The Eternal Champion

He led me down the steps.

I only hoped he had not overestimated their power.

Arjavh led me to the vaults that lay at the core of the city. We moved along bare corridors of polished black marble, lighted by small bulbs which burned with a greenish light. We came to a door of dark metal and he pressed a stud beside it. The door moved open and we entered an elevator which bore us yet further downwards.

I was, again, astonished at the Eldren. They had deliberately given up all these marvels because of some strange sense of justice.

Then we stepped into a great hall full of weirdly wrought machines that looked as if they had just been manufactured. They stretched for nearly half a mile ahead of us.

'These are the weapons,' said Arjavh hollowly.

Around the high walls were arranged hand-guns of various kinds, rifles and things that looked to John Baker's eye like antitank weapons of some sort. There were squad machines on caterpillar treads that really did look like ultra-streamlined tanks, with glass cabins and couches for a single man to lie flat upon and operate the controls. I was surprised that there were no flying machines of any kind-or none that I recognised as such. I mentioned this to Arjavh.

'Flying machines! It would be interesting if such things could be invented. But I do not think it is possible. We have never, in all our history, been able to develop a machine that will safely stay in the air for any length of time.'

I was amazed at this strange gap in their technology, but I commented on it no further.

'Now you have seen these fierce things,' he said, 'do you still feel you should use them?'

But he doubtless thought such things were not familiar to me. They were not so very different, in general appearance, to the war machines John Daker knew. And, in my dreams, I had seen much stranger weapons.

'Let us ready them,' I said to him.

We returned to the surface and there instructed our warriors to bring the weapons up.

Roldero had smashed in one of our gates now and we had had to bring up cannon to defend it, but the warriors of Humanity were beginning to press in and some hand-to-hand fighting was going on at the approach to the gates.

Night was beginning to fall. I hoped that, in spite of their gain, the human army would fall back at dark and give us the time we needed. Through the gap in the gate I saw Roldero urging his men in. Doubtless he hoped to consolidate his advantage before nightfall.

I ordered more men to the breach.

Already I was beginning to doubt my own decision.

Perhaps Arjavh was right and it was criminal to let the power of the ancient weapons loose. But then, I thought, what does it matter? Better destroy them and half the planet than let them destroy the beauty that was the Eldren.

I was forced to smile at this reaction in myself. Arjavh would not have approved of it. It was alien to him, such a thought.

I saw Roldero bring in more men to counter our forces and I swung into the saddle of a nearby horse, spurring it towards the crucial breach.

I drew my poison sword, Kanajana, and I voiced my battle-cry-the battle-cry that only a short while ago had urged the warriors I attacked into war! They heard it and, as I suspected, were disconcerted.

I leapt my horse over the heads of my own men and confronted Roldero. He looked at me in astonishment and pulled his horse up short.

'Would you fight, Roldero?' I asked.

He shrugged. 'Aye. I'll fight you, traitor.'

And he rushed at me with his reins looped over his arm and both hands around the hilt of his great sword. It whistled over my head as I ducked.

Everywhere about us, beneath the broken walls of Loos Ptokai, human and Eldren fought desperately in the fading light.

Roldero was tired, more tired than I was, but he battled valiantly on and I could not get through his guard. His sword caught me a blow on my helmet and I reeled and struck back and caught him on the helmet. My helmet stayed on, but his was half pulled off. He wrenched it off all the way and flung it aside. His hair had turned completely white since I had last seen him bareheaded.

His face was flushed and his eyes bright, his lips drawn back over his teeth. He tried to stab his sword through my visor, but I ducked under the blow and he fell forward in his saddle and I brought up my sword and drove it down into his breastbone.

He groaned and then his face lost all its anger and he gasped: 'Now we can be friends again, Erekose…' and he died.

I looked down at him as he collapsed over the neck of his sword. I remembered his kindness, the wine he had brought me to help me sleep, the advice he had tried to give me. And I remembered him pushing the dead king from his saddle. Yet, Count Roldero was a good man. A good man forced by history to do evil.

His black horse turned and began to canter back towards the count's distant pavilion.

I raised my sword in salute and then shouted to the humans who fought on. 'Look, warriors of Humanity! Look! Your War Champion is defeated!'

The sun was setting.

The warriors began to withdraw, looking at me in hatred as I laughed at them, but not daring to attack me while the bloody sword Kanajana was in my hand.

One of them did call back, however.

'We are not leaderless, Erekose, if that is what you think. We have the Queen to send us into battle. She has come to be witness of your destruction tomorrow!'

lolinda was with the besiegers!

I thought swiftly and then yelled: 'Tell your mistress to come tomorrow to our walls. Come at dawn to parley!'

Through the night we worked to reinforce the gate and to position the newfound weapons. They were raised wherever they would fit and the Eldren soldiers were armed with the handweapons.

I wondered if lolinda would get the message and, if she did get it, whether she would deign to come.

She came. She came with her remaining marshals in all their proud panoply of war. That panoply seemed so insignificant now, against the power of the ancient Eldren weapons.

We had set one of the new cannon pointing up at the sky so that we could demonstrate its fearful potential.

lolinda's voice drifted up to us.

'Greetings, Eldren-and greetings to your human pet. Is he a well-trained pet now?'

'Greetings, lolinda,' I said, showing my face. 'You begin to show your father's penchant for poor insults. Let's waste no further time.'

'I am already wasting time,' she said. 'We are going to destroy you all today.'

'Perhaps not,' I said. 'For we offer you a truce-and peace.'

lolinda laughed aloud. 'You offer us peace, traitor! You should be begging for peace-though you'll get none!'

'I warn you, lolinda,' I shouted desperately. 'I warn you all. We have fresh weapons. Weapons which once came near to destroying this whole Earth! Watch!'

I gave the order to fire the giant cannon.

An Eldren warrior depressed a stud on the controls.

There came a humming from the cannon and all at once a tremendous blinding bolt of golden energy gouted from its snout. The, heat alone blistered our skins and we fell back, shielding our eyes.

Horses shrieked and reared. The marshals' faces were grey and their mouths gaped. They fought to control their mounts. Only lolinda sat firmly in her saddle, apparently calm.

'That is what we offer you if you will not have peace,' I shouted. 'We have a dozen like it and there are others that are different, but as powerful, and we have hand-cannon which can kill a hundred men at a sweep. What say you now?'

lolinda raised her face and stared directly up at me.

'We fight,' she said.

'lolinda,' I pleaded. 'For our old love-for your own sake- do not fight. We will not harm you. You can go home, all of you, and live in security for the rest of your lives. I mean it.'

'Security!' she laughed bitterly. 'Security, while such weapons as these exist!'