And the Lady said to herself,
“I feel old and in many ways different, and my strength has gone from me, and I am glad there is no mirror to show me my whitened hair and bloodless cheeks, for the men who have come back into me were dead men and those not dead were badly hurt and I must get back to my horse before I fall into a faint of death.”
She tried to walk out, but stumbling fell. On hands and knees she crawled to where her horse waited for her. She pulled herself up into the saddle and with her girdle she tied herself there and then told the horse to go home. But she lay across the saddle like a dead woman.
The horse brought her back. Ladies in waiting took her to her bed and washed her withered limbs and gave her warm drinks and covered her wasted body with coverlets of lambs wool and the wise physicians mixed healing drinks for her and finally she recovered sufficiently to tell her father and her lover the story of the battle of the thirty against the Giant and how he was dead and the land safe.
“And now go to the old man and get the other elixir,” she whispered,” and when it works have the dead buried with honor and the wounded gently and wisely cared for and then we will come to the end of the adventure and it will be one that the singer of songs will tell of for many winter evenings to the simple folk of Walling.”
“You stay with her, Lord Gustro,” commanded the Overlord, “and I will take the wise Homonculus in my arms and gallop to the cave and secure the elixir, and when I return we will have her drink it and once again she will be whole and young again and then I will have you two lovers marry, for I am not as young as I was and I want to live to see the throne secure and, the Gods willing, Grandchildren running around the castle.”
Lord Gustro sat down by his lady’s bed and he took her wasted hand in his warm one and he placed a kiss on her white lips with his red warm ones and he whispered, ‘ ‘ No matter what happens and no matter what the end of the adventure I will always love you, Heart-of-mine. ” And Lady Angelica smiled on him and went to sleep.
Through the dark forest Cecil, Over-Lord of Walling, galloped with the little wise man in his arms. He flung himself off his war horse and ran quickly into the cave.
“Have you finished the elixir?” he cried.
The old man looked up, as though in doubt as to what the question was. He was breathing heavily now and little drops of sweat rolled down his leathered face.
“Oh! Yes! I remember now. The elixir that would save the lady and take from her the thirty bodies of the men we placed in her by virtue of our synthetic magic. I remember now! I have been working on it. In a few more minutes it will be finished.”
And dropping forward on the oak table he died. In falling, a withered hand struck a golden flask and overturned it on the floor. Liquid amber ran over the dust of ages. A cockroach came and drank of it and suddenly died.
“I am afraid,” moaned the little Homonculus. “I wish I were back in my bottle. ’ ’
But Cecil, Overlord of Walling, did not know how to comfort him.
The Battle of the Toads
[Weird Tales 1929-10]
My first thought of the monk was, “He looks like a toad!” My second thought was, “But, mayhap, he will be of use to me in becoming the Overlord of Cornwall.”
For some years I had been obsessed with this desire, to become the ruler of this strange land. Odd longings had led me to foreign lands, and there I had seen things and performed acts, the telling of which made ordinary stay-at-homes gape with astonishment. Now, with the education that results only from such adventure-some activity, I felt that it was time for me to settle down and become a somebody among the landed gentry of the British Isles. Learning that there was no great man of outstanding merit in that part of the world known as Cornwall, I felt that opportunity knocked at my door; so I journeyed to Cornwall.
That journeying, perforce, was slow. My charger, spavined, aged, thin and blind of one eye, made difficult work of carrying me and my armor. In fact, on the third day after entering the new land that in the future I was to rule over, this nag showed his profound indifference to my ambitions by allowing me to find him dead when I awoke by his side in the dark forest. It being impossible for even a man of my great strength to make much headway on foot, carrying a complete set of harness, including lance, mace, great sword and shield, I sorrowfully placed much of my treasures in a pile under some leaves and stone, and journeyed on with a dagger in my belt and my so-heavy sword and shield pounding my back at every step.
So I came to the castle of the Abbe Rousseau. Of course, he should have been living in a monastery with other priests; in fact, a man of his name had no business in Cornwall at all, at all, as his name in every way was French. I made up my mind that when I became Overlord of the country, such irregularities should be given particular attention. Yet, at that time, I was in need of shelter and food and a warm place by the fire; so I was not inclined to state openly my views concerning foreigners. In very truth, some of the natives might rightly have called me an outlander myself; which, in a way, was true, as I could hardly speak their language, and in another way was not true, as I intended to become their Overlord (though they did not know this latter fact during the first few weeks of my stay in Cornwall).
The Abbe lived in a pile of ruins that might be called, by courtesy, a castle. Though the place was a rather hopeless mess of fallen stone, still it was a tough nut to crack, and I suppose that I should still be outside the walls had I not been able to convince the Abbe, by the use of my most excellent Latin and French, that I was a man of culture, meant him no harm, and was in sore need of the hospitality and refreshments that he could offer me.
Finally he opened a little door and let me in.
It was twilight; he had his face partly covered with a hood; the pine split that he carried was small and smoking; so, for more reasons than one, I did not see his face till I arrived with him-in front of a large fire that blazed in the great hall. Leaving me there, he wended him into the shadows, where he found and brought to me a well-gnawed joint of meat, some hard bread and a bottle of sour wine. On this banquet I regaled myself with the eagerness born of hunger, rather than with the enjoyment of an epicurean.
And after I had eaten all that there was to eat I thanked my host. Now, for the first time, I saw his face. In worn velvets he stood before the fire, warming his withered shins and ivory hands. Those hands, dead white, with large blue veins coursing over them; those hands, with long, hungry fingers and uncut nails, caused me to shiver, for the fingers moved in aimless fashion, and as though alive and independent of the man that they were grown to; which was a thought that so far I had never had of the fingers of any man whom I had ever seen.
But strangest of all, and far more soul-racking to me, was the sight of the man's face. Of course, it was the face of a man. It was easy to tell that it was a man who had admitted me and fed me and now stood before the fire, ready to talk to me; I bitterly told myself that I was a fool to think otherwise of one who had so hospitably entertained me; yet there was something about that face, so intermittently illumined by the dancing shadows from the fluttering flames — there was something about that face that chilled me and made me hurriedly clutch at the gold crucifix hung around my neck — for there was something about the face of the man that made me think of a toad.