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“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 for ever 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 he wished with all his heart that he was not a Melnibonéan, that he was not an emperor and that Yyrkoon had never been born.

CHAPTER SIX

Pursuit: A Deliberate Treachery

Like haughty leviathans the great golden battle-barges swam through the wreckage of the reaver fleet. A few ships burned and a few were still sinking, but most had sunk into the unplumbable depths of the channel. The burning ships sent strange shadows dancing against the dank walls of the sea-caverns, as if the ghosts of the slain offered a last salute before departing to the sea-depths where, it was said, a Chaos king still ruled, crewing his eerie fleets with the souls of all who died in conflict upon the oceans of the world. Or perhaps they went to a gentler doom, serving Straasha, Lord of the Water Elementals, who ruled the upper reaches of the sea.

But a few had escaped. Somehow the southland sailors had got past the massive battle-barges, sailed back through the channel and must even now have reached the open sea. This was reported to the flagship where Elric, Magum Colim and Prince Yyrkoon now stood together again on the bridge, surveying the destruction they had wreaked.

“Then we must pursue them and finish them,” said Yyrkoon. He was sweating and his dark face glistened; his eyes were alight with fever. “We must follow them.”

Elric shrugged. He was weak. He had brought no extra drugs with him to replenish his strength. He wished to go back to Imrryr and rest. He was tired of bloodletting, tired of Yyrkoon and tired, most of all, of himself. The hatred he felt for his cousin was draining him still further—and he hated the hatred; that was the worst part. “No,” he said. “Let them go.”

“Let them go? Unpunished? Come now, my lord king! That is not our way!” Prince Yyrkoon turned to the aging admiral. “Is that our way, Admiral Magum Colim?”

Magum Colim shrugged. He, too, was tired, but privately he agreed with Prince Yyrkoon. An enemy of Melniboné should be punished for daring even to think of attacking the Dreaming City. Yet he said: “The emperor must decide.”

“Let them go,” said Elric again. He leant heavily against the rail. “Let them carry the news back to their own barbarian land. Let them say how the Dragon Princes defeated them.