The Chronicles of Corum

by Michael Moorcock

  Bringing the war-axe round for a second swing, Corum was caught off balance and the hound charged before the axe could come back. Corum had to take three rapid paces away from the beast as it flung itself at him, to allow the axe to continue its swing and thud into the hound’s hind-leg, crippling it but not stopping it. Corum was close to the edge and knew that a leap might break his legs at very least. One more step backward would be enough to send him falling into the street. There was only one thing he could do. As the hound charged at him, he sidestepped and ducked, and the dog went sailing past him, smashing headfirst onto the cobbles and breaking its neck.

  Now the noise of battle came from every part of the fortress, for several Hounds of Kerenos had gained access to the streets and were roaming them, sniffing for the old women and children who huddled behind the barricaded doors.

  Medhbh, King Mannach’s daughter, had been in charge of the streets, and Corum glimpsed her running at the head of a handful of warriors, charging upon two of the hounds who had found themselves trapped in a street with no exit. Some of her red hair had come loose from her helmet and it flew as she ran. Her lithe figure, the speed and control of her movements, her evident courage, astonished Corum. He had never known a woman like this Medhbh—or, indeed, like the other women here who fought with their men and who shared equal duties with them. Such beautiful women, too, thought Corum. And then he cursed himself for his lack of attention, for another beast had come leaping and snapping and howling at him. He whirled his war-axe and shouted his Vadhagh war-cry as he smashed the blade deep into the hound’s skull, between its red, tufted ears. He wished that the fight would end, for he was so weary that he could not believe he could slay another of the dogs.

  The baying of those dreadful beasts seemed to grow louder and louder. The stink of their breath made Corum wish for the harshness of the mist in his lungs. And still the white bodies flew through the air and landed upon the battlements; still the great fangs snapped and the yellow eyes blazed; still men died as the jaws ripped flesh, sinew and bone. And Corum leaned against the wall and panted and panted and knew that the next dog to attack him would kill him. He had no intention of resisting. He was finished. He would die here and all problems would be solved in an instant. Caer Mahlod would fall. The Fhoi Myore would rule.

  Something made him look down into the street again.

  There was Medhbh, standing alone, sword in hand, while a massive hound rushed at her. The rest of her party were all down. Their torn corpses could be seen strewn across the cobbles. Only Medhbh remained, and she would perish soon.

  Corum jumped before he even realized he had made up his mind. His booted feet landed squarely on the rump of the great hound, bringing its hind parts to the ground. The war-axe whistled now and crunched through the bone of the huge dog’s vertebrae, almost chopping the beast in two. And Corum, carried forward by his own momentum, fell across the corpse. He slipped in the beast’s blood, struck his skull against its broken spine and fell over onto his back, desperately trying to regain his footing. Even Medhbh did not know what had happened, for she struck at one of the dog’s eyes with her sword, not realizing that the creature was already dead. Then she saw Corum.

  She grinned as he got to his feet and began to tug his war-axe from the corpse.

  “So you would not see me dead, then, my elfin prince.”

  “Lady,” said Corum, gasping for breath, “I would not.”

  He freed his axe and staggered back up the steps to the battlements where weary warriors did their best to meet the attacks of seemingly innumerable hounds.

  Corum forced himself forward, to help a warrior who was about to go down before one of the dogs. His axe was becoming blunt with all the slaughter and this time his blow only stunned the dog, which recovered almost immediately and turned on him. But a pike took it in the belly, and the worst Corum got was the thing’s thick and ill-smelling blood pouring over his breastplate.

  He stumbled away, peering through the mist beyond the walls. And this time he did see a looming shape—a gigantic figure of a man, apparently with antlered horns growing from the sides of its head, its face all misshapen, its body all warped, raising something to its lips, as if to drink.

  And then came a sound which made all the hounds stop dead in their tracks and caused the surviving warriors to drop their weapons and cover their ears.

  It was a sound full of horror—part laughter, part screaming, part agonized wail, part triumphant shout. It was the sound of the Horn of Kerenos, calling back his hounds.

  Corum glimpsed the figure again as it disappeared into the mist. The hounds which remained alive instantly began to drive over the walls and run back down the hill until there was not a single living dog remaining in Caer Mahlod. Then the mist began to lift, rushing back towards the forest as if drawn behind Kerenos like a cloak. Once more the Horn sounded.

  Some men were vomiting, so terrible was the sound. Some men screamed, while others sobbed.

  Yet it was plain that Kerenos and his pack had had enough sport for that day. They had shown the people of Caer Mahlod a little of their power. It was all they had wanted to do. Corum could almost understand that the Fhoi Myore might see the battle in terms of a friendly passage of arms before the main fight began.

  The fight at Caer Mahlod had brought about the deaths of some four and thirty hounds.

  Fifty warriors had died, men and women both.

  “Quickly, Medhbh, the tathlum !” King Mannach, wounded in the shoulder and bleeding still, cried to his daughter. She had put one of the round balls of brains and lime into her sling and was whirling it.

  She let fly into the mist, after Kerenos himself.

  King Mannach knew she had not hit the Fhoi Myore.

  “The tathlum is one of the few things they believe will kill them,” he said.

  Quietly they left the walls of Caer Mahlod and went to mourn their dead.

  ‘ ‘Tomorrow,” said Corum,’ ‘I will set off upon this quest to find your spear Bryionak for you and bring it to you, clutched in my silver hand. I will do all mat I can to save the folk of Caer Mahlod from the likes of Kerenos and his hounds. I will go.”

  King Mannach, aided down the steps by his daughter, merely nodded his head, for he was very faint.

  “But first I must go to this place you call Castle Owyn,” said Corum. “That I must do first, before I leave.”

  “I will take you there this evening,” said Medhbh.

  And Corum did not refuse.

  THE THIRD CHAPTER

  A MOMENT IN THE RUINS

  Now that it was late afternoon and the cloud had dropped away from the face of the sun—which melted the frost a little, warmed the day and brought traces of the odor of spring to the landscape—Corum and the warrior princess Medhbh, nicknamed ‘of the Long Arm’ for her skill with snare and tathlum, rode horses out to the place which Corum called Erorn and she called Owyn.

  Though it was spring, there was no foliage on the trees and barely any grass growing upon the ground. It was a stark world, this world. Life was fleeing it. Corum remembered how lush it had been, even when he had left. It depressed him to think what so much of the country must look like now that the Fhoi Myore| their hounds and their servants, had visited it.

  They reined their horses near the edge of the cliff and looked at the sea muttering and gasping on the shingle of the tiny bay.

  Tall black cliffs—old and crumbling—rose out of the water. The cliffs were full of caves, as Corum had known them at least a millennia before.

  The promontory, however, had changed. Part of it had fallen at the center, collapsing into the sea in a tumble of rotting granite, and now Corum knew why little of Castle Erorn remained.

  “There is what they call the Sidhi Tower—or Cremm’s Tower. See?” Medhbh showed him what she meant. It lay on the other side of the chasm created by the falling rock.’ ‘It looks man-made from a distance, but it is really nature’s work.”

  But Corum kne
w better. He recognized the worn lines. True they seemed the work of nature, for Vadhagh building had always tended to blend into the landscape. That was why, in his own time, some travellers even failed to realize that Castle Erorn was there.

  ‘ ‘It is the work of my folk,” he said quietly.’ ‘It is the remains of Vadhagh architecture, though none would believe it, I know.” She was surprised and laughed. “So the legend has truth in it. It is your tower!”

  “I was born there,” said Corum. He sighed. “And, I suppose, I died there, too,” he added. Leaving his horse, he walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down. The sea had made a narrow channel through the gap. He looked across at the remains of the tower. He remembered Rhalina and his family—his father Prince Khlonskey, his mother the Princess Colatalarna, his sisters Hastru and Pholhin-ra, his uncle Prince Rhanan, his cousin Sertreda. All dead now. Rhalina at least had lived her natural lifespan, but the others had been brutally slain by Glandyth-a-Krae and his murderers. Now none remembered them save Corum. For a moment he envied them, for too many remembered Corum.

  “But you live,” she said simply.

  “Do I? I wonder if perhaps I am no more than a shade, a figment of your folk’s desires. Already my memories of my past life grow dim. I can barely remember how my family looked.”

  “You have a family—where you come from.”

  ‘ ‘I know that the legend says that I slept in the mound until I was needed, but that is not true. I was brought here from my own time— when Castle Erorn stood where ruins stand now. Ah, there have been so many ruins in my life …”

  “And your family is there? You left it to help us?”

  Corum shook his head and turned to look at her, smiling a bitter smile.

  “No, lady, I would not have done that. My family was slain by your race—by Mabden. My wife died.” He hesitated. “Slain, too?” “No, she died of old age.” “She was older than you?” “No.”

  ”You are truly immortal, then?” She looked down at the distant

  sea.

  “As far as it matters, yes. That is why I fear to love, you see.” “I would not fear that.”

  ‘ ‘Neither did the Margravine Rhalina, my bride. And I think I did not fear it, for I could not experience it until it happened. But when I experienced the loss of her I thought I could never bear that emotion again.”

  A single gull appeared from nowhere and perched on a nearby spur of rock. There had been many gulls here once.

  “You will never feel that exact emotion again, Corum.”

  ‘True. And yet …”

  “You love corpses?”

  He was offended. “That is cruel …”

  ‘ ‘What is left of dead people is the corpse. And if you do not love corpses, then you must find someone living to love.”

  He shook his head. “Is it so simple to you, lovely Medhbh?”

  ”I did not think that I said something simple, Lord Corum of the Mound.”

  He made an impatient gesture with his silver hand.’ ‘I am not, ‘of the Mound.’ I do not like the implications of that title. You speak of corpses—that title makes me feel like a corpse that has been resurrected. I can smell the mold on my clothes when you speak of ‘the Lord of the Mound’.”

  “The older legends said you drank blood. There were sacrifices on the mound during the darker times.”

  “I have no taste for blood.” His mood was lifting. The experience of the fight with the Hounds of Kerenos had helped rid him of some of his gloomy thoughts and replaced them with more practical considerations.

  And now he was reaching out to touch her face, to trace, with his hand of flesh, the line of her lips, her neck, her shoulder. And now they were embracing and he was weeping and full of

  joy.

  They kissed. They made love near the ruins of Castle Erorn while the sea pounded in the bay below. And then they lay in the last of the sunshine, looking out to sea.

  “Listen.” Medhbh raised her head, her hair floating about her face.

  He heard it. He had heard it a little while before she mentioned it, but he had not wanted to hear it.

  “A harp,” she said. “What sweet music it plays. How melancholy it is, that music. Do you hear it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is familiar …”

  “Perhaps you heard it this morning, just before the attack?” He spoke reluctantly, distantly.

  “Perhaps. And in the grove of the mound.”

  ‘ ‘I know—just before your folk tried to summon me for the first time.”

  “Who is the harpist? What is the music?” Corum was looking across the gulf at the ruined tower that was all that remained of Castle Erorn. Even to his eyes it did not look mortal-built. Perhaps, after all, the wind and the sea had carved the tower and his memories were false. He was afraid.

  She, too, now stared at the tower.

  ‘ ‘That is where the music comes from,” he said.’ ‘The harp plays the music of time.”

  THE FOURTH CHAPTER

  THE WORLD TURNED WHITE

  Garbed in fur, Corum set forth.

  He wore a white fur robe over his own clothes and there was a huge hood on the robe to cover his helmet, all made from the soft pelt of the winter marten. Even the horse they had given him had a coat of fur-trimmed doeskin embroidered with scenes of a valiant past. They gave him fur-lined boots and gauntlets of doeskin, also embroidered, and a high saddle and saddle-panniers and soft cases for his bow, his lances and the blade of his war-axe. He wore one of the gauntlets on his silver hand, so that no casual eye would know him. He kissed Medhbh and he saluted the folk of Caer Mahlod as they stood regarding him with grave and hopeful eyes upon the walls of the fortress town. He was kissed upon his forehead by King Mannach.

  “Bring us back our spear, Bryionak,” said King Mannach, “so that we may tame the bull, the black bull of Crinanass, so that we may defeat our enemies and make our land green again.”

  “I will seek it,” promised Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsei, and his single eye shone brightly, with tears or with confidence, none could tell. And he mounted his great horse, the huge and heavy war-horse of the Tuha-na-Cremm Croich, and he placed his feet in the stirrups he had had them make for him (for they had forgotten the use of stirrups) and put his tall lance in the stirrup rest, though he did not unfurl his banner, stitched for him all the previous night by the maidens of Caer Mahlod.

  “You look a great war-knight, my lord,” murmured Medhbh, and he reached down to stroke her red-gold hair and touch her soft cheek.

  He said: “I will return, Medhbh.”

  He had ridden southeast for two days and the riding had not been difficult, for he had ridden this way more than once and time had not destroyed many of the landmarks that had once been familiar to him. Perhaps because he had found so little and yet so much at Castle Erorn, he now headed for Moidel’s Mount where Rhalina’s castle had stood once. It was easy to justify this goal in terms of his quest, for Moidel’s Mount had once been the last outpost of Lwym-an-Esh and now the last of Lwym-an-Esh was Hy-Breasail. He would lose neither time nor direction by seeking out Moidel’s Mount, if that, too, had not sunk when Lwym-an-Esh sank.

  South and east he rode, and the world grew colder. Showers of bright, bouncing hailstones capered on the hard earth, pattered on his armored shoulders and his horse’s neck and withers. Many times his road across the great, wild moot was obscured by sheets of this frozen rain. Sometimes it grew so bad that he was forced to take shelter where he could, usually behind a boulder, for there were few trees on the moor, save some gorse and stunted birch; and all the bracken and heather, which should have been flourishing at this season, was either Completely dead or feebly alive. Once deer and pheasant had been everywhere, and now Corum saw no pheasant and had seen only one wary stag—thin, mad-eyed—on the whole of his journey.

  And the further east he rode, the worse the prospect of the land became, and soon there was heavy frost sparkling on every piece of ve
getation and coverings of snow on every hilltop, on every boulder. And the land rose higher and the air grew thinner and colder, and Corum was glad of the heavy robe his friends had given him, for slowly the frost gave way to snow. Every way he looked the world was white and its whiteness reminded him of the color of the Hounds of Kerenos. And now his horse waded through snow up to its hocks and Corum knew that, if attacked, he would have great difficulty in fleeing any danger and almost as much in maneuvering to face it. But at least the skies remained blue and sharp and clear, and the sun, though giving little heat, was bright. It was the mist which made Corum wary, for he knew that with the mist might come the devil hounds and their masters.

  And now he began to discover the shallow valleys of the moors and in the valleys the hamlets, villages and towns where once Mabden folk had lived. And every settlement was deserted.

  Corum took to using these deserted places for his night camps. Hesitant to build a fire lest the smoke be seen by enemies or potential enemies, he found that he could bum peat on the flagstones of empty cottages so that the smoke dispersed before it could be detected from even a close distance. Thus he was able to keep both horse and himself warm and cook hot food. Without these comforts his ride would have been miserable indeed.

  What saddened him was that the cottages still contained the funuture, ornaments and little trinkets of the folk who had lived in them. There had been no looting, for, Corum imagined, the Fhoi Myore had no interest in Mabden artifacts. But in some of the villages, the most easterly, there were signs that the Hounds of Kerenos had come a-hunting and found no shortage of prey. Doubtless that was why so many had fled and sought safety in the old, unused hill-forts like Caer Mahlod.

  Corum could tell that a complex and reasonably sophisticated culture had flourished here—a rich, agricultural people who had had time to develop their artistic gifts. In the abandoned settlements he found books as well as painting, musical instruments as well as elegant metal-work and pottery. It saddened him to see it all. Had his battle against the Sword Rulers been pointless, then? Lwym-an-Esh, which he had fought for as much as he had fought for his own folk, was gone, and what had followed it was now destroyed.