Showing posts with label "Written By The Wind" by Roland J Green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Written By The Wind" by Roland J Green. Show all posts

Sunday, 31 January 2016

"Written By The Wind"

Great King's War is a sequel to H Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan Of Otherwhen. We are talking about some serious alternative history fiction here. Lord Kalvan... is one volume of Piper's Paratime series which, since it deals with the Paratime Police, is comparable to Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series.

Roland Green, co-author of Great King's War, also wrote the Drakas! story, "Written By The Wind, A Story Of The Draka." Two Draka observe a Japanese-Russian air-sea battle in 1905. The Japanese who are about to die are said to be approaching the Yasukuni Shrine, founded by Emperor Meiji, who is named in the story.

One Draka carries a crucifix and survives. The other carries a Thorshammer and doesn't. Dying, she holds out the hammer and says:

"'Take it - take it to a shrine. Or - or Ran's.'" (Drakas!, p. 119)

Ran was the wife of the sea giant, Aegir. See here. Welcoming the dead under the sea, she resembles Naerdha. At the end, the surviving Draka, holding the hammer, asks:

"'...if there is a shrine to Thor or Ran in the Empire?'" (p. 121)

Obviously, there is not. Equally obviously, his colleague meant that her amulet should be given to the sea.

The story is mainly about the deployment and effects of military hardware. Although most of us do not want to be in a land, sea, air or space battle, we often enjoy reading about them. See here and here.