The 1st Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #2: The Illearth War (47 page)

But when the Giant was within ten yards of him, Verement made a forbidding gesture. “Come no closer, moksha Raver!” he shouted hoarsely. “I know you, Jehannum Fleshharrower! Go back! Back to the evil which made you. I deny you passage-I, Verement Shetra-mate, Lord of the Council of Revelstone! You may not pass here!”

Fleshharrower stopped. “Ah, a Lord,” he said, peering down at Verement as if the Lord were too tiny to be seen easily. “I am amazed.” His face was twisted, and his leer gave him an expression of acute pain, as if his flesh could not disguise the hurt of the rabid presence within it. But his voice seemed to suck and cling in the air like quicksand.

It held only derision and lust as he continued, “Have you come to welcome me to the slaughter of your army? But of course you know it is too small to be called an army. I have fought and followed you from Andelain, but do not think that you have outwitted me. I know you seek to meet me in Doom’s Retreat because your army is too weak to fight elsewhere. Perhaps you have come to surrender-to join me.”

“You speak like a fool,” Verement barked. “No friend of the Land will ever surrender to you, or join you. Admit the truth, and go. Go, I say! Melenkurion abatha!”

Abruptly, he caught his staff in both hands and raised it over his head. “Duroa minas mill khabaal! With all the names of the Earthpower, I command you! There is no victory for the Despiser here!”

As Verement shouted his Words, the Raver flinched. To defend himself, he thrust his hand into his leather jerkin, snatched out a smooth green stone that filled his fist. A lambent emerald flame played in its depths, and it steamed like boiling ice. He clenched it, made it steam more viciously, and exclaimed, “Verement Shetra-mate, for a hundred leagues I have driven two Lords before me like ants! Why do you believe that you can resist me now?”

“Because you have killed Shetra my wife!” the Lord cried in rage. — “Because I have been unworthy of her all my life! Because I do not fear you, Raver! I am free of all restraint! No fear or love limits my strength! I match you hate for hate, moksha Raver!

Melenkurion abatha!”

His staff whirled about his head, and a livid blue bolt of power sprang from the wood at Fleshharrower. Simultaneously, Thomin rushed forward with his fingers crooked like claws, threw himself at the Giant’s throat.

Fleshharrower met the attack easily, disdainfully. He caught Verement’s bolt on his Stone and held it burning there like a censer. Almost at once, the blue flame turned deep dazzling green, blazed up higher. And with his other hand the Giant dealt Thomin a blow which sent him sprawling behind Verement.

Then Fleshharrower flung the fire back.

The Lord’s fury never winced. Swinging his staff, he jabbed its metal end like a lance into the gout of power. Savage cracking noises came from the wood as it bucked and bent-but the staff held. Verement shouted mighty words over the flame, compelled it to his will again. Slowly the green burned blue on his staff. When he had mastered it, he hurled it again at the Raver.

Fleshharrower began to laugh. Verement’s attack, multiplied by some of the Giant’s own power, caught on the Stone as if the green rock were its wick. There it grew hungrily until the column of emerald fire reached high into the air.

Laughing, the Raver shot this fire toward Verement. It splintered his staff, flash-burned the pieces to cinders, deluged him. But then the flame bent itself to his form, gripped him, clung and crawled all over him like a corona. His arms dropped, his head fell forward until his chin touched his chest, his eyes closed; he hung in the fire as if he had been nailed there.

Triumphantly, Fleshharrower cried, “Now, Verement Shetra-mate! Where is your defiance now?” For a moment, his derision scaled upward, echoed off the cliffs. Then he went on: “Defeated, I see. But harken to me, puppet. It may be that I will let you live. Of course, to gain life you must change your allegiance. Repeat these words- ‘I worship Lord Foul the Despiser. He is the one word of truth.’”

Lord Verement’s lips remained clamped shut. Within the paralyzing fire, his cheek muscles bulged as he set his jaws.

“Speak it!” Fleshharrower roared. With a jerk of the Stone, he tightened the corona around Verement. A gasp of agony tore the Lord’s lips apart. He began to speak.

“I-worship — ”

He went no further. Behind him, Thomin jumped up to carry out his last duty.

With one kick, the Bloodguard broke Lord Verement’s back. Instantly, the Lord fell dead.

Thomin’s face was taut with murder as he sprang again at Fleshharrower’s throat.

This time, the Bloodguard’s attack was so swift and ruthless that it broke past the Raver’s defenses. He caught Fleshharrower, dug his fingers into the Giant’s neck. For a moment, the Giant could not tear him away. He ground his fingers into that thick throat with such passion that Fleshharrower could not break his hold.

But then the Raver brought the Stone to his aid. With one blast, he burned Thomin’s bones to ash with

in him. The Bloodguard collapsed in a heap of structureless flesh.

Then for a time Fleshharrower seemed to go mad. Roaring like a cataclysm, he jumped and stamped on Thomin’s form until the Bloodguard’s bloody remains were crushed into the grass. And after that, he sent the vast hordes of his wolves howling into the gullet of Doom’s Retreat. Driven by his fury, they ran blindly down the canyon, and hurtled into the Word of Warning.

The first wolf to touch the Word triggered it. In that instant, the piled rock within the walls seemed to blow apart. The power which Verement had placed there threw down the sloped sides of the defile. A deadly rain of boulders and shale fell into the canyon, crushing thousands of wolves so swiftly that the pack had time for only one yowl of terror.

When the dust blew clear, Fleshharrower could see that the Retreat was now blocked, crowded with crumbled rock and scree. An army might spend days struggling through the rubble.

The setback appeared to calm him. The hunger for vengeance did not leave his eyes, but his voice was steady as he shouted his commands. He called forward the griffins. Flying heavily with ur-viles on their backs, they went into the Retreat to fight Verement’s Word. And behind them Fleshharrower sent his rock-wise Cavewights to clear the way for the rest of the army.

Compelled by his power, the creatures worked with headlong desperation. Many of the griffins were destroyed because they flew mindlessly against the Word. Scores of Cavewights killed each other in their frenzy to clear the debris from the canyon floor. But lore-wise ur-viles finally tore down the Word of Warning. And the Cavewights accomplished prodigious feats. Given sufficient time and numbers, they had the strength and skill to move mountains. Now they heaved and tore at the rubble. They worked through the night, and by dawn they had cleared a path ten yards wide down the center of the Retreat.

Holding the Stone high, Fleshharrower led his army through the canyon. At the south end of the Retreat,

he found the Warward gone. The last of his enemies -a small band of riders including two Lords-were galloping away out of reach. He howled imprecations after them, vowing that he would pursue them to the death.

But then his farseeing Giantish eyes made out the Warward, seven or eight leagues beyond the riders. He marked the direction of their march-saw where they were headed. And he began to laugh again. Peals of sarcasm and triumph echoed off the blank cliffs of Doom’s Retreat.

The Warward marched toward Garroting Deep.

NINETEEN: The Ruins of the Southron Wastes

BY the time Warmark Troy rode away from Doom’s Retreat with the Lords Mhoram and Callindrill and a group of Bloodguard, he had put aside his enervation, his half-conscious yearning to hide his head. Gone, too, was the sense of horror which had paralyzed him when Lord Verement died. He had pushed these things down during the dark night, while Mhoram and Callindrill fought to maintain the Word of Warning. Now he felt strangely cauterized. He was the Warmark, and he had returned to his work. He was thinking-measuring distances, gauging relative speeds, forecasting the Warward’s attrition rate. He was in command.

He could see his army’s need for leadership as clearly as if it were in some way atrocious. Ahead of him, the Warward had swung slightly south to avoid the immediate foothills of the mountains, and across this easier ground it moved at a pace which would cover no more than seven leagues a day. But still the conditions of the march were horrendous. His army

was traveling into the dry half-desert of the Southron Wastes.

No vestige or hint of autumn ameliorated the arid breeze which blew northward off the parched, lifeless Gray Desert. Most of the grass had already failed, and the few rills and rivulets which ran down out of the mountains evaporated before they reached five leagues into the Wastes. And even south of the foothills the terrain was difficult-eroded and rasped and cut by long ages of sterile wind into jagged hills, gullies, arroyos.

The result was a stark, heat-pale land possessed by a weird and unfriendly beauty. The Warward had to march over packed ground that felt as hard and hostile as rock underfoot, and yet sent up thick dust as if the soil were nothing but powder.

Within three leagues of the Retreat, Troy and his companions found the first dead warrior. The Woodhelvennin corpse lay contorted on the ground like a torture victim.

Exhaustion blackened its lips and tongue, and its staring eyes were full of dust. Troy had a mad impulse to stop and bury the warrior. But he was sure of his calculations; in this acrid heat, the losses of the Warward would probably double every day. None of the living could afford the time or strength to care for the dead.

By the time the Warmark caught up with his army, he had counted ten more fallen warriors. Numbers thronged in his brain: eleven dead the first day, twenty-two the second, forty-four the third-six hundred and ninety-three human beings killed by the cruel demands of the march before he reached his destination. And God alone knew how many more He found himself wondering if he would ever be able to sleep again.

But he forced himself to pay attention as Quaan and Amorine reported on their efforts to keep the warriors alive. Food was rationed; all water jugs were refilled at every stream, however small; every Haft and Warhaft moved on foot, so that their horses could carry the weakest men and women; Quaan’s remaining riders also walked, and their damaged mounts bore packs and collapsed warriors; all scouting and water gathering were done by the Bloodguard. And every warrior who could go no farther was supplied with food, and ordered to seek safety in the mountains.

There was nothing else the commanders could do.

All this filled Troy with pain. But then Quaan described to him how very few warriors chose to leave the march and hide in the hills. That news steadied Troy; he felt it was both terrible and wonderful that so many men and women were willing to follow him to the utter end of his ideas. He mustered his confidence to answer Quaan’s and Amorine’s inevitable questions.

Quaan went bluntly to the immediate problem. “Does Fleshharrower pursue us?”

“Yes,” Troy Replied. “Lord Verement gained us about a day. But that Giant is coming after us now he’s coming fast.”

Quaan did not need to ask what had happened to Lord Verement. Instead, he said,

“Fleshharrower will move swiftly. When will he overtake us?”

“Sometime tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow evening at the latest.”

“Then we are lost,” said Amorine, and her voice shook. “We can march no faster.

The warriors are too weary to turn and fight. Warmark,” she implored, “take this matter from me. Give the First Haft’s place to another. I cannot bear-I cannot give these commands.”

He tried to comfort her with his confidence. “Don’t worry. We’re not beaten yet.”

But to himself he sounded more hysterical than confident. He had a sudden desire to scream. “We won’t have to march any faster than this. We’re just going to turn south a fraction more, so that we’ll reach that old ruined city — ‘Doriendor Corishev,’ Mhoram calls it. We should get there before noon tomorrow.”

He felt that he was speaking too quickly. He forced himself to slow down while he explained his intentions. Then he was relieved to see dour approval in the faces of his officers. First Haft Amorine took a deep, shuddering breath as she caught hold of her courage again, and Quaan’s eyes glinted with bloody

promises for the enemy. Shortly, he asked, “Who will command the Eoward which must remain?”

“Permit me,” Amorine said. “I am at the end of my strength for this marching. I wish to fight.”

The Hiltmark opened his mouth to answer her, but Troy stopped them both with a gesture. For a moment, he juggled burdens mentally, seeking a point of balance. Then he said to Quaan, “The Lords and I will stay behind with First Haft Amorine. We’ll need eight Eoward of volunteers, and every horse that can still stand. The Bloodguard will probably stay with us. If we handle it right, most of us will survive.”

Quaan frowned at the decision. But his acceptance was as candid as his dislike.

To Amorine, he said, “We must find those who are willing, and prepare them today, so that tomorrow no time will be lost.”

In answer, the First Haft saluted both Quaan and Troy, then rode away among the Warward. She carried herself straighter than she had for several days, and her alacrity demonstrated to Troy that he had made the correct choice. He nodded after her, sardonically congratulating himself for having done something right.

But Quaan still had questions. Shortly, he said, “I ask your pardon, Warmark-but we have been friends, and I must speak of this. Will you not explain to me why we march now? If Doom’s Retreat is not the battleground you desire, perhaps Doriendor Corishev will serve. Why must this terrible march continue?”

“No, I’m not going to explain. Not yet.” Troy kept his final plan to himself as if by silence and secrecy he could contain its terrors. “And Doriendor Corishev won’t serve.

We could fight there for a day or two. But after that, Fleshharrower would surround us and just squeeze. We’ve got to do better than that.”