Chronicles of Corum (14 page)

“It is likely. You will want your horse.”

“Aye,” said Corum.

There was a pause. Calatin began to say something and then changed his mind. He led Corum to the stable below the house and there was the war-horse, almost healed from its wounds. It snorted in recognition when it saw Corum. Corum stroked its nose and led it from the stable.

“My horn,” said Calatin. “Where is that?”

“I left it,” Corum told him, “In Hy-Breasail.” He looked directly into the wizard’s eyes and saw those eyes heat with fear and anger.

‘ ‘How?” Calatin almost screamed.’ ‘How could you mislay it?” “I did not mislay it.”

“You left it there deliberately. It was agreed that you should borrow it. That was all.”

‘ ‘I gave it to Goffanon. In a way you could say that if I had not had the horn to give him I could not have got you what you want.”

“Goffanon? Goffanon has my horn?” Calatin’s eyes became colder. They narrowed. “Aye.”

There was no excuse Corum could make, so he said nothing further. He waited for Calatin to speak. Then the wizard said: “You are in my debt again, Vadhagh.” “Aye.”

The wizard’s tone was level now, calculating. He smiled a quiet, unpleasant smile. “You must give me something to replace my horn.”

‘ ‘What do you want ?” Corum was becoming tired of bargaining. He was anxious to ride away from Moidel’s Mount, to return as swiftly as possible to Caer Mahlod.

“I must have something,” said Calatin. “You understand that, I trust?”

“Tell me what, Wizard.”

Calatin looked Corum over as a farmer might look over a horse at market. Then he reached out and touched the surcoat Corum wore beneath the fur cloak the Mabden had given him. It was Corum’s Vadhagh robe, red and light and made from the delicate skin of a beast which had dwelt once upon another plane and which had become extinct even there.

“Your robe, Prince, is of great value, I think?”

“I have never considered its price. It is my Name-robe. Every Vadhagh has one.”

“Then it is not valuable to you?”

‘ Ts this what you want, my robe? Will that satisfy you for the loss of the horn?” Corum spoke impatiently. His liking for the wizard had not increased. Yet he was morally in the wrong, he knew. And Calatin knew that, too.

“If you think it a fair bargain?”

Corum flung off the fur robe and began to unbuckle his belt, to undo the pin which attached his robe to his shoulder. It would be strange to lose the garment he had worn for so long, but he attached no special sentiment to it. The other robe warmed him well enough. He did not need his scarlet one.

He handed the robe to Calatin. ‘ ‘There you are, Wizard. Now we are neither of us in the other’s debt.”

“Just so,” said Calatin, watching as Corum buckled on his weapons and then climbed into the high saddle of the horse. ‘ ‘I wish you a good journey, Prince Corum. And be wary of the Hounds of Kerenos. After all, there is no horn to save you now.”

“ And none to save you,” said Corum. ” “ Will they attack you?”

“It is unlikely.” Calatin spoke mysteriously. “It is unlikely.”

And then Corum rode down to the drowned causeway and entered the sea.

He did not look back at the wizard Calatin. He looked ahead, at the snow-buried land, not relishing the prospect of his journey back to Caer Mahlod, but glad to be leaving Moidel’s Mount. He clutched the spear, Bryionak, in his silver hand, his left hand, and with his right he guided his horse. Soon he had reached the mainland and his breath and the breath of his horse began to steam in the chill air. He headed northwest.

And, as he entered the bleak forest, he thought for a moment that he heard the sound of a wild and melancholy harp.

The horseman rode a beast that was only a little like a horse. Both were colored a strange, pale green. There were no other shades of color in either. The snow was churned by the beast’s hooves. The snow flew high on both sides of it. The horseman’s pale green face was blank, as if the snow had frozen it. His pale green eyes were cool. And in his hand was a pale green sword. Not too far distant from Corum, who was drawing his own blade, the rider came to a sudden halt, crying out:

‘ ‘ Are you the one they think will save them? You seem more man than god to me!”

“Man I am,” said Corum evenly, “and warrior. Do you challenge me?”

“Balahr challenges you. I am merely his instrument.” “Balahr does not wish to fight me himself, then?” “The Fhoi Myore do not fight hand-to-hand with mortals. Why should they?”

‘ ‘The Fhoi Myore have much fear in them for a race so powerful! What is the matter with them? Do the diseases which eat at them, which will at last destroy them, weaken them?”

“I am Hew Argech, lately of the White Rocks, beyond Karnec. There was once a people, an army, a tribe. Now there is me. And I serve Balahr the One-eyed. What else can I do?”

“Serve your own folk, the Mabden.”

“The trees are my folk. The pines. They keep us both alive, my steed and I. The sap in my veins is nurtured not by meat and drink but by earth and rain. I am Hew Argech, brother to the pines.”

Corum could hardly believe the import of what this creature said. A man he must have been once, but now he had changed—changed by Fhoi Myore sorcery. Corum’s respect for Fhoi Myore power increased.

“Will you dismount, Hew Argech, and fight a manly fight, sword against sword in the snow?” Corum asked.

“I cannot. Once I fought so.” The voice was innocent, like the voice of a candid child. But the eyes remained blank, the face expressionless. “Now I must fight with cunning, not honor.”

And Hew Argech was charging forward again, sword whirling as he bore down on Corum.

It had been a week since Corum had left Moidel’s Mount—a week of bitter cold. His bones were stiff with it. His eye had blurred from looking at nothing but snow so that it had been some time before he had seen the pale green rider on the pale green steed come riding across the white moor.

So quick was Hew Argech’s attack that Corum barely had time to bring his own sword up to block the first blow. Then Hew Argech had passed him and was turning his beast for a second assault. This time Corum charged and his sword nicked Hew Argech’s arm, but Argech’s sword clanged on Corum’s breastplate and half-knocked the Vadhagh prince from his saddle. Corum still clutched the spear, Bryionak, in his silver hand, which also gripped the reins of his snorting war-horse as it lumbered round, up to its knees in thick snow, to face the next attack.

The two fought in this manner for some time, with neither managing to break the other’s guard. Corum’s breath issued from his mouth in great clouds, but no breath at all seemed to escape Hew Argech’s lips. The pale green man showed no signs of tiring, while Corum was desperately weary, barely able to keep a grip on his sword.

It was obvious to Corum that Hew Argech knew he was tiring and was merely waiting until he should become so dazed that a quick sword-thrust would finish him. Several times he managed to rally himself, but now Argech was circling him, thrusting, slicing, battering. And then his sword was knocked from his frozen fingers and there came from Hew Argech’s mouth a peculiar, rustling laugh, like wind through leaves, and he bore down on Corum for the last time.

Swaying in his saddle, Corum brought up the spear, Bryionak, to defend himself and managed to block the next blow. As Hew Argech’s sword struck the head of the spear it clanged with a musical, silvery note, which surprised both opponents. Argech had gone past Corum again, but was turning rapidly. Corum flung back his left arm and threw the spear with such force at the pale green warrior that he fell forward over his horse’s neck and had strength enough only to raise his head to see the Sidhi spear pierce Hew Argech’s chest.

Hew Argech sighed and fell from the back of his pale green beast, the spear protruding from him.

Then Corum saw something that amazed him. How it happened he could not be sure, but the spear left the body of the pale green man and flew back into the open palm of Corum’s silver hand. The hand closed involuntarily around the shaft.

Corum blinked his eye, barely able to believe what had happened, though he could feel, as well as see, the spear, for its shaft rested partly against his leg.

He looked towards his fallen foe. The beast which Hew Argech had ridden had picked up the man in its mouth and was dragging him away.

It suddenly occurred to Corum that the beast rather than the rider was the true master. He could not explain why he felt this, save that for a second he had looked into the beast’s eyes and seen what looked like irony there.

And as he was dragged, Hew Argech opened his mouth to call to Corum in that same ingenuous tone:

‘ ‘The Fhoi Myore march,” he said.’ ‘They know that the folk of Caer Mahlod called you. They march to destroy Caer Mahlod before you return with the spear which slew me. Farewell, Corum of the Silver Hand. I go back now to my brothers, the pines.”

And soon beast and man had disappeared beyond a hill and Corum was alone, holding the spear which had saved his life, turning it this way and that in the gray light as if he thought that by inspecting it he would understand how it had come to return to his hand after it had aided him.

Then he shook his head, dismissed the mystery, and urged his horse to gallop faster through the clinging snow, still heading for Caer Mahlod—heading there with even greater urgency than he had had before.

The Fhoi Myore were still an enigma. Every description of them he had heard had somehow not explained how they could command creatures like Hew Argech, how they could work such strange enchantments, control the Hounds of Kerenos and their Ghoolegh huntsmen. Some saw the Fhoi Myore as insensate creatures, little more than beasts. Others saw them as gods. They must have some kind of intelligence, surely, if they could create the likes of Hew Argech, brother of the trees? At first he had wondered if the Fhoi Myore were related to the Chaos Lords whom he had fought so long in past times. But the Fhoi Myore were at once less man-like and more man-like than the Chaos Lords had been, and their aims seemed different. They had had no choice, it seemed, in coming to this plane. They had fallen through a gap in the fabric of the multiverse and had been unable to return to their own strange half-world between the planes. Now they sought to recreate Limbo on Earth. Corum found that he could even feel a certain sympathy for their plight.

He wondered if Goffanon’s prediction had been a true one, or whether the prediction had been the product of Goffanon’s own sense of despair. Was the doom of the Mabden inevitable?

Looking across the bleak, snow-covered land, it was easy to believe that it was their fate—and his—to die victims of the Fhoi Myore encroachment.

He camped less frequently now, sometimes riding wildly through the night, careless of the pitfalls, half-asleep in his saddle. And his war-horse galloped less readily through the snow.

Once, in the evening, he saw a line of figures in the distance. Mist swirled around the figures as they marched or rode in huge chariots. He almost hailed them before he realized that they were not Mabden. Were these the Fhoi Myore on the march to Caer Mahlod?

And several times during his ride he heard a distant howling and he guessed that the hunting packs, the Hounds of Kerenos, were seeking him. Doubtless Hew Argech had returned to his masters and told them of how he had fallen before the spear, Bryionak, which had then wrenched itself from his body and settled back in Corum’s silver hand.

Caer Mahlod still seemed very distant and the cold seemed to eat into Corum’s body like a worm which fed on his very blood.

More snow had fallen since he had first ridden this way, and it had succeeded in disguising many landmarks. This fact, coupled with his blurring eyesight, made it difficult for him to find his way at all. He prayed that the horse knew the route back to Caer Mahlod, and he came to trust more and more in the beast’s instincts. As exhaustion overwhelmed him he began to know a deep despair. Why had he not listened to Goffanon and lived out his days in the tranquility of Hy-Breasail? What did he owe to these Mabden? Had he not fought enough in Mabden battles? What had that folk ever given him?

And then he would remember. They had given him Rhalina.

And he remembered Medhbh, too, King Mannach’s daughter. Red-haired Medhbh in her war-gear, with her sling and her tathlum, waiting for him to bring salvation back to Caer Mahlod.

They had given him hatred, the Mabden, when they slew his family, cut off his hand and tore out his eye. They had given him fear, terror and a thirst for vengeance.

But they had also given him love. They had given him Rhalina. Now they gave him Medhbh.

These thoughts would sustain him a little, even warm him a little, and drive the despair to the edges of his mind so that he would ride on. Ride on for Caer Mahlod, the fortress on the hill, and those whose only hope he remained.

But Caer Mahlod seemed to grow further away. It seemed a year since he had seen the Fhoi Myore war-chariots on the horizon, heard the howling of the hounds. Perhaps Caer Mahlod had already fallen. Perhaps he would find Medhbh frozen as those others had been frozen, in battle posture, unaware that there would be no battle for them to fight, that they had already lost.