{"sf1_id":1715138,"sf2_id":"yndQZP1a","title":"Ragnarok - VI","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":1592,"posted_at":"2021-05-06T16:41:00.000Z","tags":["Epic","Iambic pentameter","Poetry","blank verse"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1715138-ragnarok-vi","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/yndQZP1a","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/a3/44/a34488b5-181c-47ee-acdc-f94c8d0e3dfb","description":"#7 of Ragnarok\n\nCW: Injury\nVarr resumes his tale, explaining to Shane his first experience of fighting the Soot: some kind of animate corpse: burned, water soaked to the point of being largely rust and sodden ash, but still smoldering underneath.","content":"\"In coolness of that evening we stood guard\n\nAtop the knoll our mastery had turned\n\nTo barrow. As the hidden sun went down\n\nWe watched the pit as does a mongoose, for\n\nThe snout of the great serpent to appear.\n\nWhile there we watched we argued: How to strike,\n\nWhat next our battle, Where to aim our blows\n\nAgain against the foe. Guz raised his lance\n\nAnd pointed with the tip. 'Behold yon pit.\n\nBehold its depth unnatural. Has a one\n\nAmong us ever seen its like before?\n\nBehold this dust, that not an hour ago,\n\nIf not alive, moved like enough to life\n\nTo slay. Behold the throat of this grim gulf,\n\nHow yet it crawls with shapes of sodden soot\n\nToo cowardly, perhaps, to climb again\n\nAnd face us who have cut their numbers down.\n\nIt has more revenants to vomit forth,\n\nI deem, though they may no less feebly fight.\n\nThe wind did bring us here, to stem this tide,\n\nWar-brothers, even as we did this day,\n\nThough yet we knew it not. Here let us stand!\n\nIf it bring others of our fellowship,\n\nWarm welcome we their swords. If not, why then\n\nThe glory poured on us grows greater, that\n\nAlone we three did stand, and stand, and stand,\n\nAnd batter down this rising Soot, until\n\nIts chimney here, exhausted, chokes and fails.\n\nSafe, whole, and clean the world will be, and we,\n\nIts saviors!' So said Guz All-Leveler.\n\n'Too slow!' moaned Luke, with shaking of his head,\n\nWith pacing up and down, and with his hands\n\nSwift squeezing of the air, as if to seize\n\nHis meaning back out of the words he spoke.\n\n'Too stony solid, and too much asleep!\n\nYou call this gulf a chimney, and all these\n\nWeak mannequins the soot? Well then seek we\n\nThe fire that births the soot, and stamp it out!\n\nLet it be never said we were content\n\nTo stay in sullen watch, and leave a foe,\n\nOf epic worthy, unfought and alive\n\nTo mock our manhood! What might not it do,\n\nIf whatever-it-is can carve this pit?\n\nPour flaming oil from mountain tops? Eat out\n\nThe ground from underneath the sea? Crack up\n\nThe living soil? Dig fifty holes, each full\n\nOf furnace-slag born revenants to swarm\n\nOver the fields and forests we have loved\n\nReducing all to cinders? Could we stand\n\nAn everlasting watch on fifty holes?\n\nHow do we know this is the only one\n\nAnd there are not already fifty more?\n\nMore palatable far than this delay\n\nOr waiting one more moment, let us dive,\n\nMake missiles of ourselves, aimed at the heart\n\nThat beats brimstone and malice, till our blades\n\nMeet at its center. Let us be as swift\n\nAs thunderbolts descending through the smoke\n\nTo ferret out its source! Let us fall out\n\nUntil the wind is as a hurricane\n\nAround our ears! How can a warrior meet\n\nA challenge such as this without the ache\n\nTo do, unless his blood be water or\n\nHis breechcloth empty?' Luke the Barefoot cried.\n\nThen looked them both to me. I, who feared not\n\nThe fiercest beasts of battle in my life\n\nNor empty sooty soldiers after death,\n\nFelt something in me quail. What words had I\n\nTo match against what either one had said?\n\nHow could I make my caution sound as high\n\nAs firm endurance unrelenting, or\n\nEcstatic self-abandon? Yet I must\n\nBe last to flee from any challenge, so\n\nI spoke what little eloquence I had:\n\n'I know not how this hole did come to be.\n\nI know not what would happen if we stayed,\n\nIn vigilance, and guarded close the rim.\n\nI know not what would happen if we cast\n\nOurselves into the smoke-smelling abyss\n\nIn search of some colossuses to slay.\n\nI know not what would happen if we left,\n\nRetraced our steps, reported of our find\n\nTo the Old Man, and from him counsel got.\n\nIt may be he would know no more than I.\n\nMy heart tells me that something must be done\n\nOr we are lost, but it speaks not of what.\n\nYet I will say this much: that we should send\n\nOne of our number back to bear the news\n\nAnd hear the battle plan. I only pray\n\nThat here I have spoke rightly.' There I stopped.\n\nMy wells of words were emptied, my tongue dry.\n\nGuz frowned and pulled his granite-bearded chin.\n\n'I mislike that we should divide our strength\n\nBy separation or by disaccord,\n\nBut brother Varr speaks plain truth plainly; we\n\nCannot aspire to strategy until\n\nWe know our enemy. In all this fen,\n\nThis hummock is defensible far more\n\nThan any flat of mud and sickly reeds.\n\nHere two could make a stand, and wait\n\nFor reinforcement swift,' he slowly said.\n\nLuke shook his head, and shrugged his shoulders bare.\n\n'Well, there is nothing for it,' he grinned grim,\n\n'What good is battle-bliss against good sense?\n\nThough mark, oh Last-to-Flee and Leveler:\n\nHowever cautiously you fish for death,\n\nYou catch her in the end, so let us not\n\nWait overlong before we use our blades.\n\nIf one is to retrace our steps, then who?\n\nThough such consulting is a weariness,\n\nStill wearier is waiting. Let us choose!'\n\nAnd so were they persuaded. And what now\n\nWould I not give up to undo that speech?\n\nTo unpersuade them, and instead to plan\n\nAny alternative. But we were blind.\n\nWe nominated Luke to bear the news.\n\nWe kindled our watchfire. We settled in.\n\nWe let the sun go down surrounded by\n\nHow many hundred Soot? And there we stayed\n\nLike stupid mountaineers that make a camp\n\nBeneath the drift's impending avalanche.\n\nThe watch was not begun, and none yet slept.\n\nI think we talked on trivialities:\n\nI asked, perhaps, about their lives before,\n\nOr Guz had always meant to learn the axe,\n\nOr Luke told lewd tales. Suddenly the fire\n\nWent double dim, as if it had been crushed,\n\nAnd crackled indigo, while all around\n\nThe hissing of a thousand serpents sighed.\n\nI barely had a chance to draw a breath.\n\nI barely had the time to draw my sword,\n\nEre they were on me. Nothing could I see,\n\nThe fire was smothered, clouds curtained the moon,\n\nAnd so I fought in darkness for my life.\n\nI blindly struck, but felt a point myself\n\nThat pierced between the muscle and the skin\n\nBelow my shoulder. I thrust toward its source,\n\nOnly to be by three more weapons pierced.\n\nI fought by feel, finding the enemy\n\nBy following the screams along my nerves\n\nThat pointed to the ones who wounded me.\n\nSomewhere between the moments I was not\n\nToo fully bent on fighting back to think\n\nI dimly realized this could not last.\n\nWithout a sun to dazzle them, the Soot\n\nWere quicker, surer, stronger than before,\n\nAnd they seemed not to need the light to see.\n\nAlready did I bleed, but I could hear\n\nNo slight abatement in the sizzling snarl\n\nThat signified the numbers of the Soot.\n\nIf every hand that wounded me I killed\n\nStill would there be enough to cut me down\n\nOne red drop at a time, into the dark,\n\nAs lifeless as the ones who ground my heart\n\nBeneath their ashy boots, and more to spare.\n\nSomewhere behind I heard the rapid clash\n\nOf Luke striking at everything in reach.\n\nElsewhere further bellowed Guz his rage.\n\nA host, invisible inside the night\n\nThat was their ally, surged between us three:\n\nI never saw either of them again.\n\nHow long I fought in darkness I know not,\n\nHow many times I blundered through the pools,\n\nTo find firm ground by feel, lose it again,\n\nAnd find another hummock in the mud\n\nI may have fought on twenty times before\n\nOr may have not yet touched. How many times\n\nI sensed a sword descending, blindly dodged,\n\nMy shield fluttering upward past my head,\n\nCounter attacked, and knew not what I struck.\n\nHow many times their iron tore my flesh,\n\nSo muscles pulled in vain, so bones bruised blue:\n\nThrice I was sure I had my mortal wound\n\nAnd in berserker fury, only thought\n\nTo take as many with me as I could.\n\nHow many hours the darkness stretched, until\n\nThe pain repeatedly renewed was all\n\nThat held exhaustion off, to prop me up\n\nAnd keep me moving forward anywhere.\n\nYou saw the scars that that night left on me,\n\nThey spiderweb across my chest and arms.\n\nEach Soot that struck there never struck again,\n\nI promise, and I was outnumbered still.\n\nAt last I could no longer feel my limbs.\n\nWhether I slashed the foe or only air\n\nI could not say, but only could push on.\n\nI knew the next blow that I felt would carve\n\nThe mail from off my back, and drive down deep\n\nBetween my ribs to break and burst my heart\n\nAnd rip me right in two, but I would sell\n\nThat blow as dear as possible. And so\n\nI gathered all the hate I had, and charged,\n\nAnd as I howled forward, my feet flew\n\nThrough nothing, and I tumbled from a bank\n\nTo roll and land upon a drift of sand,\n\nClean, dry, sweet-smelling. In my shock, I heard\n\nNight breeze, and music of a running stream,\n\nAnd no infernal fizz of smoldering flesh.\n\nMy last remaining strength lifted my head\n\nEnough to glimpse a single firefly.\n\nThen I collapsed, to lay as do the dead\n\nAnd dream of how I likely was to die.\"\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"Ragnarok","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1714717-ragnarok-v.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1715507-ragnarok-vii.json"}}