The Eternal Champion

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE FLEETS ENGAGE

A whole day passed and another night and still the Eldren remained on the horizon.

Were they deliberately hoping to tire us, makes us nervous? Or were they afraid of the size of our fleet? Perhaps, I thought, their own strategy depended on us attacking them.

On the second night I did sleep, but not the drink sodden slumber I had trained myself to. There was no drink left. Count Roldero had never had a chance to bring his wineskins on board.

And the dreams, if anything, were worse than ever.

I saw entire worlds at war, destroying themselves in senseless battles.

I saw Earth but this was an Earth without a Moon. An Earth which did not rotate, which was half in sunlight, half in a darkness relieved only by the stars. And there was strife here, too, and a morbid quest that as good as destroyed me… name-Clarvis? Something of the sort. I grasped at these names, but they almost always eluded me and, I suppose, they were really the least important parts of the dreams.

I saw Earth-a different Earth again. An Earth which was so old that even the seas had begun to dry up. And I rode across a murky landscape, beneath a tiny sun, and I thought about Time…

I tried to hang on to this dream, this hallucination, this memory, whatever it was. I thought there might be a clue here to what I was, what had begun it all.

Another name-the Chronarch… Then it faded. There seemed to be no extra significance to this dream than to the rest.

Then this dream had faded and I stood in a city beside a large car and I was laughing and there was a strange sort of gun in my hand and bombs were raining from planes and destroying the city. I tasted an Upmann cigar…

I woke up, but was almost at once dragged back into my dreams.

I walked, insane and lonely, through corridors of steel and beyond the walls of the corridors was empty space. Earth was far behind. The steel machine in which I paced was heading for another star. I was tormented. I was obsessed with thoughts of my family. John Daker? No-John…

And then, as if to confuse me further, the names began. I saw them. I heard them. They were spelled in many different forms of hieroglyphics, chanted in many tongues.

Aubec. Byzantium. Cornelius. Colvin. Bradbury. London. Melnibone. Hawkmoon. Lanjis Liho. Powys. Marca. Elric. Muldoon. Dietrich. Arflane. Simon. Kane. Allard. Corom. Traven. Ryan. Asquinol. Pepin. Seward. Mennell. Tallow. Hallner. Koln…

The names went on and on and on.

I awoke screaming.

And it was morning.

Sweating I got out of my bunk and splashed cold water all over my body.

Why did it not begin? Why?

I knew that once the fighting started the dreams would go away. I was sure of it.

And then the door of my cabin burst open and a slave entered.

'Master-'

A trumpet voiced a brazen bellow. There were the sounds of running men all over the ship.

'Master. The enemy ships are moving.'

With a great sigh of relief I dressed myself, buckling on my armour as quickly as I could and strapping my sword about me.

Then I ran up on deck and climbed to the forward deck where King Rigenos stood, clad in his own armour, his face grim.

Everywhere in the fleet the war signals were being flown and voices called from ship to ship, trumpets snarled like metallic beasts and drums began to beat.

Now I could see for certain that the Eldren ships were on the move.

'Our commanders are all prepared,' Rigenos murmured tensely. 'See, our ships are already taking their positions.'

I looked with pleasure as the fleet began to form itself according to our much rehearsed battle-plan. Now, if only the Eldren would behave as we had anticipated, we should be the victors.

I looked forward again and gasped as the Eldren ships drew closer, marvelled at their rare grace as they leapt lightly over the water like dolphins.

But they were not dolphins, I thought. They were sharks. They would rend us all if they could. Now I understood something of Katorn's suspicion of everything Eldren. If I had not known that these were our enemies, that they intended to destroy us, I would have stood there entranced at their beauty.

They were not galleons, as most of our craft were. They were ships of sail only-and the sails were diaphanous on slim masts. White hulls broke the darker white of the surf as they surged wildly, without faltering, towards us.

I studied their armament intently.

They mounted a few cannon, but not so many as ours. Their cannon, however, were slender and silver and when I saw them I feared their power.

Katorn joined us. He was snarling with pleasure. 'Ah, now,' he growled. 'Now. Now. See their guns, Erekose? Beware of them. There is sorcery, if you do not believe me!'

'Sorcery? What do you mean-'

But he was off again, shouting at the men in the rigging to hurry their work.

I began to make out tiny figures on the decks of the Eldren ships. I caught glimpses of eldritch faces, but still could not, at that distance, discern any special characteristics. They moved swiftly about their ships as they swam steadily towards us.

Now our own fleet's manoeuvres were almost complete and the flagship began to move into position.

I myself gave the orders to heave to and we rocked in the sea, awaiting the Eldren shark-ships rushing towards us.

As planned, we had manoeuvred to form a square that was strong on three sides, but weak on the side facing the Eldren fleet.

Some hundred ships were at the far end of the square, set stem to stern with cannon bristling. The two other strong sides also had about a hundred ships a piece and were at a far enough distance from each other so that their cannon could not accidentally sink one of their own craft. We had placed a thinner wall of ships-about twenty-five-at the side of the square where the Eldren were drawing in. We hoped to give the impression of a tightly closed square formation, with a few ships in the middle flying the royal colours, to give the impression that this was the flagship and its escorts. These ships were bait. The true flagship-the one on which I stood-had temporarily taken down its colours and lay roughly in the middle of the starboard side of the square.

Closer and closer now the Eldren ships approached. It was almost true what Katorn had said. They did seem to fly through the air rather than through the waves.

My hands began to sweat. Would they take the bait? The plan had struck the commanders as original, which meant that it was not the classical manoeuvre it had been in some periods of the Earth's history. If it did not work, I would lose Katorn's confidence still further and it would not make my position with the king, whose daughter I hoped to marry, any better.

But there was no point in worrying about that. I watched.

And the Eldren took the bait.

Cannon roaring, the Eldren craft smashed in a delta formation into the thin wall and, under their own impetus, sailed on to find themselves thickly surrounded on three sides.

'Raise our colours!' I shouted to Katorn. 'Raise the colours! Let them see the originator of their defeat!'

Katorn gave the orders. My own banner went up first-the black field with the silver sword-and then the king's. We moved to tighten the trap, to crush the Eldren as they realised they had been tricked.

I had never seen such highly manoeuvrable sailing craft as those slender ships used by the Eldren. Slightly smaller than our men-o'-war, they darted about seeking an opening in the wall of ships. But there was no opening. I had seen to that.

Now their cannon bellowed fiercely, gouting balls of flame. Was this what Katorn had meant by 'sorcery'? The Eldren ammunition was fire-bombs rather than solid shot of the sort we used. Like comets the fireballs hurtled through the noonday air. Many of our ships were fired. They blazed, crackling and groaning as the flames consumed them.

Like comets they were and the ships were like flashing sharks.

But they were sharks caught in a net that could not be broken. Inexorably we tightened the trap, our own guns booming heavy iron that tore into those white hulls and left black gaping wounds, that ripped through those slim masts and brought the yards splintering down, the diaphanous sails flapping and faing like the wings of dying moths.

Our own monstrous men-o'-war, their heavy timbers clothed in brass, their huge oars churning the water, their dark, painted sails bulging, drew in to crush the Eldren.

Then the Eldren fleet divided into two roughly equal parts and dashed for the far corners of the net of ships-its weakest points. Many Eldren craft broke through, but we were prepared for this and with monumental precision our ships closed around them.

The Eldren fleet was now divided into several groups and it made our work easier. Implacably, we sailed in to crush them.

Now the skies were filled with smoke and the seas with flaming wreckage and the air was populated by screams, yells and warshouts, the whine of the Eldren fireballs, the roar of our own shot, the shattering bellowings of the cannon. My face was covered by a film of grease and ash from the smoke, and I sweated in the heat from the flames.

From time to time I caught a glimpse of a tense Eldren face and I wondered at their beauty and feared that perhaps we had been overconfident in our assumption of our victory. They were clad in light armour and moved about their ships as gracefully as trained dancers and their silver cannon did not once pause in their bombardment of our craft. Wherever the fireballs landed, the decks or rigging became instantly alight with a shrieking, all-consuming flame that burnt green and blue and seemed to devour metal as easily as it did wood.

I gripped the rail of the foredeck and leaned forward, trying to peer through the stinging smoke. All at once I saw an Eldren ship side-on immediately ahead of us.

'Prepare to ram!' I yelled. 'Prepare to ram!'

Like many of our ships, the lolinda possessed an ironshod ram lying just below the waterline. Now was our chance to use it. I saw the Eldren commander on his poop-deck shout orders to his men to turn the ship. But it was too late even for the speedy Eldren. We bore down on the smaller craft and, our whole ship reverberated with the mighty roar, we drove into its side. Iron and timber screamed and ruptured and foam lashed skyward. I was thrown back against the mast losing my footing and, as I clambered to my feet. I saw that we had broken the Eldren craft completely in two. I looked on the sight with a mixture of horror and exultation. I had not guessed the brutal power of the lolinda.

On either side of our flagship I saw the two halves of the enemy ship rear in the water and begin to go down. The horror on my face seemed matched by that on the Eldren commander's as he fiercely strove to hold himself erect on his sloping poop-deck while his men threw up their arms and leapt into the dark, surging sea that was already full of smashed timbers and drifting corpses.

Swiftly now the sea swallowed the slim ship and I heard King Rigenos laughing behind me as the Eldren drowned.

I turned. His face was smeared by soot and his red-rimmed eyes stared wildly out of his haggard skull. The helmet-crown of iron and diamonds was askew on his head as he continued to laugh in his morbid triumph.

'Good work, Erekose'! The most satisfying method of all when dealing with these creatures. Break them open. Send them to the depths of the ocean so that they can be that much closer to their master, the Lord of Hell!'

Katorn climbed up. His face, too, was exultant. 'I'll give you that, Lord Erekose. You have proved you know how to kill Eldren.'

'I know how to kill many kinds of men,' I said quietly. I was disgusted by their response. I had admired the way in which the Eldren commander had died. 'I merely took an opportunity,' I said. 'There is nothing clever in a ship of this size crushing lighter craft.'

But there was no time to dispute the issue. Our ship was moving through the wreckage it had created, surrounded by orange tongues of flame, shrieks and yells, thick smoke which obscured vision in all directions so that it was impossible to tell how the Fleets of Humanity fared.

'We must get out of this,' I said. 'Into clearer sea. We must let our own ships know that we are unharmed. Will you give the orders, Katorn?'

'Aye.' Katorn went back to his duties.

My head was beginning to throb with the din of the battle. It became one great wall of noise, one huge wave of smoke and flame and the stench of death.

And yet-it was all familiar to me.

Up to now my battle-tactics had been somewhat notional-intellectual rather than instinctive. But now it did seem that old instincts came into play and I gave orders without working them out first.

And I was confident that the orders were good. Even Katorn trusted them.

Thus it had been with the order to ram the Eldren craft. I had not stopped to think. It was probably just as well.

Its oars pulling strongly, the lolinda cleared the worst of the smoke and her trumpets and drums called out to announce her presence to the rest of the fleet. A cheering went up from some of the nearby ships as we emerged into an area relatively free of smoke, wreckage or other ships.

A few of our craft had begun to single out individual Eldren vessels and were hurling out their grappling irons towards the shark ships. The savage barbs cut into the white rails, ripped through the shining sails, bit into flesh even and tore off arms and legs. The great men-o'-war dragged the Eldren craft towards them, as whalers haul in their half-dead prey.

Arrows began to fly from deck to deck as archers, their legs twisted in the rigging, shot at enemy archers. Javelins rattled on the decks or pierced the armour of the warriors, Eldren and Human, and threw them prone. Now the sound of cannon could still be heard, but it was not the steady pounding it had been. The shots became more intermittent and were replaced by the clash of swords, the shouts of warriors fighting hand to hand.

Smoke still formed acrid blossoms in the air above that watery battlefield. And when I could see through the murk to the green, wreckage-strewn ocean itself I saw that the foam was no longer white. It was red. The sea was covered by a slick of blood.

As our ship beat on to join battle once again, I saw upturned faces staring at me from the sea. They were the faces of the dead, both Eldren and Human, and they seemed to share a common expression-an expression of astonished accusation.

After a while, I tried to ignore the sight of those faces.