Votan (Fantasy Masterworks) by John James

Author:John James
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy
ISBN: 9780575105645
Publisher: Gateway
Published: 2014-06-12T03:00:00+00:00

8

When Donar came back in the spring, the paint was back on our faces, and the lies were true again. Again we were the great Asers, wise and good and rich, and so we must have seemed to the Scrawlings who came in, rowing Donar home themselves. They unloaded ivory, mostly, great bags of it on the jetty. But when Donar came up from the ship two men walked behind him, and another two behind them, and each pair carried between them what no one there but me had ever seen before, and that was an Elephant Tusk. And what tusks! You have never seen tusks like them, and never will, not out of Africa. Huge they were, and curled, and yellow with age, and each stood two men high.

So Donar came in state, marching to the gate of Asgard. He stopped before us Asers, grouped before Valhall, and the two pairs of bearers brought up one tusk on either side of him, upright, reaching far above our heads. Donar stuck his chest out and said,

‘Here are the teeth of the World Serpent. No more will he wander the dark and bring down the hillsides, for I have killed him. With my little hammer I did it, all alone with my little Mollnir,’ and he waved the hammer around his head, and I would not have called it a little hammer, though it was not of the largest, but there, I am no craftsman. The Asers all cheered, and the Scrawlings all screamed, and the Vandals shouted their warcries and banged their spear-butts on their shields. That night in Valhall, Donar stood up and told us all about it.

‘Here I stand,’ he began, ‘too drunk to fall.’

‘You’re not,’ shouted a number of the drunker Vandals but indeed he was, for he hadn’t stopped drinking since I gave him his first horn, no not a cup, a horn, of Honeydew in the courtyard that morning.

‘Here I stand,’ he started again, ‘as soused as a herring. I am only a poor smith, I can only hammer, I can’t make up songs like some I could touch with a short stick, only hammer, hammer, hammer with my little Mollnir.’ He was waving the hammer about, and suddenly flung it straight down the Hall. It just missed the minstrel, who flung himself flat in time, but scattered a brazier. And so he got first singed, and then wet, for someone threw over him one of the buckets that we kept standing round in case of fire, full of marsh water to start with, but of course they usually got topped up by anyone who had a skinful of beer and couldn’t make it to the open air. But Bragi put out his hand and plucked the hammer out of the air, gently, and sent it back hard and fast to Donar, who went on:

‘Here I stand, a poor smith who had some luck in the north. I’m not going to make a song about it, I can’t, I can see two whetstones, two boars, four of those horrible birds.

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