Stormbringer - Michael Moorcock [57]
"Elric—!" Moonglum cried and then watched as, his Chaos Shield pulsing, Elric spurred the Nihrain steed towards the camp.
Protected against the influence of Chaos, Elric was sighted by a detachment of warriors as he neared the ship which was his destination. They recognised him and rode towards him, shouting.
He laughed in their faces. "Just the fodder my blade needs before we banquet on yonder ship!" he cried as he slashed off the first man's head as if it were a buttercup. Secure behind his great round shield, he hewed about him with a will. Since Stormbringer had slain the gods imprisoned in the alder trees, the vitality which the sword passed into him was almost without limit, yet every soul that Elric stole from Jagreen Lern's warriors was another fraction of vengeance reaped. Against men, he was invincible. He split one heavily armoured warrior from head to crotch, sheared through the saddle and smashed the horse's backbone apart.
Then the remaining warriors dropped back suddenly and Elric felt his body tingle with peculiar sensations, knew he was in the area of influence exerted by the Chaos ships and knew also that he was being protected against them by his shield. He was now partially out of his own earthly plane and existed between his world and the world of Chaos. He dismounted from his Nihrain steed and ordered it to wait for him. There were ropes trailing from the huge sides of the foremost ship and Elric saw with horror that other figures were climbing up them—and he recognised several as men he had known in Karlaak. But before he could reach the ship he was surrounded by all manner of horrifying shapes, things that flew at him cawing, with heads of men and beaks of birds, things that writhed from out of the seething ground and struck at him, things that groped and mewled and screamed, attempting to pull him down to join them. Frantically, he swung Stormbringer this way and that, cutting his way through the Chaos creatures, protected from becoming like them by the pulsing Chaos Shield on his left arm, until at length he joined the ghastly ranks of the dead and swarmed with them up the sides of the great, gleaming ship, grateful at least for the cover they gave him.
He reached the ship's rail and hauled himself over it, spitting bile from his throat as he entered a peculiar region of darkness and came to the first of a series of decks that rose like steps to the topmost one where he could just see the occupants—a manlike figure and something like a huge, blood-red octopus. The first was probably Jagreen Lern. The second was obviously Pyaray, for this, Elric knew, was the guise he took when he manifested himself on earth.
Contrasting with the ships seen from the distance, once aboard Elric became conscious of the dark, shadowy nature of the light, filled with moving threads, a network of dark reds, blues, yellows, greens and purples which, as he moved through it, gave and reformed itself behind him. He was constantly being blundered against by the moving cadavers and he made a point of not looking at their faces too closely, for he had already recognised several of the sea-raiders whom he had abandoned, years before, during the escape from Imrryr.
Slowly, he was gaining the top deck, noting that so far both Jagreen Lern and Lord Pyaray seemed unaware of his presence. Presumably they considered themselves entirely free from any kind of attack now they had conquered all the known world. He grinned maliciously to himself as he continued climbing, gripping the shield tightly, knowing that if once he lost hold of it, his body would become transformed either into some shambling alien shape or else flow away altogether to become absorbed into the Chaos stuff. By now Elric had forgotten everything but his main object, which was to destroy Lord Pyaray's earthly manifestation. He must gain the top-most deck and deal first with the Lord of Chaos. Then he would kill Jagreen Lern and, if she were really here, rescue Zarozinia and bear