And at the narrow head of the valley still the battle surged and eddied. Great gods–thought Cormac, glancing between lightning-like blows–do these men still hold the gorge? Aye! They held it! A tenth of their original number, dying on their feet, they still held back the frantic charges of the dwindling legionaries.
_____
Over all the field went up the roar and the clash of arms, and birds of prey, swift-flying out of the sunset, circled above. Cormac, striving to reach Marcus Sulius through the press, saw the Roman’s horse sink under him, and the rider rise alone in a waste of foes. He saw the Roman sword flash thrice, dealing a death at each blow; then from the thickest of the fray bounded a terrible figure. It was Bran Mak Morn, stained from head to foot. He cast away his broken sword as he ran, drawing a dirk. The Roman struck, but the Pictish king was under the thrust, and gripping the sword-wrist, he drove the dirk again and again through the gleaming armor.
A mighty roar went up as Marcus died, and Cormac, with a shout, rallied the remnants of his force about him and, striking in the spurs, burst through the shattered lines and rode full speed for the other end of the valley.
But as he approached he saw that he was too late. As they had lived, so had they died, those fierce sea-wolves, with their faces to the foe and their broken weapons red in their hands. In a grim and silent band they lay, even in death preserving some of the shield-wall formation. Among them, in front of them and all about them lay high-heaped the bodies of those who had sought to break them, in vain. They had not given back a foot! To the last man, they had died in their tracks. Nor were there any left to stride over their torn shapes; those Romans who had escaped the viking axes had been struck down by the shafts of the Picts and swords of the Gaels from behind.
Yet this part of the battle was not over. High up on the steep western slope Cormac saw the ending of that drama. A group of Gauls in the armor of Rome pressed upon a single man–a black-haired giant on whose head gleamed a golden crown. There was iron in these men, as well as in the man who had held them to their fate. They were doomed–their comrades were being slaughtered behind them–but before their turn came they would at least have the life of the black-haired chief who had led the golden-haired men of the North.
Pressing upon him from three sides they had forced him slowly back up the steep gorge wall, and the crumpled bodies that stretched along his retreat showed how fiercely every foot of the way had been contested. Here on this steep it was task enough to keep one’s footing alone; yet these men at once climbed and fought. Kull’s shield and the huge mace were gone, and the great sword in his right hand was dyed crimson. His mail, wrought with a forgotten art, now hung in shreds, and blood streamed from a hundred wounds on limbs, head and body. But his eyes still blazed with the battle-joy and his wearied arm still drove the mighty blade in strokes of death.
But Cormac saw that the end would come before they could reach him. Now at the very crest of the steep, a hedge of points menaced the strange king’s life, and even his iron strength was ebbing. Now he split the skull of a huge warrior and the back-stroke shore through the neck-cords of another; reeling under a very rain of swords he struck again and his victim dropped at his feet, cleft to the breast-bone. Then, even as a dozen swords rose above the staggering Atlantean for the death stroke, a strange thing happened. The sun was sinking into the western sea; all the heather swam red like an ocean of blood. Etched in the dying sun, as he had first appeared, Kull stood, and then, like a mist lifting, a mighty vista opened behind the reeling king. Cormac’s astounded eyes caught a fleeting gigantic glimpse of other climes and spheres–as if mirrored in summer clouds he saw, instead of the heather hills stretching away to the sea, a dim and mighty land of blue mountains and gleaming quiet lakes–the golden, purple and sapphirean spires and towering walls of a mighty city such as the earth has not known for many a drifting age.
Then like the fading of a mirage it was gone, but the Gauls on the high slope had dropped their weapons and stared like men dazed–For the man called Kull had vanished and there was no trace of his going!
As in a daze Cormac turned his steed and rode back across the trampled field. His horse’s hoofs splashed in lakes of blood and clanged against the helmets of dead men. Across the valley the shout of victory was thundering. Yet all seemed shadowy and strange. A shape was striding across the torn corpses and Cormac was dully aware that it was Bran. The Gael swung from his horse and fronted the king. Bran was weaponless and gory; blood trickled from gashes on brow, breast and limb; what armor he had worn was clean hacked away and a cut had shorn half-way through his iron crown. But the red jewel still gleamed unblemished like a star of slaughter.
“It is in my mind to slay you,” said the Gael heavily and like a man speaking in a daze, “for the blood of brave men is on your head. Had you given the signal to charge sooner, some would have lived.”
Bran folded his arms; his eyes were haunted. “Strike if you will; I am sick of slaughter. It is a cold mead, this kinging it. A king must gamble with men’s lives and naked swords. The lives of all my people were at stake; I sacrificed the Northmen–yes; and my heart is sore within me, for they were men! But had I given the order when you would have desired, all might have gone awry. The Romans were not yet massed in the narrow mouth of the gorge, and might have had time and space to form their ranks again and beat us off. I waited until the last moment–and the rovers died. A king belongs to his people, and can not let either his own feelings or the lives of men influence him. Now my people are saved; but my heart is cold in my breast.”
Cormac wearily dropped his sword-point to the ground.
“You are a born king of men, Bran,” said the Gaelic prince.
Bran’s eyes roved the field. A mist of blood hovered over all, where the victorious barbarians were looting the dead, while those Romans who had escaped slaughter by throwing down their swords and now stood under guard looked on with hot smoldering eyes.
“My kingdom–my people–are saved,” said Bran wearily. “They will come from the heather by the thousands and when Rome moves against us again, she will meet a solid nation. But I am weary. What of Kull?”
“My eyes and brain were mazed with battle,” answered Cormac. “I thought to see him vanish like a ghost into the sunset. I will seek his body.”
“Seek not for him,” said Bran. “Out of the sunrise he came–into the sunset he has gone. Out of the mists of the ages he came to us, and back into the mists of the eons has he returned–to his own kingdom.”
Cormac turned away; night was gathering. Gonar stood like a white specter before him.
“To his own kingdom,” echoed the wizard. “Time and Space are naught. Kull has returned to his own kingdom–his own crown–his own age.”
“Then he was a ghost?”
“Did you not feel the grip of his solid hand? Did you not hear his voice–see him eat and drink, laugh and slay and bleed?”
Still Cormac stood like one in a trance.
“Then if it be possible for a man to pass from one age into one yet unborn, or come forth from a century dead and forgotten, whichever you will, with his flesh-and-blood body and his arms–then he is as mortal as he was in his own day. Is Kull dead, then?”
“He died a hundred thousand years ago, as men reckon time,” answered the wizard, “but in his own age. He died not from the swords of the Gauls of this age. Have we not heard in legends how the king of Valusia traveled into a strange, timeless land of the misty future ages, and there fought in a great battle? Why, so he did! A hundred thousand years ago, or today!
“And a hundred thousand years ago–or a moment agone!–Kull, king of Valusia, roused himself on the silken couch in his secret chamber and laughing, spoke to the first Gonar, saying: ‘Ha, wizard, I have in truth dreamed strangely, for I went into a far clime and a far time in my visions, and fought for the king of a strange shadow-people!’ And the great sorcerer smiled and pointed silently at the red, notched sword, and the torn
mail and the many wounds that the king carried. And Kull, fully woken from his ‘vision’ and feeling the sting and the weakness of these yet bleeding wounds, fell silent and mazed, and all life and time and space seemed like a dream of ghosts to him, and he wondered thereat all the rest of his life. For the wisdom of the Eternities is denied even unto princes and Kull could no more understand what Gonar told him than you can understand my words.”
“And then Kull lived despite his many wounds,” said Cormac, “and has returned to the mists of silence and the centuries. Well–he thought us a dream; we thought him a ghost. And sure, life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusion, and it is in my mind that the kingdom which has this day been born of swords and slaughter in this howling valley is a thing no more solid than the foam of the bright sea.”
Miscellanea
The “Am-ra of the Ta-an” Fragments
The two poems and three texts that follow were found among Howard’s papers in 1966 and represent the entirety of the surviving “Am-ra of the Taan” material, predating the first Kull story by several years. The importance and influence of these texts on the Kull stories is delineated in the essay “Atlantean Genesis” found in this volume page 287.
Summer Morn
Am-ra stood on a mountain height
At the break of a summer morn;
He watched in wonder the starlight fall
And the eastern scarlet flare and pale
As the flame of day was born.
Am-ra the Ta-an
Out of the land of the morning sun,
Am-ra the Ta-an came.
Outlawed by the priests of the Ta-an,
His people spoke not his name.
Am-ra, the mighty hunter,
Am-ra, son of the spear,
Strong and bold as a lion,
Lithe and swift as a deer.
Into the land of the tiger,
Came Am-ra the fearless, alone,
With his bow of pliant lance-wood,
And his spear with the point of stone.
He saw the deer and the bison,
The wild horse and the bear,
The elephant and the mammoth,
To him the land seemed fair.
Face to face met he the tiger,
And gripping his spear’s long haft,
Gazed fearless into the snarling face,
“Good hunting!” cried he, and laughed!
The bison he smote at sunrise,
The deer in the heat of day,
The wild horse fell before him,
The cave-bear did he slay!
A cave sought he? Not Am-ra!
He lived as wild and free,
As the wolf that roams the forest,
His only roof a tree.
When he wished to eat he slaughtered,
But not needlessly he slew,
For he felt a brother to the wild folk,
And this the Wild Folk knew.
The deer they spoke to Am-ra,
Of kin by the tiger slain,
Am-ra met the tiger,
And slew him on the plain!
A youth in the land of the Ta-an,
A slim, young warrior, Gaur,
Had followed Am-ra in the chase,
And fought by his side in war.
He yearned for his friend Am-ra
And he hated the high priest’s face,
Till at last with the spear he smote him,
And fled from the land of his birth race.
Am-ra’s foot-prints he followed,
And he wandered far away,
Till he came to the land of the tiger,
In the gateway of the day.
Into the land of the tiger,
There came an alien race,
Stocky and swart and savage,
Black of body and face.
Into the country of Am-ra,
Wandered the savage band,
No bows they bore but each carried
A stone-tipped spear in his hand.
They paused in Am-ra’s country,
And camped at his clear spring fair,
And they slew the deer and the wild horse,
But fled from the tiger and bear.
Back from a hunt came Am-ra,
With the pelt of a grizzly bear,
He went to the spring of clear water
And he found the black men there.
More like apes than men were they,
They knew not the use of the bow,
They tore their meat and ate it raw
For fire they did not know.
Then angry waxed bold Am-ra,
Furious grew he then,
For he would not share his country
With a band of black ape-men.
The Tale of Am-ra
When the days are short and the nights are long in the country of the people of the caves, and the snow covers hill and valley and one may cross the River of Pleasant Water on the ice, then the people of the caves gather about the fire of old Gaur, to listen to his legends and folk-lore and his tales of his youth. Wise and shrewd was old Gaur. Cunning in hunting-craft. His cave was hung with hides of elk and bear and tiger and lion, cunningly and skillfully tanned and dressed. On the walls there hung and against the walls there leaned, antlers of elk and moose, horns of buffalo and musk-ox and tusks of rhinoceros and mammoth and walrus, the ivory beautifully polished, much of it of it carved, depicting love and war and the chase, for Gaur was skilled in the mystery of picture making and cunning with the tools of the art. Skilled in war also, was Gaur. The walls of his cave were hung with weapons, skillfully wrought, trophies of the wars of Gaurs youth when he went forth to fight the black men and the tribes of the sea and the hairy ape-men and the Sons of the Eagle. Skilled in many things was Gaur.
Untitled and Unfinished Fragment
A land of wild, fantastic beauty; of mighty trees and great rivers, of tangled, breathless jungle and boundless, unlimited prairies, of towering, awesome crags, and dank, gloomy, fever-ridden swamps, of reeking, far stretching savannas, and of great lakes. A land of pleasant summer and cruel, merciless winter. A land of beauty and terror. A land of wild beasts and wilder men. Mighty beasts roamed the mountains and the plains and jungle. Through the nights walked Na-go-sa-na, the tawny one, the Fear That Walks By Night, and Sa-go-na, the cruel sabertooth. Often upon the plains and among the brakes of the savannas, might be seen the gigantic form of Ga-so-go, the mammoth, the Hill That Walks. Among the savannas and in the jungle, Gola-ha, the Beast That Carries A Horn On His Nose, fought for supremacy with the A-go-nun, the Red One, the cone horned monster of another age. In the swamps and the deep jungle lived the Crawling Ones. The bearers of the Burning Death. And in the swamps and amid the deepest savanna reigned the E-ha-g-don, the frightful monsters of an earlier epoch–the dinosaurs. Such was the land in which dwelt my people, the Ta-an.
Through the plain and savanna and into an estuary, flowed a great river, The River of Blue Water. On one side of the river, the south side, rose moderately high cliffs. These cliffs rose abruptly, some yards back from the steep bank of the river. The top was rounded, sloping back steeply into the plain and ending in a drop of some score feet. In the cliff fronting the river were three tiers of caves, one tier above the other; and in these caves lived the tribe. The Ta-an numbered some one hundred and fifty strong. Most of these, of course, were women and children but there were at least seventy-five A-ga-nai, fighting men.
Ai, what a life that was! A life of battle; a life through which Fear stalked rampant from birth to death. For man was weak and helpless in those days, and Fear walked always by his side, and at night It lay down by his side. Even in sleep it did not depart from him but accompanied him in his troubled rest and haunted his dreams, so that in the midst of night he would start suddenly awake gripping his rude weapons and the cold sweat starting from his brow. For even as man’s waking thoughts were of Fear, so his dreams were of Fear. Through life man went in those early days, p
eering, creeping, cautiously, ready, always, to flee or fight like a cornered rat. His days, he passed in fear and watchfulness and his nights in troubled sleep and frightful dreams–dreams through which Fear stalked grisly and horrible. Thus through life he went and at last in a moment of carelessness–a sudden movement in the long grass or the bushes or the branches overhead, a great body launching through the air, an instant of awful agony and ghastly fear, and then the sound of bones crunching between mighty jaws. Or else, the rush of a heavy form across the ground, the quick lightning-like striking of a snake, the crash of a falling tree, the snapping that proceeds the parting of a rotten limb, these things heralded Death. Violent, sudden death.