The bonfire (what was left of it) was straight in front. He was in fact fighting in the very doorway of the stable, for it had been opened and two Calormenes were holding the door, ready to slam it shut the moment he was inside. He remembered everything now, and he realized that the enemy had been edging him to the stable on purpose ever since the fight began. And while he was thinking this he was still fighting the Tarkaan as hard as he could.
"Keep it up, boys!" came Griffles voice. "All together. Carefully. We dont want Darkies any more than we want Monkeys - or Lions - or Kings. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”
"Oh Susan!" said Jill. "Shes interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up.”
"It is indeed a grim door," said Tirian. "It is more like a mouth.”
For a moment or two Tirian did not know where he was or even who he was. Then he steadied himself, blinked, and looked around. It was not dark inside the stable, as he had expected. He was in strong light: that was why he was blinking.
The Calormene soldiers outside screamed. "Tash, Tash!" and banged the door. If Tash wanted their own Captain, Tash must have him. They, at any rate, did not want to meet Tash.
And the High King raised him and kissed him on both cheeks as a High King should.
A terrible figure was coming towards them. It was far smaller than the shape they had seen from the Tower, though still much bigger than a man, and it was the same. It had a vultures head and four arms. Its beak was open and its eyes blazed. A croaking voice came from its beak.
What made it hopeless, even apart from the numbers of the enemy, was the spears. The Calormenes who had been with the Ape almost from the beginning had had no spears: that was because they had come into Narnia by ones and twos, pretending to be peaceful merchants, and of course they had carried no spears for a spear is not a thing you can hide. The new ones must have come in later, after the Ape was already strong and they could march openly. The spears made all the difference. With a long spear you can kill a boar before you are in reach of his tusks and a unicorn before you are in reach of his horn; if you are very quick and keep your head. And now the levelled spears were closing in on Tirian and his last friends.Next minute they were all fighting for their lives.
Tirian and the Unicorn rushed out to rescue him. But the Calormene was now far nearer to the door then they. Before they had covered half the distance he had flung Eustace in and shut the door on him. Half a dozen more Calormenes had run up behind him. They formed a line on the open space before the stable. There was no getting at it now.
The worst of it was that he couldnt keep to the position in which he had started, under the white rock. A man who is fighting a dozen enemies at once must take his chances wherever he can; must dart in wherever he sees an enemys breast or neck unguarded. In a very few strokes this may get you quite a distance from the spot where you began. Tirian soon found that he was getting further and further to the right, nearer to the stable. He had a vague idea in his mind that there was some good reason for keeping away from it. But he couldnt now remember what the reason was. And anyway, he couldnt help it.
Even then Jill remembered to keep her face turned aside, well away from her bow. "Even if I cant stop blubbing, I wont get my string wet," she said.
Whatever else you may say about Dwarfs, no one can say they arent brave. They could easily have got away to some safe place. They preferred to stay and kill as many of both sides as they could, except when both sides were kind enough to save them trouble by killing one another. They wanted Narnia for their own.
Tirian and his friends, still panting from their fight and thankful for a few minutes rest, stood and looked on while the Tarkaan led his men against the Dwarfs. It was a strange scene by now. The fire had sunk lower: the light it gave was now less and of a darker red.
Whatever that fight may have been like, it did not last long. The noise of it died away.
All at once everything came quite clear. He found he wasfighting the Tarkaan himself.
"Nay, fair friend," said Jewel, nosing her gently. "It may be for us the door to Aslans country and we shall sup at his table tonight.”
"Sir," said Tirian, when he had greeted all these. "If I have read the chronicle aright, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?”
When you are using every muscle to the full - ducking under a spear-point here, leaping over it there, lunging forward, drawing back, wheeling round - you havent much time to feel either frightened or sad. Tirian knew he could do nothing for the others now; they were all doomed together. He vaguely saw the Boar go down on one side of him, and Jewel fighting furiously on the other. Out of the corner of one eye he saw, but only just saw, a big Calormene pulling Jill away somewhere by her hair. But he hardly thought about any of these things. His only thought now was to sell his life as dearly as he could.
And then he understood.
"Ware arrows," said Poggin suddenly.
But the Tarkaan neither lifted his face from the ground nor said a word. He was shaking like a man with a bad hiccup. He was brave enough in battle: but half his courage had left him earlier that night when he first began to suspect that there might be a real Tash. The rest of it had left him now.
The little party by the white rock watched these doings and whispered to one another.
"Get on, warriors," said the Tarkaan. "Kill the beasts, but take the two- legged ones alive.”
"Well, dont lets talk about that now," said Peter. "Look! Here are lovely fruit-trees. Let us taste them.”
With a sudden jerk -like a hen stooping to pick up a worm - Tash pounced on the miserable Rishda and tucked him under the upper of his two right arms. Then Tash turned his head sidewise to fix Tirian with one of his terrible eyes: for of course, having a birds head, he couldnt look at you straight.
Tirian suddenly felt awkward about coming among these people with the blood and dust and sweat of a battle still on him. Next moment he realized that he was not in that state at all. He was fresh and cool and clean, and dressed in such clothes as he would have worn for a great feast at Cair Paravel. (But in Narnia your good clothes were never your uncomfortable ones. They knew how to make things that felt beautiful as well as looking beautiful in Narnia: and there was no such thing as starch or flannel or elastic to be found from one end of the country to the other.)
Seven Kings and Queens stood before him, all with crowns on their heads and all in glittering clothes, but the Kings wore fine mail as well and had their swords drawn in their hands. Tirian bowed courteously and was about to speak when the youngest of the Queens laughed. He stared hard at her face, and then gasped with amazement, for he knew her. It was Jill: but not Jill as he had last seen her, with her face all dirt and tears and an old drill dress half slipping off one shoulder. Now she looked cool and fresh, as fresh as if she had just come from bathing. And at first he thought she looked older, but then didnt, and he could never make up his mind on that point. And then he saw that the youngest of the Kings was Eustace: but he also was changed as Jill was changed.
Everyone ducked and pulled his helmet well over his nose. The Dogs crouched behind. But though a few arrows came their way it soon became clear that they were not being shot at. Griffle and his Dwarfs were at their archery again. This time they were coolly shooting at the Calormenes.
Tirian had no need to ask which was the High King, for he remembered his face (though here it was far nobler) from his dream. He stepped forward, sank on one knee and kissed Peters hand.
And then, for the first time, Tirian looked about him and realized how very queer this adventure was.
"Sire," said Jill coming forward and making a beautiful curtsey, "let me make you known to Peter the High King over all Kings in Narnia.”
"I feel in my bones," said Poggin, "that we shall all, one by one, pass through that dark door before morning. I can think of a hundred deaths I would rather have died.”
The hideous creature vanished, with the Tarkaan still under its arm. And Tirian turned to see who had spoken.
"Hearken," he said. "If the Boar and the Dogs and the Unicorn will come over to me and put themselves in my mercy, their lives shall be spared. The Boar shall go to a cage in The Tisrocs garden, the Dogs to The Tisrocs kennels, and the Unicorn, when I have sawn his horn off, shall draw a cart. But the Eagle, the children, and he who was the King shall be offered to Tash this night.”
There was a deafening noise. As when the Ape had been flung in, the earth shook and there was a blinding light.
A new idea came into Tirians head. He dropped his sword, darted forward, in under the sweep of the Tarkaans scimitar, seized his enemy by the belt with both hands, and jumped back into the stable, shouting: "Come in and meet Tash yourself!”
Then Jill saw the Tarkaan coming back to the stable: eleven men followed him, dragging eleven bound Dwarfs. (Whether the others had all been killed, or whether some of them had got away, was never known.)
He turned to look at Rishda Tarkaan, but Rishda was not looking at him. Rishda gave a great wail and pointed; then he put his hands before his face and fell flat, face downwards, on the ground. Tirian looked in the direction where the Tarkaan had pointed.
"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia.”
What perhaps they had not taken into account was that the Calormenes were mail-clad and the Horses had had no protection. Also the Calormenes had a leader. Rishda Tarkaans voice cried out: "Thirty of you keep watch on those fools by the white rock. The rest, after me, that we may teach these sons of earth a lesson.”
Rishda Tarkaan turned his back on the stable and walked slowly to a place in front of the white rock.
THROUGH THE STABLE DOOR JILL ought to have been back at the white rock already but she had quite forgotten that part of her orders in the excitement of watching the fight. Now she remembered. She turned at once and ran to it, and arrived there barely a second before the others. It thus happened that all of them, for a moment, had their backs to the enemy. They all wheeled round the moment they had reached it. A terrible sight met their eyes.
And all the Calormenes banged the flats of their swords on their shields and shouted, "Tash! Tash! The great god Tash! Inexorable Tash!" (There was no nonsense about "Tashlan" now.)
They had found a trickle of water coming down the rock and all had drunk eagerly - Jill and Poggin and the King in their hands, while the four-footed ones lapped from the little pool which it had made at the foot of the stone. Such was their thirst that it seemed the most delicious drink they had ever had in their lives, and while they were drinking they were perfectly happy and could not think of anything else.
In a way it wasnt quite so bad as you might think.
"Thou hast called me into Narnia, Rishda Tarkaan. Here I am. What hast thou to say?”
"Grown-up, indeed," said the Lady Polly. "I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and shell waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of ones life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.”
And when the eleven Dwarfs, one after the other, had been flung or kicked into that dark doorway and the door had been shut again, he bowed low to the stable and said: "These also are for thy burnt offering, Lord Tash.”
Then he led him to the eldest of the Queens - but even she was not old, and there were no grey hairs on her head and no wrinkles on her cheek - and said, "Sir, this is that Lady Polly who came into Narnia on the First Day, when Aslan made the trees grow and the Beasts talk." He brought him next to a man whose golden beard flowed over his breast and whose face was full of wisdom. "And this," he said, "is the Lord Digory who was with her on that day. And this is my brother, King Edmund: and this my sister, the Queen Lucy.”
"Throw them into the shrine of Tash," said Rishda Tarkaan.
As far as one could see, the whole place of assembly was now empty except for the Dwarf and the Calormenes. In that light one couldnt make out much of what was happening. It sounded as if the Dwarfs were putting up a good fight. Tirian could hear Griffle using dreadful language, and every now and then the Tarkaan calling, "Take all you can alive! Take them alive!”
And what he saw then set his heart beating as it had never beaten in any fight.
"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever youve tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, `What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.“
A Calormene was running towards the stable door carrying something that kicked and struggled. As he came between them and the fire they could see clearly both the shape of the man and the shape of what he carried. It was Eustace.
"Oh, cant we do anything to stop it?" said Jill in a shaken voice.
"High King," he said. "You are welcome to me.”
And then the last battle of the last King of Narnia began.
But immediately, from behind Tash, strong and calm as the summer sea, a voice said: "Begone, Monster, and take your lawful prey to your own place: in the name of Aslan and Aslans great Father the Emperor-over-the-Sea.”
The only answer was growls.
