The Eternal Champion

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE THE ATTACK

And the days continued to pass until they began to get chill and it was plain that winter was coming. If winter arrived, we would be safe until spring, for the invaders would be fools to attempt a heavy siege in winter.

They realised this too, it seemed. lolinda must have come to a decision. She gave them permission to attack Loos Ptokai.

After much bickering among themselves, I learned, the marshals elected one of themselves, the most experienced, to act as their War Champion.

They elected Count Roldero.

The siege commenced in earnest.

Their massive siege engines were brought forward, including the giant cannon known as the Firedrakes. Great black things of iron, decorated with fierce reliefs.

Roldero rode up and his herald announced his presence and I went to speak with him from the battlements.

'Greetings, Erekose the Traitor!' he called. 'We have decided to punish you-and all the Eldren within these walls. We would have slaughtered the Eldren cleanly, but now we intend to put to slow death all those we capture.'

I was saddened.

'Roldero, Roldero,' I begged. 'We were friends once. You were perhaps the only true friend I had. We drank together and fought together, made jokes together. We were comrades, Roldero. Good comrades.'

His horse fidgeted beneath him, pawing at the earth.

'That was an age ago,' he said without looking up at me. 'An age ago.'

'Little more than a year, Roldero…'

'But we are not those two friends any longer, Erekose.' He looked up, shielding his eyes with a gauntletted hand. I saw that his face had grown old and it bore many new scars. Doubtless I looked as different in my own way. 'We are different men,' Roldero said, and wrenching at his reins drove his horse away, digging his long spurs savagely into its flanks.

Now there was nothing we could do but fight.

The Firedrakes boomed and their solid shot slammed against the walls. Blazing fireballs from captured Eldren artillery screamed over the walls and into the streets. These were followed by thousands of arrows that came in a black shower.

And then a million men rushed against our handful of defenders.

We replied with what cannon we had, but we relied mainly on archers to meet that first wave, for we were short of shot.

And we repelled them, after ten hours of fighting. They fell back.

Then, next day and the day after, they continued to attack. But Loos Ptokai, the ancient capital of Mernadin, Loos Ptokai held firm during those first days.

Battalion upon battalion of yelling warriors mounted the siege towers and we again replied with arrows, with molten metal and, economically, with the fire-spewing cannon of the Eldren. We fought bravely, Arjavh and I leading the defenders and, whenever they sighted me, the warriors of Humanity screamed for vengeance and died striving for the privilege of slaying me.

We fought side by side, like brothers, Arjavh and I, but our Eldren warriors were tiring and, after a week of constant barrage, we began to realise that we could not much longer hold back that tide of steel.

That night we sat together after Ermizhad had gone to bed. We massaged our aching muscles and we spoke little.

Then I said: 'We shall all be dead soon, Arjavh. You and I. Ermizhad. The rest of your folk.'

He continued to dig his fingers into his shoulder, kneading it to loosen it. 'Yes,' he said. 'Soon.'

I wanted him to raise the subject that was on the tip of my tongue, but he would not.

The next day, scenting our defeat, the warriors of Humanity came at us with greater vigour than ever. The Firedrakes were brought in closer and began steadily to bombard the main gates.

I saw Roldero, mounted on his great black horse, directing the operation and there was something about his stance that made me realise that he was sure he would break our defences that

I turned to Arjavh who stood beside me on the wall and I was about to speak when several of the Firedrakes boomed in unison. The black metal shook, the shot screamed from their snouts, hit the main gates, which were of metal and split the left one down the middle. It did not fall, but it was so badly weakened that one more cannonade would bring it completely down.

'Arjavh!' I yelled. 'We must break out the old weapons. We must arm the Eldren!'

His face was pale, but he shook his head.

'Arjavh! We must! Another hour and we'll be driven off these battlements! Another three and we'll be overwhelmed entirely!' He looked to where Roldero was directing the cannoneers and this time he did not remonstrate. He nodded. 'Very well. I agreed that you would decide. Come.'

He led me down the steps.

I only hoped he had not overestimated their power.

Arjavh led me to the vaults that lay at the core of the city. We moved along bare corridors of polished black marble, lighted by small bulbs which burned with a greenish light. We came to a door of dark metal and he pressed a stud beside it. The door moved open and we entered an elevator which bore us yet further downwards.

I was, again, astonished at the Eldren. They had deliberately given up all these marvels because of some strange sense of justice.

Then we stepped into a great hall full of weirdly wrought machines that looked as if they had just been manufactured. They stretched for nearly half a mile ahead of us.

'These are the weapons,' said Arjavh hollowly.

Around the high walls were arranged hand-guns of various kinds, rifles and things that looked to John Baker's eye like antitank weapons of some sort. There were squad machines on caterpillar treads that really did look like ultra-streamlined tanks, with glass cabins and couches for a single man to lie flat upon and operate the controls. I was surprised that there were no flying machines of any kind-or none that I recognised as such. I mentioned this to Arjavh.

'Flying machines! It would be interesting if such things could be invented. But I do not think it is possible. We have never, in all our history, been able to develop a machine that will safely stay in the air for any length of time.'

I was amazed at this strange gap in their technology, but I commented on it no further.

'Now you have seen these fierce things,' he said, 'do you still feel you should use them?'

But he doubtless thought such things were not familiar to me. They were not so very different, in general appearance, to the war machines John Daker knew. And, in my dreams, I had seen much stranger weapons.

'Let us ready them,' I said to him.

We returned to the surface and there instructed our warriors to bring the weapons up.

Roldero had smashed in one of our gates now and we had had to bring up cannon to defend it, but the warriors of Humanity were beginning to press in and some hand-to-hand fighting was going on at the approach to the gates.

Night was beginning to fall. I hoped that, in spite of their gain, the human army would fall back at dark and give us the time we needed. Through the gap in the gate I saw Roldero urging his men in. Doubtless he hoped to consolidate his advantage before nightfall.

I ordered more men to the breach.

Already I was beginning to doubt my own decision.

Perhaps Arjavh was right and it was criminal to let the power of the ancient weapons loose. But then, I thought, what does it matter? Better destroy them and half the planet than let them destroy the beauty that was the Eldren.

I was forced to smile at this reaction in myself. Arjavh would not have approved of it. It was alien to him, such a thought.

I saw Roldero bring in more men to counter our forces and I swung into the saddle of a nearby horse, spurring it towards the crucial breach.

I drew my poison sword, Kanajana, and I voiced my battle-cry-the battle-cry that only a short while ago had urged the warriors I attacked into war! They heard it and, as I suspected, were disconcerted.

I leapt my horse over the heads of my own men and confronted Roldero. He looked at me in astonishment and pulled his horse up short.

'Would you fight, Roldero?' I asked.

He shrugged. 'Aye. I'll fight you, traitor.'

And he rushed at me with his reins looped over his arm and both hands around the hilt of his great sword. It whistled over my head as I ducked.

Everywhere about us, beneath the broken walls of Loos Ptokai, human and Eldren fought desperately in the fading light.

Roldero was tired, more tired than I was, but he battled valiantly on and I could not get through his guard. His sword caught me a blow on my helmet and I reeled and struck back and caught him on the helmet. My helmet stayed on, but his was half pulled off. He wrenched it off all the way and flung it aside. His hair had turned completely white since I had last seen him bareheaded.

His face was flushed and his eyes bright, his lips drawn back over his teeth. He tried to stab his sword through my visor, but I ducked under the blow and he fell forward in his saddle and I brought up my sword and drove it down into his breastbone.

He groaned and then his face lost all its anger and he gasped: 'Now we can be friends again, Erekose…' and he died.

I looked down at him as he collapsed over the neck of his sword. I remembered his kindness, the wine he had brought me to help me sleep, the advice he had tried to give me. And I remembered him pushing the dead king from his saddle. Yet, Count Roldero was a good man. A good man forced by history to do evil.

His black horse turned and began to canter back towards the count's distant pavilion.

I raised my sword in salute and then shouted to the humans who fought on. 'Look, warriors of Humanity! Look! Your War Champion is defeated!'

The sun was setting.

The warriors began to withdraw, looking at me in hatred as I laughed at them, but not daring to attack me while the bloody sword Kanajana was in my hand.

One of them did call back, however.

'We are not leaderless, Erekose, if that is what you think. We have the Queen to send us into battle. She has come to be witness of your destruction tomorrow!'

lolinda was with the besiegers!

I thought swiftly and then yelled: 'Tell your mistress to come tomorrow to our walls. Come at dawn to parley!'

Through the night we worked to reinforce the gate and to position the newfound weapons. They were raised wherever they would fit and the Eldren soldiers were armed with the handweapons.

I wondered if lolinda would get the message and, if she did get it, whether she would deign to come.

She came. She came with her remaining marshals in all their proud panoply of war. That panoply seemed so insignificant now, against the power of the ancient Eldren weapons.

We had set one of the new cannon pointing up at the sky so that we could demonstrate its fearful potential.

lolinda's voice drifted up to us.

'Greetings, Eldren-and greetings to your human pet. Is he a well-trained pet now?'

'Greetings, lolinda,' I said, showing my face. 'You begin to show your father's penchant for poor insults. Let's waste no further time.'

'I am already wasting time,' she said. 'We are going to destroy you all today.'

'Perhaps not,' I said. 'For we offer you a truce-and peace.'

lolinda laughed aloud. 'You offer us peace, traitor! You should be begging for peace-though you'll get none!'

'I warn you, lolinda,' I shouted desperately. 'I warn you all. We have fresh weapons. Weapons which once came near to destroying this whole Earth! Watch!'

I gave the order to fire the giant cannon.

An Eldren warrior depressed a stud on the controls.

There came a humming from the cannon and all at once a tremendous blinding bolt of golden energy gouted from its snout. The, heat alone blistered our skins and we fell back, shielding our eyes.

Horses shrieked and reared. The marshals' faces were grey and their mouths gaped. They fought to control their mounts. Only lolinda sat firmly in her saddle, apparently calm.

'That is what we offer you if you will not have peace,' I shouted. 'We have a dozen like it and there are others that are different, but as powerful, and we have hand-cannon which can kill a hundred men at a sweep. What say you now?'

lolinda raised her face and stared directly up at me.

'We fight,' she said.

'lolinda,' I pleaded. 'For our old love-for your own sake- do not fight. We will not harm you. You can go home, all of you, and live in security for the rest of your lives. I mean it.'

'Security!' she laughed bitterly. 'Security, while such weapons as these exist!'

'You must believe me, lolinda!'

'No,' she said, 'Humanity will fight to the end and, because the Good One favours us, doubtless we will win. We are pledged to wage war on sorcery and there was never greater sorcery than what we have seen today.'

'It is not sorcery. It is science. It is only like your cannon, but more powerful.'

'Sorcery!' Everyone was murmuring it now. They were like primitives, these fools.

'If we continue to fight,' I said, 'it will be a fight to the finish. The Eldren would prefer to let you go, once this battle is won. But if we win, I intend to clean the planet of your kind, just as you swore you would do to the Eldren. Take the chance. A peace! Be sane.'

'We will die by sorcery,' she said, 'if we have to. But we will die fighting it.'

I was too weary to continue. 'Then let us finish it,' I told her.

lolinda wheeled her horse away and, with her marshals in her wake, galloped back to order the attack.

I did not see lolinda perish. There were so many that perished that day.

They came and we met them. They were helpless against our weapons. Energy spouted from the guns and seared into their ranks. We all felt pain as we fired the howling waves of force which swept across them and destroyed them, turning proud men and beasts to blackened rubble.

We did as they had predicted we would do. We destroyed them all.

I pitied them as they came on, the cream of Humanity's menfolk.

It took an hour to destroy a million warriors.

One hour.

When the extermination was over, I was filled with a strange emotion which I could not, then and cannot now define. It was a mixture of grief, relief and triumph. I mourned for lolinda. She was somewhere there in the heap of blackened bone and smouldering flesh. One piece of ruined meat among many, her beauty gone in the same instant as her life. At least, I thought, that might be something.

And it was then that I made my final decision. Or did I, indeed, make it at all? Was it not what I had been meant to do?

Or was it the crime I had mentioned earlier? Was this the crime I committed that doomed me to be what I was?

Was I right?

In spite of Arjavh's constant antagonism to my plan, I ordered the machines out of Loos Ptokai and, mounted in one of them, ordered them overland.

This is what I did:

Two months before I had been responsible for winning the cities of Mernadin for Humanity. Now I reclaimed them in the name of the Eldren.

I reclaimed them in a terrible way. I destroyed every human being occupying them.

A week and we were at Paphanaal where the fleets of mankind lay at anchor in the great harbour.

I destroyed those fleets as I destroyed the garrison-men, women and children perished. None were spared.

And then, for many of the machines were amphibious, I led the Eldren across the sea to the Two Continents, though Arjavh and Ermizhad were not with me.

These cities fell-Noonos of the jewel-studded towers fell. Tarkar fell. The wondrous cities of the wheatlands, Stalaco, Calodemia, Mooros and Ninadoon, all fell. Wedma, Shilaal, Sinaan and others fell, crumbling in an inferno of gouting energy. They fell in a few hours.

In Necranal, the pastel-coloured city of the mountain, five million citizens died and all that was left of Necranal was the scorched, smoking mountain itself.

But I was thorough. Not merely the great cities were destroyed. Villages were destroyed. Hamlets were destroyed. Towns and farms were destroyed.

I found some people hiding in caves. The caves were destroyed.

I destroyed forests where they might flee. I destroyed stones that they might creep under.

I would doubtless have destroyed every blade of grass if Arjavh had not come hurrying over the ocean to stop me.

He was horrified at what I had done. He begged me to stop.

I stopped.

There was no more killing to do.

We made our way back to the coast and we paused to look at the smouldering mountainside that had been Necranal.

'For one woman's wrath,' said Prince Arjavh, 'and another's love, you did this?'

I shrugged. 'I do not know. I think I did it for the only kind of peace that will last. I know my race too well. This Earth would have been for ever rent by strife of some kind. I had to decide who best deserved to live. If they had destroyed the Eldren, they would have soon turned on each other, as you know. And they fight for such empty things, too. For power over their fellows, for a bauble, for an extra acre of land that they will not till, for possession of a woman who doesn't want them…'

'You speak in the present tense,' Arjavh said quietly. 'Really, Erekose, I do not think you know yet what you have done.'

I sighed. 'But it is done,' I said.

'Yes,' he murmured. He gripped my arm. 'Come, friend. Back to Mernadin. Leave this stink behind. Ermizhad awaits you.'

I was an empty man, then, bereft of emotion. I followed him towards the river. It moved sluggishly now. It was choked with black dust.

'I think I did right,' I said. 'It was not my will, you know, but something else. I think it might have been what I was really brought here to do. There are forces, I think, whose nature we shall never know, can only dream of. I think it was another will than mine which dragged me here-not Rigenos. Rigenos, like me, was a puppet-a tool used, as I was used. It was fated that Humanity should die on this planet.'

'It is better that you think that,' he said. 'Come now. Let us go home.'