The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth

by Lord Dunsany

The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth
By
Lord Dunsany

In a wood older than record, a foster brother of the hills, stood the village of Allathurion; and there was peace between the people of that village and all the folk who walked in the dark ways of the wood, whether they were human or of the tribes of the beasts or of the race of the fairies and the elves and the little sacred spirits of trees and streams.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Classics, Sword and Sorcery, Fiction

17 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1908

About the author

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth baron of Dunsany, was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work in fantasy published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes hundreds of short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. Born to one of the oldest titles in the Irish peerage, he lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland's longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, received an honourary doctorate from Trinity College, and died in Dublin.

Reviews

[Haaze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lord Dunsany's fantasy stories is an unexplored realm to me. This particular story originating from the collection The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories is very - well, very fairy tale oriented - it almost reads as a legend told around a fire in the dark of the night. I sense the echoes of later fantasy authors such as Michael Moorcock (Corum) and even Roger Zelazny (Amber Chronicles). I like the surrealistic hero oriented quests. Dunsany definitely takes the reader on a journey - simplistic, yet powerful and dreamy. Early 20th century fantasy stories - they could become addicting.

The dragon-crocodile Tharagavverug!

[Ethan Hulbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may be one of the first sword & sorcery stories ever written, and it's pretty tough to judge things that are the first in their fields. On one hand, it's before a lot of conventions had been set up, so it's missing some things here and there and has a somewhat dry writing style. On the other hand, it's one of the building blocks of literature that helped set up the conventions that I'm now familiar with in the first place.

The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth is a great story, but the writing doesn't always work for me. Still, it went on to inspire Tolkien, Lovecraft, and many more, so there's absolutely something to be said for it.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've seen elsewhere that The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth has been called the first sword and sorcery story, but I don't see it. It may have been a huge inspiration for sword and sorcery, but it's clearly a fairy tale.

The main character is Leothric, the son of a ruler who leaves the village to undertake a quest at the behest of an older and wiser mentor figure in response to a curse laid upon his land. The town magician assigns the "Prince" a quest, to slay the dragon-crocodile Tharagavverug and forge a sword out of its spine. Having done so (of course Leothric succeeds) and bearing the sword Sacnoth, he travels to the castle of the wizard Gaznak and fights through all the dangers in his path, eventually winning through. That's not a spoiler--the title literally says the fortress is unvanquishable save for Sacnoth, so once Leothric gets Sacnoth you know he's going to win.

There are two things that make this story so good--the first is the language. There's no one who writes like Dunsany, though many fantasy authors make the mistake of trying. Just look at this:

Outside he felt the night air on his face, and found that he stood upon a narrow way between two abysses. To left and right of him, as far as he could see, the walls of the fortress ended in a profound precipice, though the roof still stretched above him; and before him lay the two abysses full of stars, for they cut their way through the whole Earth and revealed the under sky; and threading its course between them went the way, and it sloped upward and its sides were sheer.

Or this:

Then Leothric smote upon the Porte Resonant with Sacnoth, and the echo of Sacnoth went ringing through the halls, and all the dragons in the fortress barked. And when the baying of the remotest dragon had faintly joined in the tumult, a window opened far up among the clouds below the twilit gables, and a woman screamed, and far away in Hell her father heard her and knew that her doom was come.

This is more like a prose poem--the point of passages like this are just to evoke a mood and an image. I can see in my head how this would be portrayed in a metal music video or in the animated short. Who is the woman? Who is her father? Doesn't matter, we're on to the hundreds of camel-rider guards who flee screaming when Leothric tells them he has Sacnoth.

And that's the second part of the story--the humor. Dunsany is obviously writing parts of the story with tongue firmly in cheek, from names like "Wong Bongerok" the dragon to how all the evil forces in the story are constantly praising Satan to the behavior of the enemies. When the camel riders show up, they say:

The Lord Gaznak has desired to see you die before him. Be pleased to come with us, and we can discourse by the way of the manner in which the Lord Gaznak has desired to see you die.

Later, there's a scene in a banquet with queens and princes and two hundred footmen that carry messages between Leothric and the nearest of the princes. After a short discussion, the prince tells the footmen to seize him, the message gets passed down the line, and when the two nearest get close, Leothric says, "This is Sacnoth" at which point the footmen say, "It is Sacnoth" and scream and run.

And then every pair of footmen in the line does this. Just:

"It is Sacnoth. AAAAAaaaₐₐₐₐₐ"
"It is Sacnoth. AAAAAaaaₐₐₐₐₐ"
"It is Sacnoth. AAAAAaaaₐₐₐₐₐ" x 98

until the message gets back to the queens and princes and they run too. There's no way I'm supposed to read this and not think it's a joke. The story does an excellent job of being both a good fantasy story and funny, the same way the Discworld books do. No wonder so many weird fiction authors in the first half of the 20th century loved Dunsany.

You can read the story for free here.

[Ben Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

My chief complaint with this book is that it cannot accurately be rated on goodreads. For some reason, goodreads only goes up to 5 stars, where as this book rates a galaxy of them. This is LITERALLY one of the greatest things I've ever read. The fantastic (in both senses) imagination of the author and his curious way with words made this a compelling and immersive read.

I should absolutely add that I found this while looking for D&D inspiration material, and it definitely hit the spot; turns out Baron Dunsany was basically the father of fantasy literature. Some of the people who list him as an influence (H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R Tolkien, Neil Gaiman, Guillermo del friggin' Toro) are absolute giants. That many initials can't be wrong. But if you're not a huge fantasy fan, you may not find this as brain-electrifying as I did.

It's a short story so you can slam it down fast, a single reading contains the word 'smote' more times than you've heard in your entire life until this point, and it provides an eye-opening cautionary tale to anyone planning to build an impenetrable fortress but then put a sign out the front explaining how you get into it.

Check out the guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_...

And the book is actually free online (also an audio book!), but I bought it on Kindle for convenience (but shit, it was ninety-nine cents):
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Fo...

[Isabelle✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a goofy little story

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite possibly the earliest example of the sword and sorcery genre. Though not nearly as deep or complex, all of the fundamental elements of the genre are there in full glory. Fans of Dungeons and Dragons and Conan the Barbarian will feel right at home with this one.

[The Joy of Erudition · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this one four stars, an extra one purely for the sheer, comical imagination on display, which managed to overcome my dislike for the pseudo-biblical prose.

The story involves an evil sorcerer named Gaznak who rides on a comet and has the power to manifest his dreams into reality and torment the people of Earth with hellish nightmares. The only hope for defeating him rests on first vanquishing an invincible robot dragon/crocodile whose spinal column is made of the only metal strong enough to breach the fortress and kill Gaznak. And to defeat this otherwise invincible robot, the hero has to starve it to death by keeping it occupied in battle for three days.

The interior of the fortress reminds me of the Mantellan Crux, the bizarre final dungeon in Daggerfall, and could well have inspired it. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of early pen and paper RPGs took inspiration from this story. Lord Dunsany is listed in the original Appendix N for inspirational works in AD&D, but it didn't list any of his specific titles. I think this must have been one of them.

Gaznak's final boss fight mechanics are, in fact, hilarious and perfectly cap off a story that often feels like a grandly-styled pen-and-paper game. It's a moment you have to read to believe.

[Maarten · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The next day, when the twilight was far gone and night was gathering fast, the magician went away to the forest's edge, and uttered there the spell that he had made. 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.'"

[Shannon McDermott · Rating 4 out of 5]

The style of the narrative is a little distant and dry, and the characters have no personality. High rating for interesting ideas and effective imagery. The most compelling bit of imagery: an abyss that cuts so deep it opens to the "undersky," with vampires' wings beating in the darkness.

[Jakub Brudny · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Strange little tale” to świetny opis tego opowiadania, niesamowity klimat i coś co opisałbym jako „zew przygody”. Jeżeli kiedyś tak się pisało opowieści, to muszę poznać ich więcej.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very apparent how this guy was a major inspiration for both Tolkien and Lovecraft. Interesting.

[Emilee · Rating 3 out of 5]

He slayed but like in a boring way

[Forked Radish · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's certainly highly original with the prototype talking spider, probably Tolkien's Shelob inspiration. The sword Sacnoth may have been inspired by the Viking Ulfberht swords.
Note: Ulfberht is probably a corruption of Wolfbrecht or wolf bright with bright meaning sharp.

[Zachary Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have only recently discovered the works of Lord Dunsany, but am absolutely in love with them already. The Fortress Unvanquishable is but one short story from one his his many collections, but it truly distinguishes itself as an incredibly complex yet powerful tale of the strength of virtue over evil. Having read it once, I am already excited to let the imagery simmer in my head so that I can return to it after imbibing more of his writings and begin to puzzle out all the intricacies and details that will unlock the deeper meaning of the story. Read it once, twice, ten times, and the story will slowly reveal itself in the fuller intended glory.

[Lucky MBor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leer esto en la época que salió debió ser una locura.