Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [23]
“I am,” she said, and then: “And you are pleased, no doubt, that our hostage escaped!”
“What do you mean?”
“My father told me how you’d been enchanted by her wanton sorcery. You seemed to be more anxious for her safety than ours.”
“That is foolish talk!”
“Is it? I think he spoke true, Erekosë,” she said, her voice subdued now. She turned from me.
“Iolinda. I will prove how I love you—I swear I shall kill all the Eldren.”
“Including Prince Arjavh—and his sister?”
“Including them,” I said after a moment.
“I will see you later,” she said as she glided swiftly from the room. I unstrapped my sword and flung it savagely on to the floor. I spent the next few hours fighting my own agony of spirit.
CHAPTER SIX
In the month we spent preparing for the great war against the Eldren, I saw little of my betrothed and, finally, ceased to seek her out but concentrated on the plans for the campaigns we intended to fight.
I developed the strictly controlled mind of the soldier, allowing no emotion, whether it was love or hate, to dominate me. I became strong—and in my strength, virtually inhuman. I knew people remarked upon it—but they saw in me the qualities of a great battle leader and although all avoided my company, socially, they were glad that Erekosë led them.
We sailed, eventually, for the Outer Islands at World’s Edge—the gateway to the Ghost Worlds.
It was a long and arduous sailing, that one, before we sighted the bleak cliffs of the Islands and prepared ourselves for the invasion.
We found naught but a few handfuls of Eldren whom we slew. Their towns were all but deserted and of the halflings there was none. We ripped the towns apart, burning and pillaging, torturing Eldren to elicit the meaning of this, though secretly I knew it. We were possessed of a dampening sense of anticlimax and although we left no building standing, no Eldren alive, we could not rid ourselves of the idea that we had been thwarted in some way. The Eldren had said that the Gateway was closed. I did not want to believe them, but they would not say otherwise.
When our work was done in the Outer Islands, we sailed abruptly for the continent of Mernadin, put into Paphanaal which was still held by our forces, landed our troops and pushed outwards in victorious conquest.
It seemed that no Eldren fortress could withstand our grim thrustings into their territory.
It was a year of fire and steel and Mernadin seemed at times to be a sea of smoke and blood. We were all incredibly tired, but the spirit of slaughter was in us, giving us a terrible vitality and everywhere that the banners of Humanity met the standards of the Eldren, the basilisk standards were torn down and trampled.
We put all we found to the sword. We punished deserters in our own ranks mercilessly, we flogged our troops to greater endurance.
Towns burned behind us, cities fell and were torn, stone by stone, to the ground. Eldren corpses littered the countryside and our camp-followers were carrion birds and jackals.
A year of bloodshed. A year of hate. If I could not force myself to love, then I could force myself to hate, and this I did. All feared me, humans and Eldren alike as I turned beautiful Mernadin into a funeral pyre for my own terrible bewilderment and grief.
The king was slain that year and Iolinda was declared queen. But the king had become a puppet of authority—for Humanity followed a grimmer conqueror whom they regarded with awe. Dead Erekosë, they called me, the vengeful sword of Humanity.
I did not care what they called me—Reaver, Blood-letter, Berserker—for my goal came closer until it was the last fortress of the Eldren undefeated. I dragged my armies behind me as if by a rope. I dragged them towards the principal city of Mernadin, by the Plains of Melting Ice. Arjavh’s capital—Loos Ptokai.
At last we saw its looming towers silhouetted against a red evening sky. Of marble and black granite, it rose mighty and seemingly invulnerable above