Empire of the East Trilogy

by Fred Saberhagen

  The lock went smash at once, the crossbars on the door were splintering. The weight against the other side leaned harder and the bars broke off. Slowly, leisurely almost, the door swung on its hinges opening... with an effort inspired by ultimate terror, Wood broke away, returning to his body in the world of men.

  Charmian, still watching her husband’s face intently, was the first person outside the wizards’ ring to understand that something was going hideously wrong. She saw Chup’s face change once more, a new kind of calm replacing the understanding fear, and she thought that he was on the point of death. For mixed reasons, she felt a pang of disappointment, and was unconsciously drawing herself up to express her feelings in some gesture when she saw that which converted her movement into the start of a retreat.

  Suddenly she saw that Chup’s right hand, showing not even a tremor, moving with deliberate sureness, had pulled itself free of its restraint (had those straps ever been iron, that now lay twisted like torn cloth?) and was moving to take hold of the thicker iron band across his chest. The hand found its grip, and quivered once. With a ringing snap the chest-band burst, sending a fragment of metal singing like a missile past Charmian’s head. Not that Chup’s actions had anything to do with her; his eyes, with their new and terrible calm, were fixed on Wood.

  Wood, his eyes meeting that gaze, stood frozen for a long moment, his practiced hands for once contorted awkwardly. Similarly his two assistants were transfixed, one with arms outthrust as if to ward off a lunge by Chup, the other bent forward ludicrously, as if with stomach-ache. Every detail of the tableau seemed in that moment to be carved of stone.

  Then Wood’s hands shot forward, fingers clenched, thumbs pointing, aimed like some boy’s hands holding a strange and imaginary weapon in play. Toward Chup’s rising figure, garbed in the rude, stained robe of a sacrifice, there leaped out from Wood’s hands a soundless scimitar-curve of multicolored light. It flashed from the wizard across nearly the entire space that separated him from Chup. But the last half-meter of space remained inviolate.

  The counterblow Charmian could not see directly, only its effect. To her, watching in a timeless moment of terror, it seemed that Wood’s face stayed where it was, a malignant frozen mask, while behind it and below it his head and body were shattered into bloodless clods and dust. Then the face disintegrated into flying dust. Simultaneously Wood’s two aides were flung aside like rags. The blow that had struck the wizards went in a soundless shock through air and earth. Charmian fell to her knees. In the aftermath she heard the men of the army yelling and running away.

  The body that had been Chup’s stood tall and seemingly unscathed, turning to and fro to look and listen. Charmian saw that the camp a little distance off was full of tumbled tents and running men. Black-garbed wizards came running nearer, then turned and fled, or stood and trembled helplessly, when he who had been Chup looked at them. No trace of Wood was left, and the two who had been helping him were rolled-up rag-bundles on the ground. Charmian was the only living person within fifty meters of Chup’s terrible eyes, and now they turned to her.

  Still on her knees, she now stretched forth her arms. “Ardneh.” Her voice was quavering, almost inaudible, even to herself. “Ardneh, mercy—a thousand thanks and mercies are your due, for having slain that man who held me as his slave.”

  The eyes that had been Chup’s held her only a moment longer, then moved back to scan the turmoil in the camp. Suddenly a voice more terrible than Chup’s boomed from the throat that had been his: “Hear me, humans, vermin of the earth! I, the Emperor Orcus, have come to reclaim my throne, and to put all the world beneath my feet. Know and believe this, and hold yourselves in readiness to obey. Your fates depend upon how faithfully you serve me in the battle soon to come against the West. For now, farewell.”

  Only Charmian was near enough to see what happened next. The body that had been Chup’s was racked by a prolonged shuddering, making the departure of the possessing power effectively visible. Suddenly it was once more her husbnad who stood before her.

  Chup drew a deep breath, like a man returning from an underwater plunge. There was wonder in his eyes, but not bewilderment; he had evidently been conscious of all that happened while Orcus used his body to escape.

  Chup’s gaze came to rest on Charmian. She gave a low, choked cry, got to her feet and tried to flee, but before she could take a step Chup’s hard hand clamped her arm.

  “We are going to leave,” said Chup in a quiet rasp. “I think no one will try to stop the Emperor Orcus as he walks away.”

  “My own true Lord,” said Charmian, with something like a sob. “I know what you must think of me; I do not care, now that I see you whole and free again.

  “Move out,”he said, preoccupied with looking for pursuit. Thousands of distant eyes were on him, but no one in the shaken army of the East was offering to come closer. “Try to raise an alarm and I will break your spine before they get me.”

  Thus they walked away.

  When Orcus first came fully awake within his more-than-physical dungeon his first clear thought was that someone or something was helping him, reaching to give him unforced and willing aid. Powerful abilities besides his own were laboring to set him free, dispersing the fogs and webs of enchantment that had kept him more than half asleep, letting into his cell a light of almost blinding clarity. Never before had Orcus been given free and willing help, and the motives of his helper now loomed as a mystery. But he had no time now for asking questions, no time for anything but the giant effort he must make to win his freedom.

  The magical images in which Orcus saw the event were jumbled, not as clear as Wood’s dungeon door and lock. But Orcus saw the way that he must take. The man who was being drained and used by Wood became for Orcus first a handgrip, a fragment of real life thrust near him in his prison of chaos. And then the human fragment became a lifeboat bobbing and tossing on a mad sea. Made able to think and move again by some unknown source of outside help, Orcus possessed the man and used him, poured his own demonic bulk into the little matrix of the human brain, and by this fulcrum levered his own titanic energies back into the world of men.

  After that it was the work of a moment or two to release his borrowed body from its physical bonds, that he might more readily use it if he chose. It was only the work of another moment to strike Wood down. After that, a quick survey of the immediate situation, and the human body provided a convenient voice for the Demon-Emperor to use in announcing his return to the assembled human army of the East.

  Even as he spoke, his thoughts and perceptions raced ahead. He felt some regret at slaying Wood so quickly. Age-long revenge on those who had betrayed him was desirable, and Wood must have been among them, as surely as the arch-traitor must have been Ominor. But meanwhile, Orcus saw and understood why Ominor had dared to think of bringing him back into the world. The danger from the West was presently very great. Without Orcus the East would not be strong enough to meet it. And if the West prevailed, the intriguers of the East would find that they had nothing to steal from one another.

  At the heart of the danger from the West there loomed a power new to Orcus; new and strange, and stronger than any that he had ever faced before. Whether the strength of this new enemy was greater than his own he could not immediately determine, but he had the impression that the force of this enemy was still waxing. The enemy had a name, Ardneh. The name was unhidden, arrogantly revealed—make what magical use of it you like, malign powers of the East. Ardneh glowed, in the spectra of several energies, with deadly enmity for Orcus and all his works. All these things Orcus perceived within moments after re-entering the world of men, while still looking through the eyes of the man who was to have been sacrificed.

  With his chief enemy waxing stronger, there was no point in delaying the struggle that must come. Casting aside the man he had possessed, Orcus mounted in a silent invisible rush into the upper air. From there, he swept the great curve of earth with his multitude of senses. He saw
the dispositions of the main armies of both East and West, and he saw something more, that all but caused him to disregard those armies. Some kilometers north of the spot from which he had arisen, he sensed a series of chambers under the ground, and a concentration of life that moved and pulsed therein. Despite the distance, and the magical defenses that ringed it all about, to Orcus the nature of the place was plain, and the identity of the life within it. Above that place the Demon-Emperor flew slowly, and then toward it he went falling like an avalanche.

  Inside one of the caves of Ardneh, Rolf saw the lights go dim. At the same moment came a heightening in intensity of the ubiquitous hum of technological power, usually so low that he was doubtful of hearing it at all.

  “Ardneh?”

  There was no immediate answer, no feeling of Ardneh’s presence.

  Going toward the outer room where he had seen Catherine working a few minutes before—it seemed there were always more cables to be connected, more devices unpacked or moved—Rolf met her coming, wide-eyed, to look for him.

  There was unconcealed fright in her voice. “Rolf, it has gone dark outside. The sun is gone.”

  He felt his own heart lurch, but tried to appear calm. “Not the sun. If it’s dark, it must be something...”

  Ardneh interrupted, speaking from above them and seemingly from all around them, louder than they had ever heard him before. “The days of the decisive battle have begun. Orcus, emperor of demons, has found me and is attacking. Do not let the darkness outside worry you. It is local, and is part of my defense.”

  “Ardneh, what can we—”

  “Go to Room Three at once, and stand by to reconnect the generators there.”

  When they had been working for a little time in the chamber that Ardneh had taught them to call Room Three, he interrupted his detailed technical orders to inform them: “I have repulsed the first attack of Orcus. He will make further efforts, but our struggle is not likely to be decided now, until the armies of men have come to join it. Meanwhile there are more changes in equipment to be made.”

  During the remainder of the day Rolf and Catherine were kept at work. Now and again the earth shook around their armored, buried rooms. The walls yielded a little and swayed with the moving of the earth, but were not crushed or broken. Rolf discovered that another of the outer rooms had been sealed off by heavy sliding doors.

  Late in the day, Ardneh gradually ceased to issue orders. The sense of his presence became remote, while the demonic aura of his unimaginable opponent, that the humans had begun to sense, disappeared completely. Catherine and Rolf sat, waiting and resting amid their tools.

  After a while, Catherine asked: “What will you do, Rolf, when the war is over?”

  “Over?” From time to time he had enjoyed vague thoughts of victory celebrations, and once or twice he had meditated on some vengeance against the East. But such things still seemed as far away as ever.

  Catherine added: “Ardneh has told us it will almost certainly be over very soon. Remember?”

  “Of course.” He tried to visualize what victory would be like; the other possibility was hardly to be contemplated. “I can’t really remember what things were like before the war; at least, not before the East came to occupy us. I was only a child then.”

  “You were telling me yesterday about your family, and how the seacoast looked near where you lived. In the Broken Lands.”

  Rolf was silent for a time. “I can’t see myself just going back to farm the land my parents held. No, I’ll do something else. Some new work in technology, maybe. I don’t know where. Will you be with me then? When all the curses of the East are dead?” He hadn’t meant to come out with the words so bluntly, but now that they were out he had no wish to call them back.

  Catherine looked at him, and began to give her answer with luminous eyes, and then her eyes looked past him. Rolf spun round barely in time to meet the soft-footed rush of the first wolf.

  After struggling for a full day against Ardneh, Orcus broke off the fight temporarily and withdrew into the upper atmosphere meaning to recharge his depleted energies while he restudied the situation.

  During the struggle he had learned several things about his opponent. For one thing, Ardneh was certainly formidable. For another, it was virtually certain that Ardneh would never pursue him. Orcus was definitely the more mobile, while Ardneh perhaps had an advantage in strength, as long as he was content merely to defend the little plot of land wherein his life was buried.

  Brooding as he rested kilometers above that land, Orcus pondered the inky cloud of Ardneh’s defensive energies. To penetrate that concentrated block would probably prove more than even the Emperor of Demons could accomplish without help.

  Lying atop the atmosphere, Orcus spread himself thin as a blanket, absorbing energy from the sun and from incoming cosmic particles. When he had recharged his strength somewhat he summoned up a minor demon to be his messenger. This one he sent to find Ominor, and convey to the man Orcus’s blunt orders. Ominor was to bring his human army north with all possible speed, encircle Ardneh, and do all that massed human strength could achieve in the way of digging him out of his defenses. While this effort was in progress, Orcus would renew his own assault. The Western army might well try to intervene, but it could not long sustain a pitched battle against Ominor, and no other kind of battle could now save Ardneh from destruction. ‘

  A crushing victory for the East was near. After it, Orcus planned to enjoy agelong revenge against John Ominor.

  The first wolf had gone down with Catherine’s arrow through its body, but not before Rolf’s left forearm had been severely bitten. The two of them were fleeing now, feet pounding in the darkened corridors, behind them the howls of a pursuing pack. The humans cried for help as they ran; Ardneh closed doors against their pursuers were possible, but evidently could do no more. And the doors that could be closed were too few to effectively cut off the chase, though they afforded a temporarily life-saving delay.

  “To the tunnel,” Rolf gasped. It was the narrowest place that he could think of. “We maybe able to hold them there.”

  On the narrow stone ledge beside the stream, with his back to daylight, he was ready with his sword for the first red-eyed howler’s spring, and caught it on his point. Others came splashing in the stream beside him. Catherine hit one with a shaft, but before she could draw again a furry body had knocked her down.

  Rolf threw himself into the water, his blade dividing fur and bone. Catherine fought with a knife drawn from her belt. Standing together in the bloodied water it seemed for a moment that they might hold...

  Sunlight was darkened behind them. A bulk of fur that nearly filled the tunnel had entered it on all fours.

  Rolf’s swordblade had wedged in a wolf’s skull and he strained desperately to wrench it free. Meanwhile the claws of the mountainous new beast were reaching for him from behind...

  Not claws. The hand of an orange-furred giant closed round his ribs. He was lifted, swept backward, tossed into sunlight to land in mud and water with a great splash. He had just time to catch a breath before Catherine came flying to land almost in his arms. He pulled her head above water and she gasped for air.

  Now, where was his sword—?

  What seemed like long minutes were necessary to locate the weapon, stuck in the bottom mud. But it was not needed sooner. Seeing into the shadowed tunnel from sunlight was effectively impossible, but sounds came plainly out: wolf-howls that keened in agony, and what sounded like words, muttered in a basso voice. There came out broken lupine bodies, drifting. Rolf had his sword back in his hand before a single live wolf emerged at last, in a dead frantic yelping run. He cut at and missed the speeding form, and listened to the sounds of its flight diminish in the distance.

  Now something else was stirring in the tunnel mouth. A giant’s hand, covered with orange fur, and somewhere he had once seen the like before...

  “Lord Draffut,” Rolf choked out, and sat down on the stream’s ban
k, with suddenly trembling knees. “We give you welcome.”

  Catherine marveled greatly, and her awe increased when Draffut laid hold gently of Rolf’s mangled arm and raw, torn flesh became half-healed scar tissue at his touch.

  “My healing powers are not what they once were,” the Beast-Lord rumbled. “Yet what I can give to humans I still give.”

  “Lord Draffut, we thank you.”

  “Ardneh has called me, and I have listened.” With his great hands he touched and began the healing of their smaller wounds as well. Then, with Catherine’s two hands held in one of his, he paused, looking down into her eyes as an adult might regard an infant. “I sense another matter of pain, that has been visited upon you. The work of healing that has already been begun, also.”

  “We thank you again.”

  “No, you have begun it yourselves.”

  Rolf, feeling childlike in size and wisdom, exchanged looks with Catherine. “I do not understand.”

  “Rolf. Have you not now bound yourself to Catherine, so that her life is to you as your own, and more than your own?”

  Rolf still looked at her. “I have.”

  “Catherine, are you so bound to Rolf?”

  “I am bound.”

  “Then from this day let your bodies be as one; no curse of the East can have power to separate you any more, whatever harm may otherwise be done to you.”

  The Lord Draffut very shortly took his leave, saying that many humans a little to the south were in great need of him, and soon there would be even more. Ardneh’s mental presence meanwhile came fitfully to Rolf, with information.

  “We are to rest now,” he announced. “Inside.”