Stormbringer - Michael Moorcock [34]
But Elric heard the sound with relief, for it meant the beasts had understood his threat and were still bound to obey the spell. Slowly, half-reluctantly, they crawled down into the fissures, and vanished.
Sweating, Elric said triumphantly: "Luck is with us so far! Jagreen Lern either underestimated my powers, or else this is all he could summon with his own! More proof, perhaps, that Chaos uses him, and not the other way about!"
"Tempt not such luck by speaking of it," Moonglum warned. "From what you'd told me, these are puny things compared with what we must soon face."
Elric shot an angry look at his friend. He did not like to think of his coming task.
Now, they neared the huge walls of Hwamgaarl. At intervals along these walls, which slanted outwards, at an angle, to encumber potential besiegers, they saw the screaming statues—once men and women whom Jagreen Lern and his forefathers had turned to rock but allowed them to retain their life and ability to speak. They spoke little, but screamed much, their ghastly shouts rolling over the disgusting city like the tormented voices of the damned—and damned they were. These sobbing waves of sound were horrifying, even to Elric's ears, familiar with such sounds. Then another noise blended with this, as the mighty portcullis of Hwamgaarl's main gate squealed upwards and from it poured a host of well-armed men.
"Evidently, Jagreen Lern's powers of sorcery have been exhausted for the meantime and the Dukes of Hell disdain to join him in a fight against a pair of mere mortals!" Elric said, reaching for the hilt of the black runesword.
Moonglum was beyond speech. Wordlessly, he drew both his own blades, knowing he must fight and vanquish his own fears before he could encounter the men who ran at him.
With a wild howl that drowned out the screams from the statues, Stormbringer climbed from the scabbard and stood in Elric's hand, waiting in anticipation for the new souls it might drink, for the life-stuff which it could pass on to Elric and fill him with dark and stolen vitality.
Elric half-cringed at the feel of his blade in his damp hand. But he shouted to the advancing soldiers: "See, jackals! See the sword! Forged by Chaos to vanquish Chaos! Come, let it drink your souls and spill your blood! We are ready for you!"
He did not wait, but, with Moonglum behind him, spurred the Nihrain horse into their ranks, hewing about him with something of the old delight.
Now, so symbiotically linked with the hell-blade was he, that a hungry joy of killing swept through him, the joy of soul-stealing which drew a surging, unholy vitality into his deficient veins.
Though there were over a hundred warriors blocking his path, he smashed a bloody trail through them and Moonglum, seized by something akin to his friend's mood, was equally successful in dispatching all who came against him. Familiar with horror as they were, the soldiers soon became loath to approach the screaming runesword as it shone with a peculiarly brilliant light—a black light that pierced the blackness itself.
Laughing in his half-insane triumph, Elric felt the callous joy that his ancestors must have felt long ago, when they conquered the world and made it kneel to the Bright Empire. Chaos was, indeed, fighting Chaos—but Chaos of an older, cleaner sort, come to destroy the perverted upstarts who thought themselves as mighty as the wild Dragon Lords of Melniboné! Through the red ruin they had made of the enemy's ranks the pair plunged until the gateway gaped like a monster's maw before them. Without pausing, Elric rode laughing through it and people scuttled to hiding as he entered, in bizarre triumph, the City of Screaming Statues.
"Where now?" gasped Moonglum, all fear driven from him.
"To the Theocrat's Temple-Palace, of course. There Arioch and