The Kar-Chee Reign (20 page)

Cerry had known from almost the beginning that Liam was one of those about whom songs were to be sung and stories told, and this and her love was why she had followed him. She knew that song and story is never bound by the mere details of the events which give them birth, but that song and story are creators of values in themselves and of their own and are not to be hobbled or mutilated by mere alignments of mere facts.

Lors and Duro confirmed, and, after them, Tom (who was no longer known as Tom-small), how Liam had led them unfalteringly to spy out the Devils and learn the secrets of the caves and cavers, their Hells and hollows and their secret fires and weapons, how they had baited men and hunted men to bait them; their own narrow escapes time after time after time, their own unfaltering bravery and how it had derived its strength from Liam’s.

Fateem testified how Liam had raised up among the Knowers a group which rejected the doctrine of non-resistance and she told of how Rickar, though grievously wounded by the Kar-chee, had been carried away to freedom by Liam and his men and how later Rickar had risen from his sickbed and followed after to assist them in their final work of destruction and salvation, only to die a martyr’s death in doing so.

Mother Nor spoke briefly of Liam’s having opened her own eyes to the duplicity of the Devils and how she was thereby enabled to persuade many of the Knowers to find refuge and salvation on the land instead of death and destruction on the sea; then she spoke of the need to follow the principles of justice and equity … but she did not speak of this for long, for she was old and tired and the death of her son had much diminished her.

And then again Liam spoke. He spoke sitting in a chair which had been specially made for him and carved out of scented woods and cushioned with soft, washed fleeces and precious guanaco skins, with a carefully fitted-up support for his injured leg, shattered in the earthquakes.

“No one has seen any living Kar-chee since then,” he said, among other things, looking around in grim triumph. His wives, Cerry and Fateem (for in those early days he had only those two and he accorded them equal status) sat beside his chair. “It seems to be certain that those who were not drowned were eaten by the sharks and the other monsters of the sea; people have testified to seeing this happen, and there is also the dead shark found to have parts of Kar-chee inside of him. I have shown how to destroy the Kar-chee here and I will show how we destroy them everywhere else as well!”

All shouted at this and Liam’s eyes glittered and his fingers strayed up to the scar on his head where he had received his second sacred injury (nor did this one ever heal entirely, either: thus did Liam suffer on behalf of all those whom he had saved).

“It is true that the dragons still remain,” he admitted; “but you see how humble they have become. They avoid us. But this will avail them nothing, for I will show you by and by how we may hunt them and bait them and kill them as they once hunted and baited and killed
us!”
And all shouted even louder at this and bared their teeth.

It was at this great council, then, that the basic great plans were laid down. With the aid of the Kar-chee map of land and sea which Liam alone knew how to read and to follow (and hence had no need to show to others, he explained) and with the aid of those who had been Knowers and who knew the arts of navigation over long distances, Liam and those brave enough to fare at sea with him were to make contact with every other land inhabited by men. And so it was done, land by land, year by year. In some places Liam and his gentlemen (as they came to be known) were properly welcomed and alliances against the Kar-chee and the dragons were formed. There were not many Kar-chee found elsewhere, for most of them had been destroyed in the great destruction, and over those remaining victory was always obtained … sooner or later.

Sometimes, unfortunately, the men of other lands did not always properly welcome the gentlemen and it was essential to overcome their hostility, and to divide their lands and their women among those who had come only in friendship and unity against the natural (or unnatural) enemies of the whole race of mankind. But these battless and diversions did not long prevent mankind from wiping out its alien enemies, nest by nest and camp by camp; tracking them down and spying them out and destroying them with their own weapons. Eventually, of course, there were no more of the blue fire-heads. But by that time the Kar-chee who lived afar off in the cold night in their lairs around the Ring Stars had coldly decided to cease sending replacements: there were other mineable planets with more tractable native life-forms, and thenceforce there and there only the Kar-chee concentrated their attentions. Only working Kar-chee had ever been sent to Earth, only neuters, incapable of reproducing themselves; and this decision of their own home worlds was thus the final death sentence.

The dragons, on the other hand, multiplied, and their eggs and chicks and cockerels were known in every woodland … but they seemed more and more subject to the control of man as their former masters died off. Liam delighted to watch the dragon hunts as he grew older and less active, and many of them were held specially in his honor.

Mother Nor still maintained her few followers and continued to preach her moralistic ideals, but without the rigidity and discipline it had been subjected to under the regime of old Father Gaspar the sect of the Knowers continued to diminish. Further, it was unable to compete with the attractions of the vigorous and continually exciting adventure of life as led by Liam’s gentlemen. But he himself would never allow the old woman to be mocked or abused and it was by his generous consent that she and her handful of impractical followers were allowed to settle in a land all to themselves. There were those who suspected that it was there that Fateem went secretly after her disappearance in later years, but no one ever knew for sure; Liam neither spoke nor allowed it to be spoken of.

Thus humanity renewed its strength and developed its newest ways of life upon its oldest world, forgotten by its distant children for many centuries yet to come. And as for what happened after the other worlds remembered, this is not the place to recount that; and as for the later and the last years of Liam, how he bore all before him, his slaying of the Great Kar-chee who held the daughter of the Chief of Bran a captive in his hidden cave and how Liam took her, too, to wife, and of all his deeds and triumphs and those of Lors and Duro and Tom, these are to be found wherever songs are sung among men and wherever tales are told among women.