http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php?19618-Damon-Dane en Fri, 24 May 2013 02:36:59 GMT vBulletin 25 http://www.sffworld.com/forums/images/misc/rss.jpg http://www.sffworld.com/forums/blog.php?19618-Damon-Dane http://www.sffworld.com/forums/entry.php?986-Ragnarok-Fantasy-Part-Eleven Tue, 01 Feb 2011 08:02:40 GMT [I]DAMON DANE'S RAGNAROK[/I]

A horde of mind-boggling abomination was marching down through the Nothomir Pass, the jagged passage slicing through the mountains separating Barbary from Gehenna. Tramping through the hard-packed snow were legions of orcs - seven feet tall with dark grey skin and massive muscles rippling in their arms and legs. They wore black boots, black loincloths, black leather jerkins sewn with rows of iron plates like the scales of a fish, and studded black belts with iron buckles cast in the shape of skulls. In their gnarled fists were heavy iron cleavers, five feet long and spiked at the end like the head of a pick, and shields bearing the symbols of black suns or horned demon skulls. Besides being strong brawlers, the orcs were sophisticated military specialists, divided into well-drilled legions of regular infantry, heavily-armoured stormers, and the fearsome doom orc thugs - the elite of the armies of Gehenna.

Alongside the orcs swarmed vast legions of their gibbering cousins the goblins, also grey-skinned, though lighter in colour and much smaller, with hunchbacks and wicked faces dripping with hate. Then came the souldead damned - lost souls whom the Destroyer of Worlds had twisted to reward their evil acts: to some he had bequeathed an extra pair of arms, or an extra head, or the heads of vultures, wolves, goats, bulls, or elephants, while others had snakes growing out of their torsos, or spider or even octopus legs sprouting from their hips. One had eight glittering black spider eyes down the length of his face, bloody hands where his ears should have been, and an extra set of arms, monstrous and muscular, that had sprouted from his armpits, while his old arms had withered to pale and skeletal abominations, frantically twitching as they formed secret symbols of the Destroyer.

The more twisted souldead damned were not even recognisable as human at all: one was just a perverse human sabre-saw centaur - two pairs of human legs joined by a leprous headless torso and topped by a curved sabre and a wood saw chopping back and forth, attached by fleshy tendrils of gristle and sinew.

Discipline in this army of hell was enforced by the hobgoblins: huge lumbering brutes, eight feet and half a ton of muscle and bone, wielding tree-branch clubs and barbed whips with which to control and direct the lesser darkrons, and indeed their minions feared the wrath of the hobgoblins so much that even the most cowardly fainthearts and holdbacks would willingly charge against any army that men could muster, rather than flee and face the wrath of their merciless overlords.

The Barbarians had always believed the Dragon’s Back Mountains to be a natural shield against Gehenna, and, centuries before this dark day, had built Castle Ironheart to block the Nothomir Pass through the mountains. But now Gothia saw that mighty fortress blackened and burned by the invading hordes, and the legions tramping onward.

His consciousness flew south to a wild and beautiful land of rolling hills blanketed in verdant forests of oak and pine, where deer and elk roamed, eagles soared, and Kodiak bears fished for salmon in icy streams. He knew this place, for there was only one place on all Xanadu quite like it; it was the forested north of Barbary, a glittering jewel bordered by the North Sea and the Dragon’s Back Mountains.

Nestled on riverbanks among dappled patches of sunlight were little villages of Barbarian huts, with sturdy walls, thatched roofs, and stout chimneys puffing smoke. Fur-clad Barbarians happily went about their business: tanned hunters fletched arrows, screeching children chased each other around gnarled trunks, old men fished, and pink-cheeked women plopped meat and vegetables into stewpots while gossiping with their neighbours.

The village malemutes started barking so furiously that they foamed at the mouth.

The villagers stood and looked northward into the forest - fear in their pale blue eyes. To the north was the pathway to the land they all feared, to the north lay cold, darkness, chaos, and an insatiable evil beyond understanding.

An orc cleaver flew out from between the pines, spinning end over end until it struck one of the dogs and sliced its head clean off. Blood spurted out from the neck-stump, and the body staggered drunkenly while the severed head looked on, wide eyes rolling in incomprehension. Nervous, it licked its lips.

A rumbling mob of orcs poured out of the forest, their belly-deep battle roars startling the birds from the treetops and striking terror into the hearts of the villagers.

A blond hunter picked up his bow and fired in rapid succession - one arrow - two - three. A goblin and an orc went down - were trampled by others coming up behind. The hunter nocked a fourth arrow - tried to fire, but the gibbering mob swarmed all over him and cut him to pieces. A goblin picked up a piece of his corpse and committed an obscene act.

A greybeard dashed in and out of his hut in moments, donning his chainmail and grasping axe and broadsword. His eyes were steady and set as he walked out to face certain death, as calm as if he were strolling through the hills on a fine summer morning, neither rushing nor hesitant, the epitome of the unyielding Barbarian warrior.

The darkrons rushed him.

He swung the axe - sliced away the top of an orc’s skull in a spray of brains and bone shards, while punching his sword through the chest of a two-headed souldead damned.

A goblin swung a scimitar, hacking into his thigh.

He staggered, recovered, and kicked the goblin in the throat with his good leg. The goblin dropped its scimitar and fell back - choking.

Goblins, orcs, and souldead damned swamped the greybeard. He went down beneath the frantic mob and was lost. The hideous human-centaur souldead damned chopped and sawed him to pieces.

A patch of undergrowth trembled.

‘He comes! He comes!’ one of the goblins squealed, jumping up and down with great excitement. ‘He smells meat and wants to feast! The Soloth comes!’

The darkrons parted.

A black spider skittered out of the forest; shiny, spindly, and unbelievably huge - bigger than a horse, almost as big as an elephant. It began to feast on the dead Barbarians, sucking and slurping and pulsing, shuffling its bulbous abdomen back and forth in pleasure: if it were a cat it would have purred.

Some of the darkrons kneeled in reverence, but then a no-nonsense hobgoblin barged through the mob with the air of a cranky sergeant-major catching his men slacking off, and ordered them to get to work rounding up “da meat”. Already this company had harvested hundreds of sacrifices, but the Destroyer needed more, many more.

Those of the villagers who had not been slain in battle were rounded up by wolf-headed, bull-horned doomhorses, which ran down and seized any who tried to flee into the forest. They were all women and children, but for an old man too weak to fight, carrying a great-grandchild in wiry arms. He would never survive the long march to Molothsothboloth, but would begin the journey anyway, and when he faltered, would provide meat for the others.

The captives were marked - kicking and screaming - by rusty daggers, the gibbering goblins holding them down to carve pentagrams right across their faces, from ear to ear and chin to forehead, marking them as the property of the Destroyer of Worlds. Even the dead were marked in this way, though whether this was merely an act of desecration or served some darker purpose, Gothia knew not.

The freshly-marked sacrifices were manacled to a long iron chain, squeaky with rust, and led away by a pair of souldead damned, including the sabre-saw centaur. The other darkrons, who were never happy at leaving humans alive, but who were under strict orders to take live captives, vented their pent-up rage by smashing and burning the entire village and killing every living thing they could get their hands on: cows, pigs, chickens, and a wailing, golden-haired infant - the old man’s great-grandchild - who was tossed from hand to hand like a ball, and dropped more than once.

Once the baby was almost dead, the hobgoblin grumpily broke up the game by swinging the baby by its legs and smashing its head against a stone wall, before nonchalantly tossing the remains to the Soloth, which gobbled it with slurpy gusto.

‘Form up for march!’ the hobgoblin bellowed. ‘South us go! Destroyer need meat! Fast! Fast!’ He cracked his whip, tearing open a bony goblin back. ]]> Damon Dane http://www.sffworld.com/forums/entry.php?986-Ragnarok-Fantasy-Part-Eleven http://www.sffworld.com/forums/entry.php?959-Ragnarok-Fantasy-Part-Ten Mon, 24 Jan 2011 08:08:25 GMT [I]DAMON DANE'S RAGNAROK[/I]

A vision appeared before Gothia’s mind’s eye; a black stone bridge rising from a stormy sea, a bridge of giants a hundred feet high and a hundred miles from end to end, spanning the Straits of Darkness and joining Bosoboloria to the Doom Walk, binding that wild and ancient continent to Gehenna like a beautiful bride tethered to a beast of the vilest evil. The bridge ends were guarded by shiny black skulls a hundred feet high, with a gaping open mouth arched like a castle gate, while the pillars, arches, and spans of the bridge were carved in the shape of millions upon millions of human skulls.

[I]For every sinner who has ever fallen into hell,[/I] Stargard said telepathically. [I]This is one of the Shadowgates through which the hordes of Gehenna marched in the Chaos War to overrun the Holy Empire and lay waste the realms.[/I]

Gothia floated in emptiness as he beheld this pathway to hell on earth. He recalled an ancient prophecy which told how any man who attempted to cross this bridge, or who even so much as touched it, would at once have his soul sucked out of him by the hellish anti-mojo known as the souldeath darkness; would die horribly and be respawned as a darkron, or else would remain imprisoned on the bridge itself, and though he might be standing exactly where he had been just moments before, he would have entered another reality, and would no longer belong to the world of the living. Nor would he be able to turn around and go back through the skullgate: he would have no choice but to follow the Doom Walk eastward to Gehenna, or spend eternity wandering the Bridge of Darkness as a hungry ghost, crying tears of longing for his lost soul, while the winds howled, the waves crashed, and the souls of the damned wandered past unseeing, unheeding.

Gothia had seen the bridge before, had sailed beneath it twice, for the Sardar mining colony of Uruk lay on the far side, and taking this dangerous passage was the only way to navigate the Straits of Darkness and reach those hot and craggy gold-rich mountains. Just as he remembered, the bridge was wreathed in a foul storm, the waves hammering with fury against the black stone, as if the very earth itself wished to cast this abomination from its face. But the storm had raged here non-stop for a thousand years, and the stone yet stood uneroded, protected by dark necromancy of tremendous power.

So foul was the storm that only rarely could sailors on ships sailing beneath the bridge catch sight of the dark spans above, while most barely glimpsed its massive pillars though the mist and spray, from which emanated an eerie sound said to be the wailing souls of the damned, a haunting lament, but also an intoxicating siren song which had lured many a sailor to his doom.

Among the wise old sea captains who knew the terrible truth of what this bridge really was, few would willingly sail beneath it, and those who did took great care to steer clear of the pillars - though that was no mean feat, the way these wild seas crashed against them. Never would they willingly touch those columns of black skull stone: if shipwrecked it was better to drown and die with a clean soul, than to scramble onto them and be possessed by the souldeath darkness, adding your voice to the wailing chorus of those trapped within.

Gothia did not touch the bridge, or even mentally will himself to float towards it, for he could feel the slithering souldeath darkness emanating from it in waves. He did not want to be here, even in his dreams.

[I]The Bridge of Darkness,[/I] he thought.

[I]Yes,[/I] Stargard replied. Gothia could not see the Warlock, but could sense his presence everywhere and in everything, for this was partially his dream, his memory, and partially Gothia’s own connection to the higher powers that made this place possible. Built by the Destroyer of Worlds in the Age of Chaos.

[I]I knew I would someday return here, Gothia thought, It haunts my dreams.[/I]

[I]You feared that you would someday return here.

Aye, I feared that.

And do you still fear?

Aye.

But why? What are you afraid of?

A nameless fear, a fear I do not understand, but it is there nonetheless.

You fear that which mortal man cannot understand. You fear the souldeath darkness, which emanates from this bridge like invisible claws grasping your spine. The same power flows from the weavers of darkness when they summon up their powers of black sorcery from the pit of hell. Most of all it comes from the Tower of Sorrows Endless, high above the damned city of Molothsothboloth.

Why do ye show me this thing?

For years you fought against the darkrons in the mountains and deserts of Uruk. Those darkrons all marched across this bridge: that is how they reached you.[/I]

This seemed to Gothia insufficient cause to dredge up unpleasant memories. [I]Uruk is quiet now[/I], he thought. [I]That war is over.[/I] In his modest way, he neglected to mention the fact that he was the legendary samurai general whose dashing leadership had, in a vicious three-way war, broken both the extremely strong Gehennan slave-raider legion of which they were speaking, and the imperialistic army of Great Ophir, which for a hundred years had ravaged the land not for Sardar blood, but for the Bosobolorian gold that the Sardar miners were digging out of the Mazandarani Mountains by the barrow-load, (although of course obtaining the latter necessitated spilling the former). Had Gothia been more egoistic he might have made the well-justified claim that he personally had finished that war, but he was not egoistic; he was too interested in the world around him to be concerned with the welfare of his ego, so he just said, [I]That war is over.

Is it?

Mostly. Darkrons continue to harry the borders of Uruk, and sometimes raid the outlying mines for sacrifices, but that slaver legion is now so depleted as to be strategically insignificant; its presence on the Uruk border is just a nuisance, no more troubling than the buzzing of mosquitoes - irritating, aye, but irrelevant in the overall picture. Those of my people who work that hard land expect to sometimes be bitten by bugs. Anyway, the darkrons no longer dare approach our mountain fortresses. We smashed them, and then while they and the Ophirians were crying over their wounds, we built Uruk into an impregnable fortress, which is why they turned their attentions further westward, to Erlendor. Perhaps the blood of Erlen tree-dwellers is sweeter than that of dirty Sardar miners and samurai sweating in the mountains.

Perhaps,[/I] Stargard said, [I]Maybe they have turned to the west, but the war in Uruk is not over, it has merely changed direction, as all wars do from time to time. You won a campaign, but the war goes on, and soon the very same war shall spread to all of Xanadu. Darkrons are massing to swarm down into Barbary through the Nothomir Pass, a mighty host, strong enough to overwhelm even the Barbarians. And they shall be only the beginning of the horror, the vanguard of the darkness spreading across the entire world to gather sacrifices for Molothsothboloth.[/I]

Stargard paused, as if reluctant to continue. [I]Then when the 666th year comes, they shall be joined by 666 armies of horror.

Behold.[/I] ]]> Damon Dane http://www.sffworld.com/forums/entry.php?959-Ragnarok-Fantasy-Part-Ten http://www.sffworld.com/forums/entry.php?945-Ragnarok-Fantasy-Part-Nine Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:39:51 GMT [I]DAMON DANE'S RAGNAROK[/I]

Stargard flipped open a trapdoor and climbed up through the floor, before grabbing his astounded disciple’s wrist and hauling him up with effortless ease.

Gothia found himself in a circular wooden gazebo, open-sided but for a low fence running around the seven edges, elaborately carved in intertwined Norse patterns, and interspersed by seven pillars holding up the roof, each carved in the likeness of a distinctly individual Norse dragon. It reminded him of the open-sided grass huts common to the tropical Isles of Tarshish - though in this harsh northern climate such summer-friendly architecture was clearly inappropriate.

Or was it?

[I]It’s warm…[/I] Gothia realised, astounded.

He closed the trapdoor behind him, even while realising that there was no need to do this, for despite the fact that this warm sanctuary seemed open to the weather, no freezing wind howled through it. The floor was draped in a luxuriant carpet of polar bear fur, and now at least Stargard didn’t seem out of place in his socks. Stunned, but still remembering his manners, Gothia removed his boots in order not to tread snow and ice all over the rug, a traditional Sardar politeness, and one which his mentor appreciated.

In the centre of the hut sprawled a lived-in leather couch, circular and outward-facing, clearly designed so that visitors to this enchanted place could sit and enjoy the superb mountain views out of the open-sided walls. The cushions on the couch were of pink silk, embroidered with teddy bears wearing suits of armour and waving stubby little teddy swords. Unbeknownst to Gothia, they had been embroidered by one of Stargard’s wives, centuries before.

‘Wha… what is this place?’

‘The Tower of Dreams.’

‘Dreams?’

‘Yes.’ Stargard adjusted one of his moustache plaits, which had been blown into disarray. It was over two feet long and had a golden Hyperborean Cross plaited into the end. ‘Similar to the Tower of Dreams in Castle Dragonheim, although it has far less holy mojo flowing through it, which means ordinary mortals can use it without exploding from excess energy, which is good news for you.’

‘So do you come here… to dream?’

‘Yes, but not the dreams you have after eating too much cheese for supper. Nor is it sorcery. We Hyperborean Knights are moved solely by the holy mojo, which is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit and the source of all life on earth. When we are righteous, God rewards us by filling our cups with mojo and giving us powers that can scatter sorcerers of the black arts like leaves before a howling gale - even though we are not sorcerers. The same mojo allows you to be here, in this sacred place, and to dream dreams which are real-life visions of other times and other places.’

Stargard smiled. ‘These are tremendous powers for the acute strategist: the ability to discern your enemy’s intentions before he is even aware of them himself. So sit on the couch Gothia, make yourself comfortable, empty your busy mind, and let the holy mojo flow through you and reveal its secrets.’

Gothia sat on the couch, slouched right back, and stretched out his legs. A cushiony footrest of embroidered green felt magically appeared in front of him, so he propped his legs on it and tried to stop worrying about how very strange and complicated his life was becoming.

Darkness was falling, but the blizzard had cleared, leaving the peaks to shine bright in the light of the crescent moon. It was nice to be able to enjoy the mountain views without being frozen to death, for it was warm and cosy in here, so warm…

Gothia’s eyelids began to droop, and before very long he had dozed off.

Stargard stood beside him and folded his hands in prayer. A stream of glittering little moons and stars flowed out of his fingertips and washed over Gothia like a golden mist, entering Gothia’s mind and passing on the dreams of horror to which Stargard had borne witness while sleeping the sleep of madness at Castle Dragonheim. ]]> Damon Dane http://www.sffworld.com/forums/entry.php?945-Ragnarok-Fantasy-Part-Nine http://www.sffworld.com/forums/entry.php?921-Ragnarok-Fantasy-Part-Eight Sat, 08 Jan 2011 05:27:47 GMT Happy new year guys! Here's a funny old Viking joke for you...

A raven walks into an ale-house and says, 'Got any bread?'
The Viking barkeep says, 'No, this is an ale-house. We sell ale, not bread.'
The raven walks out, then walks back in and says, 'Got any bread?'
The Viking gets angry and says, 'I told you mate, this is an ale-house; we don't sell bread. If you ask me again I'll nail your damn beak to the bar!'
The raven walks out, then walks back in and says, 'Got any nails?'
The Viking says, 'No!'
The raven says, 'Got any bread?'



[I]DAMON DANE'S RAGNAROK[/I]

CHAPTER FOUR
THE ROAD TO HELL


Stargard pushed out his chair and padded in his socks across to the ladder leading up to his loft, which also doubled as a bookshelf ladder allowing him to reach the dusty tomes languishing in dignified neglect upon his topmost shelves. Climbing quick as hungry chimp, he told Gothia, who was still easing his three hundred pounds of half-thawed muscle and bone out of his chair, ‘Come on General VW! The world is about to end!’

Gothia followed him up the ladder and squeezed around Stargard’s book-laden bed. The witch’s-hat roof was built of thick tiles bolted to an extremely sturdy wooden frame. Indeed at this height, and in these ghastly weather conditions, everything had to be built with a sturdiness which would have done credit even to the architecture of the Ursans of Castle Wulfenhold, which was legendary for its robust indestructibility. In fact the HK Citadel was said to have been built by the Ursans in ancient times in return for the Hammer of Donnar, the priceless Ursan religious artefact and symbol of kingship which the Ursans had misplaced and the knights had found. The hammer had since gone missing again - in the Age of Chaos, some six centuries before, and had not been seen since.

Stargard shot a pair of iron bolts to open a trapdoor in the roof. An icy wind howled in, blowing snow into their faces.

‘What’re ye doing?’ Gothia asked in disbelief, ‘Going out on the roof?’ The tower was two hundred feet high, set at the top of a sheer, thousand-foot cliff, and the wind was very, very strong.

‘Yes.’

Gothia looked past Stargard’s shaggy head to behold a magnificently bleak view of white peaks and jagged black ridgelines. The Dragon’s Back Mountains: no matter how harsh this wilderness might be, there was always something intoxicating about it, and for reasons Gothia was beginning to understand, he liked just to be here and soak up the atmosphere. In fact this mysterious allure was one of the reasons why the Citadel had been built in the mountains in the first place, and not in some sunny field or on an idyllic tropical island: there was a tremendous amount of holy mojo swirling around in the mountains, and those who dwelt here gradually absorbed it, especially here on Holy Mountain, which was so hallowed a place that it could make a man holy with the tremendous power swirling through it. Even a man like Gothia.

With an agility that belied his age, Stargard bounced on his bed and hopped out the hatch, perching like a bird on the wooden ledge, his bedraggled socks dangling over the tiles.

Gothia was alarmed, for one slip and Stargard had a very long fall, and he wasn’t sure that even the Warlock’s alleged immortality and great store of holy mojo would protect him from splattering like a bug at the base of the cliff. Then he realised what Stargard was up to: he was going to fly. ‘Don’t ye have to change into a dragon first?’ he shouted over the wind.

Stargard didn’t appear to have heard, and started climbing out and up the steep, slippery roof, quickly vanishing from view. Faintly Gothia heard a wind-drowned, ‘Come on General VW!’

Gothia shrugged his heavy shoulders, bounced on Stargard’s bed - nearly breaking it - and boosted himself out the window. The wind smacked his face like an icy gauntlet and almost bowled him off the roof, but he gripped the window frame hard and held on.

He looked down. Only six rows of icy tiles - the sloped rim of the witch’s-hat roof - lay between him and oblivion. Beyond that was nothing - only a whistling thousand-foot plummet to a hammer-hard death on the rocks far below. He looked up, to where the peak was nearly lost amid the swirling snows. Stargard was nowhere to be seen. Gothia was alarmed. [I]Has he fallen?[/I]

‘General VW!’

Relief flooded through him: Stargard’s robed figure stood with one arm wrapped around the pointed roof spire and the other urgently beckoning him onward. His hair and beard were being whipped by the wind, but his blue eyes were sparkling with enjoyment.

[I]Well thrash me thrice with a startled tabby! [/I]Gothia silently exclaimed. [I]How did he get up there so fast? And what the fok is he doing?[/I]

Then he noticed something he was sure had not been there a moment before - a single row of roof tiles had been set flat to form a kind of narrow staircase, spiralling up and around towards the spire. Tentatively he set his booted feet upon it, concentrating intensely, mindful of the fact that Stargard had done it in his socks, and apparently in a few swift bounds, and at the age of… several hundred.

Then he stopped thinking about Stargard, for there was no sense in comparing the Warlock with ordinary people.

After several minutes of careful climbing on the smooth-frozen tiles - while trying to avoid being blown over the edge and wondering why Stargard dispensed with the basic mountaineering precaution of a safety rope - Gothia reached the spire.

‘Hold onto me!’ Stargard shouted over the howling gale, before adding unnecessarily, ‘And don’t slip!’ He was higher up than Gothia, so Gothia wrapped one arm around his waist, while splaying his feet and spare hand against the roof and flattening himself against it, all while wondering what sort of insane antics the Warlock was amusing himself with this time.

Stargard released his hold of the spire and folded his hands in prayer. White-gold light flashed.

Gothia couldn’t believe his eyes, and wondered if he was hallucinating, for where, moments before, had been nothing but the frozen roof spire, appeared a sort of wooden tree-house, perched miraculously atop the pointed roof. ]]> Damon Dane http://www.sffworld.com/forums/entry.php?921-Ragnarok-Fantasy-Part-Eight http://www.sffworld.com/forums/entry.php?878-Ragnarok-Fantasy-Part-Seven Sat, 18 Dec 2010 12:42:34 GMT [I]DAMON DANE'S RAGNAROK[/I]

Here ended the Book of Endings, the final book in the epic that was the Holy Tome.

Filled with a sense of foreboding, Gothia raised his eyes and looked at Stargard, haunted by a fear that they were standing on the brink of an apocalyptic cataclysm, and that a horrifying darkness would soon sweep down over them all.

‘For good or for ill, you and I have been born into the Dark Ages,’ Stargard said, ‘the Third Age, the Age of Endings, the end to all ages. Lupus Minor, the eye of the Wolf Constellation, has become a red giant; Ragnarok is nigh.’

Gothia sat for several moments in stunned silence, before asking, as pragmatic as ever, ‘Is there any way to somehow stop these things from happening?’

‘If you have a way to stop the Anti-Christ from cracking the Seven Seals of the Abyss and rising up from hell, then please do not keep it to yourself. Otherwise, we must just fight with the weapons we have, and what we have are the Seven Swords of Hyperborea.’ Stargard frowned into his plaited white beard. ‘Well, we don’t exactly have them; they’re scattered across the world, and the most important one is in heaven, but they must be found before the Destroyer’s return, and they must be found by none other than the Angel of the Lord himself.’ He gave Gothia a meaningful look.

It took Gothia a few moments, but then he understood the words that the Warlock had left unspoken: he was about to send him on a quest to gather the Seven Swords of Hyperborea, which meant…

Tentatively, Gothia asked, ‘Am I… the Angel of the Lord…?’

Stargard looked at him in incomprehension - noted the earnest look on his face - and then roared with laughter, slapping the table with both hands, and chortled happily for several long moments, while Gothia wondered what was so funny.

[I]Stargard has an odd sense of humour… [/I]

Stargard apologised, once he had contained himself, but to think of this battle-scarred, saké-swilling, geisha house-cruising, murderous former pirate as an angel really tickled his funnybone. He delighted in the look of confusion on Gothia’s face. ‘Sorry, it’s just that…’ he started giggling again, then dragged his Holy Tome across the desk, took a deep breath, and read the final part of the prophecy.

‘Okay, let’s have a look… “Know the Angel of the Lord by these signs: he shall have eyes like the sky, hair like the sun, and the mark of the lion upon his face. He will ride a black horse, and death shall follow in his wake”. Are you the Angel of the Lord? I can’t be sure, so let’s just match you up to the criteria: I know that death follows in your wake; you’ve a well-deserved share of infamy for that, but do you have eyes like the sky?’

‘Ye mean blue?’

‘I suppose so, unless it’s raining, in which case the sky is grey.’ Stargard looked into Gothia’s golden-brown eyes. [I]If the prophecy specified the eyes of a lion he might qualify…[/I]

‘Er, no, I don’t have eyes like the sky.’

‘Well, okay then, do you have hair like the sun?’

[I]Must mean blond, more’s the pity… [/I]Gothia ran his hand through his stubbled black hair, which was as dark as night, sprinkled with a light dusting of silver at the temples. ‘Hmm…’

‘Do you have the mark of the lion upon your face?’

‘What’s that, a lion-shaped birthmark or something?’

‘I don’t know, I’m just asking what’s written in the book. You’re old and wise enough to interpret it as you will. More likely it means has a big pussycat ever scratched your face and then tried to eat you?’

‘Lions? I had a few scraps with ‘em in the Uruk War, but they never scratched my face. I ended up eating one of them actually… It wasn’t good - I prefer fat Ophirian emirs.’

‘I see. Well, there’s no mention of cannibalism.’ Stargard read through the prophecy again. ‘Oh, there is this bit about striking your own father and lusting like a beast for prostitutes without limit. I imagine you might qualify there…?’

Gothia shrugged. ‘My father was killed by ninjas when I was nine, but I don’t recall ever hitting him before that. But prostitutes… aye, there’s been a few lusty lushbutt lasses I couldn’t resist; not without limit mind ye - only when I’m out on campaign and got no fighting to do. When I’m home I prefer to stoke the home fires.’ As if to prove his point he added, ‘I’ve got fourteen children.’ What he meant was that he had [I]roughly[/I] fourteen children, for he found it hard to keep track of the exact number: his wife was better at that sort of thing. And of course grandchildren were another matter entirely.

Stargard shook his head. ‘I’m afraid you don’t qualify then. It quite clearly says “prostitutes without limit”, not “a few lusty lushbutt lasses whilst on campaign”. Ah, here’s something else though; do you ride a black horse?’

Gothia shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘I can ride any horse. What difference does the colour make?’

Stargard shook his finger in admonition. ‘Come on now General VW, prophecies can be finicky things. It’s not for us humble servants of God to question them, but only to interpret them as best we can, and, where necessary, to try and do their bidding.’ He shook his shaggy white head. ‘No Gothia, you may be either disappointed or relieved, but you are not the Angel of the Lord. I’d say we’re looking for a blue-eyed blond vagabond galloping around on a black horse, whoring, hitting his father, and leaving death in his wake. I’d also say he has lion claw scars on his face, or even bite marks. He’s also a king of the North. That should narrow it down a bit, seeing as there are only five Norse realms, including the Ursans, who can probably be ruled out - I’m sure the prophecy would mention it if the Angel of the Lord was an Ursan. And the Vandar don’t even have a king, only clan chiefs, so that narrows it down to the kings of three realms: Hyperborea, Gothland, and Barbary - and there is mention of a “banner of lions”. The Barbarian King carries such a banner.’

Stargard paused, looking at Gothia as if trying to make up his mind about something. At length he said, ‘Come on, let me show you something.’ ]]> Damon Dane http://www.sffworld.com/forums/entry.php?878-Ragnarok-Fantasy-Part-Seven