Warily we sailed in. The Eldren, however, had known of our coming and had all but deserted their towns. This time there were no women and no children, nought but a few handfuls of Eldren warriors whom we slew. And of halflings there were none. Arjavh had spoken the truth when he said the gates were closing to the Ghost Worlds.
We ripped the towns to rubble, burning and pillaging as a matter of course, but without lust. We tortured captured Eldren to discover the meaning for this desertion and they told us nothing intelligible; but secretly I knew the meaning. Our troops became morose, possessed of a sense of anticlimax and, though we left no building standing, no Eldren alive, the men could not rid themselves of the notion that they had been thwarted in some inexplicable way—as an ardent lover is innocently thwarted by a coy maiden.
And, because of the Eldren’s refusal to give them a mighty battle, our soldiers grew to hate the Eldren that much more.
* * *
When our work was done in the Outer Islands, and every building was dust, every Eldren a corpse, we sailed almost immediately for the continent of Mernadin and put into Paphanaal, which was still held by our forces under the Lord Katorn. But, in the meantime, King Rigenos had joined them and was waiting for us to arrive. We landed our troops and pushed outwards across the continent, bent on conquest.
I remember few incidents in detail. Days merged one into the other and wherever we went we slew Eldren. There was no Eldren fortress which could withstand our grim thrusting.
I was tireless in my murdering; insatiable in my bloodlust. Humanity had wanted such a wolf as I, and now they had him and they followed him, and they feared him.
It was a year of fire and steel and ruined flesh; Mernadin seemed at times to be nothing but a sea of smoke and blood. The troops were all physically weary, but the spirit of slaughter was in them and it gave them a horrible vitality.
A year of pain and death. Everywhere that the banners of Humanity met the standards of the Eldren, the basilisk standards would be torn down and trampled.
We put all we found to the sword. We mercilessly punished deserters in our own ranks, we flogged our troops to greater endurance.
We were the horsemen of death, King Rigenos, Lord Katorn, Count Roldero and myself. We grew as gaunt as hungry dogs and it seemed we fed on Eldren flesh, drank only Eldren blood. Fierce dogs we were. Wild-eyed and panting dogs, sharp-fanged dogs for ever restless for the scent of fear and death.
Towns burned behind us, cities fell and were crushed, stone by stone, to the ground. Eldren corpses littered the countryside and the fairest of our camp followers were fat carrion birds and sleek-coated jackals. A year of bloodshed. A year of destruction. But was it Mernadin I wished to destroy, or was it myself? If I could not force myself to love, then I could force myself to hate; and this I did. All feared me, humans and Eldren alike, as I turned beautiful Mernadin into a funeral pyre on which I sought, in terrible bewilderment and grief, to burn the decaying vestiges of my own Humanity.
I cannot justify my actions. Roldero had said that men must be judged by their deeds, not their motives. I offer such speculation only in the hope that by understanding our motives we may thus control our deeds.
* * *
It was in the Valley of Kalaquita, where stood the garden city of Lakh, that King Rigenos was killed.
The city looked peaceful and deserted, and we rode down upon it with little caution. We howled one great, concerted war-cry and, in place of the disciplined army which had landed at Paphanaal, we were one mass of blood-encrusted armour and dust-ingrained flesh, waving our weapons and galloping wildly upon that garden city of Lakh.
It was a trap.
The Eldren were in the hills and had used their beautiful city as bait. Silver-snouted cannon suddenly shouted from surrounding copses and sent a searing shower of shot into our astonished soldiers’ midst! Slender arrows whistled in a wave of sharp-tipped terror as the hidden Eldren archers took their vengeance with their bows.
Horses fell. Men screamed. We turned in confusion. But then our own bowmen began to retaliate, concentrating not on the enemy archers, but on their cannoneers. Gradually the silver guns went silent and the archers melted back into the hills, retreating again to one of their few remaining fortresses.
I turned to King Rigenos, who sat beside me on his big war-steed. He was rigid, staring up at the sky. And then I saw that an arrow had pierced his thigh and embedded itself in his saddle, pinning him to his horse.
“Roldero!” I shouted. “Get a doctor for the king if we have one.”
Roldero rode up from where he had been taking account of our dead. He pushed back the king’s visor and shrugged. Then he stared significantly at me. “He has not breathed for several minutes by the look of him.”
“Nonsense. An arrow in the thigh doesn’t kill. Not normally, at any rate—and not so quickly. Get the doctor.”
A peculiar smile crossed Roldero’s bleak features. “It was the shock, I think, that killed him.” Then he laughed brutally and pushed at the armoured corpse with his hand so that it tilted over, wrenching the arrow free, and crashed into the mud. “Your betrothed is queen now, Erekosë,” said Roldero, still laughing. “I congratulate you.”
My horse stirred as I stared down at Rigenos’s corpse. Then I shrugged and turned my steed away.
It was our habit with the dead to leave them, no matter who they had been, where they lay.
We took Rigenos’s horse with us. It was a good horse.
The loss of the king did not worry our warriors much, though Katorn himself seemed a little perturbed, perhaps because he had had such great influence over the monarch. But the king had possessed no real authority in this last year, for Humanity followed a grimmer chief, who some thought might be Death Himself.
Dead Erekosë is what they called me. The vengeful, mindless Sword of Humanity.
I did not care what they called me—Reaver, Bloodletter, Berserker—for my dreams no longer plagued me, my own hypocrisy did not disturb me, and my ultimate goal came closer and closer.
It was the last fortress of the Eldren left undefeated. I dragged my armies behind me as if by a rope. I dragged them towards the principal city of Mernadin, by the Plains of Melting Ice, Arjavh’s capital—Loos Ptokai.
And at last we saw its looming towers silhouetted against a red evening sky. Of marble and black granite, it rose mighty and seemingly invulnerable above us.”
But I knew we should take it.
I had Arjavh’s word for it, after all. He had told me we should win.
* * *
The night after we had camped beneath the walls of Loos Ptokai, I sprawled in my chair and could not sleep. Instead I stared into the darkness. This was not my habit. Normally I would now slump into my bed and snore till dawn, wearied by the day’s killing.
But tonight I brooded.
And then, at dawn the next day, my features cold as stone, I rode beneath my banner as I had ridden a year before into the camp of the Eldren, with my herald at my side.
We came close to the main gate of Loos Ptokai and then we stopped. A few Eldren looked down from distant battlements but I could not read their expressions.
My herald raised his golden trumpet to his lips and blew an eery blast upon it which echoed among the black and white towers of Loos Ptokai.
“Eldren prince!” I called in my dead voice. “Arjavh of Mernadin, I have come to slay you.”
Then on the battlements directly over the great main gate I saw Arjavh appear. He peered down at me and there was a sadness in his strange eyes.
“Greetings, old enemy,” he called. “You will have a long siege before you break this, the last of our strength.”
“So be it,” I said, “but break it we shall.”
Arjavh paused. Then he said: “We once agreed to fight a battle according to the Erekosian Code of War. Do you wish to discuss terms again?”
I shook my head. “We shall not stop until every Eldren is slain. I have sworn an oa
th, you see, to rid Earth of all your kind.”
“Then,” said Arjavh, “before the battle commences, I invite you to enter Loos Ptokai as my guest and refresh yourself. You would seem in need of refreshment.”
At this I bridled, but then my herald sneered. “They become ingenuous in their defeat, master, if they think they can deceive you by such a simple trick.”
My mind had once again suddenly become a battleground of conflicting emotions. “Be silent!” I ordered the herald. I took a deep breath.
“Well?” called Arjavh.
“I accept,” I said hollowly. And then I added: “Is the Lady Ermizhad therein?”
“She is—and is eager to see you again.” There was an edge to Arjavh’s voice as he answered this last question. For a moment I was again suspicious; did I detect the threat of treachery?
Arjavh must have been aware of my own affection for his sister: the affection I did not admit, but which secretly contributed to my decision to enter Loos Ptokai.
The herald said in astonishment: “My lord, surely you cannot be serious? As soon as you are inside the gates, you will be slain. There were stories once that you and Prince Arjavh were on not unfriendly terms, for enemies, but after the havoc you have caused in Mernadin, he will kill you immediately. Who would not?”
I shook my head. I was in a new and quieter mood. “He will not,” I said. “And this way I can find an opportunity to judge the Eldren strength. It will be useful to us.”
“But disastrous for us, if you should die.”
“I will not die,” I said, and then, incredibly, all the ferocity, the hate, the mad battle-anger, rushed out of me, leaving me, as I turned away from the herald so he should not see, with tears in my eyes.
“Open your gates, Prince Arjavh,” I called in shaking tones. “I come to Loos Ptokai as your guest.”
23
IN LOOS PTOKAI
I RODE MY horse slowly into the city, having left my sword and lance with the herald, who was now, in astonishment, galloping back to our own camp to give the news to the marshals.
The streets of Loos Ptokai were silent, as if in mourning. And when Arjavh came down the steps from the battlements to greet me, I saw, that he, too, wore the expression which showed upon my own harsh features. His step was not so lithe and his voice not quite so lilting as when we had first met a year before.
I dismounted. He gripped my arm.
“So,” he said in attempted gaiety, “the barbarian battlemonger is still material. My people had begun to doubt it.”
“I suppose they hate me,” I said.
He seemed a little surprised. “The Eldren cannot hate,” he said as he led me towards his palace.
* * *
I was shown by Arjavh to a small room containing a bed, a table and a chair of wonderful workmanship, all slender and seemingly of precious metal but in fact of cunningly wrought wood. In one corner was a sunken bath with water steaming in it.
When Arjavh had gone, I stripped off my blood- and dust-encrusted armour and climbed out of the underclothes I had worn for much of the past year. Then I sank gratefully into the water.
Since the initial emotional shock I had received when Arjavh had issued his invitation, my mind had become numbed. But now, for the first time in a year, I relaxed, mentally and physically, washing all the grief and hatred from me as I washed my body. So suddenly did the tension leave me that it might have been the result of Eldren sorcery; but I think now that I relaxed because I did not have to deceive myself in Loos Ptokai.
I was almost cheerful as I donned the fresh clothes which had been laid out for me and, when someone knocked at my door, called lightly for them to enter.
“Greetings, Erekosë.” It was Ermizhad.
“My lady.” I bowed.
“How are you faring, Erekosë?”
“In war, as you know, I am faring well. And personally I feel better for your hospitality.”
“Arjavh sent me to bring you to the meal.”
“I am ready. But first tell me how you have fared, Ermizhad.”
“Well enough—in health,” said she. Then she came closer to me. Involuntarily I leaned back slightly. She looked at the ground and raised her hands to touch her throat. “And tell me—are you now wed to Queen Iolinda?”
“We are still betrothed,” I told her.
Deliberately, then, I looked into Ermizhad’s eyes and added as levelly as I could: “We are to be married when…”
“When?”
“When Loos Ptokai is taken.”
She said nothing.
I stepped forward so that we were separated by little more than an inch. “Those are the only terms on which she will accept me,” I said. “I must destroy all the Eldren. Your trampled banners will be my wedding gift to her.”
Ermizhad nodded and gave me a queer, sad and sardonic look. “That is the oath you swore. You must abide by it. You must slay every Eldren. Every one.”
I cleared my throat. “That is the oath.”
“Come,” she said. “The meal grows cold.”
* * *
At dinner, Ermizhad and I sat close together and Arjavh spoke wittily of some of the stranger experiments of his scientist ancestors and for a little while we managed to drive away the knowledge of the forthcoming battle. But later, as Ermizhad and I talked softly to one another, I caught a look of pain in Arjavh’s eyes and for a moment he was quiet. He broke into our conversation suddenly:
“We are beaten, as you know, Erekosë.”
I did not want to speak of these things any more. I shrugged and tried to continue the lighter talk with Ermizhad. But Arjavh was insistent.
“We are doomed, Erekosë, to fall beneath the swords of your great army.”
I drew a deep breath and looked him full in the face. “Yes. You are doomed, Prince Arjavh.”
“It is a matter of time before you raze our Loos Ptokai.”
This time I avoided his urgent gaze and merely nodded.
“So—you…” He broke off.
I became impatient. Many emotions mingled in me. “My oath,” I reminded him. “I must do what I swore I would do, Arjavh.”
“I do not fear to lose my own life…” he began.
“I know what you fear,” I told him.
“Could not the Eldren admit defeat, Erekosë? Could they not acknowledge mankind’s victory? Surely, one city…?”
“I swore an oath.” Now sadness filled me.
“But you cannot…” Ermizhad gestured with her slim hand. “We are your friends, Erekosë. We enjoy each other’s company. We—we are friends.”
“We are of different races,” I said. “We are at war.”
“I am not asking for mercy,” Arjavh said.
“I know that,” I replied. “I do not doubt Eldren courage. I have seen too many examples of it.”
“You abide by an oath given in anger, offered to an abstraction, that leads you to slay those you love and respect. An oath made to strengthen an already faltering resolve. You hated killing. I know you did!” Ermizhad’s voice was puzzled. “Are you tired of killing, Erekosë?”
“I am very tired of killing,” I told her.
“Then…?”
“But I began this thing,” I continued. “Sometimes I wonder if I really do lead my men—or if they push me ahead of them. Perhaps I am wholly their creation. The creation of the will of Humanity. Perhaps I am a kind of patchwork hero that they have manufactured. Perhaps I have no other existence and when my work is done, I will fade as their sense of danger fades.”
“I think not,” said Arjavh soberly.
I shrugged. “You are not me. You have not had my strange dreams.”
“You still have those dreams?” Ermizhad asked.
“Not recently. Since I began this campaign, they have gone away. They only plague me when I attempt to assert my own individuality. When I do what is required of me, they leave me in peace. I am a ghost, you see. Nothing more.”
Arj
avh sighed. “I do not understand this. I think you are suffering from a terrible self-deception, Erekosë. You could assert your own will—but you are afraid to! Instead, you abandon yourself to hate and bloodshed, to this peculiar melancholia of yours. You are depressed because you are not doing what you really desire to do. The dreams will come again, Erekosë. Mark my words—the dreams will come again and they will be more terrible than any you have experienced before.”
“Stop!” I shouted. “Do not spoil this last meeting of ours. I came here because…”
“Because?” Arjavh raised a slim eyebrow.
“Because I needed some civilised company.”
“To see your own kind,” Ermizhad said softly.
I turned on her, rising from the table. “You are not my own kind! My race is out there, beyond those walls, waiting to vanquish you!”
“We are kin in spirit,” Arjavh said. “Our bonds are finer and stronger than bonds of blood.”
My face twisted and I buried it in my hands. “No!”
Arjavh put a hand on my shoulder. “You are more substantial than you will allow yourself to be, Erekosë. It would take a great deal of a particular kind of courage if you would pursue the implications of another course of action.”
I let my hands fall to myself. “You are right,” I told him. “And I do not have that courage. I am just a sword. A force, like a whirlwind. There is nothing else to me—nothing I would allow. Nothing I am allowed…”
Ermizhad interrupted fiercely. “For your own sake, you must allow that other self to rule. Forget your oath to Iolinda. You do not love her. You have nothing in common with the bloodthirsty rabble that follows you. You are a greater man than any you lead—greater than any you fight.”
“Stop it! This is Eldren sophistry. You would save your skins with words, having failed with swords!”
“She is right, Erekosë,” Arjavh said. “It is not for our lives that we argue. It is for your spirit.”
I slumped down into my seat. “I sought to avoid confusion,” I said, “by taking a simple course of action. It is true that I feel no kinship with those I lead—or those who thrust me before them—but undeniably they are my kin. My duty…”