Fantastic Stories Presents the Fantastic Universe Super Pack #3. Fredric Brown
Читать онлайн книгу.
and at the instant Amra was dashed into the snow, his left shoulder numb from the blow of the survivor, from which the warrior’s mail had barely saved his life. Amra saw the remaining giant looming above him like a colossus carved of ice, etched against the glowing sky. The axe fell, to sink through the snow and deep into the frozen earth as Amra hurled himself aside and leaped to his feet. The giant roared and wrenched the axe-head free, but even as he did so, Amra’s sword sang down. The giant’s knees bent and he sank slowly into the snow which turned crimson with the blood that gushed from his half-severed neck.
Amra wheeled, to see the girl standing a short distance away, staring in wide-eyed horror, all mockery gone from her face. He cried out fiercely and the blood-drops flew from his sword as his hand shook in the intensity of his passion.
“Call the rest of your brothers!” he roared. “Call the dogs! I’ll give their hearts to the wolves!”
With a cry of fright she turned and fled. She did not laugh now, nor mock him over her shoulder. She ran as for her life, and though he strained every nerve and thew, until his temples were like to burst and the snow swam red to his gaze, she drew away from him, dwindling in the witch-fire of the skies, until she was a figure no bigger than a child, then a dancing white flame on the snow, then a dim blur in the distance. But grinding his teeth until the blood started from his gums, he reeled on, and he saw the blur grow to a dancing white flame, and then she was running less than a hundred paces ahead of him, and slowly the space narrowed, foot by foot.
She was running with effort now, her golden locks blowing free; he heard the quick panting of her breath, and saw a flash of fear in the look she cast over her alabaster shoulder. The grim endurance of the warrior had served him well. The speed ebbed from her flashing white legs; she reeled in her gait. In his untamed soul flamed up the fires of hell she had fanned so well. With an inhuman roar he closed in on her, just as she wheeled with a haunting cry and flung out her arms to fend him off.
His sword fell into the snow as he crushed her to him. Her supple body bent backward as she fought with desperate frenzy in his iron arms. Her golden hair blew about his face, blinding him with its sheen; the feel of her slender figure twisting in his mailed arms drove him to blinder madness. His strong fingers sank deep into her smooth flesh, and that flesh was cold as ice. It was as if he embraced not a woman of human flesh and blood, but a woman of flaming ice. She writhed her golden head aside, striving to avoid the savage kisses that bruised her red lips.
“You are cold as the snows,” he mumbled dazedly. “I will warm you with the fire in my own blood—”
With a desperate wrench she twisted from his arms, leaving her single gossamer garment in his grasp. She sprang back and faced him, her golden locks in wild disarray, her white bosom heaving, her beautiful eyes blazing with terror. For an instant he stood frozen, awed by her terrible beauty as she posed naked against the snows.
And in that instant she flung her arms toward the lights that glowed in the skies above her and cried out in a voice that rang in Amra’s ears for ever after:
“Ymir! Oh, my father, save me!”
Amra was leaping forward, arms spread to seize her, when with a crack like the breaking of an ice mountain, the whole skies leaped into icy fire. The girl’s ivory body was suddenly enveloped in a cold blue flame so blinding that the warrior threw up his hands to shield his eyes. A fleeting instant, skies and snowy hills were bathed in crackling white flames, blue darts of icy light, and frozen crimson fires. Then Amra staggered and cried out. The girl was gone. The glowing snow lay empty and bare; high above him the witch-lights flashed and played in a frosty sky gone mad and among the distant blue mountains there sounded a rolling thunder as of a gigantic war-chariot rushing behind steeds whose frantic hoofs struck lightning from the snows and echoes from the skies.
Then suddenly the borealis, the snowy hills and the blazing heavens reeled drunkenly to Amra’s sight; thousands of fireballs burst with showers of sparks, and the sky itself became a titanic wheel which rained stars as it spun. Under his feet the snowy hills heaved up like a wave, and the Akbitanan crumpled into the snows to lie motionless.
*
In a cold dark universe, whose sun was extinguished eons ago, Amra felt the movement of life, alien and un-guessed. An earthquake had him in its grip and was shaking him to and fro, at the same time chafing his hands and feet until he yelled in pain and fury and groped for his sword.
“He’s coming to, Horsa,” grunted a voice. “Haste—we must rub the frost out of his limbs, if he’s ever to wield sword again.”
“He won’t open his left hand,” growled another, his voice indicating muscular strain. “He’s clutching something—”
Amra opened his eyes and stared into the bearded faces that bent over him. He was surrounded by tall golden-haired warriors in mail and furs.
“Amra! You live!”
“By Crom, Niord,” gasped he, “am I alive, or are we all dead and in Valhalla?”
“We live,” grunted the Aesir, busy over Amra’s half-frozen feet. “We had to fight our way through an ambush, else we had come up with you before the battle was joined. The corpses were scarce cold when we came upon the field. We did not find you among the dead, so we followed your spoor. In Ymir’s name, Amra, why did you wander off into the wastes of the north? We have followed your tracks in the snow for hours. Had a blizzard come up and hidden them, we had never found you, by Ymir!”
“Swear not so often by Ymir,” muttered a warrior, glancing at the distant mountains. “This is his land and the god bides among yonder mountains, the legends say.”
“I followed a woman,” Amra answered hazily. “We met Bragi’s men in the plains. I know not how long we fought. I alone lived. I was dizzy and faint. The land lay like a dream before me. Only now do all things seem natural and familiar. The woman came and taunted me. She was beautiful as a frozen flame from hell. When I looked at her I was as one mad, and forgot all else in the world. I followed her. Did you not find her tracks. Or the giants in icy mail I slew?”
Niord shook his head.
“We found only your tracks in the snow, Amra.”
“Then it may be I was mad,” said Amra dazedly. “Yet you yourself are no more real to me than was the golden haired witch who fled naked across the snows before me. Yet from my very hands she vanished in icy flame.”
“He is delirious,” whispered a warrior.
“Not so!” cried an older man, whose eyes were wild and weird. “It was Atali, the daughter of Ymir, the frost-giant! To fields of the dead she comes, and shows herself to the dying! Myself when a boy I saw her, when I lay half-slain on the bloody field of Wolraven. I saw her walk among the dead in the snows, her naked body gleaming like ivory and her golden hair like a blinding flame in the moonlight. I lay and howled like a dying dog because I could not crawl after her. She lures men from stricken fields into the wastelands to be slain by her brothers, the ice-giants, who lay men’s red hearts smoking on Ymir’s board. Amra has seen Atali, the frost-giant’s daughter!”
“Bah!” grunted Horsa. “Old Gorm’s mind was turned in his youth by a sword cut on the head. Amra was delirious with the fury of battle. Look how his helmet is dinted. Any of those blows might have addled his brain. It was an hallucination he followed into the wastes. He is from the south; what does he know of Atali?”
“You speak truth, perhaps,” muttered Amra. “It was all strange and weird—by Crom!”
The Hohokam Dig
by Theodore Pratt
From where had these attacking Indians come? Out of a long forgotten and dim past? Had their medicine man seen the one supreme vision?
At first they thought the attack was a joke. And then they realized the truth!
At first the two scientists