The great highway stretched out before them. The miles flew underneath the wheels of the iron horse as they rode. Mortu the Kinslayer, Mortu the Merciful, scion of the north, where warriors were once bred like princes breed their race horses. Kyrus the Wise, a man of faith, of sacred vows and probing intellect, sharp tongued and sure of himself. Sometimes too much so, as a conflict with an evil sorcerer has resulted in his imprisonment in the body of a small monkey. Our heroes cross the wasteland in search of a cure for Kyrus, seeking magics and wisdom from the east.

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Thune’s Vision is full of Schuyler Hernstrom’s earliest stories, many of which I have reviewed previously on various sites. But for sword and sorcery fans, the recent rerelease of Hernstrom’s first book has a special jewel: the third story of Mortu and Kyrus.

In the far future, centuries after aliens enslaved mankind only to be thrown down by the mutinous Men of the North, a pagan Northern axeman, Mortu, and a cursed Christian monkey monk, Kyrus, scream down the ruined roads on the back of a motorcycle. Their adventures have taken them to the vile White City and against the scorpion cult of Daganha. Now they ride once more–into the land of Aerisla, of Christian airships and Illilissy war gods.

The cliff dwellers of Aerisla use their airships to bridge a great chasm, filled with simian kretchers and soaring serave that threaten human civilization. After an unseen hand leads the kretchers on a kidnapping raid, Kyrus volunteers Mortu and himself to rescue the sole abductee, the duke’s fiancee. But when a serave attack knocks Mortu into the green canopy below, the duo discovers the truth behind the kretchers, the value of Christian steel, and an Illilissy war god. This alien mech seeks the destruction of Aerisla, and the arrival of one of the mutinous Men of the North adds savor to the mechanistic dreams of revenge.

Someday [the Illilissy] will return and grant me a new body. And I will again walk in fire and lay waste to everything before me. Such slaughter  wrought, here and countless other planets. None among the war gods was ever so terrible to behold as I. Burning cities glowing on the horizon. Smoke blackening out the sun. Where I was, there was dusk.”

Mortu converses with the war god, and learns several secrets of the Illilissy, who terrorized the galaxy. The war god notes that those who declare there to be no gods often try to set themselves up as gods to fill the absence. Mortu’s reply is telling:

“And I am sick to death of gods and their troubles. In my travels I have encountered men and women who set themselves up as gods or claimed themselves as representatives.”

“And what came of it, your meeting with would-be gods?”

“I killed them.”

Duplicity and a poison at the heart of Aerisla are soon revealed. But it soon becomes time for a Man of the North to rebel once more against Illilissy rule, and for Mortu to try to fell another would-be god.

Hernstrom’s Mortu and Kyrus series often probes the blind spots created by the virtues of hard men who create good times. But rather that join the contemporary chorus condemning Christianity in fantasy, he instead explores the tension and mutual suspicion between Christian virtue and pagan virtu.  In “Mortu and Kyrus in the White City”, the pagan may have won out, delivering final justice with the stroke of an axe. Here, in “Servants of the War God”, civilization is prospering under the banner of the Cross, in a society that meets even with Mortu’s dour approval. But even such prosperity and order can be threatened by the power-hungry, often born by leisure and a hatred of tradition.  The stories suggest a rough and uneasy harmony between the two value systems without resorting to Neo-Pagan syncretism.

As usual, Hernstrom creates entire worlds in the span of a couple sentences. And the peep into the 333 White Lords of the Illilissy creates more questions, even as it bathes these conquerors in beastly symbolism. And the master of mood brings an exhilaration to the action. For once, the story is free from dour clouds, even with the melancholic conclusion to the war god’s rampage. Instead of a foreboding of a Edenic fall, “Servants of the War God” is filled with catastrophe and eucatastrophe,  Like Mortu, one struggles with how to deal with the change, even after the scouring of Aerisla.

As always, Mortu and Kyrus’s tales close with one last remaining question from the reader: “Please, sir, more?”

Thune’s Vision and “Servants of the War God” were previously released through Kickstarter, and will be available to the public on June 15th.