Duke Elric - Michael Moorcock [30]
“I also sought release from metaphysics when I left Melnibone,” said Elric. “I'll get the rest of my gear and take the land that's offered. With luck this Crimson Gate will be quickly found and I'll be back among dangers and torments which will, at least, be familiar.”
“It is the only decision you could have made.” The captain's blind head turned towards Blendker. “And you, Otto Blendker? What shall you do?”
“Elric's world is not mine and I like not the sound of those screams. What can you promise me, sir, if I sail on with you?”
“Nothing but a good death.” There was regret in the captain's voice.
“Death is the promise we're all born with, sir. A good death is better than a poor one. I'll sail on with you.”
“As you like. I think you're wise.” The captain sighed. “I'll say farewell to you, then, Elric of Melnibone. You fought well in my service and I thank you.”
“Fought for what?” Elric asked.
“Oh, call it Mankind. Call it Fate. Call it a dream or an ideal, if you wish.”
“Shall I never have a clearer answer?”
“Not from me. I do not think there is one.”
“You allow a man little faith.” Elric began to descend the companionway.
“There are two kinds of faith, Elric. Like freedom, there is a kind which is easily kept but proves not worth the keeping, and there is a kind which is hard-won. I agree, I offer little of the former.”
Elric strode towards his cabin. He laughed, feeling genuine affection for the blind man at that moment. “I thought I had a penchant for such ambiguities, but I have met my match in you, Captain.”
He noticed that the steersman had left his place at the wheel and was swinging out a boat on its davits, preparatory to lowering it.
“Is that for me?”
The steersman nodded.
Elric ducked into his cabin. He was leaving the ship with nothing but that which he had brought aboard, only his clothing and his armour were in a poorer state of repair than they had been, and his mind was in a considerably greater state of confusion.
Without hesitation he gathered up his things, drawing his heavy cloak about him, pulling on his gauntlets, fastening buckles and thongs, then he left the cabin and returned to the deck. The captain was pointing through the mist at the dark outlines of a coast. “Can you see land, Elric?”
“I can.”
“You must go quickly, then.”
“Willingly.”
Elric swung himself over the rail and into the boat. The boat struck the side of the ship several times, so that the hull boomed like the beating of some huge funeral drum. Otherwise there was silence now upon the misty waters and no sign of wreckage.
Blendker saluted him. “I wish you luck, comrade.”
“You, too, Master Blendker.”
The boat began to sink towards the flat surface of the sea, the pulleys of the davits creaking. Elric clung to the rope, letting go as the boat hit the water. He stumbled and sat down heavily upon the seat, releasing the ropes so that the boat drifted at once away from the Dark Ship. He got out the oars and fitted them into their rowlocks.
As he pulled towards the shore he heard the captain's voice calling to him, but the words were muffled by the mist and he would never know, now, if the blind man's last communication had been a warning or merely some formal pleasantry. He did not care. The boat moved smoothly through the water; the mist began to thin, but so, too, did the light fade.
Suddenly he was under a twilight sky, the sun already gone and stars appearing. Before he had reached the shore it was already completely dark, with the moon not yet risen, and it was with difficulty that he beached the boat on what seemed flat rocks, and stumbled inland until he judged himself safe enough from any inrushing tide.
Then, with a sigh, he lay down, thinking just to order his thoughts before moving on; but, almost instantly, he was asleep.
CHAPTER TWO
Elric dreamed.
He dreamed not merely of the end of his world but of the end of an entire cycle in the history of the cosmos. He dreamed that he was not only Elric of Melnibone but that he was other men, too—men who were pledged to