A Vision of Hell. Brian Stableford

in his glutinous consciousness. He was not going to die. He was alone.

      He believed that there had to be an answer to the question: why?

      But he did not even know what shape such an answer might possess.

      CHAPTER 2

      The Ahrima had not lingered long once Stalhelm was taken and set afire. There was nothing to stay for. Everything which was truly valuable had been taken by the women who had left for Lehr the moment the Ahrima were sighted and the warning given. Camlak might have been counted lucky even a fourth time, in that the marauders had chosen to move on, but it was not chance which dictated the decision. The Ahrima wanted blood, and a great deal of blood. They had not spilled so much as a mouthful at Walgo, and fully three-fourths of the population of Stalhelm had fled before their advance. They wanted the blood of that three-fourths. They wanted to ride down the women and children who hastened along the road to Lehr. They wanted the plunder of Stalhelm far more than they wanted the rest or the food that was standing in the fields. It was not their way. Once the slaughter of the townspeople was completed...then they could think of rest and the licking of wounds and the filling of bellies. At Lehr, or perhaps Opilion, where they might not be expected so soon....

      In any case, Camlak would not have claimed luck for the decision which would—almost inevitably—lead to the slaughter of his people. If the Ahrima caught the women and children on the road through Dossal Bog, then Stalhelm was obliterated. What the fire could not do, the sword would accomplish. It was the people that were Stalhelm, and once the people were dead...no Stalhelm. The name would remain, but names mean nothing.

      Some of the people would survive. Perhaps some of the warriors had managed to escape the burning village to fight again on the road. In any case, in Dossal Bog there would be ample opportunity to run and to hide. Some of the women, and particularly the children, would escape the Ahrima in the marshland. Some of those would survive the perils of the bog. Some, perhaps, would ultimately return to the blackened ruin that had been their home. But all that counted for very little. Camlak’s Stalhelm could not be recovered by a handful of children. Unless the warriors of Lehr came out to cover the retreat of the women, or something delayed the horde on the road, that Stalhelm would be strewn in a gigantic pool of blood all over the road through Dossal Bog.

      After that...well, the news would reach Lehr, Opilion, and fly like a freak wind through the north and west of Shairn. If the Shaira could then allow their common fears and needs and causes to overcome their petty quarreling and disputes over land, all Shairn might combine to raise an army and meet the Ahrima in a battle that would cut the horde’s strength so hard they would have to run. Even that would only be a beginning. With the heart of Shairn ripped open, its strength expended in a murderous encounter with the Ahrima, the Men Without Souls would move in, raiding the good lands, stealing Shairan land and taking Shairan slaves. After the war of extinction, the war of conquest.... And then....

      Harrowhounds would come. The vermin from the dark lands would spill over into the lighted lands of the Children of the Voice. Time and time and time would pass before Shairn became Shairn again. And if the Ahrima were not defeated, if no army was joined and the horde was not cut to such dimensions that the towns were safe...then Shairn might follow Stalhelm, and by the time the country lived again it would be something different. Something new.

      When Camlak finally came to his feet again he discovered that he was angry with Ermold. He was angry because of Ermold’s hate—the blind, unreasoning hate which had made him take the mask and join in the attack on Stalhelm. Camlak saw no reason for that hate, and because there was no reason he was angry. He considered Ermold’s taking of the mask a betrayal. Not a betrayal of the Shaira, to whom he owed no loyalty, but a betrayal of reason and of human nature. Walgo should have stood and fought. That was the way. Perhaps there was no difference between the Men Without Souls and the Ahrima but masks, but the masks meant something. They were real. The Men Without Souls had no reason to be something that they were not. They should have fought. Perhaps...perhaps they should have fought with Stalhelm, against the Ahrima. Was that against nature, too? Camlak thought not. Not against his nature. Ermold’s nature, on the other hand....

      Camlak dismissed the argument from his maddened mind.

      He could not think. The anger remained. He could still feel—perhaps too much.

      Camlak’s house was burning. The bricks were crumbling as the wooden framework and the roof were eaten away. When the fire died there would be nothing left but ash and rubble. In time, dust. Only dust. The smoke was foul, but Camlak managed to suck enough oxygen into his lungs to keep himself conscious and active. Foul air meant little enough to him, or to any child of the Underworld.

      Some of the other houses still stood, untouched. Something to come back to, if anyone could come back. Or somewhere for Hellkin to find refuge, somewhere for the Truemen who came from beyond Cudal Canal to establish themselves. Ultimately, the houses would decay, or form the focus for a new community. Either way, the real Stalhelm would be buried, haunted by the living and the dead alike. Nowhere and nowhen. Gone.

      Camlak wandered around the dried-up streets, searching out the bodies of the fallen, putting names to the faces and the faceless. He had the vague idea that others might be alive. But there was no one. It pained him to count how few of the bodies were Ahriman. He plucked masks off a few of the fallen, and shattered them by beating them against the cornerstones of houses which remained intact. He did not know why. He might have been searching for Ermold, though there was no real reason. In any case, he could not tell the Men Without Souls from the true Ahrima until he removed the masks. Though there were too few to give his counting satisfaction, there were too many to sort into real and unreal, looking for one filthy face, for no good reason.

      He felt guilty because he—the Old Man—should have been the only one singled out to survive (except, perhaps, for those who had run). He was the custodian of the staff. While the Ahrima were crossing the borders of Shairn, he had been taking power from the Star King Yami. Against the odds, against all the accusations, against the feeling of the people, he had established himself. He had fought the harrowhound to earn the right. And now he was Old Man of nothing, but still Old Man. What he felt was a strange kind of loneliness. He felt responsible for what had happened. He wanted to take the burden of guilt for the disaster on to himself. He was the Old Man, and he had earned it. He had earned it the hardest way of all. He felt that he had the right to feel betrayed by the chance which would not let him lie dead with the people—his people. They had never learned to trust him. They had never had the chance.

      Eventually, he tired of looking at the dead, and he went into one of the untouched houses to change his clothes. The Ahrima had smashed up what they could, but their assault had been cursory—there was no real reward, material or emotional, in destroying inert objects—and he had no difficulty in finding what he needed, and then in preparing himself a meal. What the Ahrima had left was sufficient—in fact, the stripping of the village was more the work of the women than the invaders. The women had taken all that they could carry. Too much. Too much in the way of baubles and cloth. Along with the working tools and the books, the irresistible trivia would make too heavy a burden. The fleeing women might find themselves betrayed by their fondnesses. The road to Lehr would be strewn with things which, after all, had to be thrown away. Would the greed and the delight in possession deliver them into the hands of the Ahrima? Would sound common sense or sheer blind panic have delivered them? There was no way of knowing.

      Even when he was rested and fed, clothed and armed, he still hesitated. He went back to wandering amid the dead, finding it impossible to believe that there was no life at all in Stalhelm. But by now there was. The starlings and the crabs were invading in force. Camlak began to kill, shattering the crabs with a stone axe. Against the starlings, he could do nothing. Eventually, he threw away the axe, because there were too many crabs. No matter how many he killed, it would make no difference. They would keep coming until the village could hold no more. No matter how many crabs were killed the Underworld was always as full of them as it could be. It made no sense. Killing them only made him feel worse.

      In the end, he had to leave Stalhelm to the scavengers. It was theirs now, and if he stayed he would be one of them. The only question in his mind was the matter of which way to go.