Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 4 Darkbridge

by Adam Corby

  He opened his cavernous mouth. He filled his lungs with air. And he cried out in a voice echoing off the rocky walls, so that it might be heard by all there even above the din of combat, Gundoen’s final words:

  ‘O Ara-Karn, avenge my death my son!’

  * * *

  Something of that cry pierced even the thick door of the southern lance-tower, awakening Ampeánor.

  He had piled barrels against the door, but the barbarians had not thought of passing through the lance-tower as Ampeánor had feared. So he was granted a few moments’ respite, and in the calm gloom of the tower weariness overtook him.

  Now he woke, and looked about at the barrels of rope, stacked bundles of headless lance-hafts, amphorae of oil and other stores. Dimly, like the throbbing of a hollow heart, the rising and falling sounds of battle bore in upon him.

  He stood. His wounds were cold, his limbs stiff and sore. He limped to the steps. He thrust back the door-panel and climbed into the wind.

  In scores the barbarians were swarming over the parapet, crossing the battlements and hurling themselves against the guardsmen. From the wooden tower, bowmen aimed their fiery arrows. In the square below, twenty thousand men milled; against the rearward parapet less than a hundred guardsmen crowded together in a circle. The steps to the yard were empty and open. He saw no sign of Ullerath or Berowne. The last guardsmen fought fiercely but without guidance or reserves.

  It was defeat, then.

  Ampeánor looked past the inner gates. The Palace of the Bordakasha rose in age-old serenity. The White Tower was beautiful in Goddesslight. The Disk of Goddess atop the White Tower bespoke the pride and sureness that had gone into the Empire. It was said that the Disk of Goddess had been fashioned, upon the return of the armies from their victory at Urnostardil, as a gift to Elna from Torval, the only one of his ancestors that Ampeánor would acknowledge. The gift had so delighted Elna’s heart that he awarded Torval the charanship of Rukor, the strongest of the provinces.

  Ampeánor thought of Elna’s last descendant. He was sick at heart for all he had put her through. What did it matter now, that in her loneliness she had proven unworthy and had taken other men to her couch? She was his Queen. And she had loved him, and he might have won her for his bride many years before the name of Ara-Karn ever sounded in the world. Then Dornan Ural would have been no hindrance to them; with a firm heart all the cities of North and South could have confronted the barbarian as one, and destroyed him with ease. It had been Ampeánor’s failing that had doomed their love. He had been a coward and a fool, and all the world must pay the price for it.

  He lowered his head, struck his fists on the stone, groaned and gnashed his teeth. The golden armor was covered with blood and muck. Dirt stained his arms and legs. Then he rose and descended again into the lance-tower.

  He slung two bundles of rope over his shoulders and picked up two amphorae of oil half as tall as he. He bent beneath the burden, feeling it in his damaged shoulder.

  On the roof he passed the lengths of rope through the strong handles of the amphorae, tying them with seamen’s knots.

  Then he turned to face the Sun.

  ‘O Lady, I have been no great follower of yours. I scorned your ways and gave nothing to your temples. So perhaps the old woman in the Sontil is right, and I am hateful to you. But if it is defeat, I pray you, do not let Ara-Karn say it was an easy one. Grant me one gift, Lady, only one, and a small one such as you should be pleased to grant: let Allissál live, and not hate my memory overmuch.’

  He lifted an amphora by its rope. For a moment he doubted he could do it. Holding the rope above his head, he swung the amphora about his body. The vessel spun faster; Ampeánor let out the rope. Now he too was turning about. His arms were pulled straight from his shoulders, his back bent, his head tucked between his arms. His legs fought against the pull of the stones. The breath tore from his open mouth. All at once he made it out, dark and unmistakable. Thrice more he spun, watching for it; then loosed the rope into the winds.

  The amphora arched over the earth. The warriors in the square saw it for a moment, suspended in the sky as if dark God had dropped it. They began to raise their arms and point. Then it fell.

  The amphora crashed amidst of the bowmen on the tower, broke open and spewed its contents over them.

  Ampeánor, gasping on the lance-tower roof, saw the anger and confusion among the bowmen. One man, dressed in the fashion of the nomad robbers of the Desert, pointed at Ampeánor, urging on the others with his gestures. Dimly over the clash of battle their cries reached him, as they aimed their bows at him.

  The lord of Rukor staggered up. He took the second amphora. The arrows streaked past him as he turned. Round and round, bones aching, thews tearing. His grip was weaker now, he was dizzy, his steps wandered about the small round roof that had no parapet. He let go the rope clumsily and fell.

  For a moment he saw the rocky coomb directly below him, its piled red stones bared like the Darkbeast’s teeth.

  But this amphora flew true. It stuck down torches at the tower’s side, and the flames leaped up from the oil-washed platform.

  Within moments the siege-tower became a beacon.

  Ampeánor dragged himself back from the abyss and watched it burn.

  The flames clawed at the bowmen’s legs. Their tunics caught and fired. Flames burst out of the barrels of oil-soaked arrows. Some bowmen, blinded by the smoke, fell over the sides. Others fought one another on the way down. The upper third of the tower was in flames. At last only the man from the Desert stood on the tower roof, his mouth open, his fists raised. All his robes were ablaze; like a living torch he staggered to the back of the platform and disappeared like a dropped stone down the black hole of the ladder-way.

  From the shelters among the ruins the warriors of the tribes of the far North gaped at the blazing tower. Those on the battlements felt their hearts fall at the sight. Thick coils of bitter smoke engulfed them. They choked and spat in darkness. With a rush the guardsmen joined battle, closing their eyes and driving against the path of the smoke. With their last strength the guardsmen fought, slaughtering the barbarians. The barbarians fell back and dropped their blades. Red swords and cruel lances did their work, and hurled the Northerners off the parapet as a herd of sheep is driven by flood or fire over a cliff-side in the mountains by Bollakarvil.

  * * *

  Now in the square they saw their fellow-tribesmen falling and were sick at heart. Some had seen Ampeánor as he released the second amphora. The dreadful rumor of Elna-Ana sped among them once more. At that, the chief of the Vorisals emerged from his shelter. The hope of meeting again his enemy made Roguil Arn eager to mount the ladders again. He delighted in the towering pile of burning timbers, which reminded him of the fire Ara-Karn had lit on Urnostardil. With ringing words the Vorisal went among the tribes, daring men to follow him. None of them would have gone leaderless, but behind such a man as Roguil Arn was at that moment, they would have marched even into the Darklands. Seven hundred or a thousand men the Vorisal gathered and led grimly up the ladders.

  * * *

  Weakly the lord of Rukor leaned against the battlements. Strange quiet had fallen across the wide space between the lance-towers. Billows of smoke from the burning tower flowed across the stones, but otherwise all was still. The guardsmen lay empty-eyed on the third step, weapons scattered at their sides. They lay there almost naked, as if it were over.

  Ampeánor stood over one who seemed to have more of his wits about him than the rest. ‘I don’t remember your name,’ Ampeánor said.

  ‘Sevirin Lirne, my lord.’

  ‘Sevirin Lirne, where is Berowne?’

  ‘The captain is dead, my lord.’

  ‘Ullerath?’

  ‘Him too.’

  Ampeánor looked over the others. ‘Are these all who remain alive?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  There were twenty-four men on the third step.

  With Ampeánor and Sevirin Li
rne, there were twenty-six.

  ‘Shall I order to form ranks, my lord.’

  ‘No. What for? There is no more strength in them. They have no more life left to use. But you all did well. If there should still stand cities after all of this, then men shall sing of us. Sevirin Lirne, you are released from duty, as are all the rest of you. Go and do what pleases you.’

  The lord of Rukor faced the empty line of the outer parapet. The smoke stung his face. One hand held the shield, the other drew the long sword. Beautiful it was even now, the perfection of the centuries of effort by the armorers of Ul Raambar. It sang as it sprang from its scabbard, weariless and sharp, and Goddess smiled from the stones in the cross-piece. That is the difference between things and men.

  * * *

  Eagerly Roguil Arn and his followers clambered up the ladders. They almost gained the iron-shod summits when the lone figure appeared above the parapet before them.

  Roguil Arn stopped. All the warriors stopped. They knew this one.

  ‘Come,’ the Southron said in the barbarians’ own tongue, in a voice inhuman. ‘Come, and die.’

  * * *

  Roguil Arn looked up into the bronze-shaded, pitiless eyes, the eyes of the man who killed so many, and seemed himself unkillable. And Roguil Arn knew in his heart a thing inescapable – that if he went to the top of the ladder the dark man there would kill him. He, Roguil Arn, would die, and he would know no more of the sweet pleasures of life, not good wine nor the soft touch of a woman nor the glory of his strength. He would see his home village of the snows no more; his wives there and young children would never know his voice again. But his corpse would lie on that heap below with the others, vile birds would tear his flesh, and he would end his life unvoyaged.

  Roguil Arn did not know fear even then, but the loss and evil of such a fate was abhorrent to him like sin to a lesser man. What pleasure or joy was there in dying? It was not fated that they should take this Citadel, but only hurl themselves against its Iron Gate and die. This year had proven that.

  Slowly Roguil Arn shook his head and whispered, ‘No.’

  The others on the ladders turned their gazes from the chieftain to the figure on the parapet. The first to go against that one would die. The second would also die, and the third, and the fourth, and the tenth. They all would die at his hands. This they knew. Dark God stood beside this one. There was no going against God. Ara-Karn would have done it. Gundoen might have dared. Roguil Arn would not. Nor would the rest go forward but at his lead.

  There was no sound save for the crackle and roar of the fire. Roguil Arn backed down the ladder. When he came to the man behind him he pushed at him with his foot, and that one also moved. In silence they descended and gathered on the stones above the coomb. Looking to the figure high above them, they raised fists to him.

  It was their sign of victory.

  It was as if he had been one of them, and they praised the victory he had won for them.

  Then they melted into the crowds beyond the fire.

  * * *

  The guardsmen rose. They would have joined their lord, but Ampeánor, not turning, signed them back.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ he commanded. ‘Let no man approach me.’

  He stood on the parapet. In the square below, the barbarian armies were massed in deep rows bent like a half-wheel that had for its hub the base of the burning siege-tower. The flames gleamed in colors of blood-red and orange and purple off the black Iron Gate.

  Perhaps an hour passed so, or maybe two. Ampeánor did not move. Neither did the tribesmen. From time to time a trembling took Ampeánor behind his knees and he was like to fall; with an iron will beyond his strength he held his body fast. He knew that if he showed the slightest weakness, the barbarians in all their thousands would come again.

  When the jade orb of God rose to the middle heavens behind the smoke, Ampeánor leaned forward and with a lance pushed the scaling-ladders from the Iron Gate. One by one, the ladders skipped across the face of the stone; then they fell and broke with dry sounds into a thousand fragments on the coomb.

  Only then did the barbarians bestir themselves. The waves of armored men broke and slunk back through the ruins as quietly as ghosts.

  Then at last Ampeánor turned back his tortured, haggard, sweating, smoke-stained, dead man’s visage to his awestruck men.

  ‘The war is over,’ he said.

  He was right.

  VII

  Defeat

  HOURS HAD PASSED, and the grounds of the Citadel of Elna were alive to the sounds of celebration. The Tarendahardilites made a feast, they drew water from the cisterns and mixed it with the last of the wine, they drank and ate.

  They were as yet unaware of the dark figures that gathered at the edges of the rock, and most of all about the gloom-ridden trees of the last grove of the Imperial gardens. They were as yet unaware of the wavering, smoke-like fingers that stretched up out of the ground between their feet, under the benches and tables. The Tarendahardilites filled their beakers and cups and bowls, broke bread hot from the ovens, and drank one another’s health. Victory was the watchword there, and the happy chorus rose everywhere about the grounds.

  Over the bloodstained battlements, however, a solemn, spectral stillness reigned. Dark wreaths of smoke still curled over the parapet from the burning siege-tower, and a few gerlins wheeled and dove against heaven – else were all things there deathly still.

  Faintly through the rending veils of smoke could be perceived the outlines of the body of the victor where he lay against the base of the southern lance-tower, stretched out like a river god from some rich and indolent land.

  He lay there alone. All the bodies had been borne away, and so the last guardsmen had left him there to sleep where he had fallen, too weary even to descend into the yard. Above his head the lance-tower rose out of the smoke, gaunt like a reef of adamant in an icy sea adorned with rotten wrecks and bitter, chalk-white birds of evil portent, as watchful and malignant as the hooded man who had stood upon her crown shooting death down upon his own unsuspecting followers.

  Ampeánor neither slept nor woke. His mind danced slowly within the globe of his bleeding skull. The eyelids stirred a little, the mouth twisted as if with pain – below the shoulders the rest of him lay still and heavy as a corpse. From time to time as the sounds of merriment reached him some memory would take him, and he tried in vain to bestir himself. Not even the gloved fingers half-open on the beautiful sword-hilt moved.

  When at last he woke, the smoke was no more than a bitter odor in the breeze, and the gerlins were gone. The last iron-shod sticks of the barbarians’ assault tower lay in a heap beside the disks of Elna’s Pillar of Victory. Beyond them, opening like some gigantic, ghastly blossom, Tarendahardil stretched across the plateau and the plain in lonely, dismal splendor. Streams of men on horse and foot poured out of the camp of the barbarians in the field beyond the city, passing away brightward, fleeing in defeat.

  Ampeánor hauled himself to his feet and leaned against the wall. Bareheaded, his hair a bird-nest of blood and dirt, his face greasy with smoke, tears, and sweat, the last lord of Rukor stood into the cool, peaceful airs of victory.

  He drew off his gloves. He was well now, whole again. All the madness and fury had been taken from him, consumed in fire and killing. What he had said and done before this battle had been put upon him by the gods. Now he was at peace with all men, even himself.

  He bent to pick up the lovely Raamba sword. The blade scraped against the stone, and Ampeánor was aware of a strangeness about the stronghold.

  It was silent.

  Stretched out on the steps were half a dozen guardsmen, their arms still pointing at the wine-jugs they had almost emptied. Those men were not drunk but dead.

  Ampeánor descended into the yard and passed bewildered through the brass doorway. Before him the grounds of the Citadel were bedecked with ribands of bright colors, brilliant carpets, silken cushions, couches of seltiswood, and corpse
s.

  A grand feast had been in progress. Platters of food and broken serving-jugs were scattered everywhere. The tents of the refugees shuddered in the cold wind. In the half-open tent of the wounded the last survivors moaned in thirst and anguish to their healers, who all lay dead. Shadows of gerlins flitted over the sprawled corpses of heroes. Men and women, children and cattle – they were everywhere about the silent grounds. Some had fallen with cups still at their lips; others had lived to walk about and feel the life burn out in the hollow of their bellies. And over all the grounds, out of all the thousands there, not a single one still lived.

  * * *

  During the long course of the battle, a crowd of Tarendahardilites had gathered in the shadow of the inner gates – the same crowd through which Gundoen had passed. They had come from the tents, where the more fearful stayed huddled out of sight. Three times the Tarendahardilites had lain down to the longsleep and lain awake, hearing ceaseless battle. They did not eat, and drank but little: they made themselves miserable, hoping to win somehow the pity of the gods who had doomed them long before.

  Those at the Iron Gate numbered several hundred: most of the children were there. The name of the Gerso charan was strong on the lips of more than one of them. Why, they wondered – why was it that Father Ennius did not fight in this defense, the longest and most doubtful? Then they heard a frightful cry echo off the stones beyond the Iron Gate, horribly familiar, brief and bellowed in words they could not understand, but which made them tremble: they did not know the tongue of the far North, and so could not understand Gundoen’s last cry.

  Shortly afterward the sounds of battle died away. Silently the Tarendahardilites looked at one another, then cast their eyes skyward. There an enormous, swirling serpent of black smoke spewed over the inner gates.