The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison (english readers txt) 📕

Brandoch Daha, who, missing his footing on the narrow edge of rock,

fell backwards a great fall, clear of the cliff, down to the snow an

hundred feet beneath them.

As it craned over, minded to follow and make an end of him, Juss smote

it in the hinder parts and on the ham, shearing away the flesh from

the thigh bone, and his sword came with a clank against the brazen

claws of its foot. So with a horrid bellow it turned on Juss, rearing

like a horse; and it was three heads greater than a tall man in

stature when it reared aloft, and the breadth of its chest like the

chest of a bear. The stench of its breath choked Juss’s mouth and his

senses sickened, but he slashed it athwart the belly, a great round-armed blow, cutting open its belly so that the guts fell out. Again he

hewed at it, but missed, and his sword came against the rock, and was

shivered into pieces. So when that noisome vermin fell forward on him

roaring like a thousand lions, Juss grappled with it, running in

beneath its body and clasping it and thrusting his arms into its

inward parts, to rip out its vitals if so he might. So close he

grappled it that it might not reach him with its murthering teeth, but

its claws sliced off the flesh from his left knee downward to the

ankle bone, and it fell on him and crushed him on the rock, breaking

in the bones of his breast. And Juss, for all his bitter pain and

torment, and for all he was well nigh stifled by the sore stink of the

creature’s breath and the stink of its blood and puddings blubbering

about his face and breast, yet by his great strength wrastled with

that fell and filthy man-eater. And ever he thrust his right hand,

armed with the hilt and stump of his broken sword, yet deeper into its

belly until he searched out its heart and did his will upon it,

slicing the heart asunder like a lemon and severing and tearing all

the great vessels about the heart until the blood gushed about him

like a spring. And like a caterpillar the beast curled up and

straightened out in its death spasms, and it rolled and fell from that

ledge, a great fall, and lay by Brandoch Daha, the foulest beside the

fairest of all earthly beings, reddening the pure snow with its blood.

And the spines that grew on the hinder parts of the beast went out and

in like the sting of a new-dead wasp that goes out and in continually.

It fell not clean to the snow, as by the care of heaven was fallen

Brandoch Daha, but smote an edge of rock near the bottom, and that

strook out its brains. There it lay in its blood, gaping to the sky.

Now was Juss stretched face downward as one dead, on that giddy edge

of rock. Mivarsh had saved him, seizing him by the foot and drawing

him back to safety when the beast fell. A sight of terror he was,

clotted from head to toe with the beast’s blood and his own. Mivarsh

bound his wounds and laid him tenderly as he might back against the

cliff, then peered down a long while to know if the beast were dead

indeed.

When he had gazed downward earnestly so long that his eyes watered

with the strain, and still the beast stirred not, Mivarsh prostrated

himself and made supplication saying aloud, “O Shlimphli, Shiamphi,

and Shebamri, gods of my father and my father’s fathers, have pity of

your child, if as I dearly trow your power extendeth over this far and

forbidden country no less than over Impland, where your child hath

ever worshipped you in your holy places, and taught my sons and my

daughters to revere your holy names, and made an altar in mine house,

pointed by the stars in manner ordained from of old, and offered up my

seventh-born son and was minded to offer up my seventh-born daughter

thereon, in meekness and righteousness according to your holy will;

but this I might not do, since you vouchsafed me not a seventh

daughter, but six only. Wherefore I beseech you, of your holy names’

sake, strengthen my hand to let down this my companion safely by the

rope, and thereafter bring me safely down from this rock, howsoever he

be a devil and an unbeliever; O save his life, save both their lives.

For I am sure that if these be not saved alive, never shall your child

return, but in this far land starve and die like an insect that dureth

but for a day.”

So prayed Mivarsh. And belike the high Gods were moved to pity of his

innocence, hearing him so cry for help unto his mumbo-jumbos, where no

help was; and belike they were not minded that those lords of

Demonland should there die evilly before their time, unhonoured,

unsung. Howsoever, Mivarsh arose and made fast the rope about Lord

Juss, knotting it cunningly beneath the arms that it might not tighten

in the lowering and crush his breast and ribs, and so with much ado

lowered him down to the foot of the cliff. Thereafter came Mivarsh

himself down that perilous wall, and albeit for many a time he thought

his bane was upon him, yet by good cragsmanship spurred by cold

necessity he gat him down at last. Being down, he delayed not to

minister to his companions, who came to themselves with heavy

groaning. But when Lord Juss was come to himself he did his healing

art both on himself and on Lord Brandoch Daha, so that in a while they

were able to stand upon their feet, albeit something stiff and weary

and like to vomit. And it was by then the third hour past noon.

While they rested, beholding where the beast mantichora lay in his

blood, Juss spake and said, “It is to be said of thee, O Brandoch

Daha, that thou to-day hast done both the worst and the best. The

worst, when thou wast so stubborn set to fare upon this climb which

hath come within a little of spilling both thee and me. The best,

whenas thou didst smite off his tail. Was that by policy or by

chance?”

“Why,” said he, “I was never so poor a man of my hands that I need

turn braggart. ‘Twas handiest to my sword, and it disliked me to see

it wagging. Did aught lie on it?”

“The sting of his tail,” answered Juss, “were competent for thine or

my destruction, and it grazed but our little finger.”

“Thou speakest like a book,” said Brandoch Daha. “Else might I scarce

know thee for my noble friend, being betrayed with blood as a buffalo

with mire. Be not angry with me, if I am most at ease to windward of

thee.”

Juss laughed. “If thou be not too nice,” he said, “go to the beast and

dabble thyself too with the blood of his bowels. Nay, I mock not; it

is most needful. These be enemies not of mankind only, but each of

other; walking every one by himself, loathing every one his kind

living or dead, so that in all the world there abideth nought

loathlier unto them than the blood of their own kind, the least smell

whereof they do abhor as a mad dog abhorreth water. And ‘tis a

clinging smell. So are we after this encounter most sure against

them.”

That night they camped at the foot of a spur of Avsek, and set forth

at dawn down the long valley eastward. All day they heard the roaring

of mantichores from the desolate flanks of Ela Mantissera that showed

now no longer as a pyramid but as a long-backed screen, making the

southern rampart of that valley. It was ill going, and they somewhat

shaken. Day was nigh gone when beyond the eastern slopes of Ela they

came where the white waters of the river they followed thundered

together with a black water rushing down from the southwest. Below,

the river ran east in a wide valley dropping afar to treeclad depths.

In the fork above the watersmeet the rocks enclosed a high green

knoll, like some fragment of a kindlier clime that overlived into an

age of ruin.

“Here, too,” said Juss, “my dream walked with me. And if it be ill

crossing there where this stream breaketh into a dozen branching

cataracts a little above the watersmeet, yet well I think ‘tis our

only crossing.” So, ere the light should fade, they crossed that

perilous edge above the waterfalls, and slept on the green knoll.

That knoll Juss named Throstlegarth, after a thrush that waked them

next morning, singing in a little windstunted mountain thorn that grew

among the rocks. Strangely sounded that homely song on the cold

mountain side, under the unhallowed heights of Ela, close to the

confines of those enchanted snows which guard Koshtra Belorn.

No sight of the high mountains had they from Throstlegarth, nor, for a

long while, from the bed of that straight steep glen of the black

waters up which now their journey lay. Rugged spurs and buttresses

shut them in. High on the left bank above the cataracts they made

their way, buffeted by the wind that leaped and charged among the

crags, their ears sated with the roaring sound of waters, their eyes

filled with the spray blown upward. And Mivarsh followed after them.

Silent they fared, for the way was steep and in such a wind and such a

noise of torrents a man must shout lustily if he would be heard. Very

desolate was that valley, having a dark aspect and a ghastful, such as

a man might look for in the infernal glens of Pyriphlegethon or

Acheron. No living thing they saw, save at whiles high above them an

eagle sailing down the wind, and once a beast’s form running in the

hollow mountain side. This stood at gaze, lifting up its foul human

platter-face with glittering eyes bloody and great as saucers; scented

its fellow’s blood, started, and fled among the crags.

So fared they for the space of three hours, and so, coming suddenly

round a shoulder of the hill, stood on the upper threshold of that

glen at the gates of a flat upland valley. Here they beheld a sight to

darken all earth’s glories and strike dumb all her singers with its

grandeur. Framed in the crags of the hillsides, canopied by blue

heaven, Koshtra Pivrarcha stood before them. So huge he was that even

here at six miles’ distance the eye might not at a glance behold him,

but must sweep back and forth as over a broad landscape from the

ponderous roots of the mountain where they sprang black and sheer from

the glacier, up the vast face, where buttress was piled upon buttress

and tower upon tower in a blinding radiance of ice-hung precipice and

snow-filled gully, to the lone heights where like spears menacing high

heaven the white teeth of the summit-ridge cleft the sky. From right

to left he filled nigh a quarter of the heavens, from the graceful

peak of Ailinon looking over his western shoulder, to where on the

east the snowy slopes of Jalchi shut in the prospect, hiding Koshtra

Belorn.

They camped that evening on the left moraine of the High Glacier of

Temarm. Long spidery streamers of cloud, filmy as the gauze of a

lady’s veil, blew eastward from the spires on the ridge, signs of wild

weather aloft.

Juss said, “Glassy clear is the air. That forerunneth not