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GEES went down toward the pond, and now she followed him. He struck a match,
and saw the boar floating, senseless or dead, out of his reach. He would have
waded in, but she held him back.
No, she said. He s dead I could see when you struck the third match.
Shock it isn t the burns that kill, ever, but the shock. Dolph is dead I know
it. Come away. Leave him.
He stayed to strike another match, and hold it high over his head. The night
was still, deathly still with a light haze clouding the air, and the match and
its reflection on the water showed the boar floating, still and hairless and
pink from his burning dead!
Ira said, Let us go back. My father chose him out and began his training.
Does it sound silly to say I
counted a pig among my friends?
I once made a friend of a dog, Gees said. Adolphus was more than any dog,
from what I saw of him.
Dead! She took his arm and leaned against him. Where do they go? Shall I
see him again? Dolph!
Loyal Dolph! Oh Abruptly she flung her arms round Gees and broke into a
passion of sobbing. I
have so little so very little I who have all the world to play with! Do you
know? I hold me for a little while! Let me grieve for him! I I She forced
herself back to self-control. You see me silly. Tell me it was only a pig!
My pig!
A living thing that looked up to you, he said gravely. Not silly, Ira no
real affection can ever be silly, whether you spend it on a doll or a child or
a pig it is all one thing. You love.
She drew back from his hold, and turned toward the house. I am beginning to
understand, she said.
Yes. Because I love. They came to the opened back door, and she looked along
the passage, which cut straight through the house to the front. She said, But
I closed that door! and stood looking along the hallway. Gees too looked, and
saw that the front door stood opened wide.
He said, Naylor! and almost leaped into the hallway, leaving her behind. In
long strides he reached the doorway of the room into which she had shown him
when he first entered this house, and, opening the door went in. Utter
darkness, but he struck another match and held it up. The oaken chest lay
front downward, and its carven lid was smashed and splintered, and soiled by
the trampling of muddied feet.
He heard Ira in the doorway and extinguished the match.
Don t come in, he said. Nobody here don t come in!
As he turned toward the door he heard her footsteps recede, and then she
returned, bearing the lighted lamp from the other room. She stood holding it
while she looked down at the broken chest, and then put the lamp down on the
table. Gees lifted the chest over on to its base, and heard the clank of
metal. He saw the shimmer of the sword blade, and the rolled parchments, but
of the axe with the scribed haft of narwhal horn there was no trace. Beside
him Ira looked down.
He thought I was alone here, she said, very calmly and quietly. He lighted
the fire over Adolphus to draw me out from the house, and then came in to get
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the Rod. While we were out there he took it
She broke off and stood with her head bent toward the chest, listening. Gees
listened too, and heard the first faint beginnings of the sword s singing. A
noise like trumpets far off, very far off, as it might have been a little echo
of the noise of trumpets. Swelling, broadening and gaining in power, as if an
army marched hither from the far confines of the world. Until it was a song, a
terrible song of power and hate and strong purpose, a melody to drive men mad.
A clangour that grew to its ultimate limit, as if the
marching army went by, and faded down and down and down until again it was no
more than the faintest of echoes, dying away to nothingness.
Gees looked at the girl, and she stood smiling at the rifled chest.
I know it now, she said. I don t fear it any more. It is not for me, the
doom in that song, but for him. The end is to Dark Lagny, to me. To us
Volsungs and children of the Hammer. The sword has spoken, and the last of
Oger s race goes down the way of death.
And the Rod? Gees asked practically. You set such value on it.
All that is written on it I know. The value I set on it was that he should
not have it, while he was still able to profit by the knowledge written on it.
He has stolen it too late nothing that is on it is of use to him, because doom
marches on him, now.
Gees asked, How do you know?
The sword has sung for the last time it will not have a voice again, because
I have read that song.
She took up the lamp. Let us go back to the other room. I know, I tell you.
To you, perhaps, all this is foolishness, but I am Dark Lagny s daughter.
He followed her, and she put the lamp down on the ebony table near the head
end of the divan on the other, the bowl which contained the herbs of incense
stood, and with it the two glasses. Gees stood irresolute, and she turned to
smile at him.
Two words of yours, when I grieved over Adolphus, she said. Do you know,
already that is a long while ago? Something of the past?
Yes, I think I do know, he answered.
My little pig! I have Peter left my cat. Nothing else.
No? And what were those two words of mine?
You said You love. I have no fear, no shame in telling you that is true of
me. Because of it, I would even let Jerome Naylor go free of me and of any
more harm, so much am I softened by it but it is too late for that. I might
even
What? he asked, after waiting for the end of the sentence.
No not that. I will follow this path of mine, find my way along the direction
you will not know do not wish to know. And be all I see I may be, far greater
than any other living, greater even than the
Adepts. Equal with the Powers outside and beyond space
That s near on blasphemy, he interrupted harshly.
Come to you as and when I will, perhaps unseen and unfelt by you, but there
! she went on, as if he had not spoken. Because I have no shame nor fear, I
tell you because, unloved by you, I love. If
If? he echoed, at the end of another long pause.
Once more put your arms around me, and kiss me one moment of all you have to
live. That I may tell you not in words.
He held her, and she was a flame in his hold, an infinity of passion-swept
tenderness. There needed no words to end that If and then she thrust him
away.
Now go, she said. You know. When I in my turn can look into your eyes and
say as you said You love, I will not ask for power. Because the greater good
will be mine. Now go no more words. Go.
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He went out to the night, and back toward Troyarbour and the inn.
CHAPTER VII
THE HAMMER OF THOR
THE haze of earlier evening had thickened to a chill, clammy reek as Gees went
down toward the inn.
Not so opaque as to be worth terming fog, but a vapoury swirl that, with
moonrise at hand, whitened the slopes on either side of the lane. In it he saw
ahead of him a wavering, bobbing point of light which, as he neared it,
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