The Eternal Champion

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO THE REAVING

The less of a man I became, the more of an automaton, so the dreams and half memories ceased to plague me. It was as if they had forced me into this mindless role, that while I continued to be a creature without remorse or conscience they would reward me with their absence. If I showed signs of being an ordinary human being, they would punish me with their presence.

But that is a notion. It is no nearer the truth, I suppose, than any other. One might also argue that I was about to achieve the catharsis that would rid me of my ambivalence, banish my nightmares.

In the month I spent preparing for the great war against the Eldren, I saw but little of my betrothed and, finally, ceased to seek her out but concentrated on the plans for the campaigns we intended to fight.

I developed the strictly controlled mind of the soldier. I allowed no emotion, whether it was love or hate, to influence me

I became strong. And in my strength I became virtually inhuman. I knew people remarked upon it - but they also saw in me the qualities of a great battle leader and, although all avoided my company, socially, they were glad that Erekose led them.

Arjavh and his sister had gone back to their ships and in their ships sailed back to their own land. Now, doubtless, they awaited us, readying themselves for the next battle.

We continued with our original plans and at length were ready to sail for the Outer Islands at World's Edge. The Gateway to the Ghost Worlds. We intended to close that gate.

Then we sailed.

It was a long and arduous sailing that one, before we sighted the bleak cliffs of the Outer Islands and prepared ourselves for the invasion,

Roldero was with me. But it was a grim Roldero, a silent Roldero who had made himself, as I had, into nothing but an instrument of war.

Warily, we sailed in, but, it seemed, the Eldren had known of our coming and had all but deserted their towns. This time there were no women and no children. There were naught but a few handfuls of Eldren, 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, but secretly I knew the meaning. Our troops became possessed of a sense of anticlimax and, although we left no building standing, no Eldren alive, the men could not rid themselves of the notion that they had been thwarted in some way-as an ardent lover is 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 victorious conquest.

I remember few incidents in detail. The days merged one into the other and wherever we went we slew Eldren. It seemed that no Eldren fortress 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, though they feared him.

It was a year of fire and steel and Mernadin seemed at times to be a sea of smoke and blood. The troops were all physically weary, but the spirit of slaughter was in them and that spirit gave them a terrible vitality.

A year of pain and death, and everywhere that the banners of Humanity met the standards of the Eldren, the basilisk standards were 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, lapped at Eldren blood. Fierce dogs, we were. Wild-eyed and panting dogs, sharp-fanged dogs for ever restless for the scent of fresh-spilled blood.

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 carrion birds and sleek-coated jackals.

A year of bloodshed. A year of destruction. 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 my own terrible bewilderment and grief, to burn my own dead humanity.

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 howl and, instead of the disciplined army that had landed at Paphanaal, we were a horde in blood-encrusted armour and dust-ingrained flesh, waving our weapons and galloping wildly upon the 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 spinneys 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 back once 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 then an arrow had pierced his thigh and imbedded 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 crashing into the mud. 'Your betrothed is queen now, Erekose,' 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 whom 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 disturb our warriors, though Katorn himself seemed a little perturbed, perhaps because he had had such great influence over the monarch. But the king had been a puppet of authority, particularly in this last year, for humanity followed a grimmer conqueror whom it regarded with awe.

Dead Erekose, they called me-the vengeful Sword of Humanity.

I did not care what they called me-Reaver, Blood-letter, Berserker-for my dreams no longer plagued me and my ultimate goal came closer and closer.

Until it was the last fortress of the Eldren left undefeated. Then 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, but stared into the darkness, brooding. 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 slopped. Eldren looked down.

My herald raised his golden trumpet to his lips and blew an eerie blast upon it which echoed among the black and white towers of Loos Ptokai.

'Eldren prince!' I called in my dead voice. 'Arjavh or Mernadin, I have come to slay you.'

Then on the battlements over the great main gate I saw Arjavh appear. He looked down at me, a sadness in his strange

'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 oath to rid the 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 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.'

But now my mind had 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. Perhaps the herald was right. Arjavh loved his sister, I knew.

Perhaps Arjavh was aware of my own buried affection for his sister. That affection which I did not now admit but which, of course, secretly contributed to my decision to enter Loos Ptokai.

The herald said in astonishment: 'My lord, Surely you cannot be serious? Once inside the gates, you will be slain. There were stories, once, that you and Prince Arjavh were not on 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. 'I am sure of it. 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 all the ferocity, the hate, the mad battle-anger, seemed to swell 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.'