Hadding and Hardgreip seek shelter in a house where the man has just died and is laid out for burial. When Hardgreip draws Hadding back outside, the rain has stopped, the clouds have parted and a sunbeam shines through. However:
"It turned the mere blood red." (p. 50)
The signs remain bad.
Hardgreip proposes to raise the man to foretell their immediate future. She does. He foretells imminent doom for her although not for Hadding. When the dead man has spoken and his body falls back:
"Wind howled, rain dashed." (p. 53)
We expect nothing else from them.
The following day, they bury the man they have wronged, pay his widow and ride on. Things will get worse before they get better.
3 comments:
Keep in mind that the "pathetic fallacy" was even stronger in older times -- people didn't make the sharp distinction we do between human beings and their emotions and intentionality, and the forces of nature, which we see as impersonal and operating according to natural law.
That outlook is a product first of Christianity, with it's "de-animistic" outlook, and then the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions.
When someone in 200 AD Denmark said "The wind is angry", they weren't being nearly as metaphorical as we are if we say the same thing.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: And I strongly suspect that many of US, coming from Christian and scientific minded backgrounds, would even think of that wind at all, except maybe to grumble at how cold it was.
Paul: And we see a similarly ill fated bit of necromancy in THE BROKEN SWORD, when Skafloc "raised" Orm from his grave mound, and discovered who was his father and sister.
Ad astra! Sean
Drat I meant to say above: "...would NOT even think of that wind at all..."
Sean
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