Stormbringer - Michael Moorcock [41]
He heard the sudden thwack and roar as the giant catapult discharged its first shot. The flame-shrouded pitch went arching over the ocean and landed short, boiling the sea around it as its guttered and sank. Swiftly the war-engine was rewound, and Elric marvelled at the speed as another ball of flaring pitch was forked into its cup. Jagreen Lern looked up at him and laughed.
"My pleasure will be short. There are not enough of them to put up a long fight. Watch them perish, Elric!"
Elric said nothing, pretended to be dazed and frightened.
The next fireball struck one of the leading ships directly and Elric saw tiny figures scampering about, striving desperately to quench the spreading pitch, but within a minute the whole ship was ablaze, a gouting mass of flame as the figures now jumped overboard, unable to save their vessel.
The air around him sounded to the rushing heat of the fireballs and, within range now, the Southerners retaliated with their lighter machines until it seemed the sky was filled with a thousand comets and the heat almost equalled that which Elric had experienced in the torture chamber. Black smoke began to drift as the brass beaks of the ships' rams ground through timbers, impaling ships like skewered fish. The hoarse yells of fighting men began to be heard, and the clash of iron as the first few opposing warriors met.
But now he only vaguely heard the sounds, for he was thinking deeply.
Then, when at last his mind was ready, he called in a desperate and agonised voice that human ears could not hear above the noise of war: "Stormbringer!"
His straining mind echoed the shout and he seemed to look beyond the turbulent battle, beyond the ocean, beyond the very earth to a place of shadows and terror. Something moved there. Many things moved there.
"Stormbringer!"
He heard a curse from beneath him and saw Jagreen Lern pointing up at him. "Gag the white-faced sorcerer," Jagreen Lern's eyes met Elric's and the Theocrat sucked in his lips, deliberating a bare moment before adding: "And if that doesn't put an end to his babbling—best slay him!"
The lieutenant began to climb the mast towards Elric.
"Stormbringer! Your master perishes!"
He struggled in the biting ropes, but could hardly move.
"Stormbringer!"
All his life he had hated the sword he relied on so much, which he was relying on more and more, but now he called for it as a lover calls for his betrothed.
The warrior grasped his foot and shook it. "Silence! You heard my master!"
With insane eyes, Elric looked down at the warrior who shuddered and drew his sword, hanging to the mast with one hand and readying himself to make a stab at Elric's vitals.
"Stormbringer!" Elric sobbed the name. He must live. Without him, Chaos would surely rule the world.
The man lunged at Elric's body—yet the blade did not reach the albino. Then Elric remembered, with sudden humour, that Jagreen Lern had placed a protective spell about him! The Theocrat's own magic had saved his enemy!
"Stormbringer!"
Now the warrior gasped and the sword dropped from his fingers. He seemed to grapple with something invisible at his throat and Elric saw the man's fingers sliced off and blood spurt from the stumps. Then, slowly, a shape materialised and, with bounding relief, the albino saw that it was a sword—his own runesword impaling the warrior and sucking out his soul!
The warrior dropped, but Stormbringer hung in the air and then turned to slash the ropes restraining Elric's hands and then nestled firmly, with horrid affection, in its master's right fist.
At once the stolen life-stuff of the warrior began to pour through Elric's being and the pain of his body vanished. Quickly he grasped a piece of the sail's rigging and cut away the rest of his bonds until he was swinging by one hand on the rope.
"Now, Jagreen Lern, we'll see who takes vengeance, finally," he grimaced as he swung towards the deck and dropped lightly upon it, the unholy vitality from the sword surging through him to fill him with a godlike ecstasy. He had never known