his byrny. “This,” he said, “shall be a keepsake for me of thee, my
Lord Corund. Reminding me,” and here his eyes grew terrible, “so long
as there surviveth a soul of you in Witchland, that I am still to teach
the world throughly what that man must abide that durst affront me with
such an offer.”
Corund answered him, “Thou art a dapper fellow. It is a wonder that
thou wilt strut in the tented field with all this womanish gear. Thy
shield: how many of these sparkling baubles thinkest thou I’d leave in
it were we once come to knocks?”
“I’ll tell thee,” answered Lord Brandoch Daha. “For every jewel that
hath been beat out of my shield in battle, never yet went I to war that
I brought not home an hundredfold to set it fair again, from the spoils
I obtained from mine enemies. Now this will I bid thee, O Corund, for
thy scornful words: I will bid thee to single combat, here and in this
hour. Which if thou deny, then art thou an open and apparent dastard.”
Corund chuckled in his beard, but his brow darkened somewhat. “I pray
what age dost thou take me of?” said he. “I bare a sword when thou was
yet in swaddling clothes. Behold mine armies, and what advantage I hold
upon you. Oh, my sword is enchanted, my lord: it will not out of the
scabbard.”
Brandoch Daha smiled disdainfully, and said to Spitfire, “Mark well, I
pray thee, this great lord of Witchland. How many true fingers hath a
Witch on his left hand?”
“As many as on his right,” said Spitfire.
“Good. And how many on both?”
“Two less than a deuce,” said Spitfire; “for they be false fazarts to
the fingers’ ends.”
“Very well answered,” said Lord Brandoch Daha.
“You’re pleasant,” Corund said. “But your fusty jibes move me not a
whit. It were a simple part indeed to take thine offer when all wise
counsels bid me use my power and crush you.”
“Thou’dst kill me soon with thy mouth,” said Brandoch Daha. “In sum,
thou art a brave man when it comes to roaring and swearing: a big
bubber of wine, as men say to drink drunk is an ordinary matter with
thee every day in the week; but I fear thou durst not fight.”
“Doth not thy nose swell at that?” said Spitfire.
But Corund shrugged his shoulders. “A footra for your baits!” he
answered. “I am scarce bounden to do such a kindness to you of
Demonland as lay down mine advantage and fight alone, against a
sworder. Your old foxes are seldom taken in springes.”
“I thought so,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “Surely the frog will have
hair sooner than any of you Witchlanders shall dare to stand me.”
So ended the second parley before Eshgrar Ogo. The same day Corund
essayed again to storm the hold, and grievous was the battle and hard
put to it were they of Demonland to hold the walls. Yet in the end were
Corund’s men thrown back with great slaughter. And night fell, and they
returned to their tents.
• • • • •
“Mine invention,” said Gro, when on the next day they took counsel
together, “hath yet some contrivance in her purse which shall do us
good, if it fall but out to our mind. But I doubt much it will dislike
thee.”
“Well, say it out, and I’ll give thee my censure on’t,” said Corund.
Gro spake: “It hath been shown we may not have down this tree by
hewing above ground. Let’s dig about the roots. And first give them a
seven-night’s space for reckoning up their chances, that they may see
morning and evening from the burg thine armies set down to invest them.
Then, when their hopes are something sobered by that sight, and want of
action hath trained their minds to sad reflection, call them to parley,
going straight beneath the wall; and this time shalt thou address
thyself only to the common sort, offering them all generous and free
conditions thou canst think on. There’s little they can ask that we’d
not blithely grant them if they’ll but yield us up their captains.”
“It mislikes me,” answered Corund. “Yet it may serve. But thou shalt be
my spokesman herein. For never yet went I cap in hand to ask favour of
the common muck o’ the world, nor I will not do it now.”
“O but thou must,” said Gro. “Of thee they will receive in good faith
what in me they would account but practice.”
“That’s true enough,” said Corund. “But I cannot stomach it. Withal, I
am too rough spoken.”
Gro smiled. “He that hath need of a dog,” he said, “calleth him ‘Sir
Dog.’ Come, come, I’ll school thee to it. Is it not a smaller thing
than months of tedious hardship in this frozen desert? Bethink thee
too what honour it were to thee to ride home to Carcë with Juss and
Spitfire and Brandoch Daha bounden in a string.”
Not without much persuasion was Corund won to this. Yet at the last
he consented. For seven days and seven nights his armies sat before
the burg without sign; and on the eighth day he bade the Demons to
a parley, and when that was granted went with his sons and twenty
men-at-arms up the great rib of rock between the lakes, and stood below
the east wall of the burg. Bitter chill was the air that day. Powdery
snow light-fallen blew in little wisps along the ground, and the rocks
were slippery with an invisible coat of ice. Lord Gro, being troubled
with an ague, excused himself from that faring and kept his tent.
Corund stood beneath the walls with his folk about him. “I have
matter of import,” he cried, “and ’tis needful it be heard both by
the highest and the lowest amongst you. Ere I begin, summon them all
to this part of the walls: a look-out is enow to shield you of the
other parts from any sudden onslaught, which besides I swear to you is
clean without my purpose.” So when they were thick on the wall above
him, he began to say, “Soldiers of Demonland, against you had I never
quarrel. Behold how in this Impland I have made freedom flourish as a
flower. I have strook off the heads of Philpritz Faz, and Illarosh,
and Lurmesh, and Gandassa, and Fax Fay Faz, that were the lords and
governors here aforetime, abounding in all the bloody and crying sins,
oppression, gluttony, idleness, cruelty, and extortion. And of my
clemency I delivered all their possessions unto their subjects to hold
and order after their own will alone, who before did put on patience
and endured with much heart-burning the tyranny of these Fazes, until
by me they found a remedy for their more freedom. In like manner, not
against you do I war, O men of Demonland; but against the tyrants that
enforced you for their private gain to suffer hardship and death in
this remote country: namely, against Juss and Spitfire that came hither
in quest of their cursed brother whom the might of the great King hath
happily removed. And against Brandoch Daha am I come, of insolence
untamed, who liveth a chambering idle life eating and drinking and
exercising tyranny, while the pleasant lands of Krothering and Failze
and Stropardon, and the dwellers in the isles, Sorbey, Morvey, Strufey,
Dalney, and Kenarvey, and they of Westmark and all the western parts
of Demonland groan and wax lean to feed his luxury. To your hurt only
have these three led you, as cattle to the slaughter. Deliver them to
me, that I may chastise them, and I, that am great viceroy of Impland,
will make you free and grant you lordships: a lordship for every man of
you in this my realm of Impland.”
While Corund spake, the Lord Brandoch Daha went among the soldiers
bidding them hold their peace and not murmur against Corund. But those
that were most hot for action he sent about an errand preparing what he
had in mind. So that when the Lord Corund ceased from his declaiming,
all was ready to hand, and with one voice the soldiers of Lord Juss
that stood upon the wall cried out and said, “This is thy word, O
Corund, and this our answer,” and therewith flung down upon him from
pots and buckets and every kind of vessel a deluge of slops and offal
and all filth that came to hand. A bucketful took Corund in the mouth,
befouling all his great beard, so that he gave back spitting. And he
and his, standing close beneath the wall, and little expecting so
sudden and ill an answer, fared shamefully, being all well soused and
bemerded with filth and lye.
Therewith went up great shouts of laughter from the walls. But Corund
cried out, “O filth of Demonland, this is my latest word with you. And
though ’twere ten years I must besiege this hold, yet will I take it
over your heads. And very ill to do with shall ye find me in the end,
and very puissant, proud, mighty, cruel, and bloody in my conquest.”
“What, lads?” said Lord Brandoch Daha, standing on the battlements,
“have we not fed this beast with pig-wash enow, but he must still be
snuffing and snouking at our gate? Give me another pailful.”
So the Witches returned to their tents with great shame. So hot was
Corund in anger against the Demons, that he stayed not to eat nor drink
at his coming down from Eshgrar Ogo, but straight gathered force and
made an assault upon the burg, the mightiest he had yet essayed; and
his picked men of Witchland were in that assault, and he himself to
lead them. Thrice by main fury they won up into the hold, but all were
slain who set foot therein, and Corund’s young son Dormanes wounded
to the death. And at even they drew off from the battle. There fell
in that fight an hundred and four-score Demons, and of the Imps five
hundred, and of the Witches three hundred and ninety and nine. And many
were hurt of either side.
• • • • •
Wrath sat like thunder on Corund’s brow at supper-time. He ate his meat
savagely, thrusting great gobbets in his mouth, crunching the bones
like a beast, taking deep draughts of wine with every mouthful, which
yet dispelled not his black mood. Over against him Gro sat silent,
shivering now and then for all that he kept his ermine cloak about him
and the brazier stood at his elbow. He made but a poor meal, drinking
mulled wine in little sips and dipping little pieces of bread in it.
So wore without speech that cheerless and unkindly meal, until the Lord
Corund, looking suddenly across the board at Gro and catching his eye
studying him, said, “That was a bright star of thine and then shined
clear upon thee when thou tookest this bout of shivering fits and so
wentest not with me to be soused with muck before the burg.”
“Who would have dreamed,” answered Gro, “of their using so base and
shameful a part?”
“Not thou, I’ll swear,” said Corund, looking evilly upon him and
marking, as he thought, a twinkling light in Gro’s eyes. Gro shivered
again, sipped his wine, and shifted his glance uneasily under that
unfriendly stare.
Corund drank awhile in silence, then flushing suddenly a darker red,
said, leaning heavily across the board at him, “Dost know why I said
‘not thou’?”
“’Twas scarce needful, to thy friend,” said Gro.
“I said it,” said Corund, “because I know thou didst look for another
thing when thou didst skulk shamming here.”
“Another thing?”
“Sit not there like some prim-mouthed miss feigning an innocence
all know well thou hast not,” said Corund, “or I’ll kill thee. Thou
plottedst my death with the Demons. And because thyself hast no shred
of honour in thy soul, thou hadst not the wit to perceive that their
nobility would shrink from such a betrayal as thy hopes entertained.”
Gro said, “This is a jest I cannot laugh at; or else ’tis madman’s
brabble.”
“Dissembling cur,” said Corund, “be sure that I hold him not less
guilty that holds the ladder than him that mounts the wall. It was thy
design they should smite us at unawares when we went up to them with
this proposal thou didst urge on me so hotly.”
Gro made as if to rise. “Sit down!” said Corund. “Answer me; didst not
thou egg on the poor snipe Philpritz to that attempt on Juss?”
“He told me on’t,” said Gro.
“O, thou art cunning,” said Corund. “There too I see thy treachery.
Had they fallen upon us, thou mightest have thrown thyself safely upon
their mercy.”
“This is foolishness,” said Gro. “We were far stronger.”
“’Tis so,” said Corund. “When did I charge thee with wisdom and sober
judgement? With treachery I know thou art soaked wet.”
“And thou art my friend!” said Gro.
Corund said in a while, “I have long known thee to be both a subtle and
dissembling fox, and now I durst trust thee no more, for fear I should
fall further into thy danger. I am resolved to murther thee.”
Gro fell back in his chair and flung out his arms. “I have been here
before,” he said. “I have beheld it, in moonlight and in the barren
glare of day, in fair weather and in hail and snow, with the great
winds charging over the wastes. And I knew it was accursed. From Morna
Moruna, ere I was born or thou, O Corund, or any of us, treason and
cruelty blacker than night herself had birth, and brought death to
their begetter and all his folk. From Morna Moruna bloweth this wind
about the waste to blast our love and bring us destruction. Ay, kill
me; I’ll not ward myself, not i’ the smallest.”
“’Tis small matter, Goblin,” said Corund, “whether thou shouldst or no.
Thou art but a louse between my fingers, to kill or cast away as shall
seem me good.”
“I was King Gaslark’s man,” said Gro, as if talking in a dream; “and
between a man and a boy near fifteen years I served him true and
costly. Yet it was my fortune in all that time and at the ending
thereof only to get a beard on my chin and remorse at heart. To
what scorned purpose must I plot against him? Pity of Witchland, of
Witchland sliding as then into the pit of adverse luck, ’twas that
made force upon me. And I served Witchland well: but fate ever fought
o’ the other side. I it was that counselled King Gorice XI. to draw
out from the fight at Kartadza. Yet wanton Fortune trod down the scale
for Demonland. I prayed him not wrastle with Goldry in the Foliot
Isles. Thou didst back me. Nought but rebukes and threats of death
gat I therefrom; but because my redes were set at nought, evil fell
upon Witchland. I helped our Lord the King when he conjured and made a
sending against the Demons. He loved me therefor and upheld me, but
great envy was raised up against me in Carcë for that fact. Yet I bare
up, for thy friendship and thy lady wife’s were as bright fires to warm
me against all the frosts of their ill-will. And now, for love of thee,
I fared with thee to Impland. And here by the Moruna where in old days
I wandered in danger and in sorrow, it is fitting I behold at length
the emptiness of all my days.”
Therewith Gro fell silent a minute, and then began to say: “O Corund,
I’ll strip bare my soul to thee before thou kill me. It is most true
that until now, sitting before Eshgrar Ogo, it hath been present to
my heart how great an advantage we held against the Demons, and the
glory of their defence, so little a strength against us so many, and
the great glory of their flinging of us back, these things were a
splendour to my soul beholding them. Such glamour hath ever shone to me
all my life’s days when I behold great men battling still beneath the
bludgeonings of adverse fortune that, howsoever they be mine enemies,
it lieth not in my virtue to withhold from admiration of them and well
nigh love. But never was I false to thee, nor much less ever thought,
as thou most unkindly accusest me, to compass thy destruction.”
“Thou dost whine like a woman for thy life,” said Corund. “Cowardly
hounds never stirred pity in me.” Yet he moved not, only looking dourly
on Gro.
Gro plucked forth his own sword, and pushed it towards Corund
hilt-foremost across the board. “Such words are worse than
sword-thrusts betwixt us twain,” said he. “Thou shalt see how I’ll
welcome death. The King will praise thee, when thou showest the cause.
And it will be sweet news to Corinius and them that have held me in
their hate, that thy love hath cast me off, and thou hast rid them of
me at last.”
But Corund stirred not. After a space, he filled another cup, and
drank, and sat on. And Gro sat motionless before him. At last Corund
rose heavily from his seat, and pushing Gro’s sword back across the
table, “Thou’dst best to bed,” said he. “But the night air’s o’er
shrewd for thine ague. Sleep on my couch to-night.”
• • • • •
The day dawned cold and gray, and with the dawn Corund ordered his
lines round about Eshgrar Ogo and sat down for a siege. For ten days
he sat before the burg, and nought befell from dawn till night, from
night till dawn: only the sentinels walked on the walls and Corund’s
folk guarded their lines. On the eleventh day came a bank of fog
rolling westward from the Moruna, chill and dank, blotting out the
features of the land. Snow fell, and the fog hung on the land, and
night came of such a pitchy blackness that even by torch-light a man
might not see his hand stretched forth at arm’s length before him. Five
days the fog held. On the fifth night, it being the twenty-fourth of
November, in the darkness of the third hour after midnight, the alarm
was sounded and Corund summoned by a runner from the north with word
that a sally was made from Eshgrar Ogo, and the lines bursten through
in that quarter, and fighting going forward in the mirk. Corund was
scarce harnessed and gotten forth into the night, when a second runner
came hot-foot from the south with tidings of a great fight thereaway.
All was confounded in the dark, and nought certain, save that the
Demons were broken out from Eshgrar Ogo. In a space, as Corund came
with his folk to the northern quarter and joined in the fight, came a
message from his son Heming that Spitfire and a number with him were
broken out at the other side and gotten away westward, and a great band
chasing him back towards Outer Impland; and therewith that more than
an hundred Demons were surrounded and penned in by the shore of the
lakes, and the burg entered and taken by Corund’s folk; but of Juss and
Brandoch Daha no certain news, save that they were not of Spitfire’s
company, but were with those against whom Corund went in person,
having fared forth northaway. So went the battle through the night.
Corund himself had sight of Juss, and exchanged shots with him with
twirl-spears in a lifting of the fog toward dawn, and a son of his bare
witness of Brandoch Daha in that same quarter, and had gotten a great
wound from him.
When night was past, and the Witches returned from the pursuit,
Corund straitly questioned his officers, and went himself about the
battlefield hearing each man’s story and viewing the slain. Those
Demons that were hemmed against the lakes had all lost their lives,
and some were taken up dead in other parts, and some few alive. These
would his officers let slay, but Corund said, “Since I am king in
Impland, till that the King receive it of me, it is not this handful
of earth-lice shall shake my safety here; and I may well give them
their lives, that fought sturdily against us.” So he gave them peace.
And he said unto Gro, “Better that for every Demon dead in Ogo Morveo
ten should rise up against us, if but Juss only and Brandoch Daha were
slain.”
“I’ll be in the tale with thee, if thou wilt proclaim them dead,” said
Gro. “And nothing is likelier, if they be gone with but two or three on
to the Moruna, than that such a tale should come true ere it were told
in Carcë.”
“Pshaw!” said Corund, “to the devil with such false feathers. What’s
done shows brave enow without them: Impland conquered, Juss’s army
minced to a gallimaufry, himself and Brandoch Daha chased like runaway
thralls up on the Moruna. Where if devils tear them, ’tis my best wish
come true. If not, thou’lt hear of them, be sure. Dost think these can
survive on earth and not raise a racket that shall be heard from hence
to Carcë?”
XII: KOSHTRA PIVRARCHA
OF THE COMING OF THE LORDS OF DEMONLAND TO MORNA MORUNA, WHENCE
THEY BEHELD THE ZIMIAMVIAN MOUNTAINS, SEEN ALSO BY GRO IN YEARS
GONE BY; AND OF THE WONDERS SEEN BY THEM AND PERILS UNDERGONE
AND DEEDS DONE IN THEIR ATTEMPT ON KOSHTRA PIVRARCHA, THE
WHICH ALONE OF ALL EARTH’S MOUNTAINS LOOKETH DOWN UPON KOSHTRA
BELORN; AND NONE SHALL ASCEND UP INTO KOSHTRA BELORN THAT HATH
NOT FIRST LOOKED DOWN UPON HER.
Now it is to be said of Lord Juss and Lord Brandoch Daha that they,
finding themselves parted from their people in the fog, and utterly
unable to find them, when the last sound of battle had died away
wiped and put up their bloody swords and set forth at a great pace
eastward. Only Mivarsh fared with them of all their following. His
lips were drawn back a little, showing his teeth, but he carried
himself proudly as one who being resolved to die walks with a quiet
mind to his destruction. Day after day they journeyed, sometimes in
clear weather, sometimes in mist or sleet, over the changeless desert,
without a landmark, save here a little sluggish river, or here a piece
of rising ground, or a pond, or a clump of rocks: small things which
faded from sight amid the waste ere they were passed by a half-mile’s
distance. So was each day like yesterday, drawing to a morrow like to
it again. And always fear walked at their heel and sat beside them
sleeping: clanking of wings heard above the wind, a brooding hush of
menace in the sunshine, and noises out of the void of darkness as of
teeth chattering. So came they on the twentieth day to Morna Moruna,
and stood at even in the sorrowful twilight by the little round castle,
silent on Omprenne Edge.
From their feet the cliffs dropped sheer. Strange it was, standing on
that frozen lip of the Moruna, as on the limit of the world, to gaze
southward on a land of summer, and to breathe faint summer airs blowing
up from blossoming trees and flower-clad alps. In the depths a carpet
of huge tree-tops clothed a vast stretch of country, through the midst
of which, seen here and there in a bend of silver among the woods, the
Bhavinan bore the waters of a thousand secret mountain solitudes down
to an unknown sea. Beyond the river the deep woods, blue with distance,
swelled to feathery hill-tops with some sharper-featured loftier
heights bodying cloudily beyond them. The Demons strained their eyes
searching the curtain of mystery behind and above those foot-hills; but
the great peaks, like great ladies, shrouded themselves against their
curious gaze, and no glimpse was shown them of the snows.
Surely to be in Morna Moruna was to be in the death chamber of some
once lovely presence. Stains of fire were on the walls. The fair
gallery of open wood-work that ran above the main hall was burnt
through and partly fallen in ruin, the blackened ends of the beams that
held it jutting blindly in the gap. Among the wreck of carved chairs
and benches, broken and worm-eaten, some shreds of figured tapestries
rotted, the home now of beetles and spiders. Patches of colour, faded
lines, mildewed and damp with the corruption of two hundred years,
lingered to be the memorials, like the mummied skeleton of a king’s
daughter long ago untimely dead, of sweet gracious paintings on the
walls. Five nights and five days the Demons and Mivarsh dwelt in Morna
Moruna, inured to portents till they marked them as little as men mark
swallows at their window. In the still night were flames seen, and
flying forms dim in the moonlit air; and in moonless nights unstarred,
moans heard and gibbering accents: prodigies beside their beds, and
ridings in the sky, and fleshless fingers plucking at Juss unseen when
he went forth to make question of the night.
Cloud and mist abode ever in the south, and only the foot-hills showed
of the great ranges beyond Bhavinan. But on the evening of the sixth
day before Yule, it being the nineteenth of December when Betelgeuze
stands at midnight on the meridian, a wind blew out of the north-west
with changing fits of sleet and sunshine. Day was fading as they
stood above the cliff. All the forest land was blue with shades of
approaching night: the river was dull silver: the wooded heights
afar mingled their outlines with the towers and banks of turbulent
deep blue vapour that hurtled in ceaseless passage through the upper
air. Suddenly a window opened in the clouds to a space of clean wan
wind-swept sky high above the shaggy hills. Surely Juss caught his
breath in that moment, to see those deathless ones where they shone
pavilioned in the pellucid air, far, vast, and lonely, most like to
creatures of unascended heaven, of wind and of fire all compact, too
pure to have aught of the gross elements of earth or water. It was as
if the rose-red light of sun-down had been frozen to crystal and these
hewn from it to abide to everlasting, strong and unchangeable amid
the welter of earthborn mists below and tumultuous sky above them.
The rift ran wider, eastward and westward, opening on more peaks and
sunset-kindled snows. And a rainbow leaning to the south was like a
sword of glory across the vision.