The Last Battle

“Yes,” said the King with a great sigh, almost a shiver, of delight. “It is beyond all that I ever hoped for in all my life.”
“Listen!” said Jewel, putting his head on one side and cocking his ears forward.
“What is it?” asked the King.
“Hoofs, Sire,” said Jewel. “A galloping horse. A very heavy horse. It must be one of the Centaurs. And look, there he is.”
A great, golden bearded Centaur, with man's sweat on his forehead and horse's sweat on his chestnut flanks, dashed up to the King, stopped, and bowed low. “Hail, King,” it cried in a voice as deep as a bull's.
“Ho, there!” said the King, looking over his shoulder towards the door of the hunting lodge. “A bowl of wine for the noble Centaur. Welcome, Roonwit. When you have found your breath you shall tell us your errand.”
A page came out of the house carrying a great wooden bowl, curiously carved, and handed it to the Centaur. The Centaur raised the bowl and said,
“I drink first to Aslan and truth, Sire, and secondly to your Majesty.”
He finished the wine (enough for six strong men) at one draught and handed the empty bowl back to the page.
“Now, Roonwit,” said the King. “Do you bring us more news of Aslan?”
Roonwit looked very grave, frowning a little.
“Sire,” he said. “You know how long I have lived and studied the stars; for we Centaurs live longer than you Men, and even longer than your kind, Unicorn. Never in all my days have I seen such terrible things written in the skies as there have been nightly since this year began. The stars say nothing of the coming of Aslan, nor of peace, nor of joy. I know by my art that there have not been such disastrous conjunctions of the planets for five hundred years. It was already in my mind to come and warn your Majesty that some great evil hangs over Narnia. But last night the rumour reached me that Aslan is abroad in Narnia. Sire, do not believe this tale. It cannot be. The stars never lie, but Men and Beasts do. If Aslan were really coming to Narnia the sky would have foretold it. If he were really come, all the most gracious stars would be assembled in his honour. It is all a lie.”
“A lie!” said the King fiercely. “What creature in Narnia or all the world would dare to lie on such a matter?” And, without knowing it, he laid his hand on his sword hilt.
“That I know not, Lord King,” said the Centaur. “But I know there are liars on earth; there are none among the stars.”
“I wonder,” said Jewel, “whether Aslan might not come though all the stars foretold otherwise. He is not the slave of the stars but their Maker. Is it not said in all the old stories that He is not a tame lion.”
“Well said, well said, Jewel,” cried the King. “Those are the very words: not a tame lion. It comes in many tales.”
Roonwit had just raised his hand and was leaning forward to say something very earnestly to the King when all three of them turned their heads to listen to a wailing sound that was quickly drawing nearer. The wood was so thick to the West of them that they could not see the newcomer yet. But they could soon hear the words.
“Woe, woe, woe!” called the voice. “Woe for my brothers and sisters! Woe for the holy trees! The woods are laid waste. The axe is loosed against us. We are being felled. Great trees are falling, falling, falling.”
With the last “falling” the speaker came in sight. She was like a woman but so tall that her head was on a level with the Centaur's yet she was like a tree too. It is hard to explain if you have never seen a Dryad but quite unmistakable once you have—something different in the colour, the voice, and the hair. King Tirian and the two Beasts knew at once that she was the nymph of a beech tree.
“Justice, Lord King!” she cried. “Come to our aid. Protect your people. They are felling us in Lantern Waste.
Forty great trunks of my brothers and sisters are already on the ground.”
“What, Lady! Felling Lantern Waste? Murdering the talking trees?” cried the King, leaping to his feet and drawing his sword. “How dare they? And who dares it? Now by the Mane of Aslan-”
“A-a-a-h,” gasped the Dryad shuddering as if in pain—shuddering time after time as if under repeated blows. Then all at once she fell sideways as suddenly as if both her feet had been cut from under her. For a second they saw her lying dead on the grass and then she vanished. They knew what had happened. Her tree, miles away, had been cut down.
For a moment the King's grief and anger were so great that he could not speak. Then he said:
“Come, friends. We must go up river and find the villains who have done this, with all the speed we may. I will leave not one of them alive.”
“Sire, with a good will,” said Jewel.
But Roonwit said, “Sire, be wary in your just wrath. There are strange doings on foot. If there should be rebels in arms further up the valley, we three are too few to meet them. If it would please you to wait while—”
“I will not wait the tenth part of a second,” said the King. “But while Jewel and I go forward, do you gallop as hard as you may to Cair Paravel. Here is my ring for your token. Get me a score of men-at-arms, all well mounted, and a score of Talking Dogs, and ten Dwarfs (let them all be fell archers), and a Leopard or so, and Stonefoot the Giant. Bring all these after us as quickly as may be.”
“With a good will, Sire,” said Roonwit. And at once he turned and galloped Eastward down the valley.
The King strode on at a great pace, sometimes muttering to himself and sometimes clenching his fists. Jewel walked beside him, saying nothing; so there was no sound between them but the faint jingle of a rich gold chain that hung round the Unicorn's neck and the noise of two feet and four hoofs.
They soon reached the River and turned up it where there was a grassy road: they had the water on their left and the forest on their right. Soon after that they came to the place where the ground grew rougher and thick wood came down to the water's edge. The road, what there was of it, now ran on the Southern bank and they had to ford the River to reach it. It was up to Tirian's arm-pits, but Jewel (who had four legs and was therefore steadier) kept on his right so as to break the force of the current, and Tirian put his strong arm round the Unicorn's strong neck and they both got safely over. The King was still so angry that he hardly noticed the cold of the water. But of course he dried his sword very carefully on the shoulder of his cloak, which was the only dry part of him, as soon as they came to shore.
They were now going Westward with the River on their right and Lantern Waste straight ahead of them. They had not gone more than a mile when they both stopped and both spoke at the same moment. The King said “What have we here?” and Jewel said “Look!”
“It is a raft,” said King Tirian.
And so it was. Half a dozen splendid tree-trunks, all newly cut and newly lopped of their branches, had been lashed together to make a raft, and were gliding swiftly down the river. On the front of the raft there was a water rat with a pole to steer it.
“Hey! Water-Rat! What are you about?” cried the King.
“Taking logs down to sell to the Calormenes, Sire,” said the Rat, touching his ear as he might have touched his cap if he had had one.
“Calormenes!” thundered Tirian. “What do you mean? Who gave order for these trees to be felled?”
The River flows so swiftly at that time of the year that the raft had already glided past the King and Jewel. But the Water-Rat looked back over its shoulder and shouted out:
“The Lion's orders, Sire. Aslan himself.” He added something more but they couldn't hear it.
The King and the Unicorn stared at one another and both looked more frightened than they had ever been in any battle.
“Aslan,” said the King at last, in a very low voice. “Aslan. Could it be true? Could he be felling the holy trees and murdering the Dryads?”