The Eternal Champion

'You must believe me, lolinda!'

'No,' she said, 'Humanity will fight to the end and, because the Good One favours us, doubtless we will win. We are pledged to wage war on sorcery and there was never greater sorcery than what we have seen today.'

'It is not sorcery. It is science. It is only like your cannon, but more powerful.'

'Sorcery!' Everyone was murmuring it now. They were like primitives, these fools.

'If we continue to fight,' I said, 'it will be a fight to the finish. The Eldren would prefer to let you go, once this battle is won. But if we win, I intend to clean the planet of your kind, just as you swore you would do to the Eldren. Take the chance. A peace! Be sane.'

'We will die by sorcery,' she said, 'if we have to. But we will die fighting it.'

I was too weary to continue. 'Then let us finish it,' I told her.

lolinda wheeled her horse away and, with her marshals in her wake, galloped back to order the attack.

I did not see lolinda perish. There were so many that perished that day.

They came and we met them. They were helpless against our weapons. Energy spouted from the guns and seared into their ranks. We all felt pain as we fired the howling waves of force which swept across them and destroyed them, turning proud men and beasts to blackened rubble.

We did as they had predicted we would do. We destroyed them all.

I pitied them as they came on, the cream of Humanity's menfolk.

It took an hour to destroy a million warriors.

One hour.

When the extermination was over, I was filled with a strange emotion which I could not, then and cannot now define. It was a mixture of grief, relief and triumph. I mourned for lolinda. She was somewhere there in the heap of blackened bone and smouldering flesh. One piece of ruined meat among many, her beauty gone in the same instant as her life. At least, I thought, that might be something.

And it was then that I made my final decision. Or did I, indeed, make it at all? Was it not what I had been meant to do?

Or was it the crime I had mentioned earlier? Was this the crime I committed that doomed me to be what I was?

Was I right?

In spite of Arjavh's constant antagonism to my plan, I ordered the machines out of Loos Ptokai and, mounted in one of them, ordered them overland.

This is what I did:

Two months before I had been responsible for winning the cities of Mernadin for Humanity. Now I reclaimed them in the name of the Eldren.

I reclaimed them in a terrible way. I destroyed every human being occupying them.

A week and we were at Paphanaal where the fleets of mankind lay at anchor in the great harbour.

I destroyed those fleets as I destroyed the garrison-men, women and children perished. None were spared.

And then, for many of the machines were amphibious, I led the Eldren across the sea to the Two Continents, though Arjavh and Ermizhad were not with me.

These cities fell-Noonos of the jewel-studded towers fell. Tarkar fell. The wondrous cities of the wheatlands, Stalaco, Calodemia, Mooros and Ninadoon, all fell. Wedma, Shilaal, Sinaan and others fell, crumbling in an inferno of gouting energy. They fell in a few hours.

In Necranal, the pastel-coloured city of the mountain, five million citizens died and all that was left of Necranal was the scorched, smoking mountain itself.

But I was thorough. Not merely the great cities were destroyed. Villages were destroyed. Hamlets were destroyed. Towns and farms were destroyed.

I found some people hiding in caves. The caves were destroyed.

I destroyed forests where they might flee. I destroyed stones that they might creep under.

I would doubtless have destroyed every blade of grass if Arjavh had not come hurrying over the ocean to stop me.

He was horrified at what I had done. He begged me to stop.

I stopped.

There was no more killing to do.

We made our way back to the coast and we paused to look at the smouldering mountainside that had been Necranal.

'For one woman's wrath,' said Prince Arjavh, 'and another's love, you did this?'

I shrugged. 'I do not know. I think I did it for the only kind of peace that will last. I know my race too well. This Earth would have been for ever rent by strife of some kind. I had to decide who best deserved to live. If they had destroyed the Eldren, they would have soon turned on each other, as you know. And they fight for such empty things, too. For power over their fellows, for a bauble, for an extra acre of land that they will not till, for possession of a woman who doesn't want them…'

'You speak in the present tense,' Arjavh said quietly. 'Really, Erekose, I do not think you know yet what you have done.'

I sighed. 'But it is done,' I said.

'Yes,' he murmured. He gripped my arm. 'Come, friend. Back to Mernadin. Leave this stink behind. Ermizhad awaits you.'

I was an empty man, then, bereft of emotion. I followed him towards the river. It moved sluggishly now. It was choked with black dust.

'I think I did right,' I said. 'It was not my will, you know, but something else. I think it might have been what I was really brought here to do. There are forces, I think, whose nature we shall never know, can only dream of. I think it was another will than mine which dragged me here-not Rigenos. Rigenos, like me, was a puppet-a tool used, as I was used. It was fated that Humanity should die on this planet.'

'It is better that you think that,' he said. 'Come now. Let us go home.'

EPILOGUE

The scars of that destruction have healed now, as I end my chronicle.

I returned to Loos Ptokai to wed Ermizhad, to have the Eldren secret of immortality conferred upon me, to brood for a year or two until my brain cleared.

It is clear now. I feel no guilt for what I did. I feel more certain than ever that it was not my decision.

Perhaps that is madness? Perhaps I have rationalised my guilt? If so, I am at one with my madness, it does not tear me in two as my dreams used to. I have those dreams rarely these days.

So we are here, the three of us-Ermizhad, Arjavh and I. Arjavh is undisputed ruler of the Earth, an Eldren Earth, and we rule with him.

We cleansed this Earth of human kind. I am its last representative. And in so doing I feel that we knitted this planet back into the pattern, allowed it to drift, at last, harmoniously with a harmonious Universe. For the Universe is old, perhaps even older than I, and it could not tolerate the humans who broke its peace.

Did I do right?

You must judge for yourself, wherever you are.

For me, it is too late to ask that question. I have sufficient control, nowadays, never to ask it. The only way in which I could answer it would involve destroying my own sanity.

One thing puzzles me. If, indeed, Time is cyclic, in some manner, and the Universe we know will be born again to turn another long cycle, then Humanity will one day arise again, somehow, on this Earth and my adopted people will disappear from the Earth, or seem to.

And if you are human who read this, perhaps you know. Perhaps my question seems naive and you are at this moment laughing at me. But I have no answer. I can imagine none.

I am not to be the father of your race, human, for Ermizhad and I cannot produce children.

Then how shall you come again to disrupt the harmony of the Universe?

And will I be here to receive you. Will I become your hero again or will I die with the Eldren fighting you?

Or will I die before then and be the leader who brings disrupting humanity to Earth? I cannot say.

Which of the names will I have next time you call?

Now the Earth is peaceful. The silent air carries only the sounds of quiet laughter, the murmur of conversation, the small noises of small animals. We and the Earth are at peace.