King of The World's Edge

by H. Warner Munn

  “I can do it easily,” I said. “Even Myrdhinn, aged as he is, finds no difficulty in it.”

  “Do it, then, and I will believe you. I have a jar of wine on board my ship that says the feat cannot be done.”

  Myrdhinn smiled. “That wine I shall earn, Ventidius.”

  Pressing back, he strode into the ball court.

  A herald shouted:

  “Make way! Make way for the Tecutli Quetzalcoatl!”

  And the people bowed low before him as he took the ball.

  He tucked up his long robes, ran, bounded, and in midair (as it must be done) threw the ball through the hoop without touching the sides, scoring a perfect point. How the people shouted!

  He returned to his seat near me, and the game was resumed while Guthlac sent one of the Piasa down to the river after the wine.

  Myrdhinn took it, sniffed the aroma with appreciation and laughed. I handed him my drinking-horn.

  “You must pay me a drink for the use of that!” I cried.

  Guthlac said nothing, but smiled a strange smile. Whether it was the sudden ·gleam of ferocity in his eyes, quickly masked, or perchance only a wild suspicion, I know not, but all at once I distrusted the Saxon.

  “Hold, Myrdhinn!” I shouted.

  Too late! He had drained the cup to the dregs. Hig face went pale and haggard and he looked ancient beyond the power of words to tell. He struggled to speak, choked, then said thickly, “So this is the dark destiny the stars withheld!” and sank into the arms of Cronach Hen, the last remaining of his nine faithful bards.

  Before we could gather our wits, Cronach Hen let his harp fall, laid Myrdhinn gently down and spitting curses like a cat, he dashed at Guthlac.

  One of the Piasa was quicker than any of us. He caught up the bard, sinking his long curved talons deep through the flesh, hooking them among the ribs. Then easily he tore him asunder as a man might rend a roasted pigeon.

  Women screamed in the crowd, and Guthlac croaked a command to his monstrous following as he backed warily among them.

  “Now I have satisfied the souls of my brother and my men! Now I have avenged myself upon the murderer who led us here, who sacrificed us all in a mad search for a worthless land. Come, Wealas, take me if you can!”

  The Piasa sprang at us, long scaly arms spreading wide to grapple, talons hooked to tear.

  Though the sight of these horrors chilled the hearts of my men, none refused the battle, but would not at first close in, hurling hatchets and spears from a little distance, which they kept easily, for these creatures were agile only in the water.

  So, during our first surprise, his group won almost through us to the river gate. With twenty Valiants about me, hastily rearmored, we fell upon him there.

  “Stand back, Wealas,” he bellowed at me, as he retreated deeper among his Piasa, swinging his short ax to fend off spear strokes from three Hodenosaunee who were pressing him close.

  “Stand back, lest I cleave ye to the teeth!”

  The three red men rushed recklessly in, shouting their war-cry, “Sassakway! Sassakway!” The Piasa seized them. I heard bones crack and crunch and three brave souls were fled without a groan or whimper of pain.

  I felt immortal. I ran at them.

  Guthlac’s eyes lit with savage joy. He snapped an order to his creatures. They gave way and opened a lane, through which he strode, buckler to the fore, ax whistling in a glistening circle.

  “Take it, Wealas,” he roared, and flung it at my head.

  It flew harmlessly by. I hurled my pilum.

  Now, he understood spears and lances, but he underestimated the difference between them and the Roman pilum.

  He laughed and caught the point deftly on his buckler. The bronze head penetrated and clung, the soft copper shank bent, the heavy shaft trailed on the ground and dragged his buckler low.

  I leapt forward and stepped upon the shaft. He had one breath of time to realize that he was a dead man, before my shortsword beat down his defending seaxe and shore deep between neck and shoulder.

  He fell. Myrdhinn was avenged!

  At that instant, I felt myself seized from behind in an agonizing grip.

  A Piasa raised me high above his head, and hanging there for an instant I saw Myrdhinn lying in a little open circle in the crowd.

  He opened his eyes and caught my gaze, strangely and lovingly as a fond father might follow with his look a willful and erring son who had foolishly plunged himself into danger.

  His lips moved. The grip relaxed and I was flung down. Surprisingly, I was not stunned by the impact. I scarcely felt the ground.

  As with Antaeus, the earth seemed to give me superhuman strength. I knew that I was invincible! The Piasa snatched for me. I laughed at him, brushed his grip away like a feather. I seized him by the scaly throat and broke his neck like a bird’s.

  Ah1 the multitude flung themselves upon the remaining Piasa, forcing them down, overwhelming them by sheer numbers.

  I hurried to Myrdhinn and bent over him. I must have been a horrid sight, all dabbled with gore, my armor clawed away and my hands dripping red on his white robes, but he smiled faintly.

  “I did it, Ventidius, for you. That time, it was sorcery! I gave you all my strength, that you might not die. I have loved you like a son—I never had a son— how could I let you die? God forgive me, I used sorcery again—”

  “God will, Myrdhinn,” I said softly, but his eyes had closed and I do not know if he heard me or not.

  I thought him sped. Then he spoke again, very low, and I bent to catch the words.

  “So this is what was meant by the saying that I should find the Land of the Dead—beyond the sunset—at the end of the world. Come then, show me the way! Must I go alone?”

  He stared about, but it was plain that he saw none of us.

  Suddenly he sat upright and his face glowed with joy.

  Out of the west came flying rapidly a great white bird such as I have never seen before. It approached, circled us thrice without alighting or giving voice, and flapped away again, speedily as it had come.

  The aged body relaxed. I laid him down with care, and kneeling there, I buried my face in my hands, for I knew him gone at last.

  Over me swept a dreary loneliness. I had lost a dear friend, a revered man whose wisdom had saved me often from my follies. At last, I realized that I had loved him like a parent, but it was too late—too late—I could not tell htm now.

  Through tears, I saw those around me kneel in parting reverence, and very far away, a white bird flying on and on—into the western sky and far beyond.

  So we buried his body, and over it we made a tes-selated pavement of colored pebbles, showing a picture of a man treading upon a snake, symbolic of his destruction of the Mian Empire, for his was the glory, seeing that without him all our efforts would have come to naught.

  Above his grave we built a large mound, In the following days of our encampment there, but that night the Royanehs of Myrdhinn’s young nation demanded the persons of the few remaining Piasa left alive.

  I shrugged as I turned away, and the cold-blooded scaly monsters gazed after me, staring with an unblinking fish-look.

  What were their thoughts, I wonder, as they saw the people gathering brush and fixing stakes in the ground?

  Fire was a mystery to them, strange, cruel water creatures. But they died by it and were long in so doing.

  “Houp! Houp!” shouted the dancing warriors, mimicking their death croaks, prancing high, circling the flames.

  “Houp! Houp!”

  And there were no scalps to take, for nowhere upon their bodies was there any hair.

  22 Twenty Tears Later

  In the northwest, far from Aztlan, near the mountains which fence off the Edge of the World, there dwells today (twenty years after the death of Myrd-hinn) a miserable people called by their neighbors the Flatheads. If they be
Mian refugees, I know not, for I have learned of them only by rumor, but their skulls are similarly shaped by binding against a board when the infant is very young.

  And in the moorlands, every lonely wanderer got himself a wife, so that many a noble, gently reared Mian lady has drudged away her life in tanning hides, bearing burdens and savage children for a cruel spouse.

  From some of these, we know that many perished wandering to the moors. A few may have got through to the Hot Lands of Atala, but most were scattered and slain by those I sent to guard their journey.

  So perished the haughty and valiant Mian nation, and with them their far-flung Empire of the Mounds.

  Back once more in the cliff dwellings, we have known peace. We led war into the swamps of the Piasa and well-nigh exterminated them.

  Tolteca, south of us, is newly turbulent and the tune is coming when there must again be war.

  In the north, I hear from Hayonwatha, who still lives, though all my British friends are dead from age or battle, that the nation of the Hodenosaunee is growing yet more powerful. My soldiers, or allies, hold all the forts that once represented the Mian frontier. The Chichamecans, too, are friendly.

  Your legate, then, wherever he may land, oh my Emperor, will receive a welcome, for all expect the coming of white men again and the word is out everywhere to receive them kindly and in peace as sons of the Fair God, Quetzalcoatl, the man who spoke of peace, but could be stern in war to end it quickly.

  Treat my son, Gwalchmai, Hawk of Battle as Myrdhinn once called his godson, kindly I beg. He will be unaccustomed to great cities, though he has read of them in Myrdhinn’s books and has learned, I fear, other more dangerous things. He has performed some peculiar feats that smack of sorcery to me.

  Come, then, at once while I still live. I dream of Roman keels grating on the shingle of Alata. I long to hear the sounds of Roman trumpets. I have conquered a continent for Rome, but there is none that will hold it undivided after I am gone.

  Already they forget the Christian prayer that Myrd-hinn taught his worshipers, forgetting the meanings of the words. My Azteca grow restless with liberty and long to wander.

  Come before it is too late. Come and take your empire!

  Vale.

  Epilog

  I laid down the ancient pages and turned to my veteran friend. “That is the end of the writing,” I said.

  “But not the end of the story?”

  “How can it be? Why wasn’t the message carried farther than Key West? What happened to the son of Ventidhis? How was the message lost?”

  “I think I can guess. Do you know how Key West got its name?”

  I shook my head.

  “When the Spaniards discovered the island, it was covered with skeletons where a battle had been fought So many were there that they called it Cayo de los Huessos (Island of the Bones), which was Englished as Key West. Suppose that those bones were the remains of the ship’s crew, sent with the message, and killed by the Piasa who had been driven from the Florida swamps by Ventidius’ men!”

  “Then that perhaps was the real end of the Piasa?”

  He nodded.

  “And the end of Kwalchmai, Ventidius’ only son?” I hazarded.

  “I wonder,” thoughtfully said my veteran friend. “I wonder.

  “After all, he was Merlin’s godson. If any came out of that battle alive, it must have been he. But that was a thousand years ago, and we shall probably never know.”

  The End of Book 1