{"sf1_id":1715507,"sf2_id":"lmXDv0mo","title":"Ragnarok - VII","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":1768,"posted_at":"2021-05-07T16:54:00.000Z","tags":["Epic","Iambic pentameter","Poetry","blank verse"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1715507-ragnarok-vii","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/lmXDv0mo","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/bc/58/bc58cc72-3a5e-483b-b486-2026395b77a0","description":"#8 of Ragnarok\n\nVarr completes his tale, and Shane falls into an uneasy sleep.\nThis might not have been the very first time I tried to get experimental with the dialog, but it's certainly an early experiment.","content":"\"I died not,\" Varr breathed shallowly, \"I woke\n\nMidmorning, by a gentle brook. How far\n\nI'd skirmished from satanic swamplands I\n\nHad no surmise. Three days I nursed my wounds,\n\nAnd then I took the mission meant for Luke,\n\nTo warn the Old Man. As I went, I met\n\nThe soot-things marauding. I ended them\n\nBy day, and in the night I took to stealth.\n\nBut it was all for naught. The hall was gone.\n\nEither the Soot were torchbearers, or else,\n\nThey could ignite with nothing but a touch.\n\nTheir arsonry outsped me, and my news.\n\nThe hall where I had lived was naught but ash.\n\nOut from the ruins, thus, I set my face\n\nTo anywhere the Soot might come, to slay.\n\nI do not hope to win. What hope of that?\n\nBut I will be defeated in a death\n\nThat will be worthy of remembrances.\"\n\nShane thought of and rejected several ways\n\nTo say there would no need for dying be,\n\nTo say their foes would be the ones to die,\n\nThat death would be an honor, by Varr's side,\n\nThat nothing could withstand them, and he frowned\n\nExasperated at this heroes' world\n\nFor which he was unlettered. Yet ere his\n\nUngainly eloquence had come to him\n\nAnd something epic uttered, Varr announced,\n\n\"But there! Perhaps to die is not so much.\n\nWhat matters death to the already dead?\n\nCome, brother champion, I weary you\n\nEnough now. No more answers have I. Sleep.\n\nYour wounds will pain you less for it, and then\n\nCome morning we will salve your wounded pride\n\nWith chase, with skirmish, and with victory.\"\n\nVarr made Shane take the bed, for himself straw\n\nInto a corner heaped. He would take no\n\nRefusals. Shane could only say \"I will\n\nRepay this hospitality, I swear!\"\n\n'Goodnight' he did not manage, for the furs\n\nWere soft and warm. His heartbeat echoed in\n\nHis ears as sound, his wounds as pressure-pulse,\n\nThe darkness might have been no bigger than\n\nThe outline of his body, and he mused\n\nOn how he felt more dead in sleep, than when\n\nHe waked and heard the claim that he was dead.\n\nSo sank Shane down through all of this to dream.\n\nAt first his rest was seamless, like the sleep\n\nSlept by a child exhausted in a car\n\nThat plunges onward in the trackless night\n\nAnd dives through waves of streetlamps thunder-hued\n\nThat flash across the infant eyes and stir\n\nThem not. But as he longer slept, the furs\n\nBegan to shudder, shift, and shakily\n\nTo writhe. Shane dreamed of darkness in a ring,\n\nAn audience that stank of ashes, and\n\nA rain of blows from every side, that he\n\nWas powerless to raise his hands against,\n\nFrom foes intangible, unheard, unseen.\n\nThen came one to his face. His neck snapped back,\n\nHis body stiffened like an uncoiled spring,\n\nThe world burst into shards of rainbow pain,\n\nAnd he was falling fast, into a pit\n\nDrilled in an evil smelling swamp. Below\n\nA sallow spark hung, distant, and there came\n\nThe tang of sulfur from it. Then the spark\n\nTo see him seemed, and opened, grinning rows\n\nOf blackened shark teeth, glowing red within.\n\nShane twisted as he fell, then sat up sharp\n\nPanting and nigh sweat-drowned. Upon the straw\n\nVarr snored, the embers huddled, and the room\n\nWas as he'd seen it last: rough stone and earth\n\nBy firefly basket lit. Yet not this bright:\n\nThe shadows had been deeper, had they not?\n\nShane blinked the flakes of sleep out of his brain,\n\nAnd saw the extra hundred glowing spots\n\nThat streamed in through the open door, to whirl,\n\nEncircling a figure just inside.\n\nHe wore a cloak of dirty grey, a hat\n\nWide-brimmed and pulled diagonally down\n\nAcross the left half of his face. His face\n\nWas fixed illegibly between the smile\n\nOf one upon the gallows wrongfully\n\nWho knows his death will prove him in the right,\n\nAnd that of an archangel, judging sooth\n\nIn wake of battles biblical. Shane pushed\n\nHimself upright and raised his fists. The man\n\nBut smiled a little more, \"I will not say\n\n'Be not afraid,' for Shane the Champion\n\nFears nothing. So I say I am your friend\n\nAnd hope that you will welcome me as such.\n\nAlas, for all my warriors who survive!\"\n\nHe nodded toward Varr sleeping on the floor,\n\n\"My world has been a no-man's-land too long.\n\nMy men seek bolt holes where they may, to wait\n\nFor you, oh Champion, and know not what\n\nThey wait for. I knew not myself until\n\nThis night I saw you at the forest edge-\"\n\nSo saying, he removed his hat. His hair\n\nWas grizzled grey, and trailed forward through\n\nThe bands of thick black cloth across one eye.\n\nShane licked his lips, and though he dropped his fists\n\nHe kept them clenched. He made to speak\n\nBut found his tongue immobile, still in sleep,\n\nOr paralyzed like those who dream they run\n\nBut cannot move their legs. But the Old Man\n\nWas gone, and in his place there stood a crone.\n\nGrandmotherly she seemed, not as if warm,\n\nNot likely to bake cookies or knit scarves,\n\nBut august, ancient, matriarchical,\n\nAll over wisdom-written with long care\n\nFor wayward progeny that heed her not.\n\n\"You know me not, Falconi,\" said she, \"But\n\nI know you well enough. Your place is not\n\nAmong this naïve band-\" Then she was gone\n\nAnd quick as blinking the Old Man was back\n\nAs if in cinema someone had switched\n\nThe reels of film all out of order, that\n\nA scene to later ones transmogrified\n\nWas, with such swiftness that the audience\n\nConfounded quite, has blinked and missed the change.\n\nThe Old Man bent his head, as does a man,\n\nAfter interruption, and said \"I deem\n\nThat you may be the last intrepid soul\n\nWho finds the earth too shallow for his deeds\n\nAnd seeks his promised place here, in my lands.\n\nYou have the bearing, restlessness, and stance\n\nThat speak defiant heart enduring all.\n\nYou bare your chest before your foes, to dare\n\nThem spill your blood. You even glare at me\n\nAs does a falcon at the falconer.\n\nIf you are last, then you are fit to make\n\nA worthy end for us, and I am used\n\nTo watching what my wisdom calls the last-\"\n\nThe old woman frowned, as if at a child\n\nWho fidgets at his lesson, and she said,\n\n\"I think you have more anger than you know.\n\nI think life cheated you, and gave you less\n\nThan man needs. You left cursing at the fates\n\nThat cut you off, and wove your path, and spun\n\nYour birth into a war you did not make\n\nAnd to a world that scorned you to the last.\n\nBut hear me, there is still a home for you,\n\nBut it is far beyond this petty dream\n\nOf boys' imagination. Leave it, come,\n\nAnd find what you have yearned for all your days-\"\n\nA presence deep invisible, but grim\n\nLike sensing suddenly that one is watched,\n\nGrinned from behind the fire. Shane heard it not,\n\nNor saw it, but he felt it hating him-\n\nThe Old Man pulled his wiry beard, the hue\n\nOf old titanium, and whispered \"I\n\nCome long ago from lands far to the north.\n\nThe winters there were long, like onto five\n\nWhite winters stacked together, with no spring\n\nOr summer in between. When food was stale,\n\nAnd drink was flat, and love was merely one\n\nMore way of huddling against the cold,\n\nMy people lived on hope. I gave them hope\n\nWhen all became despair. But for myself\n\nI kept no hope or strength, nor for my cause.\n\nI had hope hand to mouth. You are my last-\"\n\nThe old woman before him stood again\n\nHer iron-grey tresses trailing round her face,\n\n\"You are no fool, Falconi. You must know\n\nThat this is foolishness. Can but two men\n\nOutlast the hordes infinite? Can two men,\n\nHowever brave, command the tide to halt\n\nOr stay with sword and fist a cataract?\n\nCan two souls left alone, divorced from aid\n\nFrom heaven, hell, and their own earthly clay\n\nEndure the death of worlds, relight the sun,\n\nAnd seek to slay the Sulfur Carrier?\n\nIf you would live, abandon foolishness-\"\n\nAgain the Old Man stood, as if he had\n\nBeen standing talking all the while, his place\n\nNot trading with an opposite. \"I know\n\nYour questions, Champion, but beg of you\n\nAbandon them. Your hand is at a task\n\nToo urgent, too immediate, too high\n\nTo hesitate in curiosity-\"\n\n\"-You think you will get answers,\" said the crone,\n\n\"From him? All answers are to him a chance\n\nTo pose in Spartan attitudes against\n\nWhat his own posing makes from possible\n\nTo inevitable. You will be slain\n\nAnd never know why, how, or who killed you-\"\n\n\"-I did not seek that any of my sons\n\nShould die. I sought that they should have a chance\n\nTo drink of glory deep, to stuff themselves\n\nWith life like lava blazing, to feel love\n\nNot for a passing thing but for a fact:\n\nThat they had done extraordinary deeds\n\nAnd no defeat or death could alter that,\n\nNor everlasting darkness reach that truth\n\nThat courage once had lived, and it was theirs-\"\n\n\"-So if you are determined, Falconi,\n\nTo walk with suicidal fools, I wash\n\nMy hands, though most reluctantly, I own,\n\nOf your fate. To your master I spoke truth\n\nWhen I told him that all his hope was gone.\n\nI speak the truth to you, and say the same.\n\nGo find your hearth and home without my help\n\nIf you can. We will twice more meet again-\"\n\n-_We will meet_, thought the something in the fire,\n\n_And I will drink your blood while yet you live_\n\n_And tear you into ribbons ere you die_-.\n\nThe Old Man raised his hand, and said, \"Do not\n\nThink this speech but a dream-\" The old woman\n\nSaid \"Think not that you dreamed this, when you wake-\"\n\nShane felt a hand pressed to his brow, and then\n\nHe started up, his eyes wide, and looked around.\n\nThe room was empty, and the door stood wide.\n\nThe dawn was just upwelling on the plains.\n\nVarr stood outside, his armor standing by.\n\nShane lay propped on his elbows, with the furs\n\nBunched up across his knees. He would have thought\n\nThe past night all a dream, but that his wounds\n\nWere healed and gone each one, with not a scar\n\nLeft on his flesh, to show where they had been.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"Ragnarok","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1715138-ragnarok-vi.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1715906-ragnarok-viii.json"}}