Varlarsaga Volume 3 - Consolation

Chapter 61 - The Song in the Stone

That night, many leagues away in the east, Queen Goldal stood amongst her peoples and those refugees from Ravenmoor, looking out over the crashing waves of the southern ocean. The dim moon appeared as a yellowed half, beset by ominous cloud. The White Bridge stood, towering off into the mists, whence lay dark and brooding, the sullen bulk of Raven Isle. Somewhere beyond the sheer cliffs of Sarnya Nora, tossed on stormy seas rode the might of a Nugobluk fleet, thwarted for that time by a fitful ocean; waiting and waiting for chance to strike again at the hated White Bridge and those defending it upon the walls of the North World.

‘Four days, four days, have we kept them at bay, without help or aid from any. Yet how much longer can we hope to ward off these fearsome Nugobluk with valiant, but pitiful, few.’ Goldal, it was, who spoke. And it was as if, wearied, she spoke to none about her; but in despair beseeched some unknown saviour, or perhaps even kin known to her, who would not, could not come, in that hour of desperate need. And ere she spoke, she knew her words vain and useless. None was there left to bring relief. All her elvin-kind, and those men of Ravenmoor, were far off; fighting, no doubt, for their own lives on some distant battlefield. Dying maybe, even as she thought of them.

‘Dear Lady of Elves,’ said Belda at her side, 'I do not give way all hope. This far, these days and nights, we have held the creatures off with steady heart and hand and though we are few, the angry ocean and these bulwark cliffs have been our allies. The goblins must master them, before us.’

The Elloræ Lady Goldal stepped down from her mind's wanderings, saying, ‘Hope. I do not give up hope. Not even as I die shall I give up hope. That is the ideal on which all life is founded, indeed, clings to; hoping on after last hope is gone. Aye, hope I still hold and never will relinquish. For when hope is ended, thus are all things ended. Still and sobeit, how can we prevail; a few score hundred Elloræ and the oldfolk and children of men? Once the Nugobluk gain these sea-walls we shall not keep them back for long  I deem. And then we must make a choice: to die where we stand or flee, and so lengthen life a little. What say you and your people? What will your choice be?’

Belda made no answer. Then, shivering in the chill of night, she looked down at her worn hands, wringing them out of coldness and torment. After a moment, she replied, ‘I say this. It is not the first time my fellow country-folk and I have faced a doom together. Our end was nigh in the halls of Penda, not so very long ago, and nought was there within our knowledge to avert that doom. And yet... and yet out of unknowledge emerged our succour, even as we braced ourselves to die. So I say that we must hold on until the bitter finish. If some then seek escape, no one here could gainsay that.’

‘And whither would you have them escape? Back to the land you have forsaken at our bidding? Or out into a strange, evil-ridden world where enslavement and extinction await. Or at best, escape and pursuit and furtive hiding; the Nugo dogging your shadows through light of every day and moon of every night? Oh what a sore pass have we brought ye folk of the Raven to. Yet it would have been so on the later morrow, had you come hither with us, or no.’

Belda sighed and dared to touch the Elf Queen's hand; a hand so frail and lightsome as to seem hardly solid at all. ‘Still,’ said Belda, ‘even in hiding, hope may live on. We will bide here with you, and repay a part of the debt we owe for our deliverance; that I promise. And when your peoples have decided whether to live or die, will it be time enough for our decision.’

A Queen of Elloræ took a Queen of Men by the hands, clasping them in both of hers. ‘Let you beware, lest our choice be made too late and the time for choosing passed. And, I would say to you, think on our words together; do that much for me. And think me not ungrateful for your cleaving pledge. Men have risen high in my esteem, both for their courage and by the innocence of their own mortality.’

Thus, they stood together, silent now and watchful, into the lonely night that wrought no further solace than the comfort of each other.

 

A grey morning brought no sun. Only leaden cloud and whistling wind blowing in from seaward. The tide was on the turn and the choppy waves rose fretful between Sarnya Nora's great, archen spans.

Now the shining lower reaches of Ravenmoor's mountains, the mighty Tumberimber, could clearly be descried; the summits of that range lost amongst a mantle of cumuli and nimbus cloud. And far off in the ocean, to the south-west of that land, where now strained elvish eyes, there lurked a clot of dark splotches; the waiting armada of Nugobluk, a vast brood of vultures: settled, grim and blood-ravening, readying for the tide to draw them landward.

The defenders, on bridge and land, prepared as best they could for the coming assault; though in their hearts a weariness, cold and bitter, seeped. So much so, that all they did seemed useless, as if they were already conquered.

The tide gained momentum and soon rolled in, bringing wave on wave crashing beneath the cliff tops, so that a wild spray was flung high into the air. A fine, drenching mist and the booming of the sea filled their eyes and ears, whilst above the watchers, wheeled crowds of plaintive gulls, gliding down the currents, restless and disquieted.

‘They are sailing here, they are coming!’ cried the children of Ravenmoor, whilst the old folk drew them away from the cliff tops, back to the comparative safety of their rough-hewn, temporary dwellings in which home, had they made.

Now, elves and men braced themselves in earnest for the first shock of the coming sea-raid. No morning had dawned in all the preceding days of the Nugobluk menace, more suitable for storming cliffs, than this one. Before the day was more than newcome, the Worm-galleons, Lizard-longships, spiny with hundredfold oars, and the high towered Turtle-galleys were already sweeping, score after score, into the strait that separated Ravenmoor from the North World coast. Soon, those foul craft were swarming in the channel, so near that the thousands aboard them, on the decks, in the lateen riggings and at the multi-banked oar-rows, could be clearly seen.

Side by side, the watchers above waited.

The elvish warriors were commanded by Ælroth. The archers, by Lorica. Men, standing by their piled stone heaps and cauldrons fed with boiling water, were captained by Sarrug, Tewcross and Bromwell. Amongst them were maidens of the Elloræ and womenfolk too, all at the ready to fight, shoulder to shoulder; without stint or quarter.

Yet when the Nugobluk unleashed their fury, it was such that the defenders could hardly withstand the multitude force. Everywhere, it seemed, grappling irons snaked the cliffs seeking holds amongst the rocky clefts, and up these, streamed the Gark. At the bridge, where the enormous stone pylons sank their feet down into cold waters, clustered hundreds of Nugo-craft; and there, the goblins attempted to scale the sea-buffeted supports of Sarnya Nora.

Over and again, from cliff and bridge, the Nugobluk were hurled back into the ocean. Yet the defenders were savagely pressed and as time passed, began to weary; some men and women actually slumping where they stood. Tewcross and Belda herself, tried to rally them, pointing out Lorica amongst the elvin archers, wielding still his bow, though pierced through the thigh by a goblin barb, and Quillet one-eye, toiling with his son Bartram, amidst the fallen.

Still, the defence weakened. Goblins gained the heights and, except for stout resistance, led by Halafor Oldmaster, Irogath and Gammel the Righteous, would have broken through. As it was, Halafor and Irogath were struck down before the enemy could be beaten back. Yet on the bridge now, Men and Elves traded sword blows with the Gark and their Ugush captains; these led by Vardogr and Molug, two enormous goblins fully the height of Sarrug and Bromwell.

Soon it was evident that White Bridge could not be held. The defenders came racing back to the cliffs, there to bar the goblins from crossing over. It was at that time, when they were hardest pressed, that fleet- footed elf maidens came hurrying from the west to report sightings of a goblin and imp force approaching rapidly along the cliff -tops, from whence, secretly they had scaled those heights.

Now the situation became most serious. The defence of Sarnya Nora was lost. The battle for the cliff heights and the encampments beyond, had commenced.

Hurriedly, the defenders began a rear-guard action, the most able of men and elves facing their enemies, both south and west whilst all the rest retreated to make ready a total withdrawal from the coast, out into the wilder lands. Wains and carts were already loaded and beasts of burden yoked. Old people prepared the children for flight, whilst the ladies of the Elloræ and women, led by Queen Goldal and Belda, both mounted on swift steeds, took up the reins, poised to ride.

Behind them, at the holding line near the cliffs, the defenders awaited their besiegers; those fearsome, black goblins, massing upon the bridge, where now it's marbled whiteness was sullied red with the blood of the fallen, already besmirched and fouled by the invaders.

For men and elves, all knew in their hearts that few would survive to see the sun go down. And their hearts sank even further as they heard, above the din and clamour of the foe, the faint sounds of departing wagons, and the mournful bellowing of oxen, shouldering their loads. Yet, even as they listened, none daring to take eyes from the grinning hordes before them, it seemed for an instant, that the rumbling of wheels was not fading, but growing instead. A trick of the ears, perhaps.

And then the trick itself was drowned in uproar, as the Nugobluk charged! Fear, rippled through the front ranks of Ravenmoor men, standing nigh each other amongst the doughty elves. Fear and repulsion, the moment before impact; then the two forces clashed together.

Bona, the same who had survived the terrors of Forbidding Forest and enslavement in the Tumberimber, squeezed shut his tear-filled eyes, and thrust for all his might, into the oncoming crowd. A blow hurled him, reeling, to the ground. Cruel feet stamped him. Arms and hands dragged him away.

Ollar slipped his ashen spear over the eight-shaped shield of a Gark, thrusting it and withdrawing the bloodied tip. Lorica, now twice wounded, brought down two, and then a third, with his eagle-eyed bow. Lifandi the Elf and Bromwell the Man, between them, laid low a Ugush chieftain, before Bromwell himself, was stabbed in the neck. Still he did not fall, but stumbled on into the dust and the sweat and the wreck of battle, watching his own blood spill down over his leather jerkin.

The goblins battered on, felling their enemies as if they were long-lived trees, gloating and smearing themselves in the blood of elf and man; fighting and bickering over spoil of stripped armour, so that as they forgot their task, thus too were they hewn down in turn.

The grim business of killing and being killed went on; hack and prod, slit and chop. Oozir the Gark, looked up from where his dark-sighted eyes beheld the bashed and bloodied body of a man, Ortha; now past all pain. Oozir's jaws and fangs dripped gore. His hacking-blade and club were coated in it. The girdle of rough-linked iron rings he wore, was draped around with his foe's entrails. His clawed, unshod feet splashed in the muddied rivulets of trickling blood. He stared about, grinning, boastful; that made his third kill. Gore-crazed, he turned his thick-boned, deep-ridged head this way and that, looking for his next victim in that frantic tumult. He licked the redness, the crimson driblets from his curved scimitar, fascinated by the smell, the taste and texture; the colour.

An Elf appeared before him; a sword, swift in retribution, rose above his gawking head. Oozir flung the club, lunged forward. The sword blade crashed through helm and skull of the goblin. For an instant there was agonising pain and fear, terrifying fear. And then, as one small incident, unnoticed in that mellay, Oozir the gark fell, stone dead, with head cloven through to the shoulder. Ælmar, young wood-elf of Elvermore, leapt the body, and made way to come to Ælroth's aid where he struggled gamely against several broad Ugush warriors.

Desperately, Sarrug, once a guard to the King of Ravenmoor, cast about for someone to come to his assistance. Here he was, cut off and surrounded. Jeering, taunting goblins, and between their bowed legs, darting imps, beset him from every side. No matter where he looked about the circle wherein he stood, bestriding the body of his wife's brother Harth, was he met by gleeing grins and slavering fangs.

The din of battle raged beyond him, as Sarrug looked to his weapons; the sword was notched almost to uselessness, the knife hung at his waist, unbidden thus far. The mace, he weighed in his best hand, his left. His armour, or what left of it, was battered past service. But like a high-beast of prey, would he not leave the kill, though borne to the death by jackals and hyenas. ‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘I had better acquit myself the best that I can, though none will sing a song for me afterward.’ He threw down the notched blade and, clasping the knife between his teeth, took hold of his mace in both hands; his feet planted firmly on either side of his dead brother-in-law. About him, the Nugobluk teased and poked, waiting to catch him unaware and spike him to death with barb and quill. Then something happened amidst that hubbub, which made Sarrug wonder if he were not already killed.

Before him, prancing head-high amongst the milling, menacing enemy, came three startling horses; blue roans that Sarrug of Ravenmoor had never before laid eye to. And upon them men, it seemed, like unto none he knew of: yellow-robed were they, and white faced, and their swords, sweeping and slashing, carved a wide maul through the crowd, scattering them, so that the proud horses trod right up to him; the rider foremost taking the dead man and hoisting Sarrug too. And there hefting all through the fray.

Beyond the goblins, there flourished a tide of russet colour: peoples, little folk, forging as a wide mass, armed with bill-hooks and wood-hatchets, beetles and mallets, and tiny, curven bows. And further, to Sarrug's popping eyes, whilst his feet found the earth and he was released, he saw men and women, unknown by face maybe, but much alike to his own peoples in dress and demean; altogether amongst the small folk, striding forward with pitch-fork and ashen spear, cleavers and clouters and long pikes. Then, at once, he spied Tewcross, cut and bleeding from several wounds, staggering across a space where these little people scattered in their hundreds.

With the breath left in him, he hailed, ‘Hey, hey, Doorwarden! Am I still living, or are we met on our journey to death?’

Tewcross halted, standing as an island, whilst the sea of small folk swirled past him, twittering together in some shrill-trill tongue. ‘Ask if you will, for I am too exhausted to tell you; though I know little more than you, at that!’ He laughed, as they struggled to reach each other, wrapping grimy hands ashake. ‘These folk have come out of nowhere. The elves never having encountered them, though they have heard tell from Prince Mylor, I mean Master Corin. But oh! Who cares? We are relieved. These unknown allies are stemming the goblin onrush. We were broken before they came. Lost! Yet look!’ Tewcross clasped Sarrug, dancing. ‘Look! The goblins are falling back. Our newcome saviours are beating them into the sea!’

And it was so.

The leathery Gark, and even the Ugush captains, were giving way. A great, pouring tide of peoples were crowding them back, relentlessly, in one molten conclave; back toward the brink of the cliffs. This time it was the Nugobluk who were overrun; swept to the edge and without reprieve, hurled down to the boiling sea.

Tewcross and Sarrug found Ippikin and one of the old council, Rambert of Lann, both together, looking absolutely astonished. ‘What has happened? Do you know?’ asked Sarrug, whilst he bound a nasty slash across the Doorwarden's arm.

Old Rambert chuckled, ‘Our bacon, and our fleece, has been saved. That is what has happened.’ The old man coughed into his chuckling and turned about, pointing toward the encampment, where now milled herded beasts and folk, tall and small; all forest-dressed: reds, creams, yellows, browns and greens. ‘Come with me, whilst the enemy is thus thrown back. Later there may not be time. Quickly, make haste.’

And Rambert, lost now to the time and place of his own generation, battling to adapt to such wholesale upheaval, and struggling to forget an entire lifetime, led them through the throng of people; those tall and handsome, and those small, thigh-high, robust little folk intent upon their battle-task.

 

Eventually, they drew up before a group of people, busy directing the course of events and those about them. Bromwell was there, his throat crimson with caked blood. So too was the elf Lifandi and Quillet, his patch torn away from his blind eye. It was he who hailed them, ‘Hey! Good soldiers, rest a spell here. Have a drop of water or wine, if you need it. Wait a moment and someone will come to care for you.’

At that, war-weary Nalda, cousin to Ravenmoor's Queen Belda, appeared. ‘Dear Doorwarden, and you Master Sarrug! ‘Tis thankful I am that good Rambert has found you both amongst the living. Here, take a draught to quench your parched throats, whilst I cleanse and bind your sore wounds properly.’

The three had barely enough time to raise a wine jug and catch their breath, when up rode the Lady Goldal, with Belda at her side. Behind them, came two others; strangers to the men. The first was a regal borne women, judged by her toil-worn, but graceful manner. She was dressed all in rough, brown, forested gear; leather thickened and studded with many metal rivets and bosses. The horse that carried her seemed little more than a beast of harness for the fields; perhaps though, within its eye was there a hardier glint. She was, in truth, Qwilla of Rî-mer-Rī. And her companion, yellow clad from crown to stirrup, was Orsokon, the Wanax of Kurigaldur; and he was mounted on a blue roan of Indlebloom: one of those same given as gift by Menkeepir, when Kutha-Kesh and Kurigaldur held some meaning of power and sanctuary.

Goldal, Queen of Elloræ, looked down upon the men and a fleeting smile crossed her sad and beautiful face. ‘Take your ease, but as swift as you can. Our benefactors and their followers have come to us out of the wilds of nowhere. There is no time to say more, except this; return to arms and rally all about you. You know your own men, you know their faces and names. The enemy are beaten off bridge and cliff top, back into the sea. We are fortified a while longer. Yet be sure, they will come again; for they are not, by any means, defeated. And even with this rank-swelling, shall we be sore-pressed to hold them a second time round. Respite is ours to regroup, and send away our young, our old, our wounded and vulnerable.’ With a touch of her curven wand to Sarrug's brow, Goldal told her mount forward, her companions following. And upon the instant, Sarrug found his weariness easing.

As swift it could be done, the men were away to join their fellows and the elves, who awaited the next attack on bridge and cliffs.

 

Yet behold, even as Tewcross and Sarrug forced their way through the ranks of worn peoples, many kneeling, others prone to the ground where in stupor of battle, they had fallen, a deep cry went up from those elves amongst the foremost; it was, at once a call of distress and supplication, an entreaty and a cry of outrage. For below, down in the grey, sloping troughs of Varlar's mighty ocean, that vile fleet of enemy were clustered about the spanning feet of White Bridge. There had they begun an act of desecration that seemed unreasonable and unfathomable, but for the absolute and malicious nature of the creatures employed upon their destructive task. They had, out of sheer frustration and devilry, attacked Sarnya Nora itself. With sledge hammer and iron mallet, hefted by their largest, they had begun to strike the first blows toward the ultimate downfall of White Bridge.

Through the passage of the day, so vied the passions, the hopelessness and sorrows of those above, looking on, hurling missiles, imprecations and tears, at those toiling below; intent upon their labour of destruction. Goblins struggling, with profane hatred, at the huge, builded bridge of the elves, that would not crumble; that had become to those above, as well as those below, a bridge no more, but a symbol that must stand or be struck down, for Good or Evil, as the scales so weighed.

The day wore away to its merest core, and night drew a coverlet across the ugliness bequeathed it by the twilight. Above and below, flame was kindled as both sides strove on; protagonist, antagonist, in a battle, a wrestle that lacked words, insults, oaths, or the dying sighs of those fallen from heart-cease. Now, even the goblins worked and fought in dreadful silence, so that only the hollow blows of iron adze and pick and wedge and maul and gavel, and the crashing of stones upon the besiegers, and the sounding of waves and wind, filled the world of Varlar. Indeed, lashed about the Sarnya Nora, whilst that mammoth tug-of-war continued into the eve, and the demilune husk; the Turner of elves and pixies, soared above, casting a ghastly eeriness across those chalken cliffs and the Bridge, which the goblins would have the ocean devour.

 

Day rose up as an agony.

And the elves looked out from the high cliffs, and there beheld the damage wrought by their arch-foes. The central columns of White Bridge stood yet, gaunt and decayed, as if monstrous jaws had seized them; grinding with massive molars, the very bones of the Elven bridge, leaving it bare and skeletal, so that it must fall. Even then, the Elloræ still upon the span, could feel a quaking; a ponderous trembling. And in the greying dawn, pulled back. Relinquishing their last hold of the greatest labour of elves, on the northern shores, in that time.

 

‘Aha-ha, aharr!’ mocked the goblins. ‘We've beaten you! We've won! Broken your rotten cow-path! Watch, you worm-ridden white-filth, while we pull down your sod and mud, as if it was nothing!’ So they jeered; jeered the goblin captains Vardogr and Molug, and their lieutenants Draugr and Ormur, as they raised their fierce, glee-filled eyes to the heights, where stared a crowd of silent faces; the enemy, Elves and Men. These folk looked down to the trembling bones, which were all left of White Bridge. Where now brooded the cruelty of beaked battering-rams; the thrusting force of Nugobluk might, there ready to shatter and crumble the loathsome Elloræ haut.

Goblins leaped clear of the moles, as the rams of their waiting ships thudded, hammered, withdrew, and launched again. With every return, the stone cracked and groaned. White dust of ground marble mingled with flecking foam. Great chunks of material began to fall into the sea. Squared, and beautifully dressed stone, edged and juddered loose. The work of Mastercraft Elloræ, undercut and undermined, shivered at each barrage of delivered blows.

The craft of the Nugo back-rowed, and came again, the manifold banked oars, turned and manipulated by thousands of clawed hands, rose and fell, bracing against the ocean's might, surging forward to dash at the dying creature that was elvish splendour; that would not topple, even with the repeated concussion of goblin-volley.

Yet little by little, the end drew nigher.

Those now left on the shores of the North World, for most had reluctantly ridden away despairing the ultimate loss of Sarnya Nora, watched the rending debauch of their monumental work. Heard they too, the groan of foundations, far beneath the waters, aboil and angered. Heard they the protest of granite and stratum; beleaguered, beseeching. And in that agonised screech, the moaning death-throe of a creation that, to Elloræ eyes and ears, was a kindred, living thing grinding and smashing and crumbling its heart away, they recognised a song.

The Song that, maybe, only gnomes or dwarves had ever heard before; the Song of the living Stone.

But for this time, as Elloræ ears attuned and grasped at the very meaning of Stone-Alive, knew they also awareness of Stone-Death. And an almighty aching claimed them, as of those who ache at the slow death of a loved one. Then, warned perhaps by an unseen portent, the cliff-ward watchers lifted their misted eyes and by day's faint imagery took in a sight, bred it appeared of hallucination, despair and defeat. Westward, where the channel poured a wrathful sea, there swelled now a swarm of black and fiery craft, fast approaching; goblin ships, no doubt, yet pyrey-burning, hurling skyward dense columns of clouded smoke.

And thereaway, at Ravenmoor's eastern corner, driven by unseen hands now came a second fleet of Nugobluk ships, again in flame. To the daunted cliff watchers, hardly could sense be made of this. Only perhaps, that with fire, came there the final retribution of the goblins; that the Sarnya Nora should fall, engulfed in such.

And that was, in part, true. Though not as Men and Elves, helpless, hapless, near ruined, at first thought.

Nor as Vardogr, his fangs running with venom-filled spittle, delirious with hatred and death and victory, had planned. A mighty wall of smoke and fire reared up behind and before the besieging Nugobluk fleet, so that at once they were themselves besieged. Goblins, suddenly a quailing rabble, choked on their cruel delight, now aware of it. In unbelieving, they gaped and gawked and gibbered, whilst the vast preponderance of that fearsome pall bore down, smothering, bewildering, cloaking.

Soon from west and east, the goblin armada tossed, wreathed in coiling smoke and ash that swirled about the Sarnya Nora; the treacherous Sarnya Nora, whose living-dying stones began to sing their song of death. The death of stone surely; the death of White Bridge, certainly.

'But,' sang the stone, ‘death begets death.’

And as it sang, so it crumbled.

And as the ships of goblindom were hemmed ever together by the burning, phantom fleets of Nugobluk craft, thus at end, collapsed White Bridge. Down and down into the sea, plummeted the spans, whilst the stone itself sang its death-song, and the song claimed its victims. Vardogr screaming, Molug, Ormur snivelling, Draugr defiant; all that goblin fleet, plunging to the bottom, beneath the Singing-Stone.

Never to rise.

And, in the early afternoon, the turbulent sea subdued. The waves foamed, milky, out into the southern ocean. Only a blackened scum, and scant gull pickings, remained of what threat, had been.

Yet in that wake, to west and east, buoyed up, and wondrous beheld by those landward, lay Valdë ships; the fleets of Aneurin Seawanderer, unbowed and victorious.

And it was no coincidence, or illusion, that they were just come, any more than was it illusion that, beyond the risen cliffs of the North World, upon the flats of plains, there now stood a mustered crowd: grey and graven by their look, like score after score of carven statues or maybe a multitude of standing stones, newly erected.

They were neither.

They were the host of the Stanegnamen. The Stonegnomes; summonsed by the death-struggle of Sarnya Nora, The Song in the Stone.

Chapter 62 [next]