Silverlock (Prologue Books) Read online

  “You say Heorot is just a building and not a town? I’d been afraid I’d have to start ringing doorbells to find my side-kick, but that simplifies things.”

  “It should be simple enough if you’re used to walking. Are you hungry?”

  Having thought about something besides my bereavement for a moment, I was feeling a little better. “Hollow as Finnegan’s legs.”

  “Well, there’s a night and day joint just before you come to the road. There won’t be any other place along the way, so you’d better stoke up well. So long.”

  I came in sight of the eating place he had mentioned within half an hour. Day had by then just commenced to break, so I could make the building out with some exactness. It was cottage-type, with an extra long chimney at each end of the roof. There was no light in it, but, as promised, service was continuous. A table was set up outdoors, and I heard the rattle of china before I drew near enough to see who was eating.

  The table, a huge one, was laid for several dozen, but the only customers were a threesome at the far end. I peered at them, then decided to see if I was right the first time. There was no doubt about it. One of them was dressed in his grandfather’s duds, complete with stovepipe hat, skyscraper collar, and wallpaper tie. Of the others, one was in the costume of a rabbit and the second in that of a mouse. The latter had passed out.

  Many of the places showed signs of earlier occupancy, but I found one which didn’t at their end of the table. “You boys must have had quite a night of it,” I remarked.

  The man in the hat took exception to this statement. “We haven’t had any night at all; in fact we’re still waiting for it.” He held out a watch whose face it was too dim for me to see. “Look; it’s just six o’clock.”

  It must have been closer to three-thirty, but I knew better than to argue with a drunk’s timepiece. “So it is,” I said. No waiter had appeared, so I helped myself to bread, butter, marmalade, cold cuts, and deviled eggs. Meanwhile it occurred to me that it might be well to check on the directions I had been given, to make sure my recent guide wasn’t indulging his sense of humor again.

  “Do you fellows live around here?” I asked.

  The hat man seemed to be struck with my question. “I always live here,” he said at length. “Don’t you?”

  “Nope,” I said, pouring myself some tea, which was the only potable in sight. “I live in Chicago.”

  “How odd,” he commented. “I find it so much easier to live where I am.”

  “All right,” I groaned. “You win. I live here.”

  “It’s too late,” the rabbit gazook said. “You had your chance. People keep on getting into these difficulties,” he confided to his companion. “And it’s all just a product of sloppy thinking.”

  Being out of sorts, I wasn’t going to let that pass. “See here, mister,” I warned him. “I know you’re carrying a load, and I don’t care what you think, sane or sober; but keep it to yourself.”

  Instead of answering, he began arguing with the other about that six o’clock watch and whether they’d done the right thing greasing it with butter that might have had bread crumbs mixed up in it. It was such a typical barroom discussion that my aggravation gave way to amusement.

  “What I started out to ask,” I interrupted them, sure they had forgotten my bad humor, “is simply: can you tell me where this road runs to?”

  The man in the old-fashioned get-up dunked a piece of cake and took a bite. “That road doesn’t run,” he mumbled. “It’s scarcely been known to creep.”

  We were back at that again, but I tried to overlook it. “O.K. O.K. But where does it go?”

  “It’s a home-loving road,” he informed me. “There’s no record of it straying.”

  “I’m serious,” I said, trying to get through to them with the force of my urgency. “I really need to be straightened out, because I’m not sure where I’m heading.”

  “How do you think a road can lead you there, then? You expect far too much of a road.” After reproving me, the rabbit fellow spoke in a stage whisper to his companion. “There’s nothing sillier than unbridled optimism.”

  I had determined not to lose my temper again, but I was having a hard time. “Let’s take a look from the other side,” I persisted. “Could I follow it to Heorot?”

  The man in the hat brooded before responding. “I should certainly think so, assuming that it got there first.”

  “You can both go to Hell!” I roared at them. They appeared undisturbed, but the mouse gink waked up.

  “Why,” he asked, leaning toward me, “is an angleworm like a parallelogram?”

  As I had no quarrel with him so far, I decided to answer. “I don’t know, Mr. Bones,” I said, reaching for the cake. “Suppose you tell me.”

  He considered, while I made away with two pieces. “Well, I don’t know as they are alike,” he decided, “but if you don’t think about it, it won’t worry you.” Having pronounced this dictum, he forthwith went to sleep again.

  No representative of the management had showed up, and there was still no light in the house. I was just as glad, having remembered halfway through the meal that I had no money. Still I was unwilling to be a dead beat. My bow could be of no value to me in town, even if I had learned how to use it. Here at the forest’s edge, however, it should be considered as worth far more than the food I had consumed. I left it and the quiver by my place, nodded curtly to the others, and strode off toward the road.

  Hearing a plate overturned, I looked back. The one disguised as a mouse was still asleep. The one with the old-fashioned clothes was placing a deviled egg on his head. The one masqueraded as a rabbit was in the act of stringing my bow. Thinking it better not to be a witness, I hastened away.

  By and large the encounter did me good. Reviewing it, I laughed; and the laughter helped me to realize that I would not forever be a tortured spirit. Moreover, the mouse lad had something there. I wouldn’t forget Rosalette; but if I didn’t think about what had happened, it wouldn’t worry me. I began instead to figure out courses of procedure if Golias didn’t turn up at Heorot.

  Counting the few hours I devoted to needed sleep, it took me most of the day to reach the turn-off my guide had mentioned. Or I supposed it to be the one and anxiously scanned the signpost to be certain. By following this road, I could, it told me, reach Sandhills and Wayland’s Forge. But it was not this information that made me exclaim with satisfaction. On the topmost of the three wooden arrows was the legend: “HEOROT ½ Mile.”

  From the moment I faced down that road I smelled the sea. Soon I caught sight of it beyond a cluster of buildings. The fact that the principal one of these and not the town itself had been designated ceased to puzzle me. Heorot was what took your eye when you approached. The visual function of the burg’s other structures was to give a measuring rod for grandeur.

  Impressed though I was, my physical reaction was to cross my fingers. It was a long way to come for a meeting that might not take place.

  Supper time had swept the streets clear. It was not until I stood before Heorot that I noted much in the way of signs of life. The doors of the great edifice stood open, but it was something above the doorway that drew my eyes. Pinned there with daggers was a monstrous trophy. If it was like anything I had seen before, it was like an arm. Yet it was big as the hind leg of a dinosaur; the hair on it grew out from between scales, like weeds pushing out from cracks in the sidewalk; and the hand or paw ended in talons. It had been wrenched off, not cut; very recently, too. Blood still oozed from the raw joint, each drop landing with a hiss in the iron pot placed to receive it.

  Meanwhile I was conscious of the jovial riot which seemed to be taking place inside. When I had gazed my fill at the thing above the doors, I glanced at the two men who stood guard on either side of the entrance. They were dressed, and in general looked, much like Brodir’s men. Although on duty, they were feeling informal about it, and one of them grinned as our eyes met.

  “Pretty big game
you get around here,” I ventured.

  His grin broadened. “That there’s pretty big even for these parts.”

  Having found him friendly, I got down to business. “I’m supposed to be meeting a pal here. All right to go in?”

  “Today. Even for people in funny clothes.” I was then near enough to discover that he hadn’t gone sober to his post. “We’re keepin’ open house.”

  Thus passed by the sentry, I crossed the threshold. A grand jamboree was in progress. Hundreds of men were seated at long tables piled with food. Each of them had a mug in his hand, and dozens of waiters were rushing around keeping them filled. It was futile to search for Golias under the conditions, but it all looked good to me just the same. Except for a sandwich I had made to carry away from the breakfast table, I had had nothing to eat since before sun up.

  While I was wondering whether it would be safe to muscle in somewhere, a man whom I took to be a member of the banquet committee approached. There was so much yelling and laughing that we didn’t try to exchange words. He merely beckoned and smiled — everybody there was in a wonderful humor — and in a minute I was wedged in between a couple of long haired gorillas who good-naturedly made room for me.

  I was so busy catching up that I didn’t have a mouth to spare for conversation for a while. Then, wiping my fingers on a piece of bread and flipping it to a dog, as I had observed to be the custom, I sat up to take notice. Evidently some of the wives were out to see that the men had a good time. A sweet-faced woman wearing a gold tiara was coming down the line, asking how everyone was doing. She must have been popular, for there was comparative quiet as men waited to exchange words with her.

  “You must be a foreigner,” she said when she came to me. “I hope you’re enjoying yourself.”

  “I am, thanks. It looks like it’s going to be a tall evening.”

  She smiled. “We’re all very happy tonight. It’s the first time we’ve been able to enjoy this place in twelve years.”

  When she had passed on, I took a solid slug of mead. With its encouragement I was swiftly getting in the spirit of things. Not bothering about introductions, I started out to make a place for myself in the conversation.

  “What was wrong with this joint,” I asked the man on my right, “that you weren’t able to use it for twelve years?”

  Busy swapping dirty jokes with men across the board, he previously had paid no attention to me. Now he turned his broken nose and green eyes in my direction. After considering me, they lighted up.

  “You mean that, don’t you? I bet there ain’t anybody else in a hundred miles that don’t know the answer, and to think I got you all to myself. Shall I lie a little?”

  “Dealer’s choice.”

  “It won’t be necessary,” he decided. “It’s a good enough story pared down to hard facts. Well, there ain’t been nothin’ wrong with the premises that a good murder wouldn’t cure, but nobody was man enough to attend to it. I figure to be as tough as some; but I listened carefully, and I didn’t hear myself volunteering.” He gulped swiftly as if afraid of losing my attention. “You saw that arm above the door, didn’t you?”

  “I sure did.”

  “Well, the rest of the fiend was made to match. It used to come every night, grab up a few guys, and stuff ’em in his mouth. It didn’t make any difference to his belly whether you fought or went peaceably. We stood it just so long, then moved out.”

  I had a fleeting vision of what it would be like, waiting for that man-eater to drop in out of the dark. “God damn! I should think you would.”

  “We did, all right. And for twelve years nobody said anythin’ about movin’ back until — You see that fellow holding out his cup for a refill? Wait till he turns around.”

  At one side of the banquet hall was a table, raised above the rest in the usual fashion, for guests of honor. It was toward this that my neighbor pointed. The king — I had learned that much about the set-up — could be easily identified by his special chair. At his right was a broad-shouldered man in the act of facing around to us. Just by the way he swung his body you could see the perfect control he had of it. Even though his face was flushed with mead, it was the face of competence.

  “Nice looking joe,” I commented.

  “More than that.” The broken nose twitched earnestly. “If there was only one man you could have to help you, pick that one. Look; he doesn’t even belong here. Our troubles were no skin off his butt, but he came — uninvited, mind you — and volunteered to take the fiend on. Let’s drink to him.”

  We did. I saw that he meant to fetch bottom and imitated him.

  “What did he do the job with,” I asked professionally, “an axe?”

  “You saw.” My companion wiped the suds off his moustache with his forearm. “He used nothin. Nothin! He just naturally got his grip, braced himself, and yanked the fiend’s arm out of its socket.”

  “The devil he did!” I looked over at the raised table with renewed respect. The king was just getting to his feet. As he did so, several horns sounded, and the hall quieted.

  10

  At Heorot

  THE PURPOSE of the king was to praise the man of the occasion, and there was enough to say. It turned out that the fellow — Beowulf, he named him — had killed not only one fiend but two, thereby wiping out the whole local nest. In the second encounter it had been necessary to follow his dreadful antagonist under water and finish it off there.

  Next Beowulf made his acknowledgment. I thought he hit just the right note. He had done a great thing and knew he had. Instead of bragging, either directly or by a show of false modesty, he merely said, in effect, he was glad to own the ability which made his service possible. It was a pleasure to cheer him, especially as it was good fun to yell anyhow. Not to mention drinking the toasts that were called for.

  I was enjoying the party and a thing besides: I was enjoying my own high spirits in contrast to the glumness I had felt the night before. There’s no cure for thwarted yearning like a rousing stag evening. Yearning had given me a bad time of it, and now it was my inning. I dunked him in mead, then drew him out to crawl away like a half-drowned fly. I crushed him with my fist, as I beat time to a jolly song of which everyone knew the words except me. Lastly I rolled him up in ribald jokes and blew him away with my laughter.

  About half an hour after the speeches was when it started. A bunch of men at the table behind me began stamping their feet and yelling. Then the men seated with me took it up. They were shouting so loudly that it was a minute before I caught what they were saying.

  “We want Widsith! We want Widsith! We want Widsith!”

  I had temporarily forgotten why I had come to Heorot, but now I sat up excitedly. Of course, Widsith could be a common local name, but the coincidence made me hopeful. I had a right to be. Locating him by the cheers which followed his progress, I saw Golias making his way toward the table where Beowulf sat. Vaulting up on the platform, he bowed to the king, then turned toward the rest of us.

  Wherever an old friend is, home is. I gazed at him with satisfaction, anticipating the moment of reunion. He, like myself, wore a different outfit from the one he had on when I had last seen him. He was dressed like a jonquil, in a yellow coat that would knock your eye out and form-fitting green breeches. These were covered in their lower reaches by short boots. He had also shortened his hair; but the changes were not changes in the man. His body had the same alert bearing, his face the same look of being interested in whatever he was doing, that I remembered.

  “What would you like tonight?” he asked smilingly.

  I hadn’t been able to see what was slung over his shoulder before, but as he swung it into view I saw that it was a small harp. Unconcernedly he turned it while the debate his question had started went on.

  “Give us ‘Walter’s Stand’.”

  “‘Sigmund Siggeirsbane’.”

  “No, ‘Burnt Finnsburg’.”

  “Aw, we had that last night.”

 
“How about ‘Helgi Hundingsbane’?”

  “Something new! Something new!”

  Golias held up his hand. “Would you all settle for something new?” he asked when they had quieted.

  “Yes!” they roared; and I with them, because I had been left out of the shouting long enough.

  “All right, fill all cups, so you’ll have something to shove in your mouths when your tongues itch.” Golias grinned at us, and we grinned back. “From now on, I’m making all the noise for awhile. Understood?”

  “Understood!” we chorused.

  “Good, then!” After waiting for all to be served, he beat a couple of chords out of his harp to gain our attention. “I’m giving you,” he announced, “‘The Death of Bowie Gizzardsbane’.”

  Harsh that hearing for Houston the Raven:

  Fools had enfeebled the fortress at Bexar,

  Leaving it lacking and looted the while

  Hordes were sweeping swift on his land,

  Hell-bent to crush him. The cunning old prince

  Did not, though, despair at danger’s onrushing;

  Hardy with peril, he held it, perused it,

  Reading each rune of it. Reaching the facts, he

  Thumbed through his thanes and thought of the one

  Whose guts and gray matter were grafted most neatly.

  “Riders!” he rasped, “to race after Bowie!”

  “Bowie,” he barked when that bearcat of heroes

  Bowed to his loved prince, “Bexar must be ours

  Or no one must have it. So hightail, burn leather!

  Hold me that fortress or fire it and raze it.

  Do what you can or else do what you must.”

  Fame has it fosterlings, free of the limits

  Boxing all others, and Bowie was one of them.

  Who has not heard of the holmgang at Natchez?

  Fifty were warriors, but he fought the best,

  Wielding a long knife, a nonesuch of daggers

  Worthy of Wayland. That weapon had chewed

  The entrails of dozens. In diverse pitched battles

  That thane had been leader; by land and by sea