The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison [best e reader for academics txt] 📗

“I was King Gaslark’s man,” said Gro, as if talking in a dream; “and between a man and a boy near fifteen years I served him true and costly. Yet it was my fortune in all that time and at the ending thereof only to get a beard on my chin and remorse at heart. To what scorned purpose must I plot against him? Pity of Witchland, of Witchland sliding as then into the pit of adverse luck, ’twas that made force upon me. And I served Witchland well: but fate ever fought o’ the other side. I it was that counselled King Gorice XI to draw out from the fight at Kartadza. Yet wanton Fortune trod down the scale for Demonland. I prayed him not wrastle with Goldry in the Foliot Isles. Thou didst back me. Nought but rebukes and threats of death gat I therefrom; but because my redes were set at nought, evil fell upon Witchland. I helped our Lord the King when he conjured and made a sending against the Demons. He loved me therefor and upheld me, but great envy was raised up against me in Carcë for that fact. Yet I bare up, for thy friendship and thy lady wife’s were as bright fires to warm me against all the frosts of their ill-will. And now, for love of thee, I fared with thee to Impland. And here by the Moruna where in old days I wandered in danger and in sorrow, it is fitting I behold at length the emptiness of all my days.”

Therewith Gro fell silent a minute, and then began to say: “O Corund, I’ll strip bare my soul to thee before thou kill me. It is most true that until now, sitting before Eshgrar Ogo, it hath been present to my heart how great an advantage we held against the Demons, and the glory of their defence, so little a strength against us so many, and the great glory of their flinging of us back, these things were a splendour to my soul beholding them. Such glamour hath ever shone to me all my life’s days when I behold great men battling still beneath the bludgeonings of adverse fortune that, howsoever they be mine enemies, it lieth not in my virtue to withhold from admiration of them and well nigh love. But never was I false to thee, nor much less ever thought, as thou most unkindly accusest me, to compass thy destruction.”

“Thou dost whine like a woman for thy life,” said Corund. “Cowardly hounds never stirred pity in me.” Yet he moved not, only looking dourly on Gro.

Gro plucked forth his own sword, and pushed it towards Corund hilt-foremost across the board. “Such words are worse than sword-thrusts betwixt us twain,” said he. “Thou shalt see how I’ll welcome death. The King will praise thee, when thou showest the cause. And it will be sweet news to Corinius and them that have held me in their hate, that thy love hath cast me off, and thou hast rid them of me at last.”

But Corund stirred not. After a space, he filled another cup, and drank, and sat on. And Gro sat motionless before him. At last Corund rose heavily from his seat, and pushing Gro’s sword back across the table, “Thou’dst best to bed,” said he. “But the night air’s o’er shrewd for thine ague. Sleep on my couch tonight.”

The day dawned cold and gray, and with the dawn Corund ordered his lines round about Eshgrar Ogo and sat down for a siege. For ten days he sat before the burg, and nought befell from dawn till night, from night till dawn: only the sentinels walked on the walls and Corund’s folk guarded their lines. On the eleventh day came a bank of fog rolling westward from the Moruna, chill and dank, blotting out the features of the land. Snow fell, and the fog hung on the land, and night came of such a pitchy blackness that even by torchlight a man might not see his hand stretched forth at arm’s length before him. Five days the fog held. On the fifth night, it being the twenty-fourth of November, in the darkness of the third hour after midnight, the alarm was sounded and Corund summoned by a runner from the north with word that a sally was made from Eshgrar Ogo, and the lines bursten through in that quarter, and fighting going forward in the mirk. Corund was scarce harnessed and gotten forth into the night, when a second runner came hotfoot from the south with tidings of a great fight thereaway. All was confounded in the dark, and nought certain, save that the Demons were broken out from Eshgrar Ogo. In a space, as Corund came with his folk to the northern quarter and joined in the fight, came a message from his son Heming that Spitfire and a number with him were broken out at the other side and gotten away westward, and a great band chasing him back towards Outer Impland; and therewith that more than an hundred Demons were surrounded and penned in by the shore of the lakes, and the burg entered and taken by Corund’s folk; but of Juss and Brandoch Daha no certain news, save that they were not of Spitfire’s company, but were with those against whom Corund went in person, having fared forth northaway. So went the battle through the night. Corund himself had sight of Juss, and exchanged shots with him with twirl-spears in a lifting of the fog toward dawn, and a son of his bare witness of Brandoch Daha in that same quarter, and had gotten a great wound from him.

When night was past, and the Witches returned from the pursuit, Corund straitly questioned his officers, and went himself about the battlefield hearing each man’s story and viewing the slain. Those Demons that