A Vision of Hell. Brian Stableford

the furthest distance—or he thought he could. Perhaps it was just a suggestion of shadows—an imaginary goal to draw travelers on ever faster, until they dropped from weariness with the vision no nearer.

      The women fleeing from Shairn had gone a good way down the road. They were nearly a mile away from where he stood.

      The Ahrima had come down on their backs. The bundles they had carried were scattered in a ragged line for a quarter mile behind the place where they had been caught. The crowd had scattered both ways into the bog. Only a handful had died on the road. Camlak knew that the women and the children would have run into a radioactive waste, into a living fire, rather than stand and wait for the Ahrima. And the marauders would have followed them to cut them down. And come back again to join the horde.

      Camlak wished the bog was one vast quicksand, to have sucked the Ahrima down after their prey. But it was not. It was only a bog. The corpses were sprawled across the dark tussocks, half-swallowed by the mud, floating on the pools of stagnant water. The Ahrima had caught their prey, had enjoyed their massacre, and had gone on. Perhaps two or three Ahriman warriors had been trapped in the bog, or knifed by the women, but only two or three. No more. How many of the Children of the Voice had escaped? How many infants had found a hiding place? More than two or three, no doubt. Twelve. Or twenty. But how many of those would survive, in the long run? The same two or three. Maybe none. Wherever they went—forward, or back, or just on the road, there would be enemies enough for all of them.

      Camlak could read the whole story written in the dim scene which extended before his eyes, illumined by starlight. It was no more and no less than he had expected. He had not expected the men of Lehr to come out and try to cover the retreat. But he had had to go on to the end of the story in any case.

      As he stared out from his vantage, he felt very little emotion inside himself. He did not curse, and he certainly did not cry. He merely looked, and let the looking soak into his being. He let the sight imprint itself on his memory, becoming a part of him. That was enough. There was no need for fury or mourning. The time for those was past, left behind in Stalhelm, even before the battle and the burning.

      He would follow Nita, now. And when he found her....

      He knew no more. The alternatives which he would find then would have to be discovered. They were not ready in his mind. No such alternatives had ever been shown to him, except in his dreams. In his dreams, they were phantoms. He did not know what it took to clothe such phantoms with reality. He would live, but he did not know how, or why. Those answers were lost, lying amid the dead like the trampled, shattered bundles the women had carried out of Stalhelm in the vain attempt to wrap up their lives and steal them away from the Ahrima.

      He could see the Ahrima. He could see their fires, at least. Whether the fires were at the walls of Lehr, or still some miles away, he could not tell. Perhaps it was Lehr, or the fields of Lehr, that was burning. The light was red and blurred, a smudge in the pit of darkness which closed off the world at the limits of his visual range.

      He could imagine the Ahrima as shadows within the ruddy glow, shadow-monsters with their heads encapsulated by grotesquely huge horned masks. Men taking the form of beasts, accepting the role of the beasts, prideful of their bestiality. Black shadows in the light, clothed in smoke. The masks would shine, in the flamelight. The eyes would sparkle through the eyeholes.

      The Truemen, thought Camlak, would have it that the Children of the Voice are animals. They claim that we pretend to manhood, that our selves are false. But the Truemen are masked now, their eyes glittering like the eyes of the Ahrima, fugitive within the masks, hiding from the fire and the blood. A worthless attempt to save their worthless lives. Who are the fake people?

      Inside himself, Camlak asked the question of his Gray Soul. He did not expect an answer.

      As he turned away, content not to know the fate of Lehr and, ultimately, of Shairn—at least for the time being—he sensed a movement on the slope above him. Someone was stalking him as he had stalked the road. They had not been behind him long, but they were there now.

      Ahrima!

      He carried a bow and a long knife—he had left behind the axes and the Ahriman swords, which were too big for him. He put the bow across his back and drew the knife. He moved toward the sound, extending the blade before him. A shape rose from the barbweed, coming out from the hiding of a shallow recess. Empty hands spread wide.

      “No,” said the shadow. “Friend, not enemy.”

      Camlak did not need the sight and the sound to know. The way the shape had risen had testified to its crookedness. It was Chemec, the warrior with the bent leg. Of all the warriors, Chemec had lived. Chemec and Camlak. Why?

      Chemec knew. Chemec knew his bent leg, and knew that it had taught him all he needed to know about the art of survival. He had had to learn new ways to run, new ways to fight. It had to be Chemec that lived. No one else, save by luck.

      Camlak sheathed his knife.

      “It would be you,” he said. “It had to be.” There was naked bitterness in his voice.

      “And you?” Chemec retaliated. “I could say the same. We are both alive instead of dead.”

      It was true enough. Chemec flinched as he spoke, ready to run if Camlak remembered any one of a dozen times that Chemec had cast doubts on his manhood. Chemec had been a warrior when Camlak was yet a child. But Camlak did not remember now, and he did not react to Chemec’s words. It was all over.

      After a brief silence, when Camlak would not look at Chemec, and Chemec would not look at Camlak, the crippled warrior asked: “What now?”

      It was a plea for guidance—a warrior asking the decision of the Old Man, whose function was to decide. Chemec had been a warrior while Camlak was a child, but Camlak had killed the harrowhound and played the Sun in the communion of souls. Even so, Camlak was faintly surprised. He could not help but feel that perhaps Chemec was mocking him.

      “Stalhelm is dead,” said Camlak. “Do what you like. Anything.”

      Chemec shook his head. “I’ll come with you,” he said.

      “No,” said Camlak.

      Chemec did not understand. This would not have been Yami’s way. Yami would have welcomed him. It would have been Yami and Chemec, together.

      “We might go east,” said Chemec. “The Ahrima will turn south.”

      “North,” said Camlak.

      “We go north?” Chemec deliberately misunderstood.

      “The Ahrima,” said Camlak. “They will go north, into the heartland, to rip the bowels out of Shairn.”

      “We go north,” suggested Chemec. “To fight.”

      “No,” said Camlak again. “You go.”

      Chemec was silent.

      “It’s dead,” said Camlak. “It’s finished. Stalhelm is over. A memory, nothing more.”

      Chemec still said nothing. He could not accept it. It was beyond him. He was getting old.

      Camlak looked at the man with the twisted leg, and remembered that this had been his enemy. This man might even hate him, and hate him still. But he was ruled by the way, by the rule of the ritual.

      “I don’t want you,” he said.

      Chemec waited. He could do nothing but wait.

      When Camlak turned away, Chemec followed him. When Camlak half-turned, Chemec dropped back, but still followed.

      Camlak went north, but not to the heartland—not to fight. The heartland was well to the west of north, bordered by the vast Swithering Waste. It was into the Waste that Camlak went, heading for the great metal wall.

      Chemec followed, with infinite patience.

      CHAPTER 9

      As Burstone turned to lock the door behind him they slipped out of