The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 152

defeated by me; my army was defeated by Antarctica and by a blood lust that had finally ebbed, leaving melancholy, madness, starvation. I too stayed in my hall; I was recovered from my wounds from the battle at Elephant Main, yet still in the lingering grip of my own darkness. Grim Fiddle, the berserker warlord, had become increasingly only that. This was a fraud, however, for I had come to rely upon my rage to get me out of my hall, onto my flagship, into the blood-work. Now, summer come again, the disease that is murder had corrupted my limbs as well as my heart. I was sick of the blood. I had killed so many that I thought and felt and saw only killing. I presumed the worst in all, because I was the worst of myself.

I must be blunt, though my brevity beggars accuracy. My berserker dreaming of my rise to kingship had been replaced by a nightmare that was more mortal than that of a shape-changer. I had abandoned my sense of myself as Skallagrim Ice-Waster, Hard-Fisherman’s Promise-Keeper, left in the ocean of hatred that had been my home for six years. Without Lykantropovin I thought there was no more purpose, and if there was, it was not for me. I saw myself in my dreams as a coward, a cheat, a lie, in all, damned. That was the overwhelming image. I convinced myself that I was the servant of the God of Hate. There was no one left to comfort me. Longfaeroe might have contained my ranting—he never emerged from a cave-in on Anvers; the sealers had disappeared one at a time in battle against either the Ice Cross or the whales; Otter Ransom and Wild Drumrul had obeyed my order at Elephant Main and drowned for it. I have no strength to continue the list. They were gone. I remained in my hall. I would give no orders. I refused to go out into the sun, preferred to wrap myself in the walls of my cave. I see what I was doing most clearly now. It was prescient of me, another misused gift from Mother. I sensed my guilt, put myself on trial, accused myself of slaughtering nearly everything I had ever loved and of having gained nothing from taking revenge. I judged myself a criminal without remorse, and stood condemned to a solitary prison. My mind was in premature retreat. I wanted no answers, no opportunities, no hope. I recall that I was able to go very far in my self-torment, for I betrayed my memory of Grandfather.

I convinced myself that Grandfather’s service to his Lord God had been wrong, because there was no God of Love, rather there was a God of Hate who had made mankind wretched the more to toy with and torture the sinner. I cannot re-create my reasoning; it was not reasonable. Nonetheless, it felt more real to me than the cold. I screamed at myself, refusing food and sleep. I will not bother to reproduce here my blasphemy. The sum of it centered on my recurring delusion of the God of Hate. I claimed that I had defeated Lykantropovin and the Ice Cross as a servant of the God of Hate, claimed that I was as good a servant as was the Dark Prince, Satan. Grim Fiddle, the Black Prince of the black ice, filled himself as a well would fill with bad water and pretended even unto the power of Satan, Grandfather’s Satan. I boasted I was in league with Satan, that he was my brother-at-arms. I vowed to give myself to my comrade, to open up the Southern Ocean as Satan had opened up the doldrums. I was mad. None of it makes sense. I was mad. I chanted to my own slaves, “Satan is my ally. We are slaves of the God of Hate.”

Lazarus came to me, ministering to me as a father. He blamed himself for my condition. He said he had asked too much of me, said he was prepared to relieve me of my burden. He made long speeches, colored by Lazarus’s mix of the mystical and pedagogical, yet concluded with his sense of the practical. He tried to draw me out of my hall with promises. He said the Ice Cross wanted to surrender to me at first opportunity, that the Ice Cross had guaranteed massive resupply of the camps and immediate resettlement of the camps, had also guaranteed amnesty and rehabilitation of the Hielistos. Lazarus also tried my vanity. He said that though I was a hero to the Hielistos and the camps now, soon I would be to the world, said that I had shown that the Treaty of Good Hope and the Peace of the Frontier were death warrants, and that now the disgrace of the fleet of the damned was done and I was a great man.

“This is what you fought for, Grim,” he told me, and later, “You must act now, Grim, it all waits on you,” and then in ever more desperate terms, “We can’t let the summer pass, Grim, the camps won’t make another winter,” and, “We’ve won, you’ve won, this is the time!”

I countered Lazarus’s pleas with descriptions of the plots against me, how the Ice Cross was attempting to defeat me with trickery, how I could no longer trust my capitanes or my councillors. I told Lazarus that he was a dupe of my enemies, told him that he was a defeatist, told him, yes, this was the time, the time to attack. There was also crazy talk that we must prepare for a summer campaign, must hide the women and children, especially my South Georgians (who were all dead), for I declared Lykantropovin was alive, my capitanes had brought me the wrong head.

“There is no refuge from my enemies!” I thundered to Lazarus and my councillors. “There can be no peace! Satan is our ally! The time to attack!”

Cleopatra came to