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

he

wan the sefight but I shall satisfy your Majestie to the contrary. Gro

followeth the wars in as goode sort as his lean spare bodey will wel

beare. Of Gallandus I nedes must saye he do meddyl too much in my

counsailles, still desyring me do thus and thus but I will nat.

Heretofore in the like unrespective manner he hath now and then used

mee which I have swolewed but will not no more. Who if hee go about to

calumniate me in any thinge I praye you Lorde let mee know it though I

despise baithe him and all such. And in acknowledgement of Your highe

favors unto meward do kiss your Majesties hand.

 

“Most humbly and reverently untoe my Lorde the Kynge, undir my seal.

 

“CORSUS.”

 

The King put up the writing in his bosom. “Bring me Corsus’s cup,”

said he.

 

They did so, and the King said, “Fill it with Thramnian wine. Drop me

an emerald in it to spawn luck i’ the cup, and drink him fortune and

wisdom in victory.”

 

Prezmyra, that had watched the King till now as a mother watches her

child in the crisis of a fever, rose up radiant in her seat, crying,

“Victory!” And all they fell a-shouting and smiting on the boards till

the roofbeams shook with their great shouting, while the King drank

first and passed on the cup that all might drink in turn.

 

But Gorice the King sat dark among them as a cliff of serpentine that

frowns above dancing surges of a springtide summer sea.

 

When the women left the banquet hall the Lady Prezmyra came to the

King and said, “Your brow is too dark, Lord, if indeed this news is

all good that lights your heart and mind from withinward.”

 

The King answered and said, “Madam, it is very good news. Yet remember

that hard it is to lift a full cup without spilling.”

 

Now was summer worn and harvest brought in, and on the twenty-seventh

day after these tidings aforewrit came another ship of Witchland out

of the west sailing over the teeming deep, and rowed on a full tide up

Druima and through the Ergaspian Mere, and so anchored below Carcë an

hour before supper time. That was a calm clear sunshine evening, and

King Gorice rode home from his hunting at that instant when the ship

made fast by the water-gate. And there was the Lord Gro aboard of her;

and the face of him as he came up out of the ship and stood to greet

the King was the colour of quicklime a-slaking.

 

The King looked narrowly at him, then greeting him with much outward

show of carelessness and pleasure made him go with him to the King’s

own lodgings. There the King made Gro drink a great stoup of red wine,

and said to him, “I am all of a muck sweat from the hunting. Go in

with me to my baths and tell me all while I bathe me before supper.

Princes of all men be in greatest danger, for that men dare not

acquaint them with their own peril. Thou look’st prodigious. Know that

shouldst thou proclaim to me all my fleet and army in Demonland

brought to sheer destruction, that should not dull my stomach for the

feast tonight. Witchland is not so poor I might not pay back such a

loss thrice and four times and yet have money in my purse.”

 

So speaking, the King was come with Gro into his great bath chamber,

walled and floored with green serpentine, with dolphins carved in the

same stone to belch water into the baths that were lined with white

marble and sunken in the floor, both wide and deep, the hot bath on

the left and the cold bath, many times greater, on the right as they

entered the chamber. The King dismissed all his attendants, and made

Gro sit on a bench piled with cushions above the hot bath, and drink

more wine. And the King stripped off his jerkin of black cowhide and

his hose and his shirt of white Beshtrian wool and went down into the

steaming bath. Gro looked with wonder on the mighty limbs of Gorice

the King, so lean and yet so strong to behold, as if he were built all

of iron; and a great marvel it was how the King, when he had put off

his raiment and royal apparel and went down stark naked into the bath,

yet seemed to have put off not one whit of his kingliness and the

majesty and dread which belonged to him.

 

So when he had plunged awhile in the swirling waters of the bath, and

soaped himself from head to foot and plunged again, the King lay back

luxuriously in the water and said to Gro, “Tell me of Corsus and his

sons, and of Laxus and Gallandus, and of all my men west over seas, as

thou shouldest tell of those whose life or death in our conceit

importeth as much as that of a scarab fly. Speak and fear not, keeping

nothing back nor glozing over nothing. Only that should make me

dreadful to thee if thou shouldst practise to deceive me.”

 

Gro spake and said, “My Lord the King, you have letters, I think, from

Corsus that have told you how we came to Demonland, and how we gat a

victory over Volle in the sea-fight, and landed at Grunda, and fought

two battles against Vizz and overthrew him in the last, and he is

dead.”

 

“Didst thou see these letters?” asked the King.

 

Gro answered, “Ay.”

 

“Is it a true tale they tell me?”

 

Gro answered, “Mainly true, O King, though somewhat now and then he

windeth truth to his turn, swelling overmuch his own achievement. As

at Grunda, where he maketh too great the Demons’ army, that by ajust

computation were fewer than us, and the battle was not ours nor

theirs, for while our left held them by the sea they stormed our camp

on the right. And well I think ‘twas to enveagle us into country that

should be likelier to his purpose that Vizz fell back toward Owlswick

in the night. But as touching the battle of Crossby Outsikes Corsus

braggeth not too much. That was greatly fought and greatly devised by

him, who also slew Vizz with his own hands in the thick of the battle,

and made a great victory over them and scattered all their strength,

coming upon them at unawares and taking them upon advantage.”

 

So saying Gro stretched forth his delicate white fingers to the goblet

at his side and drank. “And now, O King,” said he, leaning forward

over his knees and running his fingers through the black perfumed

curls above his ears, “I am to tell you the uprising of those

discontents that infected all our fortunes and confounded us all. Now

came Gallandus with some few men down from Breakingdale, leaving his

main force of fourteen hundred men or so to hold the Stile as was

agreed upon aforetime. Now Gallandus had advertisement of Spitfire

come out of the west country where he was sojourning when we came into

Demonland, disporting himself in the mountains with hunting of the

bears that do there inhabit, but now come hot-foot eastward and

agathering of men at Galing. And on Gallandus’s urgent asking, was

held a council of war three days after Crossby Outsikes, wherein

Gallandus set forth his counsel that we should fare north to Galing

and disperse them.

 

“All thought well of this counsel, save Corsus. But he took it mighty

ill, being stubborn set to carry out his predetermined purpose, which

was to follow up this victory of Crossby Outsikes by so many cruel

murthers, rapes, and burnings, up and down the country side in Upper

and Lower Tivarandardale and down by Onwardlithe and the southern

seaboard, as should show those vermin he was their master whom they

did require, and the scourge in your hand, O King, that must scourge

them to the bare bone.

 

“To which Gallandus making answer that the preparations at Galing did

argue something to be done and not afar off, and that ‘This were a

pretty matter, if Owlswick and Drepaby shall be able to enforce us

cast our eyes over our shoulders while those before us’ (meaning in

Galing) ‘strike us in the brains’; Corsus answereth most unhandsomely,

‘I will not satisfy myself with this intelligence until I find it more

soundly seconded.’ Nor would he listen, but said that this was his

mind, and all we should abide by it or an ill thing should else befall

us: that this southeastern corner of the land being gained with great

terror and cruelty the neck of the wars in Demonland should then be

broken, and all the others whether in Galing or otherwhere could not

choose but die like dogs; that ‘twas pure folly, because of the

hardness and naughty ways of the country, to set upon Galing; and that

he would quickly show Gallandus he was lord there. So was the council

broke up in great discontent. And Gallandus abode before Owlswick,

which as thou knowest, O King, is a mighty strong place, seated on an

arm of the land that runneth out into the sea beside the harbour, and

a paven way goeth thereto that is covered with the sea save at low

tide of a springtide. And we drew great store of provisions thither

against a siege if such should befall us. But Corsus with his main

forces went south about the country, murthering and ravishing, on his

way to the new house of Goldry Bluszco at Drepaby, giving out that

from henceforth should folk speak no more of Drepaby Mire and Drepaby

Combust that the Ghouls did burn, but both should shortly be burnt

alike as two cinders.”

 

“Ay,” said the King, coming out of the bath, “and did he burn it so?”

 

Gro answered, “He did, O King.”

 

The King lifted his arms above his head and plunged head foremost into

the great cold swimming bath. Coming forth anon, he took a towel to

dry himself, and holding an end of it in either hand came and stood by

Gro, the towel rushing back and forth behind his shoulders, and said,

“Proceed, tell me more.”

 

“Lord,” said Gro, “so it was that they in Owlswick gave up the place

at last unto Gallandus, and Corsus came back from the burning of

Drepaby Mire. All the folk in that part of Demonland had he brought to

misery in her most sharp condition. But now was he to find by sour

experience what that neglect had bred him when he went not north to

Galing as Gallandus had counselled him to do.

 

“For now was word of Spitfire marching out from Galing with an hundred

and ten score foot and two hundred and fifty horse. Upon which tidings

we placed ourselves in very warlike fashion and moved north to meet

them, and on the last morn of August fell in with their army in a

place called the Rapes of Brima in the open parts of Lower

Tivarandardale. All we were blithe at heart, for we held them at an

advantage both in numbers (for we were more than three thousand four

hundred fighting men, whereof were four hundred a-horseback), and in

the goodness of our fighting stead, being perched on the edge of a

little valley looking down on Spitfire and his folk. There we abode

for a time, watching what he would do, till Corsus grew weary of this

and said, ‘We are more than they. I will march north and then east

across the head of the valley and so cut