside, came a doubt.\n\n'You say that I am dead. How did I die?\n\nI was indeed in battle, I recall,\n\nBut do recall no dying.' Then he shrugged\n\nAnd said 'Do you recall the womb, ere birth?\n\nBut need I not your credence, just your sword.\n\nBelieve me not, Varr Last-to-flee, but fight!'\n\nHe poured for me a measure of gold mead.\n\nI took, I bowed to him, I drank it down:\n\nIt ran like molten steel throughout my veins.\n\nFor many years I lodged below that roof.\n\nHow many, I know not--at least the span\n\nOf one lifetime twixt cradle and the grave.\n\nI learned much that I never thought to know:\n\nTechniques of swordsmanship both long-forgot\n\nAnd new-devised, and archery (which I\n\nHad never tried), and tracking in the wild,\n\nAnd how to read the verses in the wind,\n\nWhich led me to you in those pathless woods.\n\nYet whispers were there none, for all the drills\n\nOf any enemy for years on years.\n\nI hold those years the best time of my life,\n\nIf live I do. I grew strong. I slept deep.\n\nI had good brotherhood in arms, more dear\n\nThan bread. Life was so sweet, that we began\n\nTo doubt the Old Man's warnings, and his war.\n\nWe saw no end to feasting or to jousts.\n\nWe glimpsed no whiff of blood upon the wind.\n\nIn any case, if we had died before\n\nWhat need of fear? The Old Man only frowned\n\nAnd nodded as he said, 'Well, we shall see.'\n\nThen came a day when I was on the watch\n\nOf evening, as the autumn slipped away\n\nAnd winter crept down from the mountain peaks\n\nTo which it had retreated. I saw light\n\nGo dim, as if with swift-obscuring cloud.\n\nI saw the heavy amber colored sun\n\nBegin to shimmer at its lower edge\n\nAs if behind the waves of filmy heat\n\nArising from a road. Then all at once,\n\nLike dye dropped in a pan of water, spread\n\nDeep corpsy blue across the solar face.\n\nI felt the light go cold. I saw the warmth\n\nOf all the colors drain and grey. I heard\n\nA shuddering pass by, turning the air\n\nTo tortured, clinging mist. At my elbow\n\nThere was as suddenly as waking up\n\nThe Old Man, all alertness. 'Now begins\n\nI wish I knew not what. Go, get to bed.\n\nYou will have need of sleep, ere very long.\n\nYour watch was vigilant, but no watch now\n\nCan save us,' he intoned, and hung his head\n\nAs slipped the cyan sun behind the hills.\n\nThough I was wakeful, I spoke not, that night,\n\nBut lay in wondering if others lay\n\nAlike awake and wondered, and I feared\n\nI knew not what. In spite of all, the sun\n\nRose red and rich as ever, come the dawn.\n\nThe mighty doors stood open wide. The light,\n\nThat drew a path as bitter and unbent\n\nAs razor's edge upon the marble floor,\n\nWas pale gold, like faded petals thrown\n\nBefore the feet of paladins, and smelled\n\nOf dawn and death and mad ennobled deeds.\n\nBefore it stood the Old Man, dressed for war,\n\nHis shadow stretched to titan stature, sword\n\nUnsheathing in the satin sun which burned\n\nIn gouts of molten light upon the steel.\n\nWhile all stood wordless, wondering, he spoke\n\nIn tones unused to all our ears before:\n\nThe cricket is as to the mighty bell\n\nThat takes the weight of seven men to ring,\n\nAs such a bell was to the Old Man's voice.\n\n'Now you have seen the sign.' he said, 'Now you\n\nHave seen the dawning of the battle day.\n\nNow you shall see your enemy, for he\n\nAt last has breached our borders. I command\n\nNo strategies from you. I ask no oaths,\n\nAnd orders give you none. Each one of you,\n\nMost mighty, most courageous among men,\n\nWho finds the way into my hall from sleep,\n\nHas proved the worth already of your blood.\n\nI do not promise victory. It is\n\nNot mine to offer, only yours to seize.\n\nYet think on victors not. Aim higher. Think\n\nOn martyrs meeting death with joyous cry,\n\nOn hunters greeting danger like a friend,\n\nOn warriors facing doom unstoppable\n\nWith blessing, that in glory they go down.\n\nMy only charge is thus: go forth and do\n\nAs warriors do. Warriors you are. To war!'\n\nHe shook his sword and shield in the flood\n\nOf unobstructed sunlight through the door,\n\nAnd all the host did likewise. Let me live\n\nWith that roar ringing always in my ears,\n\nAnd I will need no goad to do brave deeds.\"\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"Ragnarok","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1713731-ragnarok-ii.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1714337-ragnarok-iv.json"}}