Фред Сейберхэген - The First Book of Swords

Almost immediately upon leaving the swamp behind, Draffut had begun to encounter refugees from the eruption. These were mainly folk from Duke Fraktin's high villages, where a mass evacuation had obviously started. The villagers were fleeing their homes and land in groups, as families, as individuals, moving anywhere downslope, most of them lost now in unfamiliar territory. Some of these people, passing Draffut at a little distance, shouted to him word of what they considered Vulcan's wrath — as if Draffut should not be able to see for himself the flaming sky ahead.

Draffut was not sure whether these folk were trying to warn him, to plead for his intercession with the gods, or both. "I will speak to Vulcan about it," he said, when he said anything at all in answer. Carefully he avoided stepping on any of the people. For the most part of course they said nothing to him. They were astonished and terrified to see him, and in their panic would sometimes have run right under his feet, or would have driven their livestock or their farm-carts into him. Draffut made his way considerately around them all, and went on east and up.

He had no such need to be careful with the small units of Duke Fraktin's army that he encountered along the way, some of them even before he had entered the Duke's domain. Whether mounted or afoot, these always scattered in flight before Draffut's advance, as if they took it for granted that he would be their deadly enemy. Draffut could not help thinking back to the time when soldiers had cheered him and looked to him for help. But that had been many ages and wars ago, and halfway around the world from here.

In a lifetime that had spanned more than fifty thousand years, Draffut had often enough seen swarms of human refugees, and even burning skies like these. But seldom before had he felt the earth quiver beneath his feet as it was quivering now.

When he got in among the barren foothills he continued climbing without pause. Now the rumbling towers of fire loomed almost above his head, and fine ash drifted continuously down around him. He thought that there were forces here that could destroy him, that he was no longer immune to death, as he might once have been. His own powers, absorbed over ages, were fading as slowly as they had been gained, but they were fading. Yet he could feel little personal fear. By his nature, Draffut could not help but be absorbed in larger things than that.

The shuddering, burning agony of the mountains against the darkening sky brought back more old memories to Draffut. One of these recollections was very old indeed, of another mountain, upon another continent, that once had split to spill the Lake of Life… that had been in the days of Ardneh's greatest power. Ardneh, whom Draffut had never really known at all, despite the current human version of the history of the world. It hardly mattered now, for now Ardneh was long dead…

The question to be answered now was, where had these new creatures of power sprung from, these upstart entities calling themselves gods? Ardneh in his days of greatest strength had never claimed to be a god, nor had the evil Orcus. Indeed, it seemed to Draffut looking back that for thousands of years the very word god had been almost forgotten among humanity.

If he tried to peer back too far into his own past, he reached an epoch where all memory faded, blurring into disconnected scenes and meaningless impressions. He knew that these were remnant of a time when his intelligence, brain, and body had been very different from what they were now. But certainly Draffut's memory of the past few thousand years was sharp and clear. He could recall very well the days when Ardneh and Orcus had fought each other. And in those days, not one of these currently boasting, sword-making upstarts who called themselves gods and goddesses had walked the earth. They bore names from the remote past of human myth, but who were they? By what right did they plan for themselves games that involved for humanity the horror of wars? Draffut could no longer delay finding out.

He had climbed only a little way up the first slopes of the real mountain when he found his way blocked by a slow stream of lava, three or four meters wide. The air above the lava writhed with heat. And in the night and the hellglow on the far side of the molten stream, visible amid swirling fumes and boiling air, there stood a two-legged figure far too large to be human, even if a human could have stood there and lived. The figure was roughly the same size as Draffut himself, and it was regarding Draffut, and waiting silently.

In the raging heat he could see nothing of the figure clearly but its presence. He stopped, and called a salutation to it, using an ancient tongue that either Ardneh or Orcus would have understood at once. There was no reply.

Now Draffut summoned up what he could of his old powers, concentrating them in his right hand. Then he bent down and thrust that hand into the sluggish, crusting, seething stream of lava. Without allowing himself to be burned, he scooped up a dripping handful of the molten rock. With another exertion of his will he gave the handful of magma temporary life, so that what had been dead rock quickened and soared aloft in the hot, rising air, making a small silent explosion of living things exquisite as butterflies.

Still the figure that waited beyond the lava-stream would not move or speak. But now another like itself had joined it, and as Draffut watched yet another and another one appeared. The gods were assembling to watch what he was doing, to judge him silently.

He wanted more than that from them. He stood erect and brushed his hands clean of smoking rock. It was impossible to tell from the silent observation whether the onlookers were impressed by what he had done.

In a carrying roar he challenged them: "Why do you not tell humanity the truth? Are you afraid of it?"

There was a stir among the group, images wavering in the heat. With the noise of the earth itself pervading all, Draffut could not tell what they might be saying among themselves. At last a voice, larger than human, boomed back at him: "Tell them yourself, you shaggy dog."

Another voice followed, high clear tones that must be those of a goddess: "We know well what you used to be, Beast-Lord, when first you followed your human masters into the cave of the Lake of Life, fifty thousand years ago and more. Do not pretend to grandeur now."

And yet another voice, belligerent and male: "Yes, tell them yourself — but will they believe what they are told by a dog, the son of a bitch? Never mind that some of them now think you are a god. We can fix that!"

Draffut could feel the fervor of his anger growing, growing, till it was hotter than the lava that made the earth burn just in front of him. He roared back: "I have as much right to be a god as any of you do. More! Tell the human world what you really are!"

Beyond the wavering heat, their numbers were still increasing. Another voice mocked him: "You tell them what we really are. Ha, haaa!"

"I would tell them. I will tell them, when I know."

"Ha, haaa! We are the gods, and that is all ye need to know. It is no business of a son of a bitch to challenge gods."

In a single stride Draffut moved forward across the stream of lava. And now he could see the last speaker plainly enough to be able to recognize him. "You are Vulcan. And now you are going to give me some answers, about the swords."

Vulcan answered boldly enough, with an obscene insult. But at the same time he appeared to shrink back a little within the group. There was wrangling and shoving among the deities, amid a cloud of smoke and dust. Then another figure, pushing Vulcan aside, stepped forward from behind him. Now the shape of a gigantic and muscular man, carrying a great spear, his head covered with a helm, stood limned against a fresh flow of red-hot lava spilling down a slope.