Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock [15]
Elric raised his shield to take the captain’s first blow. Through all the noise he thought he heard the man shouting at him.
‘Die, you white-faced demon! Die! You have no place in this earth any longer!’
Elric was almost diverted from defending himself by these words. They rang true to him. Perhaps he really had no place on the earth, perhaps that was why Melniboné was slowly collapsing, why fewer children were born every year, why the dragons themselves were no longer breeding. He let the captain strike another blow at the shield, then he reached under it and swung at the man’s legs. But the captain had anticipated the move and jumped backwards. This, however, gave Elric time to run up the few remaining steps and stand on the deck, facing the captain.
The man’s face was almost as pale as Elric’s. He was sweating and he was panting and his eyes had misery in them as well as a wild fear.
‘You should leave us alone,’ Elric heard himself saying. ‘We offer you no harm, barbarian. When did Melniboné last sail against the Young Kingdoms?’
‘You offer us harm by your very presence, Whiteface. There is your sorcery. There are your customs. And there is your arrogance.’
‘Is that why you came here? Was your attack motivated by disgust for us? Or would you help yourselves to our wealth? Admit it, captain—greed brought you to Melniboné.’
‘At least greed is an honest quality, an understandable one. But you creatures are not human. Worse—you are not gods, though you behave as if you were. Your day is over and you must be wiped out, your city destroyed, your sorceries forgotten.’
Elric nodded. ‘Perhaps you are right, captain.’
‘I am right. Our holy men say so. Our seers predict your downfall. The Chaos Lords whom you serve will themselves bring about that downfall.’
‘The Chaos Lords no longer have any interest in the affairs of Melniboné. They took away their power nearly a thousand years since.’ Elric watched the captain carefully, judging the distance between them. ‘Perhaps that is why our own power waned. Or perhaps we merely became tired of power.’
‘Be that as it may,’ the captain said, wiping his sweating brow, ‘your time is over. You must be destroyed once and for all.’ And then he groaned, for Elric’s broadsword had come under his chequered breastplate and gone up through his stomach and into his lungs.
One knee bent, one leg stretched behind him, Elric began to withdraw the long sword, looking up into the barbarian’s face which had now assumed an expression of reconciliation. ‘That was unfair, Whiteface. We had barely begun to talk and you cut the conversation short. You are most skillful. May you writhe forever in the Higher Hell. Farewell.’
Elric hardly knew why, after the captain had fallen face down on the deck, he hacked twice at the neck until the head rolled off the body, rolled to the side of the bridge and was then kicked over the side so that it sank into the cold, deep water.
And then Yyrkoon came up behind Elric and he was still grinning.
‘You fight fiercely and well, my lord emperor. That dead man was right.’
‘Right?’ Elric glared at his cousin. ‘Right?’
‘Aye—in his assessment of your prowess.’ And, chuckling, Yyrkoon went to supervise his men who were finishing off the few remaining raiders.
Elric did not know why he had refused to hate Yyrkoon before. But now he did hate Yyrkoon. At that moment he would gladly have slain him. It was as if Yyrkoon had looked deeply into Elric’s soul and expressed contempt for what he had seen there.
Suddenly Elric was overwhelmed by an angry misery and