Nine Princes In Amber

“Very well.” he said. “Have your men lay down their arms and board my vessel when I come alongside.”

I sheathed my blade and nodded about me.

“You have fought the good fight. and I love you for it,” I said. “But we have lost in this place.” I dried my hands on my cloak as I spoke and wiped them carefully, as I'd hate to smudge a work of art. “Lay down your arms and know that your exploits of this day will never be forgotten. One day I will praise you before the court of Amber.”

The men, the nine big red ones and the three remaining hairy ones, wept as they put down their arms.

“Do not fear that all is lost in the struggle for the city,” I said. “We have lost only one engagement and the battle still continues elsewhere. My brother Bleys hacks his way toward Amber at this moment. Caine will keep his word to spare your lives when he sees that I have gone to join with Bleys upon the land, for he would not have knowledge that he was forsworn come into Amber. I am sorry that I cannot take you with me.”

And with this, I drew Bleys' Trump from the pack and held it low and before me, out of sight of the other vessel.

Just as Caine came alongside, there was movement beneath that cold, cold surface.

“Who?” Bleys asked.

“Corwin,” I said. “How fare you?”

“We won the battle, but lost many troops. We're resting now before we renew the march. How go things with you?”

“I think we've destroyed nearly half of Caine's fleet, but he's won the day. He's about to board me now. Give me escape.”

He held forth his hand and I touched it and collapsed into his arms.

“This is getting to be a habit,” I muttered, and then I saw that he was wounded too, about the head, and there was a bandage around his left hand. “Had to grab the wrong end of a saber,” he remarked, as he saw my eyes fall upon it. “It smarts.”

I caught my breath and then we walked to his tent, where he opened a bottle of wine and gave me bread, cheese, and some dried meat. He still had plenty of cigarettes and I smoked one as a medical officer dressed my wounds.

He still had around a hundred and eighty thousand men behind him. As I stood on a hilltop and the evening began around me, it seemed as if I looked out over every camp I had ever stood within, stretching on and on over the miles and the centuries without end. I suddenly felt tears come into my eyes, for the men who are not like the lords of Amber, living but a brief span and passing into dust, that so many of them must meet their ends upon the battlefields of the world.

I returned to Bleys' tent and we finished the bottle of wine.

Chapter 7

That night there was a bad storm. It hadn't let up when dawn struggled to cross the world's palm with silver, and it continued on through the day's march.

It is a very demoralizing thing to tramp along and be rained on, a cold rain at that. How I've always hated the mud, through which it seems I've spent centuries marching!

We sought after a shadow way that was free of rain, but nothing we did seemed to matter.

We could march to Amber, but we would do it with our clothing sticking to us, to the drumbeat of the thunder, with the flashing of the lightning at our backs.

The next night the temperature plummeted, and in the morning I stared past the stiff flags and regarded a world gone white beneath a gray sky, filled with flurries. My breath went back in plumes behind me.

The troops were ill-equipped for this, save for the hairy ones, and we got them all moving quckly, to prevent frostbite. The big red guys suffered. Theirs had been a very warm world.

We were attacked by tiger. polar bear. and wolf that day. The tiger Bleys killed measured ever fourteen feet from tail tip to nose.

We marched on well into the night, and the thaw began. Bleys pushed the troops to get them out of the cold Shadows. The Trump for Amber indicated that a warm, dry autumn prevailed there, and we were nearing the real Earth.

By midnight on that second night we'd marched through slush and sleet, cold rains, warm rains, and on into a dry world.

The orders were given to make camp then, with triple security cordons. Considering the tired condition of the men we were ripe for an attack. But the troops were staggering and couldn't be pushed much further.

The attack came severat hours later, and Julian led it, I learned later from the description given by survivors.

He headed commando raids against our most vulnerable campsites on the periphery of the main body. Had I known it to be Julian, I would have used his Trump to try to hold him, but I only knew it after the fact.

We'd lost perhaps two thousand men in the abrupt winter, and I didn't yet know how many Julian had accounted for.

It seemed the troops were beginning to get demoralized, but they followed when we ordered them ahead.