“Before the sun had crossed the pinnacle

Of hours upon the sky's superior side

And any nightward momentum had gained,

The hall was emptying. The Old Man's words

Reverberated still between hard stone

Reproachful more the longer that we stayed.

Our blood seemed turned to thunderbolts, that we

Already felt our bodies straining toward

Our foes, like iron shards to a lodestone,

To fall on them, and crush, and make as dust

And less than nothing, with a deafening crash.

Delaying but a moment was torment.

By twos and threes and fours we journeyed forth.

I went with two companions: one was tall

And stronger than the knots of oaks. He spoke

But little, and he silent stood in pain.

He little cared for strategies, but struck

As much with his broad weight as with his spear.

Guz was he called, surnamed All-Leveler

For many bouts that left us stunned and sprawled

Upon the practice floor. With him there was

Another, Luke the Barefoot, swift in all:

In boast, in deed, to fellowship, to fight,

And on his ever unshod feet in war.

Rash and quick tempered—very much like you—

But just as quick to laughter after wrath.

Our armor scorned he. He with cadenced mock

Would call us oysters, clams, and lobster shells.

In battle he seemed not to notice wounds

But plied with sabers twain as if he hewed

At nothing vicious more than firewood.

Toward the sunrise hills we turned, and looked

Not back to see crystalline sunlight on

The parapets of home one final time.

Ere sunset, we were swallowed by the hills

And shadows long. For days in readiness

We walked, that grew unhurriedly to weeks.

With every mile we went, the world was changed.

It was not only that it had grown cold:

Recall that it was winter. It was not

The twisted stunted half-trees that watched us

Like evil raven ghosts among the tombs:

For we were on a heath were such shrubs grew.

It was as if the world had stretched too thin

And now was shrinking back, as does a leaf

Dead, dried out, and half-rotted, from a flame

Greedily licking at the edges soft.

The air seemed shriveled, and could not be breathed.

The earth seemed tired, and crumbled at our tread.

The time seemed comatose, as if this day

Had somehow inundated my whole life

That I had walked in colorless wetlands

As long as I had lived, and always would.

Yet reached we all too soon a slate-grey mere

Stretched wetly flat supine beneath slate sky.

It was the only place that I have seen

Since I awoke that I would term ugly.

Ugly in mood, ugly in soul. Yet more

Unsightly it was made by a great wound

Carved down into the sodden earth as if

A rat vast far beyond imagining

Had gnawed down through the mud and morbid reeds,

Or rather such a beast had burst up from

A subterranean womb. Just so it bled

Pale brackish water, and just so it stank.

But that was not the worst. I had known war

In my life previous to this. I gave

Deep wounds, and suffered blow for blow in turn.

And even as a boy untested by

The trials of manhood, universe, and war

I had beheld without emotion worse

Than holes overlarge many times before.

The worst was that the gulf did open not

To earth below a swamp, to depth of silt,

To pool clay-flavored or peat scented, but

To something smoldering slowly. The plume

Of oily smoke rose sluggish to the clouds.

A moment brief I smelled it, then the stench

My nostrils numbed, as if for surgery.

I only caught a whiff of ashes soaked

By water, sealed away for ages long,

And only now unsepulchered and stirred.

We stood upon a knot of higher ground,

The only island in that waste of mud,

And gaped, the three of us. I felt too sick

To speak. For as we watched we saw the hole

Was vaster than at first we credited.

Just as the darkling maggots in a heap

Of compost rotting, suddenly exposed

To observation, writhe as one, the hole

With motion jerky, spastic, seizure-like

Began to crawl. The sides were come alive

With shapes that looked no bigger than a mite

But we could see were men. The hole was wide

Enough to swallow up our hall, and still

Fit three more like it easily, and up

The sides came slowly someones. We knew not

What sort of man could be birthed thus, nor what

Damp hell this gulf had breached, but well we knew

These were our enemies. We were at war.

The shapes grew clear as they approached the lip.

In form they seemed like men completely sealed

In armor interlocking, twisted, bent

And stained with rust. Inside, they were not men.

Imagine you a body set aflame

Then pushed into the sea, so as it burned

It slowly foundered as it turned to ash.

Now dress it in the crumbling spoils of tombs

Of ancient heathen kings. Wrap it, perhaps,

In a moth-ravaged cloak, or on its head

A helm more verdigris than metal set.

See it begin to stir, turn sightless face,

And shuffle, raising slow a broken sword.

Next do imagine that you hear within

Its hollow chest for heartbeat the low hiss

Of flame unquenchable at water's touch,

Of embers buried under wood still wet,

Of something rotten underneath the stones

Around a chimney long abandoned, now

To fire and heat reintroduced at last.

One final touch remains, as this thing walks

Behind it picture clumps of sodden ash

Fallen from every chink and armor hole

Leaving of foul pollution a foul trail.

If your imagination matches to

Your courage, you will understand why I

Felt sickened as with fever at the sight:

Either with anger or with nausea.

With one accord we three shook clean our heads.

Without a word, we three pronounced the things

Our foes through death and ever after. None

Who calls himself a man and means it, whose

Blood in his heart is red, could otherwise

Have done once he had seen them. No more than

A heartbeat's time these thoughts flashed through us, for

Up from the mists and meres the Things had come

Slow as erosion. Now they stood around

Surrounding us, the circle tightening.

They did not want to wait for us to choose

Between war and diplomacy, so we

Chose war, and drew our weapons, and began.

They came among us faster than they ought

To have been capable of moving, but

We met them head-on, from all ways at once.

The shock was like the crash of frigid air

To hot, that swells to storm and births cyclones.

To my right hand was Guz. With one long stride

He struck him deep among their foremost ranks

And ere his forward boot had touched the ground

He struck three down: he whipped his spearhead flat

As if he held no lance, but sword twelve-foot

And keen on every edge. Three crumpled down

Like twigs deluged by hailstones. Then he thrust

And pierced the nearest through, who was not near

Even enough to strike were his reach grown

To double. Ere Guz could pull back his lance,

Two flanked him, and advancing from behind

Were half-way brandishing half-crumbled swords.

The lance butt cracked against the first one's chin

With force enough to lift it from its feet

Before it dropped. An elbow, then a fist

Slammed backward sent the other toppling flat,

And lancepoint made it helpless evermore.

While to my left, like whitewater through rocks,

Luke danced among the enemy, his blades

Sometimes like scissors, sometimes like windmills

Blown contradictory; one widershins

One with the sun, sometimes like steel-hard teeth

Of rabid rodents gnawing bone-dry wood

Clean through, sometimes like each part of a storm

In turn—like lightning piercing, like sharp rain

Swift driving jabs, like sweeping gusts of wind

Slashing and trailing turbulence behind

That twisted past whatever small defense

The rotten armor offered. Often he

Like silver flash of scales under the reeds,

A slab of muscle singly bent to speed,

Would dart under descending sword, and drift

With seemed effortlessness just out of reach

And somehow surface from behind to strike.

While I, with point of sword and edge of shield,

Both of them weapon, both defense, dealt death

Not with the overwhelming strength, that snaps

The oak boughs in the storm, or crushes rocks

Between expanding roots, nor with the speed

And dizzy acrobatic grace that bursts

Out of the clouds where sunlight pokes a hole

That guarded both my flanks and watched my back,

But simply and directly, like the beat

Of syllables in plain and honest speech.

Impossible to tally up a score

For each of us. One blasphemy against

Strong honor, clean existence, and sweet life

Each breath we drew went crashing to the ground.

I know not how to count up all we slew.

The wind was freshening, and cleared the stench.

The time seemed stunned, and slowed almost to naught.

The sunlight, strangled out by silky sheets

Of cloud, grew now encouraged and shone through

Enough to paint its shadow on the mists

Of light and not of shade. All this we saw

As one hears drums inside a melody:

We did not stop to notice, till we found

That suddenly we had no enemies. 

Then through the air the silence struck. We froze

Each posed as if for sculpture at the peak

Of some titanic lunge, blades up, arms straight

Each muscle rigid with adrenal pain,

Hearts pounding, eyes ablaze with rage and joy.

Around us in a ring lay double-dead

The slain abominations. Where they lay

Already they were rotting, as a fire

Collapses inward with a hiss when doused.

If we appeared like statues, then they seemed

The shoddy masonry, for pedestal

Intended, but incapable within

Of holding piece to piece and self to self

Beneath the thick weight of heroic bronze,

And, crushed beneath it, scatters outwards from

The feet of the colossus that stands firm.

But even as we watched, each double-corpse

Began to shrivel swiftly, like a coal

That burns too long and deeply, and is turned

To self-consuming ash. So they grew grey,

Then white, then brittle outlines bloomed, until

A passing breeze and their own chaffy weight

Left only powder, as if sudden snow

Had come confused unseasonal, and spread

Its frigid blooms only about our feet

Like flowers for a triumphal parade."