Wide eyes stared at him — all but Thyra’s; she was too torn.

  Toward evening he busked himself. He took no helm, shield, or byrnie, for the dead man bore no weapons. Some said they would come along, armored themselves well, and offered to be at his side. He told them to follow him, but no farther than to watch what happened. Their iron would be of no help, and he thought they would only get in each other’s way, and his, when he met the over-human might of the drow. He kissed Alfhild, his mother, and his sister, and clasped hands with his brother, bidding them stay behind if they loved him.

  Long did the few miles of path seem, and gloomy under the pines. The sun was on the world’s rim when men came out in the open. They looked past fields and barrow down to the empty garth, the fjordside cliffs, the water where the sun lay as half an ember behind a trail of blood. Clouds hurried on a wailing wind through a greenish sky. Cold struck deep. A wolf howled.

  “Wait here,” Hauk said.

  “The gods be with you,” Leif breathed.

  “I’ve naught tonight but my own strength,” Hauk said. “Belike none of us ever had more.”

  His tall form, clad in leather and wadmal, showed black athwart the sunset as he walked from the edge of the woods, out across plowland toward the crouching howe. The wind fluttered his locks, a last brightness until the sun went below. Then for a while the evenstar alone had light.

  Hauk reached the mound. He drew sword and leaned on it, waiting. Dusk deepened. Star after star came forth, small and strange. Clouds blowing across them picked up a glow from the still unseen moon.

  It rose at last above the treetops. Its ashen sheen stretched gashes of shadow across the earth. The wind loudened.

  The grave groaned. Turves, stones, timbers swung aside. Geirolf shambled out beneath the sky. Hauk felt the ground shudder under his weight. There came a carrion stench, though the only sign of rotting was on the dead man’s clothes. His eyes peered dim, his teeth gnashed dry in a face at once well remembered and hideously changed. When he saw the living one who waited, he veered and lumbered thitherward.

  “Father,” Hauk called. “It’s I, your eldest son.”

  The drow drew nearer.

  “Halt, I beg you,” Hauk said unsteadily. “What can I do to bring you peace?”

  A cloud passed over the moon. It seemed to be hurtling through heaven. Geirolf reached for his son with fingers that were ready to clutch and tear. “Hold,” Hauk shrilled. “No step farther.”

  He could not see if the gaping mouth grinned. In another stride, the great shape came well-nigh upon him. He lifted his sword and brought it singing down. The edge struck truly, but slid aside. Geirolf’s skin heaved, as if to push the blade away. In one more step, he laid grave-cold hands around Hauk’s neck.

  Before that grip could close, Hauk dropped his useless weapon, brought his wrists up between Geirolf’s, and mightily snapped them apart. Nails left furrows, but he was free. He sprang back, into a wrestler’s stance.

  Geirolf moved in, reaching. Hauk hunched under those arms and himself grabbed waist and thigh. He threw his shoulder against a belly like rock. Any live man would have gone over, but the lich was too heavy. Geirolf smote Hauk on the side. The blows drove him to his knees and thundered on his back. A foot lifted to crush him. He rolled off and found his own feet again. Geirolf lurched after him. The hastening moon linked their shadows. The wolf howled anew, but in fear. Watching men gripped spearshafts till their knuckles stood bloodless.

  Hauk braced his legs and snatched for the first hold, around both of Geirolf’s wrists. The drow strained to break loose and could not; but neither could Hauk bring him down. Sweat ran moon-bright over the son’s cheeks and darkened his shirt. The reek of it was at least a living smell in his nostrils. Breath tore at his gullet. Suddenly Geirolf wrenched so hard that his right arm tore from between his foe’s fingers. He brought that hand against Hauk’s throat. Hauk let go and slammed himself backward before he was throttled.

  Geirolf stalked after him. The drow did not move fast. Hauk sped behind and pounded on the broad back. He seized an arm of Geirolf’s and twisted it around. But the dead cannot feel pain. Geirolf stood fast. His other hand groped about, got Hauk by the hair, and yanked. Live men can hurt. Hauk stumbled away. Blood ran from his scalp into his eyes and mouth, hot and salt.

  Geirolf turned and followed. He would not tire. Hauk had no long while before strength ebbed. Almost, he fled. Then the moon broke through to shine full on his father. “You… shall not… go on… like that,” Hauk mumbled while he snapped after air.

  The drow reached him. They closed, grappled, swayed, stamped to and fro, in wind and flickery moonlight. Then Hauk hooked an ankle behind Geirolf’s and pushed. With a huge thud, the drow crashed to earth. He dragged Hauk along.

  Hauk’s bones felt how terrible was the grip upon him. He let go on his own hold. Instead, he arched his back and pushed himself away. His clothes ripped. But he burst free and reeled to his feet.

  Geirolf turned over and began to crawl up. His back was once more to Hauk. The young man sprang. He got a knee hard in between the shoulderblades, while both his arms closed on the frosty head before him.

  He hauled. With the last and greatest might that was in him, he hauled. Blackness went in tatters before his eyes. There came a loud snapping sound. Geirolf ceased pawing behind him. He sprawled limp. His neck was broken, his jawbone wrenched from the skull. Hauk climbed slowly off him, shuddering. Geirolf stirred, rolled, half rose. He lifted a hand toward Hauk. It traced a line through the air and a line growing from beneath-that. Then he slumped and lay still.

  Hauk crumpled too.

  “Follow me who dare!” Leif roared, and went forth across the field. One by one, as they saw nothing move ahead of them, the men came after. At last they stood hushed around Geirolf — who was only a harmless dead man now, though the moon shone bright in his eyes — and on Hauk, who had begun to stir.

  “Bear him carefully down to the hall,” Leif said. “Start a fire and tend it well. Most of you, take from the woodpile and come back here. I’ll stand guard meanwhile… though I think there is no need.”

  And so they burned Geirolf there in the field. He walked no more.

  In the morning, they brought Hauk back to Leif’s garth. He moved as if in dreams. The others were too awestruck to speak much. Even when Alfhild ran to meet him, he could only say, “Hold clear of me. I may be under a doom.”

  “Did the drow lay a weird on you?” she asked, spear-stricken.

  “I know not,” he answered. “I think I fell into the dark before he was wholly dead.”

  “What?” Leif well-nigh shouted.

  “You did not see the sign he drew?”

  “Why, no,” Hauk said. “How did it go?”

  “Thus. Even afar and by moonlight, I knew.” Leif drew it.

  “That is no ill-wishing!” Grim cried. “That’s naught but the Hammer.”

  Life rushed back into Hauk. “Do you mean what I hope?”

  “He blessed you,” Grim said. “You freed him from what he had most dreaded and hated — his straw-death. The madness in him is gone, and he has wended hence to the world beyond.”

  Then Hauk was glad again. He led them all in heaping earth over the ashes of his father, and in setting things right on the farm. That winter, at the feast of Thor, he and Alfhild were wedded. Afterward he became well thought of by King Harald, and rose to great wealth. From him and Alfhild stem many men whose names are still remembered. Here ends the tale of Hauk the Ghost Slayer.

  Fairy Gold

  Romance need not divorce itself from reality. It can speak with its own voice, but as clearly and to the point as any naturalism, about our world and our living selves. Thus Tolkien touched on matters of good and evil, sin and redemption, and the human spirit. Cabell unmercifully satirized his contemporary America. And here, on a less exalted plane, is a small object lesson in elementary economics.

  Women, weather, and wizardy are alike in this, that their beneficences are apt to be as astonishing as their betrayals.

  — The Aphorisms of Rhoene

  It is an old tale, often told: a young man loved a young ~ woman, and she him, but they quarreled, whereupon he went off in search of desperate adventure while she wept in solitude. However, this time it was not quite so. Arvel stormed down Hammerhead Street toward the Drum and Trumpet, where he intended to get drunk. Lona, after a few angry tears, uttered many curses and then returned to her pottery, where she punished the clay with her fists and pedaled the wheel until it shrieked.

  The hour being scarcely past noon, Arvel found none of his cronies in the tavern, only a half-dozen sailors. Trade had grown listless throughout Caronne, after much of the kingdom’s treasure bled away abroad during the Dynasts’ War. Ships that came to Seilles often lay docked for weeks before their masters had sold all cargo. The markets at Croy were a little better, but the Tauran League now held a monopoly of them.

  These men were off a vessel that had arrived on the morning’s tide. They sat together, drinking like walruses rescued from a desert, rumbling mirth and brags, pawing at the wench whenever she came to refill a goblet. Arvel recognized the language of Norren, though he did not speak it. A couple of them were not of that land, but dark-hued, while the manes and beards of the rest were sun-bleached nearly white and their skins turned to red leather. Evidently they had been in the tropics.

  Worldfarers! His longing took Arvel by the throat. He flung himself down at a table in a corner, hard enough to bruise his bottom. A sunbeam struck through a window leaded together out of stained glass scraps, to shatter in rainbows on the scarred wood. Smoke and kitchen smells lapped around him.

  The wench came through the gloom, her clogs loud on the floor. “Joy to you,” she greeted. Surprise caught her. “Why, Arvel, what a thundercloud in your face. Did a ghost dog bite you today?”

  “A pack of them, and the Huntsman himself to egg them on,” he snarled. “Wine — the cheapest, because — I’ll want a plenty.”

  She fetched, took his coin, and settled on the bench opposite. Pity dwelt in her voice and countenance. “It’s about your girl, isn’t it?” she asked low.

  He gave her a startled blue glance. “How can you tell?”

  “Why, everyone knows you’re mad with your wish to go oversea, and never a hope. But that’s had you adrift by day, not at drink before evening. Something new must have gone awry to bring you in here so early, and what could it be save what touches your betrothal?”

  Arvel swallowed a draught. Sourness burned its way down his gullet. “You’re shrewd, Ynis,” he mumbled. “Yes, we’re done with each other, Lona Grancy and I.”

  The wench looked long at him. ”I never thought her a fool,” she said.

  Despite his misery, Arvel preened a trifle. He was, after all, quite young, and various women had assured him he was handsome — tall, wide-shouldered, lithe, with straight features, slightly freckle-dusted, framed by fiery hair that curled past his earrings. As a scion of a noble family, albeit of the lowest rank, he was entitled to bear a sword and generally did, along with his knife; both were of the finest steel and their handles silver-chased. Otherwise, though, he perforce went shabby these days. The saffron of his shirt was faded and its lace frayed, his hose were darned, the leather of his jerkin and shoes showed wear, the cloak he had folded beside him was of a cut no longer modish.

  “Well,” he said, after a more reasonable gulp of wine than his first, “she wanted to make a potter of me. A potter! Told me I must scuttle my dream, settle down, learn a —” he snorted — “an honest trade —”

  “And cease being a parasite,” Ynis finished sharply.

  Arvel jerked where he sat, flushed, and rapped in answer. “I’ve never taken more than is my right.”

  “Aye, your allowance. Which is meager, for the bastard son of a house that the war ruined. What use your courtliness any more, Arvel Tarabine, or your horsemanship, swordsmanship, woodsmanship?”

  “I guide —”

  “Indeed. You garner an argent here and there, taking out parties of fat merchants and rich foreigners who like to pretend they’re born to the chase. If they stand you drink afterward, you’ll brag of what you did in the war, and sing ’em a song or two. And always you babble about Sir Falcovan and that expedition he’s getting up. Is this how you’ll spend the rest of your years, till you’re too old and sodden for it and slump into beggary? No, your Lona is not a fool. You are, who wouldn’t listen to her.”

  He stiffened. “You get above yourself.”

  Ynis eased and smiled. “I get motherly, I do.” She was plump, not uncomely but beginning to fade, a widow who had three children to nurture and, maybe, a dream or two of her own. “You’re a good fellow, mauger your folly, and besides, I like your girl. Go back, make amends —”

  “Hej, pige!” bawled a Norrener from across the taproom, so loudly that a mouse fled along a rafter. “Mer vin!”

  Ynis sighed, rose, and went to serve him. She had been about to quench the rage that her words had refuelled in Arvel. Now it flamed up afresh. He could not endure to sit still. He tossed off his drink, surged from the bench, and went out the door, banging it shut behind him.

  * * *

  To Lona came Jans Orliand, chronicler at the Scholarium of Seilles and friend of her late father. This was not as strange as it might seem, for Jans was of humble birth himself and had married a cousin of the potter. Afterward he prospered modestly through his talents, without turning aloof from old acquaintances, until the hard times struck him too.

  Lona had just put a fresh charge of charcoal under her kiln and pumped it akindle with the bellows. She was returning to her wheel when his gaunt form shadowed the entrance. She kept the shed open while she worked, even in winter, lest heat and fumes overcome her; and this was an amiable summer day. Nevertheless she had a healthy smell about her, of the sweat that dampened her smock. A smudge went across her snub nose. A kerchief covered most of her gold-brown hair.

  “Joy to you,” Jans hailed. He paused, to squint nearsightedly at her small, sturdy frame and into her green-brown eyes, until he said: “Methinks you’ve need of the reality, not the mere ritual.”

  “Is it that plain to see?” she wondered. “Well — whoops!” In an expansive gesture, he had almost thrown a sleeve of his robe around one of the completed vessels that lined her shelves. She stopped him before he sent it acrash to the floor. “Here, sit down, do.” She offered him a stool. “How may I please you, good sir?”

  “Oh, let us not be formal,” he urged, while he folded his height downward. She perched on the workbench and swung her feet in unladylike wise; but then, she was an artisan, in what was considered a man’s occupation. “I require cups, dishes, pots of attractive style; and you, no doubt, will be glad of the sale.”

  Lona nodded, with less eagerness than she would ordinarily have felt. Feeling his gaze searching her yet, she forced herself to tease: “What, have you broken that much? And why have you not sent your maidservant or your son?”

  “I felt I had better choose the articles myself,” Jans explained. “See you, I have decided on renting out the new house, but its bareness has seemed to repel what few prospective tenants have appeared.”

  “The new house?”

  “Have you forgotten? Ah, well, it was years ago. My wife and I bought it, thinking we would move thither as soon as we could sell the old one. But the war came, and her death, and these lean days. I can no longer afford the staff so large a place would demand, only my single housekeeper. The taxes on it are a vampire drain, and no one who wants it can afford to buy it. I’ve posted my offer on every market board and had it cried aloud through every street — without result. So at last my hopes are reduced to becoming a landlord.”

  “Oh, yes, I do recall. Let’s pick you out something pretty, then.”

  Still Lona could not muster any sparkle. Jans stroked his bald pate. “What hurts you, my dear?” he asked in a most gentle tone.

  She snapped after air. “You… may as well hear… now. Soon it will be common knowledge. Arvel and I… have parted.”

  “What? But this is terrible. How? Why?”

  “He — he will not be sensible. He cannot confess… to himself… that Sir Falcovan Roncitar’s fleet is going to sail beyond the sunset without him —” Lona fought her wish to weep, or to smash something. She stared at her fingers, where they wrestled in her lap. “When that happens… I dread what may become of him. We could, could survive together… in this trade… and today I told him we must… b-because the father of my children shall not be a drunken idler — And he — O-o-oh!” She turned her wail into an oath and ended bleakly: “I wish him luck. He’ll need it.”

  In his awkward fashion, Jans went to her and patted her shoulder. “Poor lass, you’ve never fared on a smooth road, have you?” he murmured. “A child when you lost your mother; and your father perforce made you his helper; and when he too wended hence, there was no better inheritance for you than this.”

  Lona lifted her head. ‘It’s not a bad little shop. It keeps me alive. It could keep a family.”

  Jans winced. She saw, and welcomed the chance to escape from herself. “What pains you?” she demanded. “It’s your turn for telling.”

  He stood aside from her. His back sagged, while a sad little smile tugged his lips upward. “Oh, an irony,” he replied. “The single form of humor the gods know, I believe.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Quite simple, ’tis. Hark.” He confronted her. “When for a time it appeared that Arvel might indeed sail off to the New Lands, and you with him as his bride, were you not also ablaze? Be honest; we speak in confidence.”

  “Well —” She swallowed. “Not in his way. I would have been sorry to forsake this my home for a wilderness. Nonetheless, I was ready to go for his sake, even if I must sell out at a great loss. And in truth, I would have welcomed such a chance to better ourselves and bequeath a good life to our children.” She spread her empty hands. “Of course, I knew from the first it was likeliest a will-o’-the-wisp. He would have had to borrow the sum required, and where, without security? His father’s estate entailed. Nobody who might desire this shop and cottage is able to pay a reasonable price, wherefore they are just as unmortgageable. After he tried, and failed, I besought him to settle down here and at least earn a steady living; but there it was I who failed.”