GODS OF THE NORTH
By ROBERT E. HOWARD
[Transcriber's Note: Originally published in March 1934 in "The FantasyFan". This etext was prepared from the reprint in Fantastic UniverseDecember 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that theU.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Publisher's Note: The publication of this strange story by RobertE. Howard, author of the Conan stories, so much a part of theLiving Library of Fantasy, represents a departure for thismagazine. Without abandoning our policy of bringing you, monthafter month, the best in NEW Science Fiction and Fantasy, we will,from time to time, publish material such as this, hitherto known toonly a few students of the field! GODS OF THE NORTH was publishedin 1934, in Charles D. Hornig's THE FANTASY FAN, which had acirculation of under a hundred! We thank Sam Moskowitz, Editor andSF historian, who showed us this story.
The clangor of the swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughterwas hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The pale bleak sun thatglittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow-covered plainsstruck sheens of silver from rent corselet and broken blade, where thedead lay in heaps. The nerveless hand yet gripped the broken hilt:helmeted heads, back-drawn in the death throes, tilted red beards andgolden beards grimly upward, as if in last invocation to Ymir thefrost-giant.
Across the red drifts and mail-clad forms, two figures approached oneanother. In that utter desolation only they moved. The frosty sky wasover them, the white illimitable plain around them, the dead men attheir feet. Slowly through the corpses they came, as ghosts might cometo a tryst through the shambles of a world.
Their shields were gone, their corselets dinted. Blood smeared theirmail; their swords were red. Their horned helmets showed the marks offierce strokes.
One spoke, he whose locks and beard were red as the blood on the sunlitsnow.
"Man of the raven locks," said he, "tell me your name, so that mybrothers in Vanaheim may know who was the last of Wulfhere's band tofall before the sword of Heimdul."
"This is my answer," replied the black-haired warrior: "Not in Vanaheim,but in Valhalla will you tell your brothers the name of Amra ofAkbitana."
Heimdul roared and sprang, and his sword swung in a mighty arc. Amrastaggered and his vision was filled with red sparks as the bladeshivered into bits of blue fire on his helmet. But as he reeled hethrust with all the power of his great shoulders. The sharp point drovethrough brass scales and bones and heart, and the red-haired warriordied at Amra's feet.
Amra stood swaying, trailing his sword, a sudden sick wearinessassailing him. The glare of the sun on the snow cut his eyes like aknife and the sky seemed shrunken and strangely far. He turned away fromthe trampled expanse where yellow-bearded warriors lay locked withred-haired slayers in the embrace of death. A few steps he took, and theglare of the snow fields was suddenly dimmed. A rushing wave ofblindness engulfed him, and he sank down into the snow, supportinghimself on one mailed arm, seeking to shake the blindness out of hiseyes as a lion might shake his mane.
A silvery laugh cut through his dizziness, and his sight cleared slowly.There was a strangeness about all the landscape that he could not placeor define—an unfami