When rival armies meet:
"A wind blew off the sea, loud, cold, and salt." (XXV, p. 210)
Appropriately loud and cold before battle.
The text continues:
"Already ravens from inland and gulls from the water were gathering in it. They had learned." (ibid.)
Another resonance between fictional universes: in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, ravens gather in the Dreaming when the Furies are set against Morpheus. They include the ravens from the Tower of London and Noah's Raven.
In the quiet before the battle:
"...only the wind and the nearing thunder spoke." (p. 211)
Thunder approaches as battle does. It and the wind join the dialogue.
When men fight:
"Thunder hammered the world." (p. 212)
Thor's hammer.
When the wounded King Uffi challenges Hadding to come and finish him:
"Thunder rolled around his words." (p. 214)
However, later, in a time of peace, when an eagle hovers golden in the sunlight:
"...wind blew cool, clean, the farthest mountain as clear to see through it as if one soared there oneself alongside the eagle." (XXVI, pp. 221-222)
Hadding and Uffi threaten each other with hell-road but surely they should expect Valhalla? Religious ideas were inchoate.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Well, I would not expect bitter enemies to wish each other the pagan equivalent of Paradise! So of course Uffi and Hadding would hope the other would go to a more unpleasant destination after death.
I finally finished vol. 2 of Solzhenitsyn's massive novel MARCH 1917, ending with the abdication of Nicholas II. Actually, the book ends with AS showing us the Tsar started having about the wisdom of that abdication, including this poignant quotation from Nicholas' diary: "This evening, Guchkov and Shulgin arrived from Petrograd. I spoke with them and handed them my signed and redone Manifesto [of abdication]. At one in the morning I left Pskov with a heavy sense of what I had been through. Surrounded by treason and cowardice and deceit!"
If this is a genuine quote from his diary, Nicholas II was right to feel like that! He had never been adequately informed of what was actually going on in Petrograd, of how feeble the uprising was and of how badly served he had been by the authorities there. AND of how quickly the army group commanders (with one exception) had been willing to urge abdication on him instead of seeking quick and decisive means of putting down the disorders!
I finished vol. 2 with disgust and anger. The catastrophe of March 1917 led directly to Lenin's November seizure of power and all its hideous consequences, one of them being the disastrous rule of Vladimir Putin!
It's been exhausting but fascinating, reading Volumes 1 and 2 of MARCH 1917, plus LENIN IN ZURICH. But, I'll wait some time before going on to Volume 3.
I now feel able to focus more on some of the works of Poul Anderson, such as NEW AMERICA. And possibly WAR OF THE GODS.
Ad astra! Sean
Dang it, I garbled the second sentence of the second paragraph of my comment. I wanted to write: "Actually, the book ends with AS showing us the Tsar STARTING TO HAVE DOUBTS about the wisdom of that abdication..."
Sean
Sean,
We usually get the meaning when words are missing.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I'm glad of that. But I still get annoyed by MY typos and garblings.
Ad astra! Sean
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