Dargoth rises onto his hind legs, so that now his head is ten feet above the floor.
Then he leaps forward, his arms outstretched, his tail curled, his head extended, fangs bared. The blades rise upon his back like gleaming fins, his hooves fall like hammers.
At the last possible moment, Wakim sidesteps and throws a punch which is blocked by the other’s forearm. Wakim leaps high into the air then, and the whip cracks harmlessly beneath him.
For all his bulk, Dargoth halts and turns rapidly. He rears once more and strikes forward with his front hooves. Wakim avoids them, but Dargoth’s hands fall upon Wakim’s shoulders as Dargoth descends.
Wakim seizes both wrists and kicks Dargoth in the chest. The tail-lash falls across his right cheek as he does so. Then he breaks the grip of those massive hands upon his shoulder, ducks his head and lays the edge of his left hand bard upon the other’s side. The whip falls again, this time across his back. He aims a blow at the other’s head, but the long neck twists it out of the way, and he hears the whip crack once more, missing him by inches.
Dargoth’s fist lands upon his cheekbone, and he stumbles, off balance, sliding upon the floor. He rolls out of the path of the hooves, but a fist knocks him sprawling as he attempts to rise again.
As the next blow descends, however, he catches the wrist with both hands and throws his full weight upon the arm, twisting his head to the side. Dargoth’s fist strikes the floor and Wakim regains his feet, landing a left cross as he does so.
Dargoth’s head rolls with the punch and the lash cracks beside Wakim’s ear. He lays another blow upon the twisting head, and then he is borne over backwards as Dargoth’s rear legs straighten like springs and his shoulder strikes Wakim in the chest.
Dargoth rears once more.
Then, for the first time, he speaks:
“Now, Wakim, now!” he says, “Dargoth becomes first servant of Anubis!”
As the hooves flash downward, Wakim catches those metal legs, one in each hand, halfway up their length. He has braced himself in a crouched position, and now his lips curl back, showing his clenched teeth, as Dargoth is frozen in mid-strike above him.
He laughs as he springs back into a standing position and heaves with both arms, casting his opponent high up upon his hind legs, struggling to keep from falling over backwards.
“Fool!” he says, and his voice is strangely altered. His word, like the stroke of a great iron bell, rings through the Hall. There comes up a soft moaning from among the dead, as when they had been routed from out their graves.
“ ‘Now,’ you say? ‘Wakim,’ you say?” and he laughs as he steps forward beneath the falling hooves. “You know not what you say!” and he locks his arms about the great metal torso and the hooves flail helplessly above his back and the tail-whip swishes and cracks and lays stripes upon his shoulders. His hands rest between the sharpened spines, and he crushes the unyielding segmented body of metal close up against his own.
Dargoth’s great hands find his neck, but the thumbs cannot reach his throat, and the muscles of Wakim’s neck tighten and stand out as he bends his knees and strains.
They stand so, frozen for a timeless instant, and the firelight wrestles with shadows upon their bodies.
Then with a gigantic, heaving motion, Wakim raises Dargoth above the ground, turns, and hurls him from him.
Dargoth’s legs kick wildly as he turns over in the air. His spines rise and fall and his tail reaches out and cracks. He raises his arms up before his face, but he lands with a shattering crash at the foot of the throne of Anubis, and there he lies still, his metal body broken in four places and his head split open upon the first step to the throne.
Wakim turns toward Anubis.
“Sufficient?” he inquires.
“You did not employ temporal fugue,” says Anubis, not even looking downward at the wreck that had been Dargoth.
“It was unnecessary. He was not that mighty an opponent.”
“He was mighty,” says Anubis. “Why did you laugh, and make as if you questioned your name when you fought with him?”
“I do not know. For a moment, when I realized that I could not be beaten, I felt as though I were someone else.”
“Someone without fear, pity, or remorse?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still feel thus?”
“No.”
“Then why have you stopped calling me ‘Master’?”
“The heat of battle raised emotions which overrode my sense of protocol.”
“Then correct the oversight, immediately.”
“Very well, Master.”
“Apologize. Beg my pardon, most humbly.”
Wakim prostrates himself on the floor.
“I beg your pardon, Master. Most humbly.”
“Rise again, and consider yourself pardoned. The contents of your previous stomach have gone the way of all such things. You may go re-refresh yourself now. -Let there be singing and dancing once more! Let there be drinking and laughter in celebration of the name-giving on this, Wakim’s Thousandyear Eve! Let the carcass of Dargoth be gone from my sight!”
And these things are done.
After Wakim finishes his meal, and it seems as if the dancing and the singing of the dead will continue until Time’s well-deserved end, Anubis gestures, first to his left, then to his right, and every other flame folds upon every other pillar, dives within itself, is gone. His mouth opens and the words come down upon Wakim: “Take them back. Fetch me my staff.”
Wakim stands and gives the necessary orders. Then he leads the dead out from the great Hall. As they depart, the tables vanish between the pillars. An impossible breeze tears at the ceiling of smoke. Before that great, gray mat is shredded, however, the other torches have died, and the only illumination within the Hall comes from the two blazing bowls on either side of the throne.
Anubis stares into the darkness, and the captured light-rays reform themselves at his bidding and he sees Dargoth fall once more at the foot of his throne and lie still, and he sees the one he has named Wakim standing with a skull’s grin upon his lips, and for an instant-had it been a trick of the firelight? -a mark upon his brow.
Far, in an enormous room where the light is dim and orange and crowded into corners and the dead lay them down once more upon invisible catafalques above their opened graves, faint, rising, then falling, Wakim hears a sound that is not like any sound he has ever heard before. He stays his hand upon the staff and descends the dais.
“Old man,” he says to one with whom he spoke earlier, one whose hair and whose beard are stained with wine and in whose left wrist a clock has stopped, “old man, hear my words and tell me if you know: What is that sound?”
The unblinking eyes stare upward, past his own, and the lips move: “Master…”
“I am not Master here.”
“… Master, it is but the howling of a dog.”
Wakim returns then to the dais and gives them all back to their graves.
Then the light departs and the staff guides him through the dark along the path that has been ordained.
“I have brought your staff, Master.”
“Arise, and approach.”
“The dead are all returned to their proper places.”
“Very good. -Wakim, you are my man?”
“Yes, Master.”
“To do my bidding, and to serve me in all things?”
“Yes, Master.”
“This is why you are emissary to the Middle Worlds, and beyond.”
“I am to depart the House of the Dead?”
“Yes, I am sending you forth from here on a mission.”
“What sort of mission?”
“The story is long, involved. There are many persons in the Middle Worlds who are very old. You know this?”
“Yes.”
“And there are some who are timeless and deathless.”
“Deathless, Lord?”
“By one means or another, certain individuals have achieved a kind of immortality. Perhaps they follow the currents of life and draw upon their force, and they flee from the waves of death. Perhaps they have adjusted their biochemistry, or they keep their bodies in constant repair, or they have many bodies and exchange them, or steal new ones. Perhaps they wear metal bodies, or no bodies at all. Whatever the means involved, you will hear talk of the Three Hundred Immortals when you enter the Middle Worlds. This is only an approximate figure, for few truly know much about them. There are two hundred eighty-three immortals, to be exact. They cheat on life, on death, as you can see, and their very existence upsets the balance, inspires others to strive to emulate their legends, causes others to think them gods. Some are harmless wanderers, others are not. All are powerful and subtle, all adept at continuing their existence. One is especially noxious, and I am sending you to destroy him.”