* * *

        Red and black, in shadows and blood -
        To a grim purposes, sees yet sightless.

                                                 * * *

        Thus it was that Asodo Hatch dueled with a demon inside the
minor mountain known as Cap Foz Para Lash, and won a great victory
over that demon. Inside of a month, the details of that duel were
known to all of Dalar ken Halvar. Asodo Hatch - this is how the
story was told, and nobody doubted it - had challenged Paraban
Senk to a duel. Senk had accepted the challenge. In an arena
generated by the machineries of the illusion tanks, Asodo Hatch
had met with Senk, and the pair had fought it out to the red-blood
finish, with the rule of the Combat College as the prize.
        Also told in Dalar ken Halvar was the story of Hatch's
climactic confrontation with the lockway's dorgi. It was told how
the dorgi had growled and roared, how it had spat death with its
zulzers - death which Hatch in his nimbleness had dodged and
ducked - and how at last it had destroyed itself when in its
frustration it attempted to use its most powerful weapons to
destroy not just Hatch but the entire mountain which trapped and
encumbered it.
        On the strength of such tales, Asodo Hatch became not just
Saint Hatch but Hero Hatch into the bargain, all of which was a
great help to him as he attempted to make himself master of the
Empire of Greater Parengarenga.
        Even with such help, to secure his rule was no easy task. It
required the most delicate of negotiations, coupled with a
regrettable requirement for (on occasion) direct and ruthless
action which need not here be detailed. For the management of an
empire is a study in itself, and not to be lightly summed.
        Suffice it to say that Asodo Hatch was for a time very busy,
yet as the days went by his burdens eased. And so it was that he
found the time for nights of peaceful privacy, and spent those
nights in Pan Lay, a fine house on the heights of Cap Gargle. The
owner of that house was the Lady Iro Murasaki, one of the
gray-skinned Janjuladoola people - and Hatch of course did not
displace her from her residence when he chose to spend his nights
in that residence.
        It is doubtlessly true that, in a strictly moral universe,
Asodo Hatch would not have ended thus in the arms of the Lady Iro
Murasaki. But this is a history of the world of the fact and the
flesh, not a gaudy tale of Good versus Evil such as might have
been candy flossed to life by the Eye of Delusions. This, then, is
not a nicely balanced structure of error and retribution suitable
for use as a model to propound the ethical philosophies. It is
history, and it is not for history to take upon itself the mission
of the moralists.
        But if some mission be demanded, if it be said that the mere
recounting of events is not a task sufficient in itself - why,
then, let this history be taken as an exemplification of the
intrinsic complexity of life. If a message be required, why then,
let the very complexities of this history be a message in itself.
And if something more still be demanded - a moral, perforce! - why
then, let the moral be that life is a dice game played in the
shadows with a dog and a ghost.
        Consider by the light of that moral the life of Asodo Hatch.
In the time of his testing, Asodo Hatch used means which he did
not rightly know were at his disposal to achieve ends which were
not strictly of his own choosing. He was swimming, yes, and
swimming of his own free will, and in the direction of his
choosing - but he was swimming in a river that was in flood, a
boiling river of filthy brown water ever churning toward the hot
pit of its final embroilment.
        And we too in our time may be plunged into such a flood; and
therefore should not be too quick to judge, or to say that Hatch
should have drunk the river dry, or should have grown wings and
flown, or should have conceded himself to the flood by evolving
himself into a fish.
        Let us then grant him the charity of our mercy.
        And if it be objected that Hatch, whether swimming or
drowning, had no right to live when so many were dead - why then,
know that it takes only a moment's courage to die, whereas it
takes a lifetime's courage to live. And Asodo Hatch had the
greatest of difficulty in finding that lifetime's courage, for the
undeniable truth is that his father had handed him both a
sharpened sword and the incentive to use it.
        Therefore let us grant to Asodo Hatch at least the honor of
his courage.
        And if further excuse for his actions be needed, why then,
remember only that Hatch was a barbarian monstrous in his purple,
a true warrior of one of the Wild Tribes if ever there was one;
and, if someone must be blamed for his wrongdoing, then blame the
cartoonists of the Nexus, who were surely the providers of his
strongest role models. And with blame thus properly assigned in
the best of moralizing fashion, it is proper to spare a moment to
satisfy the curiosity of the ethnologists, and to detail the manner
in which the Frangoni worship of the Great God Mokaragash was
reconciled with the rise of Nu-chala-nuth.
        Let it be recorded, then, that at the end of the first year
of his rule, Asodo Hatch climbed to the Frangoni rock, and that
Hatch there made his peace with Sesno Felvus, the High Priest of
the Great God Mokaragash. In Temple Isherzan, there was only the
priesthood left, and not much of that: for the Frangoni laity had
converted as a whole to the worship of the Nu-chala, and hence had
joined themselves to that great congregation known as the Nu-
chala-nuth.
        To deprive a Great God of the worship of His people would be
considered by many to be an unpardonable crime; but Sesno Felvus
pardoned Asodo Hatch, for Sesno Felvus - when forced to the
ultimate choice - valued his people more than his god.
        Besides, the gods evolve, do they not? State it as a
certainty: they do. For it is one of the lessons of history that
the gods lack that stability of form which is given to the flesh;
and, in proof of this, it is difficult to find so much as a single
god which has been stable in its form for as little time as a
thousand years. Therefore it might well be thought that the Great
God Mokaragash, when incarnated in an idol in the precincts of
Temple Isherzan, had yet to evolve to His final form; and it might
be thought that the Nu, the god worshipped by the Nu-chala, was
simply a potential future form to which, in the fullness of time,
the Great God Mokaragash would Evolve.
        Therefore it could be argued that those who abandoned the
worship of the Great God Mokaragash to make themselves members of
the Nu-chala-nuth were simply giving slightly premature homage to
a future form of the Great God Mokaragash. This at least was what
Sesno Felvus told those priests who chose to stay with him in
Temple Isherzan; and, if any chose to disbelieve this, not one of
them was bold enough to say as much.
        As for Asodo Hatch himself, when asked by the Lady Iro
Murasaki what he truly believed, Hatch delivered himself of this
simplest of doctrines:
        "When a mantis flies, it's more of a leaf than a bird."

                                                The End