We Do It

The Broken Sword, XII.

The Dark Lord to the witch:

"'Did you think you ever summoned me and struck a bargain? No, you were led astray; that was another. Mortals never sell me their souls. They give them away.'" (p. 90)

The Sabbat Goat to the black magician:

"WE WILL DO WITHOUT THE ANTICHRIST. HE WAS NEVER NECESSARY. MEN HAVE ALWAYS LED THEMSELVES UNTO ME."

-James Blish, Black Easter IN Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), pp. 319-425 AT p. 423.

Lucifer Morningstar to Morpheus:

"They talk of me going around and buying souls, like a fishwife come market day, never stopping to ask themselves why.

"I need no souls.

"And how can anyone own a soul?

"No. They belong to themselves...

"...They just hate to have to face up to it."

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Season Of Mists (New York, 1992), p. 82, panel3 5-6.

Well, that is clear enough. We do it.

Splendour And Presences

The Broken Sword, XII.

"The dim splendour of the castle which was also a barren tor, the sorceries adrift through its eternal warm twilight, the presences that haunted hills and woods and waters - oppressed [Freda] with strangeness." (p. 86)

See also:

The Twilight Of The Elves

More On The Elves

Here again, Poul Anderson's text expresses two levels of reality or perception. People saw tors and imagined or interpreted them as elven castles. They saw hills, woods and waters and sensed haunting presences. I do not expect to meet a ghost in a wood but I do expect to experience some of what our ancestors felt as twilight deepened in such places. We must follow the narrative and also feel its atmosphere.

"Go with G - !" Well, no. Freda cannot say that in Elfheugh. But the Faerie realms are fading or withdrawing...

Chill Wind And Slow Storm

The Broken Sword, XII.

Skafloc's wizard skis bear  "...him like the wind." (p. 83) He meets Tyr who:

"Despite a chill wind...wore only a wolfskin kilt..." (ibid.)

It is not good to meet the god of war "...alone at dusk..." (ibid.) so, of course, the wind at the time of this meeting is appropriately chill. 

"[Tyr's] voice was as of a slow storm through a brazen sky." (p. 84)

The earliest gods were personifications of natural forces. It would have been imagined that a storm was the voice of a god so, of course, this god's voice sounds like a storm. When society became more complicated so that social forces like wars overwhelmed individuals with the apparent inevitability of natural forces like hostile weather, then social forces also were personified. Thus: Thor, thunder; Tyr, war. Next, personified external forces were unified. Then they came to be understood and therefore no longer personified... However, because external forces remain uncontrollable, resort is still made to spells or prayers.

Poul Anderson's narrative returns us to those ages when a storm was a voice and when men told tales of gods and elves.

Cold Wind And Doom

The Broken Sword, XI.

Freda's home is burned and her family killed. She says:

"'Broken is the tree whose branches sheltered the land, and wind blows cold across fields gone barren -'" (p. 79)

Leea warns Skafloc against Freda:

"'There is doom in her; I can feel it, like chill in my marrow.'" (p. 80)

- but Leea does not know the reason. Freda is Skafolc's sister. 

I admit to not remembering what happens next despite several previous readings. Maybe the plot of The Broken Sword will stay with me longer this time.

I also admit to preferring Poul Anderson's fantasies to Tolkien's. Anderson deserves as much recognition.

Wanderer And Night-Bridge

The Broken Sword, X.

Leea sings about the wind:

"Seaward blows the wind tonight..." (p. 66)

Women, hearth, kith and kin cannot hold men called to sea by the wind which Leea addresses as "...old wanderer..." (ibid.)

The wind that Valgard had released from a sack blows Skafloc's fleet into the same fjord where the elves find human longships and murdered men.

When they approach Illrede Troll-King's hall:

"Wind shrieked and cuffed them with cold hands." (p. 68)

That is what we expect! However, there is not much more wind in this chapter. During the battle in the hall, Skafloc Elven Fosterling and Valgard Changeling come face to face (the same face!) in combat but they are driven apart. Illrede, Valgard and some others flee. Skafloc frees the human prisoners, Asgerd and Freda, not knowing that they are his sisters.

When the elves, with the freed women, return to their ships, they expect attack because they hear troll horns:

"...blowing ragged on the wind." (p. 72)

Skafloc leads a wedge formation. 

"...they saw the trolls massed black against the wan night-bridge of the gods..." (p. 73)

"Night-bridge" is yet another description of the Milky Way and the trolls are something else seen against it.

When the elven survivors escape, Skafloc's runes shift the wind in their favour.

Reaving, Grieving

The Broken Sword, X.

Leea sings to Skafloc and concludes:

"...when the sea their life is reaving.

"And their women will be grieving." (p. 66)

Does this sound a bit like Dies Irae?

1 Day of wrath and doom impending.
David's word with Sibyl's blending!
Heaven and earth in ashes ending!

7 What shall I, frail man, be pleading?
Who for me be interceding,
When the just are mercy needing?

-copied from here.

Something resonates when lines end in "-ing"!

This also reminds us of another verse by Kipling:

What is a woman that you forsake her,

And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,

To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

-copied from here.

I have quoted the two best parts of Kipling that I know and unfortunately will sail no further with Skafloc tonight.

Theology

Lunarians need a source of energy - antimatter - whereas elves just need to know the right spells. Poul Anderson's creative versatility and literary skills enabled him to construct, with apparent ease, fictional narratives based on either of these two very different sets of premises. Fantasies can assume either polytheism or medieval monotheism. Sf features characters who at least believe either in diverse monotheisms or in alternative religious metaphysics. Norse and other deities can appear as fictional characters in novels or short stories. The One God of several well known scriptural traditions intervenes less frequently but can be there when needed. 

Thus, the content of religious beliefs is at least a major background issue in Poul Anderson's works. For what it is worth, my most recent foray into theology, an attempt to improve on an earlier version, and now entitled "Prophecy And Contemplation," is here.

Embarkation

The Broken Sword, X.

How can we convey the detail of Poul Anderson's descriptions without quoting some at length? Instead of composing the following paragraph, Anderson could simply have written that the warriors embarked:

"On a night just after sunset, the warriors embarked. A moon newly risen cast silver and shadow on the crags and scaurs of the elf-hills, on the strand from which they rose, on the clouds racing eastward on a wind that filled heaven with its clamour. The moonlight ran in shards and ripples over the waves, which tumbled and roared, white-maned, on the rocks. It shimmered off weapons and armour of the elf warriors, while the black-and-white longships drawn up on the shore seemed but shapes and light-gleams.

"Skafloc stood wrapped in a cape, the wind streaming his hair..." (p. 65)

Two paragraphs: two references to wind. Colours, clamour, cape, wind, waves, white manes, weapons, warriors... And at last a conversation in which Leea warns Skafloc not to go. He goes.

We know only that doom awaits.

Many Winds

 

The Broken Sword, IX.

When Asgerd, Aelfrida's daughter, agrees with her betrothed that the garth is hollow with its men gone:

"A cold sea-wind, blowing fine dry snowflakes, ruffled her heavy locks." (p. 59)

Then:

"As night fell, a strong wind came with snow on its wings, to howl around the hall. Hail followed, like night-gangers thumping their heels on the roof." (ibid.)

Almost immediately, Valgard and his Vikings arrive, kill men, burn the hall, abduct the sisters, Asgerd and Freda, and depart by sea:

"...rowing against a wind which blew icy waves inboard." (p. 61)

But Valgard, following the witch's instructions, unties a sack that releases a favourable wind. Back at Orm's garth, among the women and children left behind, Aelfrida sits:

"...with hair and dress blowing wild..." (ibid.)

A gale drives the ships and wind whoots in the rigging. The cliffs of Finnmark bear "...wind-twisted trees." (p. 62) The wind blows the ships into a fjord where the waiting trolls, visible only to Valgard's with-sight, wear little or nothing:

"...however freezing the wind." (p. 63)

As already agreed with Valgard, the trolls attack and kill his men who cannot see them.

I have skipped past some details like the disgusting appearance of the trolls and the description of the troll-king's hall. However, for the most part, focusing on the winds has given us a good summary of the action.

Valgard gives Asgerd and Freda to Troll-King Illrede. 

It is my time of night for other reading. But I think that we have done justice to Poul Anderson's winds.

What The Priest Says

The Broken Sword, IX.

Looking at the dead bodies of her husband and sons, Aelfrida whispers:

"'The priest says it would be a sin, or I would slay myself now and go to my rest beside you...'" (p. 58)

I agree with the priest although not for his reasons! By remaining alive, Aelfrida can later appreciate life although differently from before and even though this seems impossible to her at the time. More fundamentally, we are the organisms through which reality is known/knows itself. As such, our role is to remain conscious as long as possible, not to give up when times are bad.

The most fundamental question of philosophy is the relationship between being and consciousness and the most fundamental question of life is: "To be or not to be," - in Shakespeare and also here.