He rose and held Alianora to him. This, he knew, was the end of his search, and the knowledge was pain. His eyes dwelt on her upturned face before he kissed her.
Carahue spoke soft: “What have you in truth come here to find?”
Holger did not answer at once. He approached the altar. In the floor before the communion rail was a stone slab. When he touched the iron ring thereof, a remembered thrill went through him.
“This,” he said. He drew his sword, which was now useless as a weapon, and slipped it through the ring for a lever. The slab was monstrously heavy. He felt the steel bend as he strained. “Help me,” he gasped. “Oh, help me!”
Carahue thrust his own blade into the crack the Dane had opened. A moment afterward, the other sword broke across. Together they lifted the slab. It fell to the paving with a hollow thud and shattered in three pieces.
Alianora seized Holger’s shoulder. “Listen!” she exclaimed.
He raised his head. Far off he heard the noise of an army. There was an earthquake hammering of hoofs, the sound of trumpets, the death-like clangor of arms. “It is the host of Chaos,” he said, “riding forth on mankind.”
He looked down into the narrow hole at his feet. Moonlight shone bluely off the great blade which lay waiting.
“We need not fear,” he said. “In this sword is locked that before which they cannot stand. When their demon gods have been driven back into the Middle World, the human savages will despair and flee. We got here soon enough.”
“Who are ye?” whispered Alianora.
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But I shall.”
A moment more he delayed. There was a Power in him, but it was something beyond man and man’s hopes. He dared not lift the glaive.
He looked up at the figure on the cross. Bending, he took the sword Cortana in his hand.
“I know that blade,” breathed Carahue.
Holger felt the illusion that masked him dissolve. And his memory returned and he knew himself.
They gathered around him, Alianora in the circle of his free arm, Carahue clasping his shoulder, Papillon’s nose gentle against his cheek. “Whatever comes,” he said, “whatever happens to me, know that you will return safe, and that you will always bear my love.”
“I sought you, comrade,” said Carahue. “I sought you, Ogier.”
“I love ye, Holger,” said Alianora.
Holger Danske, whom the old French chronicles know as Ogier le Danois, mounted into the saddle. And this was the prince of Denmark who in his cradle was given strength and luck and love by such of Faerie as wish men well. He it was who came to serve Carl the Great and rose to be among the finest of his knights, the defender of Christendie and mankind. He it was who smote Carahue of Mauretania in battle, and became his friend, and wandered far with him. He it was whom Morgan le Fay held dear; and when he grew old, she bore him to Avalon and gave him back his youth. There he dwelt until the paynim again menaced France, a hundred years later, and thence he sallied forth to conquer them anew. Then in the hour of his triumph he was carried away from mortal men.
And some say he waits in timeless Avalon until France the fair is in danger, and some say he sleeps beneath Kronborg Castle and wakens in the hour of Denmark’s need, but none remember that he is and has always been a man, with the humble needs and loves of a man; to all, he is merely the Defender.
He rode out on the wold, and it was as if dawn rode with him.
NOTE
I HAD A LETTER from Holger Carlsen right after the war, to say he’d come through alive. After that I didn’t hear from him until one day two years later, when he sauntered into my office.
I thought he’d changed a lot, grown more quiet and much older-looking, but wasn’t too surprised considering what he must have experienced as an undergrounder. He explained that he’d gotten an American job again. “Just a money earner,” he said. “What I really want to do is haunt your bookstores. I’ve located stuff in London and Paris and Rome, but not enough yet.”