The Last Battle Read Online Free PDF Page A

it was the best question anyone had asked yet.
    The Ape jumped up and spat at the Lamb.

    “Baby!” he hissed. “Silly little bleater! Go home to your mother and drink milk. What do you understand of such things? But the others, listen. Tash is only another name for Aslan. All that old idea of us being right and the Calormenes wrong is silly. We know better now. The Calormenes use different words but we all mean the same thing. Tash and Aslan are only two different names for you know Who. That’s why there can never be anyquarrel between them. Get that into your, heads, you stupid brutes. Tash is Aslan: Aslan is Tash.”
    You know how sad your own dog’s face can look sometimes. Think of that and then think of all the faces of those Talking Beasts—all those honest, humble, bewildered Birds, Bears, Badgers, Rabbits, Moles, and Mice—all far sadder than that. Every tail was down, every whisker drooped. It would have broken your heart with very pity to see their faces. There was only one who did not look at all unhappy.
    It was a ginger Cat—a great big Tom in the prime of life—who sat bolt upright with his tail curled round his toes, in the very front row of all the Beasts. He had been staring hard at the Ape and the Calormene captain all the time and had never once blinked his eyes.
    “Excuse me,” said the Cat very politely, “but this interests me. Does your friend from Calormen say the same?”
    “Assuredly,” said the Calormene. “The enlightened Ape—Man, I mean—is in the right. Aslan means neither less nor more than Tash .”
    “Especially, Aslan means no more than Tash?” suggested the Cat.
    “No more at all,” said the Calormene, looking the Cat straight in the face.
    “Is that good enough for you, Ginger?” said the Ape.
    “Oh certainly,” said Ginger coolly. “Thank you very much. I only wanted to be quite clear. I think I am beginning to understand.”
    Up till now the King and Jewel had said nothing: they were waiting until the Ape should bid them speak, for they thought it was no use interrupting. But now, as Tirian looked round on the miserable faces of the Narnians, and saw how they would all believe that Aslan and Tash were one and the same, he could bear it no longer.
    “Ape,” he cried with a great voice, “you lie damnably. You lie like a Calormene. You lie like an Ape.”
    He meant to go on and ask how the terrible god Tash who fed on the blood of his people could possibly be the same as the good Lion by whose blood all Narnia was saved. If he had been allowed to speak, the rule of the Ape might have ended that day; the Beasts might have seen the truth and thrown the Ape down. But before he could say another word two Calormenes struck him in the mouth with all their force, and a third, from behind, kicked his feet from under him. And as he fell, the Ape squealed in rage and terror.
    “Take him away. Take him away. Take him where he cannot hear us, nor we hear him. There tie him to a tree. I will—I mean, Aslan will—do justice on him later.”

Four

WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT

    THE KING WAS SO DIZZY FROM BEING knocked down that he hardly knew what was happening until the Calormenes untied his wrists and put his arms straight down by his sides and set him with his back against an ash tree. Then they bound ropes round his ankles and his knees and his waist and his chest and left him there. What worried him worst at the moment—for it is often little things that are hardest to stand—was that his lip was bleeding where they had hit him and he couldn’t wipe the little trickle of blood away although it tickled him.
    From where he was he could still see the little stable on the top of the hill and the Ape sitting in front of it. He could just hear the Ape’s voice still going on and, every now and then, some answer from the crowd, but he could not make out the words.
    “I wonder what they’ve done to Jewel,” thought the King.
    Presently the crowd of beasts broke up and