Three hearts and three lions

24

FAR AND FAINT, at the very edge of hearing, the horns blew. They had the noise of wind and sea and great beating wings, a hawk voice, a raven voice. And Holger knew that the Wild Hunt was out and after him.

He vaulted up on Papillon. As the stallion burst into movement, he raised Alianora to her place behind. Carahue was already off. The white mare and the tattered white clothes of her rider flew ghostly in the low moonlight. Hoofs rang and thundered. They bent down to the long fleeing.

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.