Dreamsongs, Volume I by George R. R. Martin Read Free Book Online Page B

the statue of Saagael, and rippling muscles strained. The statue toppled, and shattered. It fell, broken and smashed, near the empty hulk of the thing called Jasper, clad in a green and gold costume.
    Doctor Weird surveyed the scene with an ironic smile flicking over his dead-white features. “Even after he had destroyed your mind and soul, it was a man who brought about the downfall of the Lord of Darkness.”
    He lifted his eyes to the girl on the altar, now beginning to stir from the terror that had taken her consciousness. He approached her and said, “Do not be afraid of me. I will take you home now.”
    It was day outside. The shadow had lifted. The eternal night was over.
             
    NEXT ISSUE: DR. WEIRD MEETS THE DEMON

T HE F ORTRESS

    Have you beheld her gray form rise
    Superb o’er bay and sea
    With menace in her granite eyes:
    Come try your strength on me?
    My very look, so grim and dread,
    Can strike the impious foeman dead.

    Whatever course the war may take
    In forest or on plain,
    Rouse not the ocean’s queen to break
    The calm of her disdain.
    A thousand cannon, tongued with fire,
    Will whelm you with their savage ire!
    —The Tales of Ensign Stål,
Johan Ludvig Runeberg
    A LONE AND SILENT IN THE NIGHT, S VEABORG WAITED.
    Dark shapes in a sea of ice, the six island citadels of the fortress threw shadows in the moonlight—waiting. Jagged granite walls rose from the islands, and bristled with row on row of silent cannon—waiting. And behind the walls, grim and determined men sat by the guns day and night—waiting.
    From the northwest, a bitter wind brought the sounds and smells of the city in the distance to Sveaborg as it shrieked about the fortress walls. And high on the parapets of Vargön, largest of the six islands, Colonel Bengt Anttonen shivered with the cold as he stared morosely into the distance. His uniform hanging loosely from his hard, lean frame, Anttonen’s gray eyes were cloudy and troubled.
    “Colonel?” The voice came from just behind the brooding officer. Anttonen half turned, and grinned. Captain Carl Bannersson saluted briskly and stepped up to the battlements beside the colonel. “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he asked.
    Anttonen snorted. “Not at all, Carl. Just thinking.”
    There was a moment of silence. “The Russian barrage was fairly heavy today,” began Bannersson. “Several men were wounded out on the ice, and we had to put out two fires.”
    Anttonen’s eyes roamed over the ice beyond the walls. He seemed almost unmindful of the tall, youthful Swedish captain, and lost in thought. “The men should never have been out on the ice,” he said, absently.
    Bannersson’s blue eyes probed the colonel’s face questioningly. He hesitated. “Why do you say that?” he asked. There was no answer from the older officer. Anttonen stared into the night, and was silent.
    After a long minute, Anttonen stirred, and turned to face the captain. His face was tense and worried. “There’s something wrong, Carl. Something very wrong.”
    Bannersson looked puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
    “Admiral Cronstedt,” replied the colonel. “I don’t like the way he’s been acting lately. He worries me.”
    “In what way?”
    Anttonen shook his head. “His orders. The way he talks.” The tall, lean Finn gestured towards the city in the distance. “Remember when the Russian siege began in early March? Their first battery was dragged to Sveaborg on a sledge and mounted on a rock in Helsinki harbor. When we replied to their shelling, every shot told on the city.”
    “True. What of it?”
    “So the Russians ran up a truce flag, and negotiated, and Admiral Cronstedt agreed that Helsinki should be neutral ground, and neither side should build fortifications near it.” Anttonen pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, and waved it at Bannersson. “General Suchtelen allows officers’ wives from the city to visit us at times, and through them I got this