The wolf led Swin eastward into Undor, away from the Road, and then north-east along the borders of the Anglad Morwen. After four days they came to the deep River Iduin. She leapt in and swam, and he followed, and although they were both carried a long way down they came out on the other side and continued their journey for four more days. She allowed him to follow without difficulty, very much as the fox had led the Punchkins to Caras Gulwen; and it cannot be doubted that the end of this journey would have been the same, had not Swin chanced to encounter the two starving wanderers. The wonder of that reunion can hardly be described. For another couple of days, while the needy ones rested and recovered beneath shelters which Swin made for them, Melohtar was mostly silent, content simply to marvel and to enjoy the delight of finding his friend thus restored and alive. And Swin was almost as glad to see him, both for the sake of the love between them, and also because this meeting had eased his dreadful burden of guilt. He had ruthlessly abandoned Brydda, but had he not done so these two outcasts would surely have perished in the wilderness; his Oath had compelled him to follow the wolf, but the presence of Melohtar, with whom and for whom this second Oath had been sworn, seemed now to lessen the compulsion. The angler’s hook was still there, tugging at his insides, but he found himself able to resist it for a while. He told his new companions (saying nothing of Brydda) why he had left Garholt, and Melohtar spoke briefly of the wedding and its disastrous outcome.
‘That explains the disappearance of the scars on your arms,’ commented Erum. ‘Mindir, or Dryhten-Sweald as you would call him, must always supersede the heathen gods. The second Oath fulfilled and cancelled the first.’
‘Possibly,’ admitted Melohtar. ‘I remember I said something like that at the time.’
‘Then it is a push from Dryhten, and a purpose of Dryhten, that has brought me here?’ asked Swin eagerly.
‘But of course, of course! Melohtar, my friend, if you ever doubted His purposes and His beneficence, how can you doubt them now?’
‘The result of the Oath, last time round,’ said Melohtar. ‘That takes some getting over.’
‘Then what happened to me?’ said Swin. He had heard the story of Gauriel’s bewitchment and the second Oath with interest but no recognition, and without the kindling of any response. The information remained with him as matter newly learned rather than recovered.
‘I won’t tell it now. Later I will find the strength,’ said Melohtar wearily. ‘It’s a horrible tale. You should not ask me to recall it.’ And then he spoke no more. But all next day Erum and Swin talked together on the ways and purposes of the Gods. Erum was pleased to have found so willing a hearer – ‘A barbarian ripe for the true Gospel,’ said he; but his manner towards Swin was never proud or patronising; humble, rather, grateful and almost adoring.
The three decided to strike northward together, back to the Road. Swin was reluctant to leave off following the wolf, but now that he had a better idea of what it was, and of the nature of the compulsion that had dragged him, he was brought to agree with what Melohtar insisted: that there was no longer any point in hunting the wolf, as they had sworn to do, until they had dogs and horses and men and a wagon and a strong cage to contain her. And he also had to agree with what Erum said: that it would not be at all in the spirit of the Oath, to abandon in the wilderness, for the Oath’s sake, that friend for whose sake the Oath had been sworn. And so the plan was agreed. Erum and Melohtar wrapped themselves up in Swin’s blankets and went to sleep.
It was a soft mild night. The wind was faintly perfumed with grass and new leaves. Swin sat by the camp-fire, poking at it with a long stick, keeping watch while his friends slept. He was well rested after his three days’ pause, but his thoughts were troubled, his scars aching. Suddenly he blinked with surprise. In front of him, within the circle of firelight, stood a dwarf. The dwarf had a long grey beard. He wore a leather apron, and he held a hammer and a pair of tongs.
‘Who are you?’ asked the dwarf.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘I’ve lost my memory. Who are you?’
‘I am Dain,’ was the answer. ‘Do you want to have your memory back?’
‘Yes please!’
‘Then we will help you – I and my friend Nabbi the Smith.’
There stood a second dwarf, dressed in work-clothes like the first, but with a white beard and a royal-blue hood. He held up something that shone and glinted in the firelight. ‘Here’s a clue,’ he said.
Swin recognised it with some difficulty. ‘That’s Boarcrest,’ he said; and the object became distinct, and it was indeed Swin’s old helmet with the boar-image on top.
‘It shall no longer be called Boarcrest, but Battleswine,’ said the first dwarf. ‘Come to the fire, and kneel!’
Swin knelt down close by the fire. The dwarves put the helmet on his head and carefully adjusted the chin-strap. Then they began to tap on the helmet with their hammers. They were fastening it to his head. Swin felt no pain even though nails were being driven into his skull. The tapping and hitting continued; the back of his neck, his shoulders and all of his back were hammered upon; armour was coming into existence all over him, and all over him it was being fixed to his body. A push made him bend forward and fall on to all fours; he looked down at his arms and hands that had already been covered in golden plates. All the armour was golden, glinting in the firelight. His hands and knees had changed: he stood now on four small cloven feet – trotters. He raised his head proudly. He had been wrought into the form of a great boar with golden bristles.
Dain and Nabbi left off hammering him. ‘Finished!’ they said, and shook hands. Then Nabbi said: ‘But where is she who will ride him?’
‘Right here!’ said Dain. He bent over the sleeping form of Erum and shook him. Erum woke up at once, cast off his blanket and rose to his feet.
‘But you’re a man,’ said Battleswine, grunting with disappointment. ‘I expected to be ridden by a young lady.’
‘Don’t be too sure of that!’ said Erum, and laughed. For his priestly robe was like a woman’s dress, and his long fair hair flowed down over his shoulders; his eyes were large and luminous, and the beardless lips laughed merrily a second time. ‘Come, Battleswine! Don’t you want to get your memory back?’
‘Yes!’
‘Then I will ride you. Thank you, good dwarves.’
Dain and Nabbi bowed. Erum seated herself on Battleswine’s back – side-saddle, as it were, with her long dress fluttering on one side. At once the Swine galloped away, racing over the countryside, traversing hills and valleys, leagues upon leagues. He came to a small river. It was the Lantros. On the other side of the river was a dark forest. He crossed the river and ran on tirelessly through the enormous trees. He came to a lake. In his dream he recognised the lake, and said to his rider: ‘That is Wheelwater, is it not?’
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Lake Cornen.’
He rushed into the lake, which was as round as a wheel, and swiftly paddled across. Beyond the lake a steep forest-covered hill rose up, but at the shore there was a dark opening into the hillside: a cave-mouth.
Before this opening he halted. Erum jumped lightly off his back and called into the cave. ‘Wake up, Grandma!’ she called, and her voice echoed back distantly from the passages inside the hill. ‘Wake up, grumpy old Grandbags! Lazy old crone, stop lying in your dark cave: let’s have a run, a long ride to the North, to the royal City and the place of the Temple. Play, shall we? Bet, shall we? Wager for winnings in a race to the throne?’
From far below, deep in the bowels of the hill, a muttering voice answered something; but the words were confused among the echoes.
‘Rouse yourself, dame,’ chanted Erum, her voice now sounding forth more fully and sweetly: ‘Come, rise, old Yabeth! Stir up your thighs and stagger to your wolf-pen! Saddle up your white wolf, silver is her bridle: bravely will she bear you and race against my boar!’
Now the other voice was nearer. Peevish in tone, yet deep and ominous, the words could be made out: ‘Bleary are my eyes, but not yet blind, young woman: smuggle him, would you, your red-haired lover and lusty esquire, in false-wrought form of a boar and under pretence of a race, to Ruminas?’
Unabashed, Erum continued her chant: ‘Drivel you’re speaking, nonsense you’re spouting, slandering Battleswine my true-built boar. Forget the wager: we’ll wait here, pause for a leisurely chat. There’s a lot to talk of, a throne at stake, a folk enthralled and a dragon’s head – and yes, he needs help, the churl you mentioned, Eofor, chip from a royal block. Come, Yabeth, let’s reckon his true lineage and family-tree!’
Now Yabeth's footsteps could be heard, slow and terribly heavy. She made no immediate reply to this speech, but Battleswine was afraid. His tail drooped, and his bristles, and the golden gleams faded out of his armour. He wanted to run away. Then the voice was a deep angry bellow:
‘He fears me now! Ah, fickle and wayward mortal, maimed and dismembered, bloodiest fool Eofor, will you face yourself? Can you bear the load of your own true lineage? Do you dare to ask, to question the darkness?’
Full, unimpassioned and powerful as the plainsong of a priestess before an altar, Erum’s voice answered for him:
‘Enlighten him, Goddess, and give him fair speech, forgetting your anger. His ancestors, came they from Turmal and the towered cities, or the tribes of the Nibyth, her trusted friends? From the Foriarim, or the Falagwaith? Who was his father?’
Tread. Tread. Tread.
‘YOU, Eofor, were the son of Calessar, though he named you not; and Calessar was the son of Olostur the dispossessed, last true king of the Northern Realm! Your father’s mother wore pearls and woad, Princess Niamas of the Falagwaith, the red-haired ones, descended from the ancient race of Amalech! These are the mighty kin of Eofor, maimed and cut in pieces, latest descendant and bloodiest fool!’
Nearer.
‘Olostur was slain by the soldiers of the Usurper, and your father Calessar watched as they hanged him by the road! And Olostur’s father was Kedrahil the Second, who died of the sickness of the worm! And Kedral his father was called Formendacil, for he conquered the whole land of the North before the dragon slew him by Aduchel! He was the great-great-grandsire of Eofor, maimed and cut in pieces, latest descendant and bloodiest fool!’
Nearer!
‘Kedral Formendacil was Kedral the Third, most valiant of all the Kings! And his grandsire was Keldur Alcarin! Long and glorious was his reign, yet his brother followed him when he died, that Olostur the First who founded the Temple, the accursed house of pollution! And their father was Kedral the Second, and his father was Kelohtar, and his father was Kedrahil the first! All these were your kin, Eofor the stubborn, wayward and damnable, latest descendant and bloodiest fool!’
Still nearer! And now the lake had risen with dark and angry waves, and the earth resounded with the crashes of the feet of the Goddess, and the hillside shook, and trees cracked and slid, and stones and boulders came hurtling down. Battleswine scuffled and grovelled in fear, not daring to run away, while the earth seemed to be rising up behind him, tilting him forward, tipping him into the black entrance. He pressed himself desperately to the earth, and as in his first dream of the Goddess, which he now faintly remembered, the mud that squelched around him, and the blood pounding in his ears, and the clamour of earth and wood and water all seemed to combine with the profound voice, the angry reproach of the Earth herself:
‘And who was his father? LOOK AT ME!’
He raised his terrified eyes and beheld the Goddess standing before the cave-mouth. In other wise she appeared than his first vision of her: not beautiful in passionate naked yearning, nor yet without majesty, but bulky and hideous, wearing a black robe, her hair like the grey roots of an uprooted tree, her mouth snarling like a dog’s, her face misshapen and lumpish.
‘KEDRAL! He of the line of Targil and Eangil! They of the Kings of Atalantis, sent from the Gods! Such is your lineage, Eofor, latest and unluckiest fool! Now when are you going to get off your arse and take up arms, you lazy turd, you loitering wanker? Linger here, would you, until that terrible Worm has wasted the whole realm of your heritage? Get up! Get hence! Leave these hopeless wretches who hinder you merely, and come to me!’
Swin found himself in human form. He staggered to his feet. Erum stood beside him, her dress fluttering like a flag, her hair streaming in the wind. She took his hand and confronted Yabeth calmly:
‘Great was his native strength, yet now, though increased with the Earth’s own strength, he struggles still, caught in a web that comprehends and is partly akin to your power, O Goddess, being woven of light and darkness. Listen! Although he is caught and cannot obey you now, in the end he will render you excellent service. Meanwhile, give him your memory drink, that he may remember and heed this vision.’
‘O, stop pestering me, the pair of you,’ was the resentful answer. Yabeth thrust her hand into the pocket of her black robe and brought out an unstoppered bottle. ‘As for you, Erumardil the useless, loveless harlot and temple whore: how many priestly pricks have had you, thronged up and thrust themselves behind you? Hasten back to your house of pollution, ride, romp with your filthy dogs. Here’s your tipple, Eofor, take it!’
The stone bottle looked small in her thick-knuckled fist, but Swin needed both his hands to receive it. Nasty black foam came bubbling out of its open neck.
‘Maybe this beer is best undrunk,’ rumbled Yabeth. ‘Maybe you’ll taste betrayal and torment.’
‘No!’ said Erum, tall and shining white, sexless now but facing him with stern command. ‘Drink it!’
Swin looked from the one to the other. He raised the bottle to his lips and drank. The taste was bitter and loathsome, and he awoke from his dream.
Note - Chapter 3.2 is the second of the two chapters which are based on specific ancient texts - in this case the Hyndluljoth or 'Song of Hyndla' from the old Norse Elder Edda. I have consulted various translations; readers interested in the original legend might like to look at, for example, the entertaining and accessible version by Kevin Crossley-Holland in The Penguin Book of Norse Myths.