Empire of the East

by Fred Saberhagen

  The hand that held Chup’s head up by its hair now shifted its grip slightly. Turning his eyes down once again, he beheld his own headless, living body being brought up close beneath his head. Its hands grasped clumsily, like a baby’s, at Draffut’s fur when they could feel it. Closer the raw neck stump came, till Chup could hear the fountaining of its blood vessels. And closer yet, until there came a pressure underneath his chin—

  His head had not been breathing, nor felt any need to breathe; now there came a choking feeling, but it entailed no pain. It ended as the first rush of lung-drawn air caught coldly in his mouth and throat. Then with a sharp tingle came the feelings of his body, awareness of his fingers clutched in fur, of his feet kicking in the air, of the gentle pressure of the great hand closed around his ribs.

  That hand now bore him down, to immerse him completely in the lake once more. Once he was below the surface, his breathing stopped again, not by any choking or impediment but simply because it was not needed there. A man plunged into clearest, purest water would not call for a cup of muddy scum to drink; so it was that his lungs made no demand for air. Then in two hands Chup was lifted out, to be held high before an ugly, gentle face that watched him steadily.

  “I came—” Chup began to speak with a shout, before he realized there was no need for loudness. The lake gave the impression of filling all the cave with waterfall-voices, as sweet as demons’ noise was foul, but yet in fact a whisper might be heard.

  “I came as quickly as I could, Lord Draffut,” he said more normally. “I thank you for my life.”

  “You are welcome to what help I have to give. It is long since any thanked me for it.” The voice of Draffut, deep and deliberate, was fit for a giant. His hands turned Chup like a naked babe undergoing a midwife’s last inspection. Then Draffut set him, still dripping with the lake, upon a ledge that—Chup now saw—ran all the way around the cavern. This ledge, and the huge cave’s walls and curving roof, were of some substance dark and solid as the goblet in which the demon had brought him his healing draught long days ago. The ledge was at a level but little higher than the surface of the lake. Seeing at a distance was difficult in the cavern’s glowing air, but at its farthest point from Chup the ledge seemed wider, like a beach, and there were other figures moving on it, perhaps of other beasts who tended other men.

  The Beast-Lord said: “I cannot command the valkyries, or I would have sent them for you. If I could choose what men I help, I would help first those who fight against the demons.”

  Chup opened his mouth to answer. But now that he was no longer bathed in the fluid of life, a great weakness came over him, and he could only lean back against the wall and feebly nod.

  “Rest,” said Draffut. “You will grow stronger quickly, here. Then we will talk. I would give all men sanctuary, and heal them, but I cannot…I sent for you because you are the first man in the Black Mountains in many years who has cared for a fellow creature’s suffering. A small beast brought me the news that you had saved it from a demon.”

  For a moment Chup could not remember, but then it came to him: in the cavern of Som’s treasure hoard. Still he was too feeble to do more than nod.

  He tried again to study the figures moving in the cavern’s farthest reaches, but could not see them clearly, so vibrant was the air with light and life. The ledge Chup rested on was of a dull and utter black, but covered tightly with a film as thin and bright as sunlight, a glowing, transparent skin formed of the fluid of the lake. The film was never still. At one spot there would begin a thickening in the film, a thickening that swelled and pulsed, rose up and broke away, becoming a living separation that went winging like a butterfly. And from some other place there would spring a similar fragment, perhaps bigger than the first, big enough to be a bird, flying up and sagging as its wings melted, but not dying or collapsing, only putting out new wings of some different and more complex shape and flying on to collide in the singing, luminous air with the butterfly, the two of them clinging together and trembling, seeming on the verge of growing into something still bigger and more wonderful; but then diving deliberately together and melting back into the gracefully swirling body of the lake, with their plunge splashing up droplets that fell again into the patterned film that glided shining and without ceasing over the black substance of the ledge.

  Feeling some returning strength, Chup raised one hand to touch his neck. Running his fingers all the way around, he followed the scar, thin, jagged, and painless, of his death wound. Once more he tried to talk.

  “Lord Draffut, is the battle over?”

  Draffut turned his head toward the far end of the Lake. “My machines are still working without pause. The battle goes on. From what I have heard from beasts and men, the foul demon is likely to prevail, though if the issue were left to swords alone, the West would win.”

  “Then there is little time for us to act.” Chup tried to rise, but felt no stronger than the splashing butterflies of light.

  “Your healing is not finished. Wait, you soon will be strong enough to stand. What do you mean, we must act?”

  “We must act against the one you call ‘foul demon’—if you are as much the demons’ enemy as you claim, and I have heard.”

  Draffut lifted his great forearms high, then let them down, like falling trees, with a huge splash. “Demons! They are the only living things that I would kill, if I could. They devour men’s lives, and waste their bodies. For no need of their own, but out of sheer malignity, they steal the healing fluid from my lake, and taunt me when I rage and cannot come to grips with them.”

  Chup was now able to sit straighter on the ledge, and his voice had grown stronger. “You would kill Zapranoth?”

  “Him soonest of them all! Of all the demons that I know, he has done human beings the greatest harm.”

  “I know where he has hidden his life.”

  All was silent, except for the sweet seashell roaring of the lake. Draffut, standing absolutely still, looked down steadily at Chup for so long that Chup began to wonder if a trance had come upon him.

  Then Draffut spoke at last. “Here in the citadel? Where we can reach it?”

  “Here in the citadel he hid it, where he could keep his eye upon it every day. Where we can reach it if we are strong and fierce enough.”

  The Beast-Lord’s hands, knotted into barrel-sized fists, rose dripping from the lake. “Fierce? I can be fierce enough for anything, against obstacles that do not live, or against demons, or even against beasts if there is need. I cannot injure men. Not even—when it must be done.”

  “I can, and will again.” With a great effort Chup rose up, swaying, to his feet. “Som and his demon-loving crew…as soon as I can hold a sword again. Lord Draffut, the human Lords of the East are more like demons than like men.” Lifting a weak arm, Chup pointed to the distant beachlike place, where people were being cared for by tall inhuman figures. “Who are are those?”

  “Those? My machines. At least they were machines, when I was young. We all have changed since then, working in this cave, in constant contact with the Lake of Life. Now they are alive.”

  Chup had no time for marveling at that. “I mean those being healed. If you would fight the demons, fight the men who help them. Turn against the East. Order your machines, beasts, whatever they are, to stop healing Som’s troops now.”

  At that, Lord Draffut’s eyes blazed down upon him. “I have never seen Som, let alone acknowledged him as lord, and I care nothing for him. Men come and go around my lake, and use it. I remain. Long before there was an East or West, I lived. From the days of the Old World I have healed human wounds. Weapons were different then, but wounds were much the same, and men change not at all—though to me they then were gods.”

  Were what? Chup wondered, fleetingly; he had not heard that word before.

  Draffut spoke on, as if relieving himself of thoughts and words too long pent up. “I was not in the Old World as you see me now. Then I could not think. I was much smaller, an
d ran behind human beings on four legs. But I could love them, and I did, and I must love them still. Turn against the East, you say? I am no part of that abomination! I was here before Som came—long before—and I mean to be here when he has gone. I walked here when the healing lake was made, by men who thought their war would be the last. When they went mad and ran away, I was locked in, with the machines. I—grew. And when new tribes of humanity came, I was ready to lend them the collars, and the valkyries’ help, that they might be healed when they fought. And—after them—came others—”

  The High Lord Draffut slowed his angry speech. “Enough of that. Where is the life of Zapranoth?”

  Chup told him, things that he had heard and seen, and how the pieces seemed to fall together. The telling was quickly finished, but Chup was standing straight before he’d finished; he felt his strength increasing by the moment. “The girl’s name is the same, you see. Lisa. Though I would wager that her face and memory have been changed. And she has been here just half a year.”

  Draffut pondered but a moment more. “Then come, Lord Chup, and I will give you arms. If there are men I cannot frighten from our path, then you will fight them. If what you say is true, no other obstacle can keep me from the life of Zapranoth. Come! Swim!” And Draffut turned and swam away, cleaving the lake with stretching overhand strokes. Chup dove in and followed, faster than he had ever splashed through water.

  XI

  Knife of Fire

  Rolf’s balloon skimmed lower, dragged against tall shrubbery, and scraped free, but then continued sinking. In the quiet he could hear the gas escaping from a dozen arrow punctures in the bag. Mewick pointed silently at the next hedge ahead of them; this one they would not clear.

  Rolf swung up to the basket’s rim, and leaped in the instant before they struck the hedge. He hit the ground with sword already drawn—but there were no opponents yet in sight.

  In all directions, other balloons were coming down, seeding armed desperate fighters throughout the inner courts and buildings of Som’s citadel. But some balloons had missed the walls, or were still going up. Lacking the djinn’s help, or guiding ropes to follow, there was no pattern in the landing. Mewick was to assume leadership of the five man squad in Rolf’s balloon, once they had landed. But Mewick, like the rest, now stood perplexed for a moment beside the hedge; it was hard to see which was the best way to move to join up most effectively with other elements of the assaulting force. And from this garden they could see no vulnerable target where Som might be hurt with a quick attack.

  Only Rolf had glimpsed a goal, and he turned toward it when it seemed as likely a direction to take as any other. He ran toward the place where he had seen his sister, Mewick and the others pounding after him, across empty lawns and over deserted terraces.

  The girl was still on the roof. Her face was turned away, toward the battlefield, where like the smoke of burning villages the Demon-Lord hung in the air.

  “Lisa!”

  She looked round when he shouted, and he knew he had not been mistaken. But there was no recognition in her eyes when they met his, only confusion and alarm.

  Rolf started toward her, but then stopped as a squad of men in black appeared, coming in single file round the corner of the building where she was.

  He called out once more: “Lisa, try to come this way!” But there was no way for her to manage that right now. The Eastern squad was coming on to block the way. They were only auxiliaries, without the collars of the Guard, and armed with a varied selection of old weapons, but they were eight to face Rolf and his four companions. The eight soon proved to lack the willingness for battle of the five; one of their number they left behind, bleeding his life out in a flowerbed, and others, fleeing, clutched at wounds and yelled and left red trails.

  Rolf tried to get another look at Lisa on her roof. But there was no time. Beyond a tall hedge and a wall of masonry, some thirty meters distant, a huge collapsing gasbag showed where another Western squad had landed. These now seemed heavily beset, to judge by the shouts and noises there. Another force in black, ten or twelve men maybe, could be glimpsed through hedges as they hurried in that direction.

  Drops of gore flew from Mewick’s hatchet as he motioned for a charge. “That way!” And they were off.

  The shortest route to this new fight, lay over a decorative stone wall, head high. Rolf sheathed his sword to hurl himself up at full speed and with two hands free to grab. He drew again even as he lunged onward from his crouch atop the wall, and as he leaped struck downward with full force, to kill a Guardsman from behind. They were in a walled-in garden, with more than a score of men contending in a wild melee. Rolf landed awkwardly, off balance, but bounced up into a crouch at once, just in time to parry a hard blow that nearly knocked his sword away.

  Above the garden the huge gasbag, draped with its plastic mail, was steadily collapsing, threatening to make a temporary peace by smothering the fight. But yet there was room to wield weapons. The five beleaguered crewmen of this balloon welcomed with shouts the arrival of Mewick and his squad, and doubled their own strokes. But this time the enemy were Guardsmen, and more numerous than the squad of auxiliaries had been.

  The fight was savage and protracted. The West could gain no advantage until the crew of a third balloon had managed to reach the scene, and fell upon the Guardsman’s flank. When at last the Guard retreated, there were but nine men of the West still on their feet, and several of these were weak with wounds. Rolf, bearing only the one light wound suffered earlier, helped others with their bandages. He then began to hack off fallen Guardsmen’s heads, but Mewick stopped him.

  “We must move on, and find some heart or brain within this citadel where we can strike; let dead men be.”

  One of the Northmen had got up into a tree to look around. “More of our fellows over there! Let’s link with them!”

  Over the wall again they went, to where another dozen or fifteen Westerners had joined together, and were setting fires. Mewick was quick to argue with the leader of these men that what they were doing had little purpose, that some vital target must be found. To make his point he gestured toward the battlefield outside the citadel. There the High Lord Zapranoth remained immobile above the Western force; and what the demon might be doing to the men who swarmed like ants beneath his feet was not something that Rolf cared to think about.

  But the leader of the vandalizing crew, gestured to the clouds of smoke his men were causing to go up; these, he shouted, were bound to have an effect when they were seen.

  And he was right. A hundred black-clad soldiers or more, diverted from the fight outside, came pouring back into the citadel. Som dared not let his fortress and its contents fall.

  This Eastern counterattack come with a volley of arrows, then a charge. Rolf once more caught sight of Som himself, entering the fight in person in defense of what might be his own sprawling manor. The Lord of the Black Mountains, gaunt and hollow-eyed, wearing no shield or armor, shouting orders, came striding at the head of his own troops, swinging a two-handed sword. A Western crossbowman atop a wall let fly a bolt at Som. Rolf saw the missle blur halfway to its black-clad target, spin neatly in midair, then fly back with the same speed it had been fired. It tore a hole clear through the bowman’s throat.

  After that, there were few weapons raised at Som, though he ran straight at the Western line. Hack and thrust as he might, hoping to provoke a counter, those of the West who came within his reach restricted themselves to parrying and dodging his blows. Fortunately he was no great swordsman, and could do little damage to such a line as faced him now, shields at the ready. Once his sword was knocked out of his hands. He grabbed it up again, his face a mask of rage, and leaped once more to the attack. This time the Western line divided just in front of him; Mewick had quickly hatched a scheme to cut off Som and capture him, by a ring of shields pressed around him till he could be immobilized and disarmed. But the opening appeared too neatly before Som, or perhaps some magic warned him; he fe
ll back into the shelter of his own ranks, and thenceforward was content to let them do his fighting. They came on sturdily enough.

  Once more, for a time, the fighting was without letup. Then there came another small body of Western troops, fighting their way into the mass, bettering the odds just when it seemed they were about to worsen too severely. The forces separated briefly, the West dragging back their wounded where they had the chance. Rolf, looking again for Lisa, saw that she had remained at her vantage point on the roof. Perhaps she felt safer up there. Looking beyond her, he saw the sign of defeat still in the sky—the brooding shape of Zapranoth.

  One of the party who had just joined them had thrown himself down, exhausted, and was answering questions about the progress of the battle outside. Rolf realized that this man and his group had just come from there, had somehow managed to fight their way over the citadel’s wall or through its gate.

  “—but it does not go well. The old man withstands the demon still, how I do not know. Surely he cannot live much longer. Then Zapranoth will have us all. Already half our army has gone mad. They throw away their weapons, chew on rocks…still we have numbers on our side, and we might win, if it were not for Zapranoth. None can withstand the demon. None…”

  His voice fell silent. The men around were looking at him no longer, but up toward the mountain.

  Rolf craned his neck. There, on the high, barren, unclimbable slope, amid the doors where valkyries shuttled in and out, a new door had been opened. It looked as if an outer layer of rock had been cracked away as the door, of heavy dull black stuff, had been swung out. Framed in the opening, there stood what seemed to be the figure of a man, but having a beast’s head, and garbed in fur as radiant as fire. From inside the mountain, behind this figure, there streamed out a coruscating light that made Rolf think of molten metal.