Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 4 Darkbridge

by Adam Corby

  It was then that a woman of the Tarendahardilites, who was helping carry in the dead, halted before the awakened man’s pallet. Busy with all the newly-dead guardsmen, they had forgotten this one that Father Ennius had borne in. Now she was surprised to see that the dead man lived. But when she beheld that face uplifted below her, then words choked in her throat. She moved back, her face pale as the clouds of High Summer. Not even all the blood and slaughter of that red tent had readied her for what she had just then beheld.

  Gundoen looked about him rather stupidly.

  He had not seen the young Tarendahardilite, but it did seem to him that a woman stood before him. She was an old woman, leaning on a staff, and dressed in ragged robes adorned only by the leaves of autumn.

  It seemed to Gundoen that Melkarth stood before him.

  The old seeress regarded the chieftain searchingly. Her old eyes were dark with tears.

  ‘Gundoen Strong-In-Girth, I bring you a message from your wife. Hertha-Toll says, your hour has come. Rise up, go forth and kill your enemies.’

  She let the tip of her staff touch thrice his twisted knee. Straightway a burning coursed through his body, as from spiced hot ale after a long hunt in wet snow. The pain waned, strength came back.

  The chief opened his mouth as though to speak. But he saw only the back of the old woman as she walked away. Had she been afraid to say it? But Gundoen was not afraid to die.

  From beneath the cloak he took up a large clay wine-jug, the gift of Ara-Karn. ‘Drink no other drink, but only this wine,’ the black-eyed man had said. There must be strong healing here, then. Gundoen unstopped the jug and drank, letting the juice run over his beard and chest. It was good biting wine, of the sort that came from the first southern city they had conquered, when the army emerged from the Taril.

  Gundoen belched. He felt almost a man again. A light gleamed in his good eye. Again he searched among the rags of the pallet, and drew forth the second gift of his son. It was a sword, but not a small sword such as they used here in the South. This was a heavy sword of war from the far North. Gundoen laid it across his knees, and ran one of the bandaged paws along its clean edge: the layers of bandages opened in a sharp cut. A well-made blade, hardly used.

  ‘It was your birthing gift to me. Do you not remember? This is that blade you had forged upon the hilt of Tont-Ornoth, whose sword tasted the blood of Elna. I have kept it for you. It has scarcely been bloodied. I give it back to you. You are its rightful owner, chieftain.’

  Gundoen let his two hands close about the massive hilt. All the chieftains of his tribe had kept this hilt, the treasured relic of their tribe’s founder. Now it had been forged anew to blade. Now it was whole again. Through all the generations the hilt had bided, waiting for this hour and for Gundoen.

  And then Gundoen underwent the greatest trial of his life. He tried to stand up.

  The pain burst upon his limbs and he knew again his mortality, and fell back gasping. Four times he essayed it, and only on the fifth succeeded. Only the words of his wife drew him on. Then he knew that it had been she who had somehow saved his life from the torments. She had saved him so that he might now hold this sword and die fighting.

  Never had anyone granted him so fine a gift: he loved her all the more for it. ‘Thank you, Hertha-Toll. Thank you.’

  He stood swaying as though he might fall. The cloak remained upon him, stuck fast to the wounds. Drawing the cloak about him, he trudged past the pallets of the dead.

  He came out close by the inner gates. There a crowd of Tarendahardilites had gathered, many of them children. Gundoen pushed past them. The high inner gates were shut, but next to them a small brass door was open.

  This is like Gerso, Gundoen thought, and went through. He entered the yard between the gates, and approached the shadow of the great battle raging above.

  It was there that Kuln-Holn saw him.

  VI

  Glory

  ON THE LAST STEP of the battlements the guardsmen struggled, their strokes weary and discordant. The barbarians had lost their most-feared foe. They crowded the guardsmen against the rearward parapet; but somehow the defenders rallied.

  Berowne led them now. He planted himself in the middle of the lines, not so great a fighter as Ampeánor, but still, in the girth and weight of his body, a shield-wall in himself.

  Even so the defenders despaired. With the passing of Ampeánor they lost all hope of victory. Their reserves were no more. Each time a man chanced for a moment to lift his eyes, he beheld through the dark-weaving weapons the summit of the wooden tower. Even if they could by some untoward burst of strength have hurled the barbarians back, they could not hold the parapet beneath that rain of arrows. They had their superior position no longer. That tower robbed them of it forever. They fought on hopelessly, for soon they knew they must all die.

  ‘We do no good here!’ Ullerath screamed in Berowne’s ears. ‘The way is too wide for our numbers. Fall back to the inner gates!’

  ‘No!’ Berowne shouted. ‘Flee, and the barbarians will spear us in the back. Not five of ten would gain the inner gates. Here we stand and here fall, if Goddess will have it so – but we will move at no command of mine!’

  ‘Why then were these defenses made with two sets of gates? I obey you, but you are wrong. Now let me take your place. For too long you have borne the main blows of the barbarians’ swords. Go rest, but leave me not long alone here, for I haven’t your waist!’

  At that Berowne loosed his voice in laughter, and the sound, unwonted in that place, sang in the ears of the guardsmen. It set in their hearts thoughts of their relatives and beloveds in the Palace and tents behind them. Once more they remembered that for which they fought, and drove with renewed courage against the mass of savage bodies.

  * * *

  Like a pilgrim, Gundoen stood in the shadow and gazed up at the battle. He saw the upraised lances, toiling bodies and seething arms, but he heard it only faintly, as if it happened beyond a hillside. This gave Gundoen wonder, for he was not yet accustomed to his deafness. The Vapionil had burst one of his eardrums with long silver needles, nor had they left the other ear untouched. Ara-Karn had had almost to shout into his ear to make Gundoen hear him in the cell below the Palace.

  He stood in the middle of the yard between the gates. In front of him beneath the battlements the outer gates closed in a smooth wall. To either side the face of the stone was broken by portals leading into barracks and supply-rooms hollowed out of the rock. Silent as a shadow, the adopted father of Ara-Karn crossed the yard and entered the portal nearest the gates.

  He passed through empty rooms. In the room housing the mechanism controlling the gate in Gerso there had been huge wheels. Now in the half-darkness Gundoen studied the mechanism of the Iron Gate of Elna. He found no wheels here. The first blush of strength was fading now; not even Melkarth and wine could overcome for long the mutilations his body had suffered. Deafened, dizzy and purblind, Gundoen could not sort out the mechanism looming vaguely against the long wall before him. Then at length a kind of sense emerged from it.

  He he saw a huge bar of bronze resting in wooden brackets. The bar was driven into the body of the Iron Gate, but not deeply. Another bar would be found in a similar chamber on the other side of the yard. Horizontal posts emerged from it at intervals; there were four such, each long enough for four men to bring their strength to bear against it. Sixteen men should trod the ancient upraised walkway to open the Iron Gate. There must have been another, simpler way to open the gate, but Gundoen could not fathom it.

  Gundoen clambered up to the walkway.

  Carefully, with reverence, he laid the sword with the hilt of Tont-Ornoth to one side.

  He put his shoulder against one post, shifting to find the most advantageous position.

  Then he began to push.

  The veins of his brows burst out and his face waxed dark. His naked feet clawed the walkway. The muscles of his arms and legs swelled and strove; new stains darkened th
e cloak. Once he heaved, and again, and a third time.

  The post yielded, a little. A dull groan sounded. The bar had moved. Gundoen threw himself against the post, careless of blinding pain. With each effort the bar moved a little more. When one shoulder was useless Gundoen turned the other to bear. Like some great living hammer he used himself, mindless of hurt. So at last it came to a point where the bar would move no more, no matter how Gundoen might hurl himself against it.

  Gundoen staggered to the end of the walkway. He passed his arm between the end of the bar and the opening into the body of the gate. It was done and he was glad.

  ‘Now,’ he mumbled, ‘once more.’

  He picked up the sword and drew the peak of the cloak over his head. Once more he passed through empty rooms, finding his way out of the rock. It seemed almost as gloom-ridden outside as it had been within. His sight, vague and dim, came to him coyly as Alli, his last concubine. She had been a bold-eyed wench, and sweet; but when she had failed to give him a son to grow to manhood, then Gundoen had let her go, never regretting the loss of the embrace of her soft thighs. Of all the women Gundoen had known, Hertha-Toll had proved the only one he could not have done without. He wished she could have seen his final deed.

  A group of Southrons was in the yard talking together. Gundoen did not see them until he stumbled into them. One seemed to be saying something to him, but Gundoen pushed his way through. Another stood in his way; Gundoen swept up one of his massive arms like a club, knocking the man backwards. Then from behind Gundoen strong hands grabbed the cloak and tore it from his back.

  ‘Sweet Goddess!’ swore Berowne.

  * * *

  Now a rumor ran among the barbarians below, bright like the first green shoots of spring: the Southron Elna-Ana was dead, slain by Estar-Brin even as he avenged himself upon his slayer. Many scoffed at the report. How could Elna-Ana be dead, when he was deathless? Could a rock be killed, or a spirit? Roguil Arn most of all denied it. He could not bring himself to give up his cherished hope of another encounter with the Southron. So Roguil Arn climbed to the peak of Erion Sedeg’s tower to see for himself.

  When Roguil Arn descended, his face was downcast. He pushed men away from him angrily, and proclaimed that, dead or alive, the Southron no longer fought in the battle.

  ‘Then he is dead,’ said Nam-Rog, and at his words a cheer went up. ‘Or else he is so wounded he can no longer hold a weapon. Roguil Arn, will you now lead a new force up the ladders to win the stronghold for us?’

  ‘No, I will not fight again in this place.’ Sourly he tore off the armor he had so recently girded on, and cast himself on the dusty ground. ‘How could he die, and rob me of our next encounter?’

  So Nam-Rog himself raised his sword and spear, and the warriors around him shouted their war-cries. They leaped onto the ladders at his heels and ran upward. They hurled themselves over the parapet and across the battlements. First was Nam-Rog himself, bloodthirsty as few had ever seen him: with the first blow of his sword he split open the helmet and head of a guardsman from crown to chin, so that the blood sprayed, the brains splashed, and the teeth flew out like beads from a broken string. So Ullerath of Egland fell, and was trampled underfoot by the contesting forces.

  * * *

  A snarl burst from the barbarian’s lips as he crouched in the yard and faced the small band of men with his broadsword. Silently the guardsmen surrounded him. They gazed with horror upon the blackened lips, toothless mouth, gaping eyehole drooling pustulence, bandaged hands, scars, discolored secretions, twisted knees and twisted apelike feet. It was hard to believe that this thing had been the magnificent warrior who had hurled a guardsman from the parapet.

  ‘Listen to me, barbarian,’ Berowne called. ‘I have no heart to fight you. What they did to you was none of my doing, nor would I have your blood on my hands now. Give up your sword. We will see that you are treated in the tent of the wounded, and no man will harm you, not even if he is of the highest rank. You have my oath before Goddess.’

  A bestial growl issued from the barbarian’s throat. He stepped forward, swinging the sword. The blade struck against one man’s shield.

  ‘Attack but do not kill him,’ Berowne called. ‘Maimed as he is, he will prove a small threat.’

  But the captain did not know Gundoen. Again and again the ring of lances and swords closed on the nearly naked man, but each time the barbarian drove them back. Half a dozen men surrounded him; and yet the barbarian twisted and fought in sudden, savage flurries, and the guardsmen could not get at him. Gundoen had ever preferred wrestling to the sword, but in the battles of the wars he had learned swiftness and cunning. Now not all the numbers of his assailants availed then. Four he wounded, and two went down in death beneath the brutal blows of the sword of Tont-Ornoth.

  From above, the chief of the Durbars saw through the press of men, for one flashing moment. He saw his friend. And he cried out, ‘Gundoen! Gundoen! Gundoen!’

  Then one of the guards leaped behind Gundoen and with two heavy, chopping blows unstrung him. The lines closed again, and Nam-Rog saw no more.

  Gundoen fell clumsily, and the sword spun from his hands. Another guardsman kicked the weapon away. Cursing, the barbarian flung his massive arms about. His huge thighs moved pathetically. The blood streamed from his legs where the blue steel had done its work. With his arms alone Gundoen crawled about, searching for his lost weapon.

  ‘By Goddess,’ swore one man, ‘is he blind?’

  Then the guardsmen would have rushed at him but for Berowne. ‘I will have none of you murder him,’ the captain ordered. ‘He is defeated now and will harm us no more. And surely he has endured enough,’ Berowne mused, kneeling over the fallen man.

  The massive arms lashed up and caught the captain in a bone-breaking hold. Berowne cried out. The two men, huge as bulls, strove furiously on the ground. In awe, for a moment, the others hung back. Berowne was the taller man, fresher and whole; but he could not overcome the cunning that long years had given the barbarian. Slowly Berowne bowed to the awful force brought to bear upon his nape. His face went purple and blue, he was choking, he heaved and flailed his arms – in vain.

  A sudden, dreadful crack was heard. The life broke from the big body of Berowne, which never again would know the caress or the scent of the beloved Kiva.

  With a savage bellow, Gundoen cast the corpse away. He leaned on one elbow, drinking in the air. ‘Thank you, Hertha-Toll,’ he said in a voice scarcely human, ‘It was a good gift.’

  He thought of the rest of his enemies, whom he could not see beyond the rust-red fog that thickened about him. He sent them from his mind. They were only Southrons, after all. He wished he still had the wine. No, beer would have been better, the brown foaming beer of his tribe. He had always loved beer – too much, maybe. He shrugged. It had been a good life after all.

  One regret he had, that he had never seen the Southern Ocean. It was said there were pools and grottoes there whose water was warmer than the air. Gundoen had wanted to bathe in those pools and search for shells in the grottoes. He had wanted to make a necklet of shells to give Hertha-Toll when he went back home.

  ‘And the Southron, lord – you will see to him? He betrayed me. Together we fought a Darkbeast, just the two of us, and slew it. He owed me life and brotherhood after that, but he was a Southron and caused my death. Avenge it as befits a son.’

  And Ara-Karn had bowed his head. And it had seemed to Gundoen, beyond belief, that he saw tears in the black-green eyes. ‘I will avenge you, Gundoen. Before all the gods and demons, by the horrors of the Darklands, I swear it to you – my father…’

  Gundoen leaned back, turning the sky to face him. He heard a step. Hertha-Toll stood over him. She was an old woman now, with wrinkles at her eyes and spots on her hands. Even so she was beautiful. He wanted to tell her he was sorry that he had gone off adventuring in these alien lands. But he was not sorry, he was glad. He had done some things, and won fame and glory.

 
‘Why didn’t you come to me when I sent for you? We could have been together.’

  ‘No, Gundoen,’ she answered. ‘I was born on Kaari Moldole, and there in the grove of women I will die. That is my way. But I loved you and chose you before you were ever aware of me.’

  * * *

  Filled with horror, the guardsmen hung back from the fallen barbarian. Nervously they fingered their weapons. Then without a word they all moved in, all but one, and stabbed and hacked at the great foundering bulk of putrid flesh. Blood and mucous splashed up over their armor, hands and faces. They tasted the death of Gundoen in their mouths and the reek of it consumed their nostrils. They drew back drunkenly. With relief and horror they watched the last spasms of the tortured body.

  ‘He was no man, but half a beast,’ swore one in a low voice. ‘The captain was wrong, despite his fine feelings.’

  ‘It was good he was tortured, or else we would never have brought him down.’

  ‘Even so, he would have beaten and killed us. If Iocantris had not unstrung him, we would all be dead now.’

  ‘Yes, all honor is owed Iocantris, not only for discovering the danger, but for having more courage than the best of us.’

  So they all agreed, clapping hands on the victor’s rounded shoulders. But Kuln-Holn scarcely heard them. He was looking at the dismembered, thrashing carcass of Gundoen, a thing bursting with death horrible and bloody, and he was terrified.

  * * *

  Gundoen knew now where he was. Something of his sight returned to him. He was lying on the stone of a yard between the gates of the great fastness of the Southron Emperors. Above him the battle raged in silence. He had come so far, and had conquered all the North in the name of Ara-Karn. But his life was draining out of him, mixing with the blood of his victims. The spirits of those he had left unvoyaged in the Taril could now be appeased.

  He saw the Southrons regarding him with fear, though he was helpless now and slain. He grinned, baring a bloody mouth. This was a good death. He had never hoped for one so fine. Men would hear of it. Ara-Karn would hear of it, and command that songs be made. Gundoen left behind him a son such as no other chieftain of his tribe had ever done; greater even than Tont-Ornoth was his son. Now there remained only one final deed for him to do here – one last cry to release the spirit and send it flying up to Goddess.