Three Hearts and Three Lions (26 page)

The moon was an argent glare in Holger’s left eye. The wold slid past, darkness underfoot, flung stones and hissing brush, a rattle of branches like laughter. He felt the horse’s muscles throb and swing between his thighs; he felt the girl’s hands on his waist, guiding him in the direction she had spied out. His iron clashed on him, leather creaked, the wind shouted. Loudest came the labor of the horse’s breathing.

Everywhere around were stars, but unthinkably remote in a black heaven. The Swan flashed overhead, the Milky Way spilled suns off its dim arch, Carl’s Wain wheeled under the Pole; all the stars were cold. Northward he began to see the peaks of this range, sword sharp, sheathed in ice that gleamed under the moon. Behind him waxed lightlessness.

Gallop and gallop and gallop! Now Holger heard the wild horns closer, shrilling and wailing. Never had he heard such anguish as was blown on the horns of the damned. Through the cloven air he heard hoofs in the sky and the baying of immortal hounds. He leaned forward. His body swayed with Papillon’s haste, his rein hand loose on the arched neck, his other hand gripped about Alianora’s.

Swiftly, swiftly, over the rime-gray wold, under the last stormclouds and the sinking moon, gallop, gallop, gallop. The sorrow of the huntsmen shrieked in his head. He shook himself and strained to see his goal. There was only the plain and the glacial mountains beyond.

Carahue began to lag. His mare tripped. He jerked her head up and roweled her. Holger thought he could hear the feet of the nightmare dogs. A lunatic yelling broke about him.

He looked behind, but Alianora’s tossing hair hid those who followed. He thought he saw metal ablaze. And was that the clatter of dead men’s bones?

“Hasten, hasten, best of horses! Oh, run, my comrade, run as no horses ever did erenow, for surely all men are pursued with us. Haste thee, my darling, for we ride against striding Time, we ride against marching Chaos. Ah, God be with thee, God strengthen thee to run!”

The horn blasts filled his skull. The hoofs and hounds and empty bones were at his back. Holger felt Papillon stumble. Alianora was almost thrown. He clung to her wrist and dragged her against him. Once more they rode.

Up ahead there, what was that, stark athwart the sky? The church of St. Grimmin—but the Wild Hunt howled and swept downward. He heard the clamor of huge winds, and saw murk before his eyes.
Jesu Kriste, I am not worthy, but help thou me.

A wall stood in his way. Papillon gathered himself and sprang. As the huntsmen closed in on him, Holger felt such a cold as he had not dreamed could be, strike through his heart. He thought he heard the wind whistle between his ribs.

The black stallion hit earth with a crash that nearly slammed him from the saddle. Carahue followed. The white mare did not clear the wall. She fell back, but her rider leaped free. He caught the top of the wall and pulled himself over to land in the churchyard. Holger heard the mare cry out once, briefly and horribly, as the roaring overwhelmed her.

And then it was gone. The wind was gone too. Silence shot up like a scream.

Holger bent over. His hand shook, but he caught Carahue’s as he already held Alianora’s. They looked about them.

The yard was overgrown with grass and whins, through which crumbling headstones could be seen to ring the ruinous outline of the church. Fog drifted in tendrils, glowing white where the hunchback moon touched, with a dank smell of corruption. Holger felt how Alianora shivered in the chill.

He heard the sound as it came from the shadows behind the church. It was the sound of a horse moving among the graves, a horse old and lame and weary unto death, stumbling among the graves as it sought him, and he whimpered in his throat. For he knew that this was the Hell Horse, and whoso looks upon it shall die.

Papillon could not make haste, here where the headstones reached out of weeds like fingers to pull him down. Carahue took the reins and led the stallion. They walked between the slabs, which leaned about in a drunkenness of neglect, the names long worn from their faces. The sound of the old lame horse grew louder, slipping and staggering through shadow to meet them.

Mists glimmered about the church of St. Grimmin’s, thicker and thicker, as if they would hide it. Holger could just see that the steeple was fallen, the roof gone, the windows blindly agape. Slowly, feeling his way through the vapors and the tombstones, Carahue neared it.

The hoofs of the Hell Horse scrunched in ancient gravel. But this was the door of the church. Holger sprang down. Alianora huddled on Papillon’s back. He lifted his arms and she fell into them. He carried her up the time-gnawed steps.

“You too,” said Carahue gently, and led the stallion inside.

They halted in what had been the nave and looked toward the altar. The last moonlight poured over it. The crucifix was still there, high above the fallen chancel, and Holger could see Christ’s face against the stars. He fell to his knees and took off his helmet. After a moment Carahue and Alianora joined him.

They heard the Hell Horse depart. As its clopping, limping hoofbeats dragged into silence, the faintest of breezes awoke and scattered the fog. Holger thought that the church was not dead, not defiled. It stood roofed with sky and walled with the living world; it stood as the sign of peace.

He rose and held Alianora to him. This, he knew, was the end of his search, and the knowledge was pain. His eyes dwelt on her upturned face before he kissed her.

Carahue spoke soft: “What have you in truth come here to find?”

Holger did not answer at once. He approached the altar. In the floor before the communion rail was a stone slab. When he touched the iron ring thereof, a remembered thrill went through him.

“This,” he said. He drew his sword, which was now useless as a weapon, and slipped it through the ring for a lever. The slab was monstrously heavy. He felt the steel bend as he strained. “Help me,” he gasped. “Oh, help me!”

Carahue thrust his own blade into the crack the Dane had opened. A moment afterward, the other sword broke across. Together they lifted the slab. It fell to the paving with a hollow thud and shattered in three pieces.

Alianora seized Holger’s shoulder. “Listen!” she exclaimed.

He raised his head. Far off he heard the noise of an army. There was an earthquake hammering of hoofs, the sound of trumpets, the death-like clangor of arms. “It is the host of Chaos,” he said, “riding forth on mankind.”

He looked down into the narrow hole at his feet. Moonlight shone bluely off the great blade which lay waiting.

“We need not fear,” he said. “In this sword is locked that before which they cannot stand. When their demon gods have been driven back into the Middle World, the human savages will despair and flee. We got here soon enough.”

“Who are ye?” whispered Alianora.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But I shall.”

A moment more he delayed. There was a Power in him, but it was something beyond man and man’s hopes. He dared not lift the glaive.

He looked up at the figure on the cross. Bending, he took the sword Cortana in his hand.

“I know that blade,” breathed Carahue.

Holger felt the illusion that masked him dissolve. And his memory returned and he knew himself.

They gathered around him, Alianora in the circle of his free arm, Carahue clasping his shoulder, Papillon’s nose gentle against his cheek. “Whatever comes,” he said, “whatever happens to me, know that you will return safe, and that you will always bear my love.”

“I sought you, comrade,” said Carahue. “I sought you, Ogier.”

“I love ye, Holger,” said Alianora.

Holger Danske
, whom the old French chronicles know as
Ogier le Danois
, mounted into the saddle. And this was the prince of Denmark who in his cradle was given strength and luck and love by such of Faerie as wish men well. He it was who came to serve Carl the Great and rose to be among the finest of his knights, the defender of Christendie and mankind. He it was who smote Carahue of Mauretania in battle, and became his friend, and wandered far with him. He it was whom Morgan le Fay held dear; and when he grew old, she bore him to Avalon and gave him back his youth. There he dwelt until the paynim again menaced France, a hundred years later, and thence he sallied forth to conquer them anew. Then in the hour of his triumph he was carried away from mortal men.

And some say he waits in timeless Avalon until France the fair is in danger, and some say he sleeps beneath Kronborg Castle and wakens in the hour of Denmark’s need, but none remember that he is and has always been a man, with the humble needs and loves of a man; to all, he is merely the Defender.

He rode out on the wold, and it was as if dawn rode with him.

NOTE

I HAD A LETTER from Holger Carlsen right after the war, to say he’d come through alive. After that I didn’t hear from him until one day two years later, when he sauntered into my office.

I thought he’d changed a lot, grown more quiet and much older-looking, but wasn’t too surprised considering what he must have experienced as an undergrounder. He explained that he’d gotten an American job again. “Just a money earner,” he said. “What I really want to do is haunt your bookstores. I’ve located stuff in London and Paris and Rome, but not enough yet.”

“What on earth?” I said. “You, a bibliophile?”

He laughed rather harshly. “Not quite. I’ll tell you some other time.” He went on to ask about mutual friends from the old days. His London stay had improved his English.

The other time wasn’t long about coming, though. I imagine he wanted a sympathetic audience quite badly. He’d been received into the Catholic Church—a datum which, knowing him, I advance as important evidence in favor of this story—but of course the confessional booth doesn’t serve the same purpose. He needed to tell the whole thing, as it had been for him. “Not that I expect you to believe a word of this,” he said, over beer and sandwiches one midnight in my apartment. “Only listen, will you?”

He finished in the darkness before morning, when the streets lay empty beneath us and the city’s lights were so muted we could see a few stars. He poured himself more beer and stared at it for a long while before he drank.

“And how did you get back?” I asked, most quietly, so as not to jar him. He looked like a sleepwalker.

“Suddenly I
was
back,” he said. “I rode out and scattered the hosts of Chaos, driving them before me. And somehow it began to seem as if I were also fighting on that beach, in another night and another world. And then I was. I rushed forward, naked. My clothes hadn’t made the transition with me, you see, and lay in a heap at my feet. A bullet or two grazed me, but nothing worse. I was moving so damn fast. Faster than human flesh has a right to move. The doctors say that can happen under conditions of extreme stress. Adrenalin or something. Anyhow, I got in among the Germans, took his gun away from one of them, clubbed it, and went to work. The business was soon over.”

He grimaced at an unpleasant recollection, but said doggedly, “Those two worlds—and many more, for all I know—are in some way the same. The same fight was being waged, here the Nazis and there the Middle World; but in both places, Chaos against Law, something old and wild and blind at war with man and the works of man. In both worlds it was the time of need for Denmark and France. So Ogier came forth in both of them, as he must.

“Here, in this universe, the outward trappings were less picturesque, I suppose. A man in a boat, escaping to help the Allies. But his escape was necessary. In the light of what happened since, you can maybe guess why. So Holger Danske arose to see that he did get free. I was... weeks?... gone in that Carolingian world, and returned to the same minute on this. Time is a funny thing.”

“What became of you afterward?” I inquired.

He chuckled. “I had a devil of a time explaining why and how I’d peeled to the buff before charging the enemy. But we were in a hurry, and went our separate ways before the strain on my wits got too great. Since then I’ve been plain Holger Carlsen. What else could I do?” He shrugged. “When I came to the knowledge of myself as the Defender, I broke the hosts of Chaos in that world. Then, because of the spell, I was drawn back to finish my task on this side. Once the crisis was past in both worlds, the job done... well, equilibrium had been re-established. There was no unbalanced force to send me across space-time. So I stayed.”

He looked wearily at me. “Of course, I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Delusions and so on. I don’t blame you. But thanks for the use of your ear.”

“I’m not quite sure what to think,” I answered. “Tell me, though, why are you hunting books?”

“Old books,” he said. “
Grimoires
. Treatises on magic. Morgan sent me here once.” His fist crashed on the table. “And I’ll find the way back for myself!”

I haven’t seen or heard from him for years. No one has. Well, people do disappear. Perhaps he disappeared to the place he spoke of—always assuming the story true, a matter in which I suspend judgment. I hope he did.

But meanwhile new storms are rising. It may be that we shall need Holger Danske again.

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