THE DEEP ONES: "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" by Lord Dunsany

"The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" by Lord Dunsany

Discussion begins February 6.

First published in The Sword of Welleran (1908)



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Fortress_Unvanquishable,_Save_for_Sacnoth
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10806/pg10806.html (no direct link to the story, unfortunately - you just have to scroll down the page (about 2/3 of the way) until you see it)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?63207

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
Time and the Gods
The Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories

MISCELLANY

http://www.blackgate.com/2011/04/10/lord-dunsany-and-the-fortress-unvanquishable...
http://tinyurl.com/assddd2
http://tinyurl.com/aexfymd
http://www.dunsany.net/

I'll be reading this one in Dutch translation from Het fort Onneembaar. It appears to be a collection only ever published as such in Dutch. Funny, my copy of Het zwaard van Welleran (yes, also in Dutch) doesn't contain this story. There must be some combining problem behind that.

Time and the Gods for me.

Gutenberg version for me.

I have The Complete Pegana, which includes Time and the Gods, but this story's not there. :(
Guess I'll read it online.

I'm reading this online as well.

5 > There are two works called "Time and the Gods" - a 1906 collection of Peganan short stories, which doesn't include the non-Peganan "Fortress Unvanquishable", and a 2000 collection of collections, which includes both the original "Time and the Gods" and "The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories", the collection "Fortress" was originally published in.

The Complete Pegana includes the former (which I can't seem to touchstone).

> 7

Ah! Thanks for the explanation.

Whenever I read a Dunsany story here, it makes me want to cast aside whatever else I'm reading and dive into one of his collections. This story is no exception. He had me at this:

And the spell was a compulsive, terrible thing, having a power over evil dreams and over spirits of ill; for it was a verse of forty lines in many languages, both living and dead, and had in it the word wherewith the people of the plains are wont to curse their camels, and the shout wherewith the whalers of the north lure the whales shoreward to be killed, and a word that causes elephants to trumpet; and every one of the forty lines closed with a rhyme for "wasp".

That paragraph itself is a magic spell.

I was a little surprised at the sheer number of different monsters featured here. Why didn't Harryhausen make this?

I also enjoyed the manner in which Sarnoc is referred to in the third person, as the sword, rather like Moorcock's Stormbringer, becomes an entity unto itself. No one author or tale invented the sword & sorcery genre, but I'd have to say this one was highly influential on what was to come.

This story made me laugh out loud several times.

It's interesting that Satan (more specifically, the praise of Satan) comes up several times, but there's nothing about any sort of God.

>11 paradoxosalpha:

Satan is but a manifestation of the dreams of the extraterrestrial magician Gaznak:

And he told them how Gaznak rides upon the comet, and how he visits Earth once in every two hundred and thirty years, and makes for himself a vast, invincible fortress and sends out dreams to feed on the minds of men, and may never be vanquished but by the sword Sacnoth.

Perhaps in his travels Gaz read the Christian bible and it gave him useful ammunition for his nightmares.

As a malefic sender of dreams, Gaznak even strikes me as a possible progenitor of Cthulhu!

>10 paradoxosalpha:

Well, this part made me grin:

...and the name of the fortress shone on the wall, writ large in letters of brass: "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth."

That's really, really bad security.

Tharagavverug was something of a pushover, if you ask me.

>15 paradoxosalpha:

Ba-dum-BUM :-D

"Tharagavverug" is one heck of a fine name for a dragon.

I'm about midway through an over-leisurely read of Tolkein's Book of Lost Tales, which I'm finding profoundly Dunsanian throughout. It strikes me that the spider in this story was a likely model (conscious or no) for Ungoliant, and even more for Shelob who similarly serves as a threshold-guardian.

For raw extravagance, I could see this story being an influence on Clark Ashton Smith.

>17 paradoxosalpha:

The spider sequence also seems to harbinger Conan's trip to the top of the "Tower of the Elephant", although with a decidedly different outcome. And that reminds me - what's worse than a giant hairy spider? A talking giant hairy spider... that frowns!

> 19 A talking giant hairy spider... that frowns!

And has hands, and hair to fall in front of its face! That's why I thought of Ungoliant, who is not so much a spider as a "spider": a malevolent spirit with a spider-affect. You're right, though, the size and circumstance of the spider is a lot like the one in "Tower of the Elephant."

>19 paradoxosalpha:

Forgot about the hands, and oh, yes, the hair not only falling but parting in front of the spider's face was quite unsettling! You may be right that this is a spirit creature. This recalls for me some of the crazily bizarre sequences in 1980's Hong Kong horror films from the likes of Tsui Hark.

Thereat the black hair that hung over the face of the spider parted to left and right, and the spider frowned: then the hair fell back into its place, and hid everything except the sin of the little eyes which went on gleaming lustfully in the dark.

> 20

Well, everybody in the fortress other than Gaznak and Leothric is a spirit creature, right?

>22 gwendetenebre:

True, making this is obviously not your average giant hairy talking frowning spider with lankly parted hair and hands! I really am reminded more than a bit of Asian horror tropes here, from Lafcadio Hearn to A Chinese Ghost Story. One of Gaznak's dragon monster-minions is even named "Wong Bongerok".

Perhaps my favourite image from this story are the abysses so ridiculously deep you can see the constellations of the southern skies through them. It just fills me with childish delight.

Perhaps the spider is more a spider by occupation than one by species?

> 23

Yes, great abysses. From the gate of the fortress onward, it's just such a cascade of hashish-reverie!

Where is everybody? They're missing out.

I've loved Dunsany from an early age, and this is one of his very finest tales!

Here's a great bit, for those of us who find disgression to be the quintessence of tale-telling:

And when Sacnoth was revealed and all the gargoyles grinned, it was like the moonlight emerging from a cloud to look for the first time upon a field of blood, and passing swiftly over the wet faces of the slain that lie together in the horrible night. Then Leothric advanced towards a door, and it was mightier than the marble quarry, Sacremona, from which old men cut enormous slabs to build the Abbey of the Holy Tears. Day after day they wrenched out the very ribs of the hill until the Abbey was builded, and it was more beautiful than anything in stone. Then the priests blessed Sacremona, and it had rest, and no more stone was ever taken from it to build the houses of men. And the hill stood looking southwards lonely in the sunlight, defaced by that mighty scar. So vast was the door of steel. And the name of the door was The Porte Resonant, the Way of Egress for War.

This is the third Dunsany story I've read, and he's definitely growing on me. (I'm not a big fan of Lovecraft's Dunsanian tales, so didn't think I'd like their model.)

Dunsany had me hooked from the opening sentence. I liked the whole antique flavor that wasn't pinned down to a single era. Dragons are reminiscent of medieval European legends. But we also have the ancient world brought in with a reference to Assyrian scimitars. And the names have, at least for me, a Germanic (Sacnoth) or Latin (Leotheric) suggestion about them -- until you get to Wong Bongerok. And, yes, it is curious we have Satan without a Christian God.

The whole rhythmn of the story was strongly suggested of the King James Bible. I looked up "Sacnoth" in a Strong's Biblical Concordance but couldn't find anything similar in the Bible. It's such a suggestive name it sounds like it should mean something.

I very much liked the whole metallic dragon idea and the echoes coming out of him.

>17 paradoxosalpha: A Clark Ashton Smith biographer disputes the whole notion of Dunsany being a Smith model here: http://www.eldritchdark.com/articles/criticism/14/on-the-alleged-influence-of-lo.... However, I too must say I was reminded of Smith with Gaznak living on a comet and sending down bad dreams on Allathurion.

I liked the wry insouciance of the end. Maybe this never happened, says Dunsany. "... who shall say ... "

An captivating, almost mesmerizing, tale. I liked the fairy tale feel including the repetitions - Leothric's three questions, his three day fight with the dragon, and the structure of his obstacles at the fortress. Others have seen an influence of the Arabian Nights here, but I'm not familiar with them in any detail.

It's also an interesting mix of a sword and sorcery type plot with a high fantasy / epic feel but guess the split of these genres is a more modern development.

>23 AndreasJ:
Perhaps my favourite image from this story are the abysses so ridiculously deep you can see the constellations of the southern skies through them. It just fills me with childish delight.

I love the follow-up: "Once or twice Leothric saw a star blink for an instant and reappear again, and this momentary eclipse of a few stars was all that remained in the world of the body of Thok."

This is only the second Dunsany story I've read. That's not a lot to go on, but I suspect Dunsany didn't take his storytelling as seriously as Lovecraft (I have read the Dunsany-influenced Lovecraft stories) - not serious in the same way, in any event.

I had the impression that this was an extravagant tall tall, dressed up in language reminiscent of the King James Bible and Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur (possibly William Morris's versions of the Norse Sagas, too. That's only a guess though, I haven't read any Morris).

It was the elephant that made me laugh. I'm not sure why.

Sorry for coming late to the party. Got caught up in my other reading and sort of forgot about this one - was thinking about skipping this one and starting on "Whisperer in the Darkness". Boy, I'm glad I didn't - that story was cool as hell. Definitely reminiscent of Tolkien, as PA points out (rather, Tolkien is reminiscent of Dunsany, as Dunsany came first) - I feel like I somehow magically reread The Lord of the Rings in 45 minutes - uncanny.

>10 paradoxosalpha:

Yeah, me too, especially at this bit:

Nobody looked at Leothric as he entered through the hole in the door, but one of the Princes asked a question of a footman, and the question was passed from mouth to mouth by all the hundred footmen till it came to the last one nearest Leothric; and he said to Leothric, without looking at him:

'What do you seek here?'

And Leothric answered: 'I seek to slay Gaznak.'

And footman to footman repeated all the way to the table: 'He seeks to slay Gaznak.'

And another question came down the line of footmen: 'What is your name?'

And the line that stood opposite took his answer back.

Then one of the Princes said: 'Take him away where we shall not hear his screams.'

And footman repeated it to footman till it came to the last two, and they advanced to seize Leothric.

Then Leothric showed to them his sword, saying, 'This is Sacnoth,' and both of them said to the man nearest: 'It is Sacnoth;' then screamed and fled away.

And two by two, all up the double line, footman to footman repeated, 'It is Sacnoth,' then screamed and fled, till the last two gave the message to the table, and all the rest had gone.

That, and at the name Wong Bongerok, which might be the coolest name for anything in a fantasy story, ever. :D

>26 paradoxosalpha:

it was like the moonlight emerging from a cloud to look for the first time upon a field of blood, and passing swiftly over the wet faces of the slain that lie together in the horrible night.

That's a stunning image.

>27 RandyStafford:

I liked the whole antique flavor that wasn't pinned down to a single era.

That, to me, is the quintessence of Dunsany's appeal. If I had never read him before and you had handed me this story and said, "Read this", I would honestly have no idea when it was written. 1908? 1808? 1708? Could be any of them. That kind of timelessness is truly exceptional.