The Worm Ouroboros - E. R. Eddison (best books to read non fiction txt) 📗

so great a stream of shot and steel reeled first forward then backward then forward again upon us, confounded in a vast confusion. I trow new strength came to our arms; I trow our swords opened their mouths. For northward we beheld the ensign of Galing streaming like a blazing star; and my Lord’s self in a moment, high advanced above the rout, and Zigg, and Astar, and hundreds of our horse, hewing their way toward us whiles we hewed towards them. And now was reaping time for us, and time of payment for all those weary bloody hours we had held on to life with our teeth among the tents on Krothering Side, while they o’ the other part, my Lord and his, had with all the odds of the ground against them painfully and yard by yard fought out the fight to victory. And now, ere we well wist of it, the day was won, and the victory ours, and the enemy broken and put to so great a rout as hath not been seen by living man.

“That false king Corinius, after he had tarried to see the end of the battle, fled with a few of his men out of the great slaughter, and as it later appeared gat him ashipboard in Aurwath harbour and with three ships or four escaped to sea. But the most of their fleet was burned there in the harbour to save it from our hands.

“My Lord gave command to take up the wounded and tend ’em, friend and foe alike. Among them was King Laxus ta’en up, stunned with a mace-blow or some such. So they brought him before the lords where they rested a little way down the Side above the home meads of Krothering.

“He looked ’em all in the eye, most proud and soldier-like. Then a saith unto my Lord, ‘It may be pain, but no shame to us to be vanquished after so equal and so great a fight. Herein only do I blame my ill luck, that it denied me fall in battle. Thou mayst now, O Juss, strike off my head for the treason I wrought you three years ago. And since I know thee of a courteous and noble nature, I’ll not scorn to ask of thee this courtesy, not to tarry but take it now.’

“My Lord stood there like a warhorse after a breather. He took him by the hand. ‘O Laxus,’ saith he, ‘I give thee not thy head only, but thy sword;’ and here a gave it him hilt-foremost. ‘For thy dealings with us in the battle of Kartadza, let time that hath an art to make dust of all things so do with the memory of these. Since then, thou hast shown thyself still our noble enemy; and so shall we account thee still.’

“Therewith my Lord commanded bring King Laxus down to the sea, and ship him aboard of a boat, for Corinius still held off the land with his ships, waiting no doubt to see if he or any other of his folk could yet be saved.

“But as King Laxus was upon parting, my Lord Brandoch Daha, speaking with great show of carelessness as of some trifling matter a had by chance called to mind, ‘My lord,’ saith he, ‘I ne’er ask favour of any man. Only in a manner of return of courtesies, methought thou mightest be willing to bear my salutations to Corinius, sith I’ve no other messenger.’

“Laxus answereth he would freely do it. Then saith his highness, ‘Say to him I will not blame him that he abode us not i’ the field after the battle was lost, for that had been a simple part, flatly ’gainst all maxims of right soldiership, and but to cast his life away. But freakish Fortune I blame, that twined us one from the other when we should have dealt together this day. He hath borne him in my halls, I am let to know, more i’ the fashion of a swine or a beastly ape than a man. Pray him come ashore ere you sail home, that I and he, with no man else to make betwixt us, may cast up our account. We swear him peace and grith and a safe conduct back to’s ships if he prevail against me or if I so use him that he cry for mercy. If he’ll not take this offer, then is he a dastard; and the whole world shall so acclaim him.’

“ ‘Sir,’ saith Laxus, ‘I’ll punctually discharge thy message.’

“Whether he did so or no, father, I know not. But if he did, it seemeth it was little to Corinius’s liking. For no sooner had his ship ta’en Laxus aboard, than she hoised sail and put out into the deep, and so goodbye.”

The young man ceased, and they were all three silent awhile. A faint breeze rippled the foliage of the oakwoods of Tivarandardale. The sun was down behind the stately Thornbacks, and the whole sky from bourne to bourne was alight with the sunset glory. Dappled clouds, with sky showing here and there between, covered the heavens, save in the west where a great archway of clear air opened between clouds and earth: air of an azure that seemed to burn, so pure it was, so deep, so charged with warmth: not the harsh blue of noonday nor the sumptuous deep eastern blue of approaching night, but a bright heavenly blue bordering on green, deep, tender, and delicate as the spirit of evening. Athwart the midst of that window of the west a blade of cloud, hard-edged and jagged with teeth coloured as of live coals and dead, fiery and iron-dark in turn, stretched like a battered sword. The clouds above the arch were pale rose: the zenith like black opal, dark blue and thunderous grey dappled with fire.

XXVII The Second Expedition to Impland

How the Lord Juss, not to be persuaded from his set