Battle

I have commented before on Poul Anderson's rich vocabulary. I have just found another to me completely unfamiliar word, "...hackamore..." on p. 98 of Vault Of The Ages (New York, 1969). The context makes clear that it is a way to bridle a horse and it is easy to google the full meaning.

Meanwhile, Anderson has given us yet another excellent description of a battle. The Dalesmen draw up on the top of a hill in the wedge formation that we have met in other Anderson works. They hold off the attacking barbarians, the Lann, until the Lann's cavalry emerges from a concealing wood, attacks from the side and breaks through, destroying the Dalesmen's formation.

The Dalesmen's leader, Ralph, rallies his men, holds them together and leads a counterattack that breaks right through the enemy lines. Since night has fallen, the Lann Chief knows that his men will not be able to pursue so he holds them back.

Thus, Ralph's leadership has saved the bulk of the Dalesmen's army but they know that they are a beaten force. Anderson makes us feel what they feel:

"Carl's body was one vast, numb ache. His head felt hollow with tiredness, and he staggered a little as he walked. Only now was he becoming really aware of his wounds..." (p. 90)

Carl must break taboo to retrieve the scientific knowledge of the ancients in order to defeat the otherwise militarily superior Lann. The attached image conveys the wonder of finding records of technology in a time vault. I think from the description in the novel that the older man showing the three boys a model of a rocket should be dark-skinned.

A Blunt Wedge

Poul Anderson, Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 8.

"Ralph's army was drawn up in the formation his people had always used, a double line in the shape of a blunt wedge, with himself and most of his guards at the point." (p. 82) -

first rank: axes and spears;
behind them: long pikes and infighting weapons;
at intervals: company banners;
on the flanks: horsemen with lances and swords;
on higher ground: boys and older men with bows and slings;
tight enough to hold, then advance.

See also:

Wedge
Wedge II
How King Magnus Went To His Weird
Swine-Array And Sea Elves
The Return Of The Swine-Array
A Battle
Battle
Battle
Ravens II

Wedge II

"The army was formed as a wedge, spear and shield soldiers at the edges, the cavalry, archers, and supply wagons inside."
-Jerry Pournelle, King David's Spaceship (London, 1984), pp. 185-186.

Such a small disciplined wedge is able to sally forth from a besieged city, out into the midst of vastly greater numbers of besieging barbarians, to kill the besiegers in great numbers without being overwhelmed by them and to return to the safety of the city. The above link to a post about a Poul Anderson heroic fantasy novel reveals that, mythologically speaking, it was Odin who taught this military formation to mankind.

Am I interested in learning military tactics? Personally, not very. However, as with the seamanship in Chapter Twelve, it is always interesting to read an account of skilled activities by a writer who understands them. And it is good to see the demoralized men of a besieged city win a new kind of collective confidence.

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.

Swine-Array And Sea Elves

Continuing the quote from the previous post:

"Deor and Thora had a place of honor in the front rank only a little behind Godric's sword-hand, next to his son and heir Leofric. As honor usually did, it also meant greater peril. The mass behind them added weight, but they were at the point of the spear. Others would step forward to take their place if they fell dead or wounded." (ibid.)

This further account explains more fully the structure of the wedge formation or swine-array.

As they march on, Deor imagines:

"...glimpsing the sae-aelfen in the spray." (p. 319) (See also Elves And The Sea.)

Terminology

I have said before that reading Anderson requires a dictionary - sometimes more than others. During a battle in Rogue Sword (New York, 1960):

"...heaumes..." (p. 100);
"...gonfanon..." (p. 101);
" 'Desperta ferres!' " (p. 102);
"...poitrail..." (p. 102).

I think there were similar words earlier but I did not note them at the time. We miss new vocabulary as we continue reading through a passage instead of pausing to focus on an individual word.

" 'Desperta ferres!' " is immediately followed by "Wake the iron!" which turns out to be the English translation of the Latin. Not knowing this yet, I continued to read with incomprehension that the Almugavares, whose war shout was "Desperta ferres!," struck their spearheads against the stones, raising sparks. What stones? Were the enemy shielded with stones? Why blunt and damage spearheads by striking them on the ground - if that is what they were doing?

Anderson does not explain. Apparently, however, this group, the Almugavares, did shout that war cry to frighten the enemy and to invoke the military use of iron. Further, they did strike the stones underfoot in order to intimidate their enemies by raising sparks.

Like the wedge formation described in War Of The Gods, this is a detail of military history that I have learned by reading Anderson. I have yet to google the other odd words quoted above.

Addendum, 10/12/12:

"...mangonel..." (p. 115);
" '...pourpoint...' "(p. 116).

Earlier:

" '...QUEAN!' " (p. 72) (I thought this was a miss-spelling but I have googled it and it is a word.)
"...tasses..." (p. 76)
"...Turcopol..." (p. 76). ?

Further on:

"...leny...lugsail..." (p. 119); ?
"...boniface..." (p. 123)

How King Magnus Went To His Weird

"In battle, he took the right wing with the Southern levies, Einar the Northerners on the left, while Magnus had the tip of the wedge: the "swine-fylking" which Odhinn himself had taught to men." (Poul Anderson, The Road Of The Sea Horse, New York, 1980, pp. 37-38)

Odin taught the wedge battle formation to men in Anderson's War Of The Gods. That was a book in which Odin was a real being. Here, we must regard him as a myth.

Here again, St Olaf does the next best thing. He cannot interact as a physical being but does appear to his son Magnus in a dream before a battle and offers a choice: follow me or become a great king but at the expense of committing a great sin. This is ominous since this second chapter of the novel is entitled How King Magnus Went To His Weird. Next day, Magnus spends a lot of time with a priest and I must finish rereading the chapter to learn how he meets his death.

Harald comments:

" 'Men get dreams and dreams and most of them mean naught.' " (p. 39)

Fortuitously, I have just reread Neil Gaiman's "August." There, no less an authority than Caesar Augustus, in whose reign the new God was born, informs us that:

"Many dreams come through the gates of ivory...and they lie. A few dreams come through the gates of horn, and they speak to us truly." (Neil Gaiman, Fables And Reflections, New York, p. 105)

Pulling Everything Together, Maybe

The previous post, Gods And Wars, referred to a battle between Dalesmen and Lann. For the Dalesman battle formation, see A Blunt Wedge. For three young Dalesmens' discussion of whether someone must have made the world, see not only Just A Story but also Someone. For one of several items seen, in different contexts, against the Milky Way, see Progress. And that Milky way reference is part of yet another of Poul Anderson's vivid descriptive passages appealing to at least three of the senses:

"Carl lay in tall, wet grass, hearing the sigh of wind and the distant creaking song of crickets. Looking upward, he saw the [guard] go past, a dim sheen of metal against the Milky Way."

-Vault Of The Ages, Chapter 9, p. 97.

Sighing wind is appropriate to the Dalesmen's post-battle exhaustion whereas the crickets are indifferent to human conflict.

Myths Of Origins

War Of The Gods, XXIII.

Mythologically and fictionally, a god (Gangleri, Odin as the Wanderer) taught men, including Hadding (Njord incarnate) a battle formation: the wedge. Historically and prehistorically, men have learned and taught themselves everything. No god taught mankind language, agriculture, government or poetry. Human hands and brains contrived culture and technology, then brains created myths about anthropomorphic gods.

Although this might seem obvious, CS Lewis presents a culturally sophisticated First Man, an Adam equivalent, on Venus, learning about mathematics and technology by direct divine inspiration. Lewis really did live in a different world from the rest of us.

(I trust that it will not be considered reprehensible to advertise another work with the same title.)

Ravens II

When reading Poul Anderson's War Of The Gods, I noted that the sail of the Danish King Hadding's ship bore the emblem of a raven which is also the symbol of Odin. This is explained in Anderson's earlier work Hrolf Kraki's Saga (New York, 1973) where a later Danish king also has "...raven sail unfurled..." (p. 54) War... tells us that the Danish kings were Skjoldungs, but the Saga adds that their ancestor, Skjold, was believed to be a son of Odin.

War Of The Gods explains a phrase used in the Saga. The Danish kings' enemies have reason to fear not only "...a raven banner..." but also "...a host in the swine-array of battle..." (p. 62). The swine-array, taught by Gangleri/Odin to Hadding, is a wedge shaped formation so named because it rips through an unprepared host like a boar's tusks.

In Hrolf Kraki's Saga, Chapter II, "The Tale of Frodhi," the usurper Frodhi is overthrown by his nephews Hroar and Helgi. In Chapter III, "The Tale of the Brothers," Helgi, reigning jointly with his brother, begets Yrsa who, according to the family tree at the beginning of the book, will become the mother of the title character, Hrolf Kraki. Thus, although Hrolf is not yet on stage, Chapter II (of VIII) has brought him significantly closer. However, as Anderson says in the Foreword, the real hero of the saga is Skjold's line of descent, not any single Skjoldung.