The Worm Ouroboros, Eric Rücker Eddison [epub ebook reader txt] 📗

more I would know,” said Juss. “How great a following bath

he in Impland?”

 

“The greatest strength that he can make,” answered Mivarsh, “of devils

ultramontane is as I think two score hundred. Many Imps beside will

follow him, but they have but our country weapons.”

 

Lord Brandoch Daha took Juss by the arm and went forth with him into

the night. The frosted grass crunched under their tread: strange stars

blinked in the south in a windy space betwixt cloud and sleeping

earth, Achernar near the meridian bedimming all lesser fires with his

pure radiance.

 

“So cometh Corund upon us as an eagle out of the sightless blue,” said

Brandoch Daha, “with twelve times our forces to let us the way to the

Moruna, and all Impland like a spaniel smiling at his heel; if indeed

this simple soul say true, as I think he doth.”

 

“Thou fallest all of a holiday mood,” said Juss, “at the first

scenting of this great hazard.”

 

“O Juss,” cried Brandoch Daha, “thine own breath lighteneth at it, and

thy words come more sprightly forth. Are not all lands, all airs, one

country unto us, so there be great doings afoot to keep bright our

swords?”

 

Juss said, “Ere we sleep I will inform Zeldornius how the wind

shifteth. He must face both ways now, till this field be cut. This

battle must not go against him, for his enemies be engaged (if Mivarsh

say true) to give the help of their swords to Corund.”

 

So fared they to Zeldornius’s tent, and Juss said by the way, “Of this

be satisfied: Corund bareth not blade on the hills of Salapanta. The

King hath intelligencers to keep him advertised of all enchanted

circles of the world, and well he knoweth what influences move here,

and with what danger to themselves outlanders draw sword here, as

witness the doom fulfilled these nine years by these three captains.

Therefore will Corund, instructed in these things by his master that

sent him, look to deal with us otherwhere than in this charmed corner

of the earth. And he were as well take a bear by the tooth as meddle

in the fight that now impendeth, and so bring upon him these three

seasoned armies joined in one for his destruction.”

 

They passed the guard with the watchword, and waked Zeldornius and

told him all. And he, muffled in his great faded cloak, went forth to

see guards were set and all sure against an onslaught from either

side. And standing by his tent to give good night to those lords of

Demonland, he said, “It likes me better so. I ever was a fighter; so,

one fight more.”

 

The morrow dawned and passed uneventful, and the morrow’s morrow. But

on the third morning after the coming of Mivarsh, behold, east and

west, great armies marching from the plains, and Zeldornius’s array

drawn up to meet them on the ridge, with weapons gleaming and horses

champing and trumpets blowing the call of battle. No greetings were

betwixt them, nor so much as a message of challenge or defiance, but

Jalcanaius with his black riders rushed to the onset from the west and

Helteranius from the east. But Zeldornius, like a gray old wolf,

snapping now this way now that, stemmed the tide of their onslaught.

So began the battle great and fell, and continued the livelong day.

Thrice on either side Zeldornius went forth with a great strength of

chosen men, in so much that his enemies fled before him as the

partridge doth before the sparrowhawk; and thrice did Helteranius and

thrice Jalcanaius Fostus rally and hurl him back, mounting the ridge

anew.

 

But when it drew near to evening, and the dark day darkened toward

night, the battle ceased, dying down suddenly into silence. Those

lords of Demonland came down from their tower, and walked among the

heaps of dead men slain toward a place of slabby rock in the neck of

the ridge. Here, alone on that field, Zeldornius leaned upon his

spear, gazing downward in a study, his arm cast about the neck of his

old brown horse who hung his head and sniffed the ground. Through a

rift in the western clouds the sun glared forth; but his beams were

not so red as the ling and bent of Salapanta field.

 

As Juss and his companions drew near, no sound was heard save from the

fortalice behind them: a discordant plucking of a harp, and the voice

of Mivarsh where he walked and harped before the walls, singing this

ditty:

 

The hag is astride

This night for to ride;

The devill and shee together:

Through thick and through thin.

Now out and then in.

Though ne’er so foule be the weather.

A thorn or a burr

She takes for a spurre.

With a lash of a bramble she rides now;

Through brakes and through bryars.

O’re ditches and mires.

She followes the spirit that guides now.

No beast for his food

Dares now range the wood.

But husht in his laire he lies lurking;

While mischiefs, by these.

On land and on seas.

At noone of night are a working.

The storme will arise

And trouble the skies;

This night, and more for the wonder.

The ghost from the tomb

Affrighted shall come.

Cal’d out by the clap of the thunder.

 

When they were come to Zeldornius, the Lord Juss spake saying, “O most

redoubtable Zeldornius, renowned in war, surely thy prognostications

by the moon were true. Behold the noble victory thou hast obtained

upon thine enemies.”

 

But Zeldornius answered him not, still gazing downwards before his

feet. And there was Helteranius fallen, the sword of Jalcanaius Fostus

standing in his heart, and his right hand grasping still his own sword

that had given Jalcanaius his bane-sore.

 

So looked they awhile on those two great captains slain. And

Zeldornius said, “Speak not comfortably to me of victory, O Juss. So

long as that sword, and that, had his master alive, I did not more

desire mine own safety than their destruction who with me in days gone

by made conquest of wide Impland. And see with what a poisoned

violence they laboured my undoing, and in what an unexpected ruin are

they suddenly broken and gone.” And as one grown into a deep sadness

be said, “Where were all heroical parts but in Helteranius? and a man

might make a garment for the moon sooner than fit the o’er-leaping

actions of great Jalcanaius, who now leaveth but his body to bedung

that earth that was lately shaken at his terror. I have waded in red

blood to the knee; and in this hour, in my old years, the world is

become for me a vision only and a mock-show.”

 

Therewith he looked on the Demons, and there was that in his eyes that

stayed their speech.

 

In a while he spake again, saying, “I sware unto you my furtherance if

I prevailed. But now is mine army passed away as wax wasteth before

the fire, and I wait the dark ferryman who tarrieth for no man. Yet,

since never have I wrote mine obligations in sandy but in marble

memories, and since victory is mine, receive these gifts: and first

thou, O Brandoch Daha, my sword, since before thou wast of years

eighteen thou wast accounted the mightiest among men-at-arms. Mightily

may it avail thee, as me in time gone by. And unto thee, O Spitfire, I

give this cloak. Old it is, yet may it stand thee in good stead, since

this virtue it bath that he who weareth it shall not fall alive into

the hand of his enemies. Wear it for my sake. But unto thee, O Juss,

give I no gift, for rich thou art of all good gifts: only my good will

give I unto thee, ere earth gape for me.”

 

So they thanked him well. And he said, “Depart from me, since now

approacheth that which must complete this day’s undoing.”

 

So they fared back to the spy-fortalice, and night came down on the

hills. A great wind moaning out of the hueless west tore the clouds as

a ragged garment, revealing the lonely moon that fled naked betwixt

them. As the Demons looked backward in the moonlight to where

Zeldornius stood gazing on the dead, a noise as of thunder made the

firm land tremble and drowned the howling of the wind. And they beheld

how earth gaped for Zeldornius.

 

After that, the dark shut down athwart the moon, and night and silence

hung on the field of Salapanta.

X THE MARCHLANDS OF THE MORUNA

Of the journey of the demons from Salapanta to

Eshgrar Ogo: wherein is set down concerning

the Lady of Ishnain Nemartra, and other

notable matters.

 

MIVARSH FAZ came betimes on the morrow to the lords of Demonland, and

found them ready for the road. So he asked them where their journey

lay, and they answered, “East.”

 

“Eastward,” said Mivarsh, “all ways lead to the Moruna. None may go

thither and not die.”

 

But they laughed and answered him, “Do not too narrowly define our

power, sweet Mivarsh, restraining it to thy capacities. Know that our

journey is a matter determined of, and it is fixed with nails of

diamond to the wall of inevitable necessity.”

 

They took leave of him and went their ways with their small army. For

four days they journeyed through deep woods carpeted with the leaves

of a thousand autumns, where at midmost noon twilight dwelt among

hushed woodland noises, and solemn eyeballs glared nightly between the

tree-trunks, gazing on the Demons as they marched or took their rest.

 

The fifth day, and the sixth and the seventh, they journeyed by the

southern margin of a gravelly sea, made all of sand and gravel and no

drop of water, yet ebbing and flowing away with great waves as another

sea doth, never standing still and never at rest. And always by day

and night as they came through the desert was a great noise very

hideous and a sound as it were of tambourines and trumpets; yet was

the place solitary to the eye, and no living thing afoot there save

their company faring to the east.

 

On the eighth day they left the shore of that waterless sea and came

by broken rocky ground to the descent to a wide vale, shelterless and

unfruitful, with the broad stony bed of a little river winding in the

strath. Here, looking eastward, they beheld in the lustre of a late

bright-shining sun a castle of red stone on a terrace of the fell-side

beyond the valley. Juss said, “We can be there before nightfall, and

there will we take guesting.” When they drew near they were ware,

betwixt sunset and moonlight, of one sitting on a boulder in their

path about a furlong from the castle, as if gazing on them and

awaiting their coming. But when they came to the boulder there was no

such person. So they passed on their way toward the castle, and when

they looked behind them, lo, there was he sitting on the boulder

bearing his head in his hands: a strange thing, which would cause any

man to abhor.

 

The castle gate stood open, and they entered in, and so by the courtyard to a great ball, with the board set as for a banquet, and bright

fires and an hundred candles burning in the still air; but no living

thing was there to be seen, nor voice heard in all that castle. Lord

Brandoch Daha said, “In this land to fail of marvels only for an hour

were the strangest marvel. Banquet we lightly and so to bed.”