And then Half-and-Half was back again in human form, looking up at the Emperor with a friendly wink. “There!” he said. “You can see I haven’t lost my touch!”
“Indeed!” said His Majesty, laughing. “Indeed! But I also see that my bracelet of annihilation is still securely in place!”
He clapped his hands to bring the audience to a close.
“Very well then, Cardinal-Major. Thank you for your assistance with this. Take this fellow away and get him out of those dreadful breeches and into some sort of decent outfit that will reassure your fellow-officers. He can come to my war cabinet this afternoon. We’re in very serious trouble just now, I’m afraid. Those damned Antinomians are making fools of us all along the Eastern front. I’m losing a lot of territory, not to mention about a thousand soldiers a day. We need some new ideas – and quickly. We need some sort of encouragement.”
A metal screen slid down in front of the throne and the Emperor and his pearly light were gone. I led the Immortal Warrior down the famous Amber Stairs, and across the Court of Roses.
Half-and-Half the traitor was to be accommodated in the House of Honour.
That is politics I suppose.
“You see?” he said, as we passed among the roses. “They just won’t accept it, even when I tell it to them straight! Once they see what I can do, they refuse to believe that they’d be just as well off without me.”
We passed down the Corridor of the Succession with its long series of portraits of Emperors and Empresses past. Half-and-Half smiled. “Still,” he said, “I like this Emperor. He’s fun.”
He made no mention of the bracelet and, when I spoke of it, he touched it vaguely with his fingers and moved on to other things. I couldn’t help admiring his sangfroid.
“Tell me,” I asked him, “How did you do those tricks?”
The Immortal Warrior smiled. “Hypnotism, sleight of hand, mirrors, very good balance – take your pick!” He winked at me. “There’s no point at all in my telling you how it really works. You wouldn’t believe me. This is a scientific age after all!”
He laughed. To my own surprise, I found myself smiling.
Half-and-Half looked at me sharply. “There’s quite a pleasant fellow under that stiff exterior, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said after a moment, “quite a good-looking fellow too. Maybe you should think of chucking in this Pristine nonsense and having a bit of fun for a change? After all, you only live once. Unless, of course, you’re me.”
We crossed the Court of Fountains and reached the entrance of the House of Honour. Flunkies came out to greet the Immortal Warrior. My role was at an end. We said goodbye.
“Take a leaf from my book,” said Half-and-Half, “Whatever I do, life will go on the same. So I might as well do whatever I like.”
He smiled. “I won’t say that it always works out for me as a philosophy of living, but half of the time it works out fine.”
I turned to go.
“Do you know what I’ve missed most of all?” I heard him say to the flunkies. “It’s not food, it’s not drink. It’s…”
And then the door closed behind him.
My duties completed, I left the Palace and crossed the teeming city. I smelt the city smells of spices and cooked meat and excrement and sweet cakes and rotten vegetables. I heard the angry shouts and the love-songs and the crying babies and the children shrieking and yelling as they played chase through the streets and alleys. I saw the white incense smoke rising from the houses of Enino as they made ready for mid-afternoon prayers. I saw the purple ribbons fluttering in the windows of the whorehouses. I crossed the Great River and looked down at the dirty children and old women and dogs, swarming over its muddy bed, scavenging for scraps…
And I returned to my home, the barracks of the 32nd Pristine Guard. The white walls were bare, the stone courtyard swept scrupulously clean. Officers in white jackets like my own saluted and greeted me with polite deference.
“Pleased to see you, sir.”
“Good to have you back, your Holiness.”
I was suddenly very tired. I couldn’t face eating with my subordinates that night. I asked for some bread and cheese to be brought up to my rooms and let it be known that I would take up the reins again in the morning.
Then I retired to my quarters, my two austere rooms, with the iron bed, and the plain whitewashed walls and the single plain image of Enino, unsmiling, in the midst of his fiery wheel. Dutifully I made an obeisance, then I began to undress.
As I unbuttoned my jacket I caught sight of myself in the little mirror I use for shaving.
Tentatively, uncertainly, I smiled.
I’d never smiled at myself before. It seemed a strange thing to do. But I quite liked it. I sensed the pressure, long suppressed, of a warmer, lighter, more sensual me within…
Half-and-Half went to war. In No-Man’s Land he danced among the bullets and laser beams. Among the ruins and the bomb craters, he laughed and performed acrobatic feats. Over the fallen corpses, he became a lion, a giant, an eagle with wings of fire.
Back at headquarters Generals and Arch-Generals stood in awe as he effortlessly absorbed information and expounded stratagems. Our soldiers cheered. They loved him for his indomitable spirit, not caring at all that he had once betrayed their own great-grandfathers. Along the whole front, they went back on the attack, full of courage and hope and new energy.
And all the while the bracelet of annihilation remained securely fixed to the Immortal Warrior’s arm.
Day after day the Antinomians fell back, very often dropping their weapons and running in sheer panic. Day after day, fair-haired Philinomians ran out from their hiding places and prostrated themselves at our feet. At the Battle of the Ford, our enemies were finally routed. Their kingdoms were annexed to the Empire. Our victory was complete.
I was sent by the Emperor to grant Half-and-Half his pardon and to bring him back to the City for the celebrations. But as I drew near to his encampment, a flash of blinding white lit the sky ahead of us. The bracelet had exploded, annihilating Half-and-Half and, with him, hundreds of soldiers and the entire mountain on which he had stood, looking out over those fertile Antinomian plains which he’d added to our Emperor’s realm.
Where the mountain had been there was only a huge crater, almost completely smooth, as if scooped out of butter by a gigantic spoon.
We walked up to the rim of it, Sergeant Tobias and I. It was as bare and as dead and as featureless as a crater on the moon.
“No one could survive that,” Tobias muttered, “no one. Not even an Immortal.”
Not long afterwards I left the Imperial service and became a merchant, dealing in military surplus, and making good use of my reputation and my contacts. I married, I became quite comfortably off, I travelled the length and breadth of the Empire making deals.
About fifteen years after the Battle of the Ford, I happened to be passing through the Antinomian Borders with my new assistant Zolinda, and thought I would go up with her and take a look at the crater. (It had filled with rain over the years and become a lake). Partly I was curious: I wanted to remind myself that those strange events had really happened and not just been a dream. Partly I hoped to impress Zolinda with my stories of Half-and-Half and Gendlegap and my place in the history-books. She was an attractive woman and I wanted to sleep with her. It had worked with several others before.
So we went up to the lake known as Half-and-Half’s Doom, Zolinda and I, and I told her the story, looking out over that circular expanse of lifeless water. But when I had finished, I felt strangely flat and not at all impressed by my own importance. What part had I really played after all in the story of Half-and-Half, other than the part of a dupe and a stooge?