his mouth was moving, his sword describing complicated geometries in the air, his whole body beginning to turn in ritual movements, a ghostly dance.
Oona awakened and lay beside me, watching Elric as he cut through the material binding his victim. I recognized the terrified human being. One of the Nazis who had originally come here with Gaynor. He was snarling like a trapped dog, but there was stark horror in his eyes and he could not control his trembling. He tried to strike out at Elric. Ravenbrand licked him. He pulled back his bleeding hand. Ravenbrand licked him again. His face carried a thin line of blood. And again. The ragged shirt covering his chest fell away to reveal another line from neck to navel.
The Nazi was whimpering, trying to find escape, allies, God, anything. The sword tasted him. Savored him. Relished his blood drop by drop. And while he played with the sniveling wretch, Elric crooned a haunting wordless song. The cadences rose and fell. I was astonished that they issued from a mortal throat. All the time they grew in intensity and bit by bit the Nazi died, pieces of his flesh falling away as he watched. The sword continued its delicate, terrible work. Oona craned to see, fascinated. In this she was her father's child. She had the look of a cat. I, however, was forced to turn away more than once. Forced by the sound of that voice, rising and falling, growing stronger and stronger, by the sight of Elric himself, his wild, crimson eyes raised towards the upper darkness, his mouth open in something between a melody and a scream, his white flesh glinting and his great black runesword turning a human being to slivers before his own eyes.
The Nazi was still fully conscious, such was Elric's appalling artistry. The man still wore his black SS boots. He knelt before my doppelganger and tears mingled with the blood from his eyes as Elric's blade teased them out until they hung by a few strands of muscle on his own cheeks.
Most of the time Elric's voice drowned the hideous screaming of the Nazi, his pleadings to spare him or kill him, and I was thankful for that.
Sword and man acted in unison-two intelligences in an unholy pact. I had never felt this of Ravenbrand before. Elric's use of the blade seemed to have awakened an evil in the very iron. Red runes slithered up and down its length, pulsing like veins. The sword seemed to relish the subtle, disgusting wounds which it now inflicted upon the Nazi's bloody flesh. It was without doubt the most loathsome sight I had ever seen.
Again I turned away. Then I heard Oona gasp and I looked back.
Another shape formed itself around the Nazi's tormented body. It twisted in and out, growing like something organic. Gradually, snakelike, it swallowed Elric's victim, then became increasingly agitated, and gouted up out of what remained of the corpse. Gushing towards the cavern's roof. Swirling like a cloud overhead. A cloud in which tiny strands of lightning seemed to flash and writhe, taking on the color of the Nazi's blood as the man squealed like a bled pig, realizing that there were worse fates than the one he had just endured. He finally gave himself up to the cloud.
I heard Elric's voice above all the other sounds. 'Father of Winds. Father of Dust. Father of Air. Father of Thunder. H'Haarshann Oldfather. Oldest of fathers. H'Haarshann Oldfather, father of the first.' I knew the language he spoke, because I knew all such things now, and I knew that he was delivering the wretched mortal up to the one he summoned.
'Oldfather! Oldfather! I bring you what the lord of the h'Haarshann demands. I bring thee the exotic meat thou craveth.'
The cloud grunted. It was satisfied. It uttered a kind of soft whistle. Now the scarlet lightning began to dance and skip again, forming a shape. I thought I saw the wizened face of a vindictive old man, long strands of lank hair hanging to his shrunken shoulders. A toothless mouth smacking lips as the last of the sacrifice was absorbed. Then the mouth grinned.
'You know how to feed an old friend, Prince Elric.' The voice was a sighing breeze, a gale, a fluttering wind.
'As you have fed before, h'Haarshann Oldfather.' My near-twin had sheathed the bloody black blade and now stood with arms outstretched in an attitude of respect. 'As you will feed again, while I live. That is our bargain. Made with my ancestors a million years since.'
'Ahaaaa ...' A deep sigh. 'So few remember. I have a mind to grant you my aid in return for that exquisite moment. What is it that you desire of me?'
'Someone has summoned your sons to this plane. They have misbehaved themselves. They have done great damage.'
'It is in their nature. It is what they must do. They are so young, my ten sons. They are the ten great h'Haarshann that stride the worlds.'
'That is so, Oldfather.' Elric glanced down at the remains of the Nazi. As a hawk takes every part of the bird save the feathers, so Oldfather had taken the mortal, leaving nothing but the blood-soaked remains of his SS uniform. 'They have been brought by my enemies from their place amongst the worlds. To threaten the lives of me and mine.'
Oldfather quivered. 'But without you I cannot know the exquisite taste of flesh. And my Ten Sons have business about the worlds, to breathe my will upon them.' 'That is so, great Oldfather.'
'None is left save you, sweet mortal. None who knows what Oldfather likes to eat.'
At that moment Elric looked up. His eyes met mine. The sardonic mockery in his expression made me turn my head in disgust. I knew that Elric of Melnibone only resembled a man, that his blood was of an older, crueler kind than mine. In my own world such savage and sadistic sacrifice was only performed by the mentally ill. For Elric and his kind, those practices were a way of life, refined to an art and enjoyed as spectacle. In Melnibone praise was given to the victim who died with style and who best entertained his audience with his dying. What Elric had just done caused him no troubled conscience. The actions had been necessary and were natural to him.
Oldfather seemed to be debating the value of the sacrifice.
'Would you feast again, noble Oldfather?' Elric's voice was soft, coaxing. There was no threat in it, but Oldfather was remembering the taste of mortal flesh and was already yearning for more.
'I will see to my sons, ' said the apparition. 'They, too, have eaten well.' The whirling scarlet fire swelled until it resembled circling cloud, sweeping up towards the cavern's faraway roof and then down into the darkness until it had disappeared, leaving the faintest of pink, dissipating light.
I looked towards Gaynor's camp. They had become aware of something. I saw troogs peering in our direction. One of them ran towards the center of the camp where Gaynor had pitched an ostentatious tent, its guy ropes secured by pegs hammered into the living rock.
I guessed the Nazi's death to have been pointless after all. Oldfather had gone. The ten whirling inverted cones of phosphorescent light still guarded the camp. Elric's filthy ritual had done nothing but attract the attention of Gaynor's horde.
A party of troogs lumbered in our direction. They had not seen us, but it would not take them long to find where we were. I looked around for some way of escape. Only Oona had a weapon. My sword was in the hands of my doppelganger. I was not sure I would feel quite the same emotions towards the blade in the future. If I had a future to contemplate.
The troogs were beginning to climb the rocks towards us. They could smell us. I looked around for something to throw. The rocks were the only weapons available to me.
Glancing back, I saw that Elric had sunk to his knees totally exhausted. I wondered if I could get to the sword before the troogs reached us. If I could ever handle that blade again.
Oona nocked an arrow to her bow and took aim.
She looked once or twice over her shoulder, unable to believe that Elric had failed, that Oldfather had taken his offering and left without giving us any of the help he had seemed to promise.
I caught a glimpse of something not far from the grey horizon. A scarlet flash which began to speed towards us, coming faster and faster and making a mighty thrum, as if someone plucked the strings of an enormous guitar whose sound was amplified through all creation.
Elric scrambled up to join us. He was grinning. He panted like a wolf. He had a look of wild lust in his eyes. A look of triumph, of hunger.
He said nothing to us but looked to where the scarlet cloud was approaching. To where the Ten Sons danced at the edges of Gaynor's camp.
Then he lifted his head, raised the black runesword in a victorious gesture and began to sing.
I knew the song. I knew Elric. I had been Elric. I knew what it meant. I knew what it said. But I could not
