2018-01-08
521
“Not much happened,” Vagn said. There was a fresh cut on his cheek.
Galdor said, “You didn’t see anything?”
“No. A blowfly bothered me, once, but I swatted it away.”
Their eyes met. Galdor laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Where did you say you came from?”
“West of here. From the big island.”
“Then how did you get here?”
“I walked.”
“On the water?”
The boy opened his mouth with another lie, then, from the tower, the horn blew. Galdor said a round oath. “Get to the ships,” he said. “Hjeldric is come at last.”
Vagn loved being back on the water, where everything was simple: the stroke, his strength, and the sea. On the bench ahead of him Thorulf swung his oar; Ketil stood at the helm, steering them through the broken water. All around Vagn, the men were chanting the count.
He had rowed all his life, but always clunky little boats like the knarr. Never before a vessel like this one, this sea serpent of a ship, light and supple, skimming over the water. The rhythm carried him like great wings. He added his voice to the count, a glad part of this.
Through the corner of his eye he could see that they were racing to cut off another longship, streaking up the strait from the west. Ketil yelled out and the count quickened. Vagn pushed himself to match it, gasping at the effort; all around him the other men strained at the oars. The ship trashed across a rough current. The oncoming ship was fighting the same surface chop and lost half a length, and then Vagn’s ship glided out onto a patch of easy water. The other longship stood up its oars and veered off.
A hoarse cheer rose from the benches around Vagn. Ketil laid them over. The jug came by and Vagn gulped down most of the water in it. His sword lay under his bench. Maybe now they would fight, ship to ship. He longed to try the sword in a real fight. Over there, across the open water, the other longship faced them, too far to see any of those men. He dragged in a deep breath. Thorulf reached around and slapped his shoulder, and someone else gave a random yell. Vagn felt his blood beating through his body; he shook his muscles loose. He looked quickly around at the other men, his crew. His brothers now. He thrust that problem off. He looked out over the water toward the other ship, his hand itching to pick up his sword.
Then a horn blew, behind them.
He twisted to look over his shoulder. Back there, Galdor had his other two ships bow to stern across the narrows. Three more enemy ships lay up the strait, waiting. Lean and low, they were beautiful, and it swelled him to think he would fight in such a one. The horn sounded again and Vagn felt his scalp prickle. This was the beginning of it. But none of the other men even looked up. Back at the helm, Ketil suddenly gave over the steerboard to somebody else and went forward.
Thorulf was sitting back. Another jug came. Vagn said, “What’s going on?”
“They’re talking.” The man across the way from him turned toward him. “Nothing is going to happen for a while.”
On the bench behind him, somebody said, “They outnumber us. Galdor doesn’t fight against the odds.” Thorulf muttered something under his breath.
Vagn looked around them. They were at the narrowest part of the strait. He remembered the rocks that cluttered the water along the shore. It seemed to him Galdor’s three ships could hold off the four enemy ships easily enough. Probably there was some piece of warcraft he was not grasping here. Now Galdor was shouting from his ship toward one of the others, and someone there was shouting back. They were arranging to meet on the land. There would still be a fight. Vagn reached down to touch the hilt of his sword.
—
Galdor had sent most of his men back up to the Vedrborg. The rest he kept below, in a broad meadow just inland of the beach where Hjledric’s ships drew up, and he went among them and counted out seven of them. Thorulf was among these seven and so was Vagn. When Ketil was not counted in, he and the others went away. Galdor paced up and down past the men who stayed.
He said, “I am staking the Vedrborg on this. I will reward good work here.” His eyes were hot and bright. He drew his sword; Vagn imagined it hissed like a snake, coming out of the sheath. “Thorulf, take the weather edge. I will take the middle.”
Thorulf stepped back and leaned on his sword. Around him the other men were gripping each other’s hands, drinking deep of the alehorns. Across the grass Hjeldric’s eight men gathered. Vagn looked over his new sword again. He had worked on the rusty parts with sheep’s fat and a rag and gotten some of it clean. The notch he could not fix. But the blade felt good in his hand. He took a deep breath. The sun was warm on his cheek. He told himself he might never see another sunrise; this seemed a far-distant, unimportant matter.
Thorulf stood there, swinging his arms back and forth. He said, “Is this the first time you’ve fought like this?”
Vagn said, “Yes.” His voice had a squeak.
Thorulf said, “I think it is my last.”
Ketil suddenly appeared again. To Vagn, he said, “Galdor will win this. Keep your sword up.” He thumped Thorulf on the back. “You’d better get down there. Feed a few ravens for me.” Thorulf walked heavily away across the grass, and Vagn followed.
—
Vagn could not stop bouncing. He was gripping the sword too tight. Beside him, Thorulf slouched, scratching his beard. He said, “Tonight in Valhalla, Vagn Akason,” and spat through his fingers. Galdor came pacing along in front of them, calling their names and jabbing his sword in the air.
He lifted his shield, and the horn blew.
They walked together in a row toward Hjeldric’s men, who came toward them in a row, each to each. In front of Vagn was a lanky body behind a big round shield, red hair sticking out all around a leather helmet. Vagn could not quite get his breath. Beside him, Thorulf gave a screech and dashed forward.
The redheaded man lunged at Vagn, striking shoulder high, and Vagn tore his attention away from Thorulf. He swung up the shield and the blow struck so hard it numbed his arm. He slashed out with his sword, low, not seeing much, and felt it bang hard on the redheaded man’s shield, and the other man sprang away. Vagn followed him, shield first, wanting him to strike first. Inside the leather helmet, above the thatch of red beard, the man’s blue eyes locked with his. He jabbed with his sword, and when Vagn pulled his shield up, turned the stroke low, and hard.
The tip of the sword sliced toward Vagn’s knee. He drove his own sword down, and the blades rang together. Vagn saw at once the other man had the longer reach. He crashed forward, shield first, into the tall, gangly body, closing the gap between them. For an instant, they were chest to chest together, the redhead’s breath blasting in Vagn’s face. He felt the other man’s strength coil to throw him off, and as the other man shoved he slid sideways out of the way, laying out his sword. The redheaded man stumbled, fell across the blade and staggered to his knees.
Vagn bellowed, hot with triumph. Then another of Hjeldric’s men was charging him, shorter, wider, swinging an axe.
He caught this on the shield, turning the edge a little, so the wide curved blade did not strike full on. With his sword he hacked down at the axeman’s head. The axeman ducked back and away, and for an instant Vagn could look around.
The redhead was getting to his feet. Blood smeared his side but he was raising his sword again. Out there on the trampled grass, Thorulf lay in a heap.
The axeman barked some name, and he and the redheaded man fanned out and came at Vagn together. The redheaded man was breathing hard, the blood bright on his breastplate and shield arm. The other man, squatty, with his axe, bobbed back and forth then gave a howl and charged.
Vagn stood fast; he turned the first blow off with his shield and with his sword poked and cut, watching how the other man met that. He knew that the redheaded man was coming in behind him, and he backed up in a rush, getting out from between them. The redheaded man dropped to one knee again. The other one lifted his axe, moving sideways, circling around to Vagn’s far side.
The redheaded man heaved himself up onto his feet and stumbled forward. Vagn cocked up his shield; his body felt huge and the shield the size of a pea. From the side the axe sliced at his head and he ducked and lunged and his sword glanced off the axeman’s shield. He dodged away from them both again, and the axeman stepped back. The redheaded man lost his balance and fell to his hands and knees.
Vagn cast another look around. They had moved far along the meadow, somehow, almost to the wood; Thorulf’s body was a long way back there. Nearer, Galdor and Hjeldric were circling each other. Galdor’s sword swung out, and Hjledric dodged, then attacked, going against Galdor’s shield hand.
Then from the wood there burst a tide of men.
Vagn stood, startled. They were Galdor’s men, and they reached the redheaded man first and hacked him down, and then the axeman went down. Hjeldric wheeled toward them, and Galdor plunged the sword through his back. Vagn did not move. He saw Galdor fling his arms up, triumphant. He saw, down on the beach, two of Hjeldric’s ships push away.
Ketil walked up to Vagn. He said, “I told you he would not leave it to chance.” His eyes did not quite meet Vagn’s. Vagn threw his shield down, and went off to see what had happened to Thorulf.
—
At undernmeal Vagn sat staring at his hands. Around him the voices purred and muttered but he heard nothing. The food came around and he ate nothing. He drank from the alehorn, which did him no good.
His mind was churning. Thorolf was dead, but Thorulf had died well, of hard wounds taken in front. Vagn thought over and over of the redheaded man, who had fought so hard, even wounded, merely to be cut down from behind like a coward. The gall burned in his belly. Ketil, beside him, spoke to him only once.
“We won, didn’t we?”
Vagn grunted at him. After that Ketil said nothing, only glanced at him now and then, and passed him the horn.
In the high seat Galdor shouted out a name, and some warrior stood up, and Galdor pulled one of the gold rings from his arm and a slave brought it down and everybody cheered. Vagn stared at the table.
Then Galdor was calling out his name.
Vagn lifted his head, and all around saw faces watching him. A slave came trotting toward him, holding out a gold ring, and a long yell rose, his name in sixty voices.
He stood up, everybody’s eyes turned on him, and hurled the ring across the room.
“No! There was nothing golden on that field, no honor—” He was shaking, the blood booming in his ears. “Better men than you died on that field, Galdor No-King, Galdor Cheat! I would be a better king here than you are.”
The hall crashed into silence. Nobody moved.
Galdor said, “This is your end, Vagn Akason.” He rose in his place and took the sword up off the table and drew it from the scabbard. Around Vagn the others were suddenly moving, pulling the benches and tables back, and he was alone, standing there. He drew his sword. Galdor was coming toward him down the hall.
He moved away, then Galdor was coming at him, sideways, the keen blade slicing toward him. He bounded backward. He got his sword crosswise of Galdor’s and the shock rang up his arm. Galdor was pushing him along, darting here, there, poking at him, laughing. Vagn skittered backward, trying to get some room, and came up against the table.
Hands gripped him from behind. Somebody was holding him for Galdor, and the king moved in fast. Vagn dropped his sword. He reached back and got the wrists holding him, twisted and crouched down, and with all his weight he hauled the man behind him over his shoulder and into Galdor’s thrust.
The sword came out through the falling man’s chest. While Galdor was pulling it free Vagn grabbed up his own sword again and vaulted onto the table. The other men shied back, toward the walls. Galdor swung hard at his knees, and when he dodged that, the king leapt onto the table after him. Slashing and cutting up and down, he drove Vagn backward, through the bread and the cheese, tipping over the alehorns. Vagn kept his sword up, fending off the king’s blows, groping along behind him with his feet.
Galdor stabbed at him, and Vagn saw something; he lunged toward the weakness, but it was a trap. The king wheeled his blow backward at him and struck the sword out of his hand.
A bellow went up. The king’s eyes glowed. Vagn leapt down from the table, and raced out the door into the yard. Galdor was hot after him. Just beyond the threshold was a stack of firewood, and Vagn threw a chunk of it at Galdor and saw an axe among the wood. With a bound he caught it up. Galdor was right behind him and he wheeled around and swung the axe waist high, missing Galdor by a finger’s breadth.
Galdor howled. His teeth showed. He hacked right, and Vagn dodged, then left and Vagn dodged. The axe was top-heavy and hard to manage. Galdor let him swing and came in behind the swing, and Vagn felt the blade crease his ribs through his shirt. He swung the axe around and hurled it straight at Galdor.
Galdor went down; the axe grazed his shoulder. Vagn raced across the yard, toward the storeroom with the barrel of swords. The doors were shut and barred. Galdor was pounding after him, yelling, derisive.
“Wait, little boy, I’m not done with you!”
Vagn swerved toward the kitchen, where there would be knives. Galdor was on his heels. On the ground out in the middle of the yard he saw a broom, and veered toward it. He could hear yelling, from a great distance; all he saw was the broom, and he snatched it up and wheeled just as Galdor closed with him.
The sword swung at his head; he thrust up the broom and the blade bit the wood and snapped it. Still clutching the short end, Vagn slid back, out of reach of the sword. Galdor stood a moment, the sword raised, the tip circling in the air as if it sniffed for him.
The others, packed up against the walls, were calling and whistling. Vagn watched only the tip of the sword. Sliding his feet along, the stub end of the broomstick poking out before him, he inched his way toward the wall. Galdor shifted as he shifted, the sword blocking him this way, herding him that, moving him backward, backward. Vagn gave a quick look over his shoulder. Just behind him was the stair up to the parapet. The blade ripped at him and he sprang backward, up onto the steps.
Galdor was below him now, but Vagn had no fit weapon. He lashed out with the short piece of the broom and the king coiled back, out of reach, and whipped the sword at his ankles. Vagn leapt up another step, and Galdor came after. The sword jabbed at him. Galdor lunged up the steps and Vagn scurried away across the parapet and came up hard against the rail.
“Nowhere to run now,” Galdor said, breathless. He lifted the sword, and Vagn’s gaze rose with it. “Aha! You admire my sword? You should. It’s beyond price. It longs for blood.” He waggled the sword in Vagn’s face. “Its first blood was the dwarf who made it, who never made another like it. And now—” He cocked back the sword above Vagn’s head. “It will have yours.”
The dwarf. The dwarf. Braced against the wall, Vagn cried out, “Tyraste, remember!”
Galdor swung the blade down at his head, and the sword turned in Galdor’s hand, struck the wall, and flew across the parapet.
Vagn yelled. Galdor lunged after the sword, both hands stretched out. Vagn was closer. His hand fastened on the sword hilt and without pausing he swung his arm with all his strength around and took Galdor across the body.
Somewhere far off a huge yell went up. Vagn stood. Galdor sagged to his knees, his hands on his ripped belly, his head back. Vagn said, “This for my brothers. And Thorulf. And the dwarf in the cellar.” He drove the sword through Galdor’s chest.
The yelling went on. Down in the yard the other people were shouting and waving their arms. Vagn stood, panting.
The sword in his hand felt light, quick; its power burned in it. He understood why Galdor had always been touching it. Vagn wanted right away to strike with it again. The dwarf had made it full of charms. He remembered how it had turned on Galdor.
He went on down the stair to the yard, crowded with people. They were all watching him, and when he came toward them they moved back out of his way. He went in through the kitchen. There he found a rush light, and followed the passageway into the dark.
In the forge, at the foot of the stair, he sank down on his heels, and held the rushlight up to see. In the dust was the dwarf’s head, but now it was smiling.
Vagn laid the sword down beside it.
“I have brought this back to you.”
The dwarf whispered, “Yours. Yours, now.”
Eagerly he took it back in his hand. The dwarf’s lips bent in a deeper smile. “But beware. It is still evil.”
—
This was how Vagn Akason became king of the Vedrborg. But the life there was not to his liking, and soon he went off to join the Jomsvikings.
⬩ ⬩ ⬩
Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winner George R. R. Martin, New York Times bestselling author of the landmark A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, has been called “the American Tolkien.”
Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, George R. R. Martin made his first sale in 1971, and soon established himself as one of the most popular SF writers of the seventies. He quickly became a mainstay of the Ben Bova Analog with stories such as “With Morning Comes Mistfall,” “And Seven Times Never Kill Man,” “The Second Kind of Loneliness,” “The Storms of Windhaven” (in collaboration with Lisa Tuttle, and later expanded by them into the novel Windhaven), “Override,” and others, although he also sold to Amazing, Fantastic, Galaxy, Orbit, and other markets. One of his Analog stories, the striking novella “A Song for Lya,” won him his first Hugo Award, in 1974.
By the end of the seventies, he had reached the height of his influence as a science-fiction writer, and was producing his best work in that category with stories such as the famous “Sandkings,” his best-known story, which won both the Nebula and the Hugo in 1980 (he’d later win another Nebula in 1985 for his story “Portraits of His Children”), “The Way of Cross and Dragon,” which won a Hugo Award in the same year (making Martin the first author ever to receive two Hugo Awards for fiction in the same year), “Bitterblooms,” “The Stone City,” “Starlady,” and others. These stories would be collected in Sandkings, one of the strongest collections of the period. By now, he had mostly moved away from Analog although he would have a long sequence of stories about the droll interstellar adventures of Haviland Tuf (later collected in Tuf Voyaging) running throughout the eighties in the Stanley Schmidt Analog, as well as a few strong individual pieces such as the novella “Nightflyers”—most of his major work of the late seventies and early eighties, though, would appear in Omni. The late seventies and eighties also saw the publication of his memorable novel Dying of the Light, his only solo SF novel, while his stories were collected in A Song for Lya, Sandkings, Songs of Stars and Shadows, Songs the Dead Men Sing, Nightflyers, and Portraits of His Children. By the beginning of the eighties, he’d moved away from SF and into the horror genre, publishing the big horror novel Fevre Dream, and winning the Bram Stoker Award for his horror story “The Pear-Shaped Man” and the World Fantasy Award for his werewolf novella “The Skin Trade.” By the end of that decade, though, the crash of the horror market and the commercial failure of his ambitious horror novel The Armageddon Rag had driven him out of the print world and to a successful career in television instead, where for more than a decade he worked as story editor or producer on such shows as the new Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast.
After years away, Martin made a triumphant return to the print world in 1996 with the publication of the immensely successful fantasy novel A Game of Thrones, the start of his Song of Ice and Fire sequence. A freestanding novella taken from that work, “Blood of the Dragon,” won Martin another Hugo Award in 1997. Further books in the Song of Ice and Fire series, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons, have made it one of the most acclaimed and bestselling series in all of modern fantasy. Recently, the books were made into an HBO TV series, Game of Thrones, which has become one of the most popular and acclaimed shows on television, and made Martin a recognizable figure well outside of the usual genre boundaries, even inspiring a satirical version of him on Saturday Night Live. Martin’s recent books include a massive retrospective collection spanning the entire spectrum of his career, Dreamsongs; a novella collection, Starlady and Fast-Friend; a novel written in collaboration with Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham, Hunter’s Run; and, as editor, several anthologies edited in collaboration with Gardner Dozois, including Warriors, Song of the Dying Earth, Songs of Love and Death, Down These Strange Streets, Dangerous Women, and Rogues; as well as several new volumes in his long-running Wild Cards anthology series. In 2012, Martin was given the Life Achievement Award by the World Fantasy Convention. His most recent books are High Stakes, the twenty-third volume in the Wild Cards series, and The World of Ice and Fire, an illustrated history of the Seven Kingdoms.
Here he takes us to Westeros, home to his Ice and Fire series, and back in time for a look at things that happened long before A Game of Thrones begins, for the story of an unfortunate sibling rivalry that has tragic and disastrous effects on the entire world.
⬩ ⬩ ⬩
King Aegon I Targaryen, as history records, took both of his sisters to wife. Both Visenya and Rhaenys were dragonriders, blessed with the silver-gold hair, purple eyes, and beauty of true Targaryens. Elsewise, the two queens were as unlike one another as any two women could be…save in one other respect. Each of them gave the king a son.
Aenys came first. Born in 7 AC to Aegon’s younger wife, Queen Rhaenys, the boy was small at birth, and sickly. He cried all the time, and it was said that his limbs were spindly and his eyes small and watery, so that the king’s maesters feared for his survival. He would spit out the nipples of his wet nurse, and give suck only at his mother’s breasts, and rumors claimed that he screamed for a fortnight when he was weaned. So unlike King Aegon was he that a few even dared suggest that His Grace was not the boy’s true sire, that Aenys was some bastard born of one of Queen Rhaenys’s many handsome favorites, the son of a singer or a mummer or a mime. And the prince was slow to grow as well. Not until he was given the young dragon Quicksilver, a hatchling born that year on Dragonstone, did Aenys Targaryen begin to thrive.
Prince Aenys was three when his mother, Queen Rhaenys, and her dragon Meraxes were slain in Dorne. Her death left the boy prince inconsolable. He stopped eating, and even began to crawl as he had when he was one, as if he had forgotten how to walk. His father despaired of him, and rumors flew about the court that King Aegon might take another wife, as Rhaenys was dead and Visenya childless and perhaps barren. The king kept his own counsel on these matters, so no man could say what thoughts he might have entertained, but many great lords and noble knights appeared at court with their maiden daughters, each more comely than the last.
All such speculation ended in 11 AC, when Queen Visenya suddenly announced that she was carrying the king’s child. A son, she proclaimed confidently, and so he proved to be. The prince came squalling into the world in 12 AC. No newborn was ever more robust than Maegor Targaryen, maesters and midwives agreed; his weight at birth was almost twice that of his elder brother.
The half brothers were never close. Prince Aenys was the heir apparent, and King Aegon kept him close by his side. As the king moved about the realm from castle to castle, so did the prince. Prince Maegor remained with his mother, sitting by her side when she held court. Queen Visenya and King Aegon were oft apart in those years. When he was not on his royal progress, Aegon would return to King’s Landing and the Aegonfort, whilst Visenya and her son remained on Dragonstone. For this reason, lords and commons alike began to refer to Maegor as the Prince of Dragonstone.
Queen Visenya put a sword into her son’s hand when he was three. Supposedly the first thing he did with the blade was butcher one of the castle cats, men said…though more like this tale was a calumny devised by his enemies many years later. That the prince took to swordplay at once cannot be denied, however. For his first master-at-arms, his mother chose Ser Gawen Corbray, as deadly a knight as could be found in all the Seven Kingdoms.
Prince Aenys was so oft in his sire’s company that his own instruction in the chivalric arts came largely from the knights of Aegon’s Kingsguard, and sometimes the king himself. The boy was diligent, his instructors all agreed, and did not want for courage, but he lacked his sire’s size and strength, and never showed himself as any more than adequate as a fighter, even when the king pressed Blackfyre into his hands, as he did from time to time. Aenys would not disgrace himself in battle, his tutors told one another, but no songs would ever be sung about his prowess.
Such gifts as this prince possessed lay elsewhere. Aenys was a fine singer himself, as it happened, with a strong, sweet voice. He was courteous and charming, clever without being bookish. He made friends easily, and young girls seemed to dote on him, be they highborn or low. Aenys loved to ride as well. His father gave him coursers, palfreys, and destriers, but his favorite mount was his dragon, Quicksilver.
Prince Maegor rode as well, but showed no great love for horses, dogs, or any animal. When he was eight, a palfrey kicked him in the stables. Maegor stabbed the horse to death…and slashed half the face off the stableboy who came running at the beast’s screams. The Prince of Dragonstone had many companions through the years, but no true friends. He was a quarrelsome boy, quick to take offense, slow to forgive, fearsome in his wroth. His skill with weapons was unmatched, however. A squire at eight, he was unhorsing boys four and five years his elder in the lists by the time he was twelve and battering seasoned men-at-arms into submission in the castle yard. On his thirteenth name day in 25 AC, his mother Queen Visenya bestowed her own Valyrian steel blade, Dark Sister, upon him…half a year before his marriage.
The tradition amongst the Targaryens had always been to marry kin to kin. Wedding brother to sister was thought to be ideal. Failing that, a girl might wed an uncle, a cousin, or a nephew; a boy a cousin, aunt, or niece. This practice went back to Old Valyria, where it was common amongst many of the ancient families, particularly those who bred and rode dragons. The blood of the dragon must remain pure, the wisdom went. Some of the sorcerer princes also took more than one wife when it pleased them, though this was less common than incestuous marriage. In Valryia before the Doom, wise men wrote, a thousand gods were honored, but none were feared, so few dared to speak against these customs.
This was not true in Westeros, where the power of the Faith went unquestioned. The old gods were still worshipped in the North, but in the rest of the realm there was a single god with seven faces, and his voice upon this earth was the High Septon of Oldtown. And the doctrines of the Faith, handed down through centuries from Andalos itself, condemned the Valyrian marriage customs as practiced by the Targaryens. Incest was denounced as vile sin, whether between father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister, and the fruits of such unions were considered abominations in the sight of gods and men. With hindsight, it can be seen that conflict between the Faith and House Targaryen was inevitable. Indeed, many amongst the Most Devout expected the High Septon to speak out against Aegon and his sisters during the Conquest, and were most displeased when the Father of the Faithful instead counseled Lord Hightower against opposing the Dragon, and even blessed and anointed him at his second coronation.
