Kull: Exile of Atlantis (39 page)

But Cormac saw that the end would come before they could reach him. Now at the very crest of the steep, a hedge of points menaced the strange king’s life, and even his iron strength was ebbing. Now he split the skull of a huge warrior and the back-stroke shore through the neck-cords of another; reeling under a very rain of swords he struck again and his victim dropped at his feet, cleft to the breast-bone. Then, even as a dozen swords rose above the staggering Atlantean for the death stroke, a strange thing happened. The sun was sinking into the western sea; all the heather swam red like an ocean of blood. Etched in the dying sun, as he had first appeared, Kull stood, and then, like a mist lifting, a mighty vista opened behind the reeling king. Cormac’s astounded eyes caught a fleeting gigantic glimpse of other climes and spheres–as if mirrored in summer clouds he saw, instead of the heather hills stretching away to the sea, a dim and mighty land of blue mountains and gleaming quiet lakes–the golden, purple and sapphirean spires and towering walls of a mighty city such as the earth has not known for many a drifting age.

Then like the fading of a mirage it was gone, but the Gauls on the high slope had dropped their weapons and stared like men dazed–
For the man called Kull had vanished and there was no trace of his going!

As in a daze Cormac turned his steed and rode back across the trampled field. His horse’s hoofs splashed in lakes of blood and clanged against the helmets of dead men. Across the valley the shout of victory was thundering. Yet all seemed shadowy and strange. A shape was striding across the torn corpses and Cormac was dully aware that it was Bran. The Gael swung from his horse and fronted the king. Bran was weaponless and gory; blood trickled from gashes on brow, breast and limb; what armor he had worn was clean hacked away and a cut had shorn half-way through his iron crown. But the red jewel still gleamed unblemished like a star of slaughter.

“It is in my mind to slay you,” said the Gael heavily and like a man speaking in a daze, “for the blood of brave men is on your head. Had you given the signal to charge sooner, some would have lived.”

Bran folded his arms; his eyes were haunted. “Strike if you will; I am sick of slaughter. It is a cold mead, this kinging it. A king must gamble with men’s lives and naked swords. The lives of all my people were at stake; I sacrificed the Northmen–yes; and my heart is sore within me, for they were men! But had I given the order when you would have desired, all might have gone awry. The Romans were not yet massed in the narrow mouth of the gorge, and might have had time and space to form their ranks again and beat us off. I waited until the last moment–and the rovers died. A king belongs to his people, and can not let either his own feelings or the lives of men influence him. Now my people are saved; but my heart is cold in my breast.”

Cormac wearily dropped his sword-point to the ground.

“You are a born king of men, Bran,” said the Gaelic prince.

Bran’s eyes roved the field. A mist of blood hovered over all, where the victorious barbarians were looting the dead, while those Romans who had escaped slaughter by throwing down their swords and now stood under guard looked on with hot smoldering eyes.

“My kingdom–my people–are saved,” said Bran wearily. “They will come from the heather by the thousands and when Rome moves against us again, she will meet a solid nation. But I am weary. What of Kull?”

“My eyes and brain were mazed with battle,” answered Cormac. “I thought to see him vanish like a ghost into the sunset. I will seek his body.”

“Seek not for him,” said Bran. “Out of the sunrise he came–into the sunset he has gone. Out of the mists of the ages he came to us, and back into the mists of the eons has he returned–to his own kingdom.”

Cormac turned away; night was gathering. Gonar stood like a white specter before him.

“To his own kingdom,” echoed the wizard. “Time and Space are naught. Kull has returned to his own kingdom–his own crown–his own age.”

“Then he was a ghost?”

“Did you not feel the grip of his solid hand? Did you not hear his voice–see him eat and drink, laugh and slay and bleed?”

Still Cormac stood like one in a trance.

“Then if it be possible for a man to pass from one age into one yet unborn, or come forth from a century dead and forgotten, whichever you will, with his flesh-and-blood body and his arms–then he is as mortal as he was in his own day. Is Kull dead, then?”

“He died a hundred thousand years ago, as men reckon time,” answered the wizard, “but in his own age. He died not from the swords of the Gauls of this age. Have we not heard in legends how the king of Valusia traveled into a strange, timeless land of the misty future ages, and there fought in a great battle? Why, so he did! A hundred thousand years ago, or today!

“And a hundred thousand years ago–or a moment agone!–Kull, king of Valusia, roused himself on the silken couch in his secret chamber and laughing, spoke to the first Gonar, saying: ‘Ha, wizard, I have in truth dreamed strangely, for I went into a far clime and a far time in my visions, and fought for the king of a strange shadow-people!’ And the great sorcerer smiled and pointed silently at the red, notched sword, and the torn mail and the many wounds that the king carried. And Kull, fully woken from his ‘vision’ and feeling the sting and the weakness of these yet bleeding wounds, fell silent and mazed, and all life and time and space seemed like a dream of ghosts to him, and he wondered thereat all the rest of his life. For the wisdom of the Eternities is denied even unto princes and Kull could no more understand what Gonar told him than you can understand my words.”

“And then Kull lived despite his many wounds,” said Cormac, “and has returned to the mists of silence and the centuries. Well–he thought us a dream; we thought him a ghost. And sure, life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusion, and it is in my mind that the kingdom which has this day been born of swords and slaughter in this howling valley is a thing no more solid than the foam of the bright sea.”

Miscellanea

The “Am-ra of the Ta-an” Fragments

The two poems and three texts that follow were found among Howard’s papers in 1966 and represent the entirety of the surviving “Am-ra of the Taan” material, predating the first Kull story by several years. The importance and influence of these texts on the Kull stories is delineated in the essay “Atlantean Genesis” found in this volume page 287.

Summer Morn

Am-ra stood on a mountain height

At the break of a summer morn;

He watched in wonder the starlight fall

And the eastern scarlet flare and pale

As the flame of day was born.

Am-ra the Ta-an

Out of the land of the morning sun,

Am-ra the Ta-an came.

Outlawed by the priests of the Ta-an,

His people spoke not his name.

Am-ra, the mighty hunter,

Am-ra, son of the spear,

Strong and bold as a lion,

Lithe and swift as a deer.

Into the land of the tiger,

Came Am-ra the fearless, alone,

With his bow of pliant lance-wood,

And his spear with the point of stone.

He saw the deer and the bison,

The wild horse and the bear,

The elephant and the mammoth,

To him the land seemed fair.

Face to face met he the tiger,

And gripping his spear’s long haft,

Gazed fearless into the snarling face,

“Good hunting!” cried he, and laughed!

The bison he smote at sunrise,

The deer in the heat of day,

The wild horse fell before him,

The cave-bear did he slay!

A cave sought he? Not Am-ra!

He lived as wild and free,

As the wolf that roams the forest,

His only roof a tree.

When he wished to eat he slaughtered,

But not needlessly he slew,

For he felt a brother to the wild folk,

And this the Wild Folk knew.

The deer they spoke to Am-ra,

Of kin by the tiger slain,

Am-ra met the tiger,

And slew him on the plain!

A youth in the land of the Ta-an,

A slim, young warrior, Gaur,

Had followed Am-ra in the chase,

And fought by his side in war.

He yearned for his friend Am-ra

And he hated the high priest’s face,

Till at last with the spear he smote him,

And fled from the land of his birth race.

Am-ra’s foot-prints he followed,

And he wandered far away,

Till he came to the land of the tiger,

In the gateway of the day.

Into the land of the tiger,

There came an alien race,

Stocky and swart and savage,

Black of body and face.

Into the country of Am-ra,

Wandered the savage band,

No bows they bore but each carried

A stone-tipped spear in his hand.

They paused in Am-ra’s country,

And camped at his clear spring fair,

And they slew the deer and the wild horse,

But fled from the tiger and bear.

Back from a hunt came Am-ra,

With the pelt of a grizzly bear,

He went to the spring of clear water

And he found the black men there.

More like apes than men were they,

They knew not the use of the bow,

They tore their meat and ate it raw

For fire they did not know.

Then angry waxed bold Am-ra,

Furious grew he then,