by E R Eddison
Roder drew up his lip. ‘Wisdom,’ he said, ‘hath her excesses, and no less need of moderation, than folly. Take your course, my lord; but for my own part I will not be held answerable for these delays.’
It was seen now that Lessingham halted and pitched camp in the meadows west of Limisba, the hither side of the Hazanat, about a mile short of where the ground began to rise. And now he arrayed his army before the camp as if for battle. Jeronimy said, ‘He doth now in a manner draw the straw before the cat. But we shall not play withal.’ Roder ground his teeth and went to his quarters. Little content it brought him to see his own summer palace of Limisba, given him lately by King Mezentius in payment of his services in peace and war, lie thus under the claws of Lessingham. When supper was cooked, Jeronimy bade damp out all fires, so as it should not be known from below whether he lay there still in the Salimat or whether he was marched away. There was yet no tidings of the Chancellor, now full two days behind the time appointed. This lay like an ill-digested meal on their bellies. Jeronimy chose him out a prudent close and faithful messenger: sent him back by the Zayana road to seek tidings. All night long Lessingham’s camp-fires smoked to the stars from glimmering points of flame. Roder said, ‘Are they girl-children, then, these riffraff of Rerek, that they must coddle by the fire these summer nights, though we upon the hill can sleep in the cold?’ He was snoring in his tent and so saw not, an hour before dawn, his own house of Limisba in a lowe, like Antares amid the lesser fires of night.
At daybreak Limisba sparkled merrily, so as even here in the Salimat a man might doubt he heard not the crackle, throwing up vast eddying clouds of smoke that were yet but as a wreath from a snuffed-out candle facing the clouds of the dawn. The camp-fires burned yet, but the camp was struck. Along the winding waters towards the Zenner new fires beaconed to the sky, as if Lessingham, having done with his feint against the Salimat, would say, ‘Come down then and deal with me, or I will burn up all Meszria under your noses.’ Word was brought hastily to the generals: Roder rushed out in his shirt, sputtering a stream of blasphemies: called up the guard to summon the captains to council: gave order to strike camp and make all ready to march in posture for battle upon short warning. In the midst of which haste and fury he was met with the Lord Jeronimy with letters in his hand. ‘From the Chancellor: put in my hands this instant by’s messenger ridden day and night,’ said the Admiral: ‘these commends express he hath had delays for cause we spoke on: doubtful allegiance ’mongst his men: but all ended now and their minds well satisfied. Doubted not to set forth from Zayana on Thursday (that’s four days late)’ – ‘Damnation of hell! What good’s in that?’ said Roder. – ‘And by forced marches should be here ere tomorrow night.’
‘Then is our way clear,’ said Roder: ‘we wait no longer;’ and he flung off to his tent to clothe himself. The lord Admiral looked after him with pursed lips and an anxious brow.
Ten minutes later was their council called in the Admiral’s tent. Earl Roder came in in full battle-gear. He said, ‘There is first the point of policy, my lord, and that’s for you and I. Pray you let’s be private.’
‘As shall please you,’ said Jeronimy.
When they were private the Lord Jeronimy took him by the arm and said, ‘I would have you in a manner overview the thing serenely. I am no jot less eager than yourself to strike; but remember, ’tis his plain game to make us put our finger in a hole. There is hazard in’t today. Tomorrow, with the Chancellor and near another two thousand men, no hazard at all. Hasty fruits, my lord, be a pleasure for the time; but their time is but a cherry-fair.’
Roder said, in a strained quietness, ‘Your lordship must forgive me if I speak my mind, and ’tis, of this that you have spoke now, that a lewder and feebler skill or argument can no man make: if in sober sadness you would wait till tomorrow and suffer this Lessingham slip through our fingers.’
‘Nay, pray you, my lord,’ said Jeronimy, ‘you must not wrest my words. Wait till tomorrow, and I will securely promise you there shall not one tail of them return again into Rerek.’
‘Were it speak my thought,’ said Roder, and grew crimson, ‘I should a said you did seek an argument to cloak your – nay, but I know ’tis not chicken-hearted-ness: I mean your pig-headedness – like a filthy fly that seeketh all over the body for a sore.’
‘Rude incivilities, my Lord Roder,’ said the Admiral, taking his hand away, ‘shall stand us in little stead in our search for wise counsel. In a manner, ’tis a main need for us to be of one mind in this pass we are come to: to fail of that were a ruin worth all men’s pity.’
‘My good lord Admiral,’ said Roder, ‘give me your hand. I’m sorry my cursed words should so outrun my meaning. Only, a shame have we with so much strength at our back, when that a pawn saith to the king checkmate. Well, let him go his ways then. I reck not. And when his grace shall see, from his high vantage point of Rumala, this Lessingham fare like a king through Outer Meszria, and none to nay-say him, and we by just presumption lost or gone to sleep, he will soon down on him from Rumala, and himself do the thing we boggled at.’
The Admiral listened with hands clasping and unclasping behind his back, his head bent, as if studying his own feet. At mention of the Duke he gave a little start: a deep flush overspread his countenance. ‘Nay, but I had forgot that,’ he said, after a pause. ‘And yet ’tis present danger, Lessingham heading east. In the mad-brain violence of his valour, to come down: cope Lessingham in the plains.’ Still avoiding Roder’s eye, he walked slowly to the tent door and stood looking out. ‘Whereupon should most assuredly his too little force be incontinently overthrown and eaten up.’
Roder pricked his ears. Jeronimy abode there, silent and thoughtful, twirling his gold perspective-glass on the end of its slender chain. Roder spoke: ‘Which if’t befall, you and I should have but one shift left, my lord Admiral: that’s straight go hang ourselves.’
The Admiral said nothing: only ceased from twirling of his glass. Roder waited a little. Then he said. ‘There is yet good time to head him off, bring him to battle. After a few hours, not so easy; yet even that were better, follow at his heels through Meszria: better than sit here.’
There was a long silence. Roder breathed thickly through his nose; his jowl, under the bristles of his cropped black beard, swoll above the collar of his gorget. At last, without looking round, Jeronimy spoke. ‘The considerations are too much different. Time: ’tis that spoils all. No time to bring word to the Duke in Rumala. And so, impulsive necessity: not your other reasons, my lord,’ he said, turning and coming in; ‘’tis this persuadeth me to that which were else great folly. You shall have your way, my lord. Call in the rest.’
‘Ha! Then ’tis day!’ said Roder, and took him by both hands. ‘Now have I the bloody man upon the anvil: shall be pulp ere sundown.’
Lessingham, from a rise of ground beside the Zenner where he had now halted his army, beheld at four miles’ distance how Roder came down in force from the Salimat. ‘The Gods be praised,’ he said: ‘here’s an end of bonfires. Yet with such sluggish foxen, no way but smoke ’em out. And now we must not seem too eager, while they have yet the choice to run to earth again.’
‘You have roused a bed of bears, not foxen,’ said Amaury.
‘When the bear was met with the tiger cat, then was there fur a-flying,’ said Lessingham. ‘Time is of our side. They outnumber us, but not past coping with. Give ’em time to gather all their power, we durst not stand them; but now ’tis not beyond adventure.’
He issued command now, and they fell back slowly south-eastwards. The Earl turned east on this, as if to intercept them in the lava at the skirts of the hills above Nephory. After an hour’s march the armies were drawn within two miles of one another. Lessingham altered his course and headed due north, hugging at last the eastern edge of the wood of Orasbieh as if he would make for the bridge at Lorkan, where the Kutarmish road running in from the north crosses the shallow and muddy river Ailyman a little above its fall
ing into the Zenner. Here betwixt wood and river was a stretch of meadow land, firm and level: and here, resting his left upon the river a few hundred paces above the bridge and his right upon the border of Orasbieh wood, Lessingham halted and made ready for battle. Of his main battle, of footmen, he made a crescent, centre advanced, horns curving back toward the road. A great part of these were raw levies, raised, some hundreds, within the week from the countryside inland about Argyanna and seaward about Kessarey, others raised by the Vicar two months since, when he drew power to him in Owldale because of King Styllis. But nine hundred, of all the sixteen hundred foot, were veterans of the Vicar’s old army, hard as bears and inured to war: these had seen service under Lessingham too ere now, seven or eight years ago when, not without discreet countenance from the princes and (as was commonly said) from Barganax, the great rebellion had shaken all Rerek nearly to the unseating of the Vicar and the conquering might of Fingiswold. With some of these veteran troops Lessingham stiffened his centre, but posted them in the main upon the wings, held well back as aforesaid: ten score he kept in reserve under his own hand for more security in the dangerous purpose he did intend. Four hundred of his own horse, under command of Amaury, made his left battle, resting on the river. Three hundred more, under Brandremart, along with the squadrons lent from Argyanna, went on the right beside the wood.
When the Earl’s outriders came round the south-east neb of the wood and saw these dispositions, they sent word back to let him know that Lessingham stood there in the ings of Lorkan, and in what posture, offering battle. Upon which the Earl straightway called a halt, arrayed his host as he had determined with himself before, and advanced in order of battle. He had with him the whole army that was that morning gathered in the Salimat, save only five hundred sailors from the fleet who abode still in the pass there with the High Admiral, to hold it if need were and to await the Chancellor. His main strength, of two thousand heavy-armed spearmen of Fingiswold and a thousand of Jeronimy’s sailors, so far outwent in his judgement Lessingham’s foot, as well in weapons and goodness as in numbers, that he made little account of the odds against him in respect of horse. With that mind, he arrayed them in deep ranks, and commanded Peropeutes, who with Hortensius and Belinus captained the foot, to throw their whole weight, upon blowing of the horn for battle, against Lessingham’s centre, and break it. He himself with his three hundred picked horsemen of the Wold fared against Amaury beside the river. Egan and the Meszrian horse, but new come in that morning, went upon the left.
Earl Roder without parley let blow up the war-blast, and the banners were borne forth, and with a great and horrid shout his main battle set on at a lumbering run. Lessingham bade his folk hold their ground till it was come to handystrokes and then to hold firm on the wings at all costs. When they were come within cast, each side let at the other with twirl-spears. Upon the next instant Peropeutes and the pick of the royal guard, bearing great oblong shields and armed alternately with long thrusting-spears and two-handed swords, crashed like a battering-ram against Lessingham’s centre. In the roar of that onset and the clatter of steel and grinding of edge upon edge, the levies of Rerek, under the weight of deep columns so thrown upon them, shook and bent. Many were hurt and many slain of either side in that first clash of the battle; for fair in the centre had Lessingham set with each raw young man an old fighter of the Vicar’s, and these, with their short two-edged swords good for thrusting and hewing alike, and their smaller shields light but tough, made play where Roder’s spearmen might scarce find weapon-room in the close mellay. With main ponderous weight of numbers thrusting in serried ranks from behind, the battle front bent northwards, until Lessingham’s half-moon was clean reversed: horns reaching forward on either side, belly buckled inward. And little by little into that deepening pocket Roder’s battering-ram, with ever narrowing front, crowded and battered its way.
Lessingham had under his hand a hundred picked riders and a hundred of his veteran foot, men trained to go into battle with the horsemen, holding to the stirrup when they charge. With these he hung about the backward-buckling centre as a gannet follows a shoal of mackerel. His lips were set: his eyes dancing fires. By runners and riders, where he might not see for himself, he knew minute by minute how things fared: of the Meszrian horse now broken and put to flight beside the wood: of Amaury heavily engaged with Roder on the left. For the main action, his tried troops, two hundred and fifty on either part, were now, with the passage between them of that battering-ram, posted where he would have them: upon the enemy’s flanks. Even as the gannet, half closing her wings, drops like a white broad-barbed arrow to the sea, cleaving the waters with a blow that flings up spray with a swish as of a spouting whale, so, suddenly, seizing the moment, Lessingham struck. Himself, with his two hundred, rushing forth now from between the ranks of the unbroken but battered and far-driven centre, turned back the advance of Roder’s main front as with a blast of murdering wild-fire. In that same nick of time, the Vicar’s veterans closed upon Roder’s flanks like the claws of a crab. They took his right flank at open shields, so that great was the man-fall, and men cast down in heaps: some smothered under their fellows’ carcases, some cut to death with their own weapons or their fellows’ or ever their foes might come at them. The horse upon Lessingham’s right, leaving the pursuit when they heard his horn blow up the battle-call, took a sweep south and about and fell upon the foot from flank and rear. Amaury in a last charge flung the half of Roder’s famous horsemen into the river and utterly overthrew them.
The sun was a flattened ball of crimson fire touching the sea between the Quesmodian isles, when the High Admiral walked up from his tent with the Lord Beroald to a place of prospect whence they might overlook far and wide the vale of the Zenner, misty in the warm and sleepy sunset light. ‘Well, I have told you, I think, every tittle,’ he said. ‘And now it is the eighth hour past noon. And no news these three hours.’
‘And then to say he had come up with him in the ings of Lorkan?’
Jeronimy nodded his head. ‘Should a been more news ere now.’
The Chancellor with a swift glance sideways, not to be seen, noted the Admiral’s face clouded with anxious thought. ‘I would not think so,’ he said lightly.
‘A cat not to be caught without mittens,’ said Jeronimy. He stood for a minute scanning the countryside below, then, as they turned again to their walking, ‘When should your main body be here?’ he said.
‘Tomorrow night,’ answered Beroald.
‘And Zapheles?’
Beroald’s lip curled. ‘I will adventure upon no guesses as to that.’
‘Tomorrow night,’ said Jeronimy. ‘And that’s but lean relief, when ’tis being played out now, and for want of your army, three days dallied behind the day – nay, I blame it not on you, my lord: I know what ado you had. Nor I blame it not on myself.’ He met the Chancellor’s cold eye, squared his shoulders and laughed. ‘Your lordship must forgive me. Pah! ’Tis barely sunset, and are the scritch-owls abroad already? But these land-fights, ’tis pure truth, have ever seemed a thing ’gainst nature to me, in a manner.’
A studied imperturbability informed the Chancellor’s lean countenance as, erect and soldier-like, he surveyed the landscape with folded arms. ‘The odds of strength, my lord Admiral,’ he said coldly, ‘can alone resolve you of all doubts. And Roder is no untried boy, to walk into nets or aim ere he can strike. Come, let’s go to supper.’
X
THE CONCORDAT OF ILKIS
AMAURY BEFORE THE DUKE • OUR LADY OF CYPRUS • FIORINDA IN A JEWELLED SHADE • PHILOMMEIDES APHRODITE • HER HIGH PIERIAN FLOWER • THE DUKE PERCEIVES.
DUKE Barganax, the second night after that battle, sat in an upper chamber above the guard-room in Rumala. Bolt upright he sat, in a great stone chair, back to the wall, greaved and helmed, and in his long-sleeved byrny, every link of which was damascened with silver and gold. Black plumes of the bird of paradise shadowed his helm with their shifting iridescence of green an
d steel-blue fires. His hands hung relaxed over the arms of the chair. Torn and crumpled papers lay at his feet. A lamp on the table at his left elbow lighted the room but dimly. His face was in shadow, turned from the lamp towards the deep-set open window and its darkness astir with starlight. He did not move at the clatter of Medor’s mailed footsteps on the stair nor at his coming in. For a full minute Medor stood before him silent, as if afeared.
‘Is he gone?’
Medor answered, ‘I cannot move him. He is most stubborn set to speak with your grace.’
