'A hot meal-and a simple one,' King Rigenos said, echoing my own sentiments. 'No banquets-I warned you not to make a large ceremony of this, Bladagh.'
'And I have not, my liege.' Bladagh looked relieved. He did not seem to me to be a man who enjoyed spending money. 'I have not.'
The meal was simple, though not particularly well-prepared. We ate it with Prince Bladagh, his plump, stupid wife, Princess lonante and their two scrawny children. Privately, I was amused at the contrast between the city seen from a distance and the appearance and way of life of its ruler.
A short while later the various commanders, who had been assembling in Noonos for the past several weeks, arrived to confer with Rigenos and myself. Katorn was among them and was able to outline very succinctly and graphically the battle-plans we had worked out between us in Neciranal.
Among the commanders were several famous heroes of the Two Continents-Count Roldero, a burly aristocrat whose armour was as workmanlike and free from decoration as my own-also there was Prince Malihar and his brother, Duke Ezak, both of whom had been through many campaigns; Earl Shanura of Karakoa, one of the furthest provinces and one of the most barbaric. Shanura wore his hair long, in three plaits that hung down his back. His pale features were gaunt and criss-crossed with scars and he spoke seldom and usually to ask specific questions. The variety of the faces and the costumes surprised me at first. At least, I thought ironically, humanity was united on this world, which was more than could be said for the world John Daker had left. But perhaps they were only united for the moment, to defeat the common enemy. After that, I thought, their unity might well suffer a set-back. Earl Shanura, for instance, did not seem too happy about taking orders from King Rigenos who he probably considered soft.
I hoped that I could keep so disparate a group of officers together in the battles that were to follow.
At last we were finished with our discussions and I had spoken a word or two with every commander there. King Rigenos glanced at the bronze clock that stood on the table and which was marked with sixteen divisions. 'It will be time to put to sea soon,' he said. 'Are all ships ready?'
'Mine have been ready for months,' Earl Shanura said gruffly. 'I was beginning to feel they would rot before they saw
The others agreed that their ships would be able to sail with little more than an hour's notice.
Rigenos and I thanked Bladagh and his family for their hospitality and they seemed rather more cheerful now that we were leaving.
Instead of marching from the palace, we now hurried in coaches to the quayside and rapidly boarded our ships. The king's flagship was called the lolinda, a fact which I had not noticed before, my thoughts being full of the woman who bore that name. Our other ships from Necranal were now in port and their sailors were refreshing themselves in the short time they had, while slaves took on board the last provisions and armaments that were needed.
There was still a mood of slight depression hanging over me from my strange half-dreams of the previous night, but it was beginning to disperse as my excitement grew. It was still a month's sailing to Mernadin, but already I was beginning to relish the chance of action. At least action would help me forget the other problems. I was reminded of something that Pierre told Andrei in War and Peace-something about all men finding their own ways of forgetting the fact of death. Some womanised, some gambled, some drank and some, paradoxically, made war. Well, it was not the fact of death that obsessed me-indeed, it seemed that it was the fact of eternal existence that was preying on my mind. An eternal life involving eternal warfare.
Would I at some stage discover the truth? I was not sure that I wanted to know the truth. The thought frightened me. Perhaps a God could have accepted it. But I was not a God. I was a man. I knew I was a man. My problems, my ambitions, my emotions were on a human scale-save for the one abiding problem-the question of how I came to exist in this form-of how I had become what I was. Or was I truly eternal? Was there no beginning and no end to my existence? The very nature of Time was held in question. I could no longer regard Time in linear terms, as I had once done as John Daker. Time could not be conceived of any more in spatial terms.
I needed a philosopher-a magician-a scientist to help me on that problem. Or else I could forget it? But could I forget it? I would have to try.
The seabirds squawked and circled as the sails smacked down and swelled in the sultry wind that had started to blow. The timbers creaked as the anchors were weighed and the mooring ropes cast off from the capstans and the great flagship, lolinda, heaved herself from the port, her oars still rising and falling, but making faster speed now as she sailed towards the open sea.
CHAPTER TEN
FIRST SIGN OF THE ELDREN
The fleet was huge and contained great fighting ships of many kinds, some resembling what John Daker would have called nineteenth-century tea-clippers, some that looked like junks, some with the lateen rig of Mediterranean craft, some that were very like Elizabethan caravels. Sailing in their separate formations, according to their province or origin, they symbolised the differences and the unity of mankind. I was proud of them.
Excited, tense, alert and confident of victory, we sailed for Paphanaal, gateway to Mernadin and conquest.
Yet I still felt the need to know more of the Eldren. My cloudy memory of the life of an earlier Erekose could only confer an impression of confused battles against them and also, perhaps, somewhere a feeling of emotional pain. That was all. I had heard that they had no orbs to their eyes and that this was their chief distinguishing unhuman characteristic. They were said to be inhumanly beautiful, inhumanly merciless and with inhuman sexual appetites. They were slightly taller than the average man, had long heads with slanting cheek-bones and slightly slanting eyes. But this was not really enough for me. There were no pictures of Eldren anywhere on the Two Continents. Pictures were supposed to bring bad luck, particularly if the evil eyes of the Eldren were depicted.
As we sailed, there was a great deal of ship-to-ship communication, with commanders being rowed or hauled in slings to and from the flagship, depending on how good the weather was. We had worked out our basic strategy and had contingency plans in case it should not prove possible to exercise this strategy. The idea had been mine and seemed a new one to the others, but they soon grasped it and the details had now all been decided upon. Each day the warriors of every ship were drilled in what they were to do when the Eldren fleet was sighted, if it was sighted. If it was not' we should despatch part of the fleet straight to Paphanaal and begin the attack on the city. However, we expected the Eldren to send out their defence fleet to meet us before we reached Paphanaal and it was on this probability that we based our main plan.
Katorn and I avoided each other as much as possible. There were, in those first few days of sailing, none of the verbal duels of the sort we had had in Necranal and on the Droonaa River. I was polite to Katorn when we had need to communicate and he, in his surly way, was polite to me. King Rigenos seemed to be relieved and told me that he was glad we had settled our differences. We had not, of course, settled anything. We had merely waived those differences until such time as we could decide them once and for all. I knew eventually that I must fight Katorn or that he would try to murder me.
I took a liking to Count Roldero of Stalaco, though he was perhaps the most bloodthirsty of all when it came to discussing the Eldren. John Daker would have called him a reactionary-but he would have liked him. He was a staunch, stoical, honest man who spoke his mind and allowed others to speak theirs, expecting the same tolerance from them as he gave to them. When I had once suggested to him that he saw things too plainly in black and white he had smiled wearily and replied: