Under a hot sullen sky, the windless sea swelled in long slow waves that rocked the tangled kelp and ocean-grass up and down, heavenward and hellward. To starboard, the dark cliffs of a small jungled island rose from an angry muttering surf, but there were no birds flying above it.
Corun pointed to the shore. “That’s the first of the archipelago,” he said. “From here on, we can look for the Xanthi to come at any time.”
“We should get as far into their territory as possible, even to the black palace,” said Shorzon. “I will put a spell of invisibility on the ship.”
“Their sorcerers can break that,” said Chryseis.
“Aye, so. But when they come to know our powers, I think they will treat with us.”
“They’d better!” smiled Imazu grimly.
“Steer on toward the island of the castle,” said Shorzon to the pirate. “I go to lay the spell.”
He went into his cabin. Corun had a glimpse of its dark interior before the door was closed—draped in black and filled with the apparatus of magic.
“He will have to be in a trance, physically, to maintain the enchantment,” said Chryseis. She smiled at Corun, and his pulses raced. “Come, my dearest, it is cooler on the afterdeck.”
The sailors rowed steadily, sweat glistening on their bare blue hides. Imazu paced up and down the catwalk, flicking idlers with his whip. Corun stood where he could keep an eye on the steersman and see that the right course was followed.
It had been utter wonder till now, he thought, unending days when they plowed through seas of magic, nights of joy such as he had never known. There had never been another woman such as Chryseis, he thought, never in all the world, and he was the luckiest of men. Though he died today, he had been more fortunate than any man ever dared dream.
Chryseis, Chryseis, loveliest and wisest and most valiant of women—and she was his, before all the jealous gods, she loved him!
“There has only been one thing wrong,” he said. “You are going into danger now. The world would go dark if aught befell you.”
“And I should sit at home while you were away, and never know what had happened, never know if you lived or died—no, no, Corun!”
He laid a hand on the sword at his waist. They had given him arms and armor again after she had come to him. Logical enough, he thought without resentment—he could be trusted now, as much as if he were one of Shorzon’s ensorcelled warriors.
But if this were a spell too, the gods deliver him from ever being freed of it!
He blinked. There was a sudden breath of chill on him, and his eyes were blurring—no, no, it was the ship that wavered, ship and men fading—He clutched at Chryseis. She laughed softly and slipped an arm around his waist.
“It is only Shorzon’s spell,” she said. “It affects us too, to some extent. And it makes the ship invisible to anyone within seeing range.”
Ghost ship, ghost crew, slipping over the slowly heaving waters. There was only the foggiest outline to be seen, shadow of mast and rigging against the sky, glimpses of water through the gray smoke of the hull, blobs of darkness that were the crewmen. Sound was still clear; he heard the mutter of superstitious awe, the crack of the whip, and Imazu’s oaths that sent the oars creaking and splashing again. Corun’s hand was a misty blur before his eyes. Chryseis was a shadow beside him.
She laughed once more, a low exultant throb, and pulled his lips down to hers. He ruffled the streaming fragrant hair and felt a return of courage. It was only a spell.
But what were the spells? he wondered for the thousandth time. He did not hold with the simple theory that wizards were in league with gods or demons. They had powers, yes, but he was sure that somehow these powers came only from within themselves. Chryseis had always evaded his questions about it. There must be some simple answer to the problem, some real process, as real as that of making a fire, behind the performances of the sorcerers—but it baffled him to think what it might be.
Blast it all, it just wasn’t reasonable that Shorzon, for instance, should have been able actually to change himself into a jungle monster many times his size. Yet he, Corun, had seen the thing, had felt its wet scales and smelled its reptile stink. How?
* * * *
The ship plowed slowly on. Now and then Corun looked at the compass, straining his eyes to discern the blurred needle. Otherwise they could only wait.
But waiting with Chryseis was remarkably pleasant.
It was at the end of a timeless time, perhaps half a day, that he saw the Xanthian patrol. “Look,” he pointed. “There they come.”
Chryseis stared boldly over the sea. The hand beneath his was steady as her voice: “So I see. They’re—beautiful, aren’t they?”
The cetaraea came leaping across the waves, big graceful beasts with the shapes of fish, their smooth black hides shining and the water white behind their threshing tails. Astride each was a great golden form bearing a lance. They quartered across the horizon and were lost to sight.
The crew mumbled in fear, shaken to their hardy souls by the terrible unhuman grace of the Xanthi. Imazu cursed them back to work. The ship went on.
Islands slipped by, empty of man-sign. They had glimpses of Xanthian works, spires and walls rearing above the jungle. These were not the white colonnaded buildings of Tauros or the timbered halls of Conahur—of black stone they were, with pointed towers climbing crazily skyward. Once a great sea serpent reared its head, spouted water, and writhed away. All creatures save man could sense the presence of wizardry and refused to go near it.
Night fell, an abyss of night broken only by faint glimmers of sea-fire under the carpeting weed. Men stood uneasy watch in full armor, peering blindly into the somber immensity. It was hot, hot and silent.
Near midnight the lookout shouted from the masthead: “Xanthi to larboard!”
“Silence, you fool!” called Imazu. “Want them to hear us?”
The patrol was a faint swirl and streaking of phosphorescence, blacker shadows against the night. It was coming nearer.
“Have they spotted us?” wondered Corun.
“No,” breathed Chryseis. “But they’re close enough for their mounts—”
There was a great snorting and splashing out in the murk. The cetaraea were refusing to go into the circle of Shorzon’s spell. Voices lifted, an unhuman croaking. The erinye, the only animal who did not seem to mind witchcraft, snarled in saw-edged tones, eyes a green blaze against the night.
Presently the squad turned and slipped away. “They know something is wrong, and they’ve gone for help,” said Corun. “We’ll have a fight on our hands before long.”
He stretched his big body, suddenly eager for action. This waiting was more than he could stand.
The ship drove on. Corun and Chryseis napped on the deck; it was too stiflingly hot below. The long night wore away.
In the misty gray of morning, they saw a dark mass advancing from the west. Corun’s sword rasped out of the sheath. It was a long, double-edged blade such as they used in Conahur, and it was thirsty.
“Get inside, Chryseis,” he said tightly.
“Get inside yourself,” she answered. There was a lilt in her voice like a little girl’s. He felt her quiver with joyous expectation.
The ghostly outlines of the ship wavered, thickened, faded again, flickered back toward solidity. Suddenly they had sight; the vessel lay real around them; they saw each other in helm and corselet, face looking into tautened face.
“They have a wizard along—he broke Shorzon’s spell,” said the Conahurian.
“We looked for that,” answered Chryseis evenly. “But as long as Shorzon keeps fighting him, there will be a roiling of magic around us such that none of their beasts will approach.”
She stood beside him, slim and boyish in polished cuirass and plumed helmet, shortsword belted to her waist and a bow in one hand. Her nostrils quivered, her eyes shone, and she laughed aloud. “We’ll drive them off,” she said. “We’ll send them home like beaten iaganaths.”
Imazu blew the war-horn, wild brazen echoes screaming over the sea. His men drew in the oars, pulled on their armor, and stood along the rails, waiting.
“But did we come here to fight them?” asked Corun.
“No,” said Chryseis. “But we’ve known all along that we’d have to give them a taste of our might before they’d talk to us.”
The Xanthian lancers were milling about half a league away, as if in conference. Suddenly someone blew a harsh-toned horn and Corun saw half the troop slide from the saddle into the water. “So—they’ll swim at us,” he muttered.
* * * *
The attack came from all sides, converging on the ship in a rush of foam. As the Xanthi neared, Corun saw their remembered lineaments and felt the old clutch of panic. They weren’t human.
With the fluked tail, one of them had twice the length of a man. The webbed hind feet, on which they walked ashore, were held close to the body; the strangely human hands carried weapons. They swam half under water, the dorsal fins rising over. Their necks were long, with gills near the blunt-snouted heads; their grinning mouths showed gleaming fangs. The eyes were big, dark, alive with cold intelligence. They bore no armor, but scales the color of beaten gold covered back and sides and tail. They came in at furious speed, churning the sea behind them.
Chryseis’ voice rose to a wild shriek. “Perias! Perias—kill!”
The erinye howled and unfolded his leather-webbed wings. Like a hurled spear he streaked into the air, rushed down on the nearest Xanthian like a thunderbolt—claws, teeth, barbed tail, a blinding fury of blood and death, ripping flesh as if it were parchment.
The ship’s ballista chunked and balls of the ever-burning Achaeran fire were hurled out to fall blazing among the enemy. Chryseis’ bow hummed beside Corun, a Xanthian went under with an arrow in his throat—the air was thick with shafts as the crew fired.
Still the Xanthi rushed on, ducking up and down, near impossible to hit. The first of them came up to the hull and sank their clawed fingers into the wood. The sailors thrust downward with pikes, howling in fear-maddened rage.
The man near Corun went down with a hurled javelin through him. At once a huge golden form was slithering over the rail, onto the deck. The sword in his hand flashed, another Umlotuan’s weapon was knocked spinning from his hand and the reptile hewed him down.
Corun sprang to do battle. The swords clashed together with a shock that jarred the man backward. Corun spread his feet and smote out. His blade whirled down to strike the shoulder, gash the chest, and drive the hissing monster back.
With a rising cold fury, Corun followed it up. That for the long inquisition—that for being a horror out of the sea bottom—that for threatening Chryseis! The Xanthian writhed with a belly ripped open. Still he wouldn’t die—he flopped and struck from the deck. Corun evaded the sweeping tail and cut off the creature’s head.
They were pouring onto the ship through gaps in the line. Chryseis stood on the foredeck in a line of defending men, her bow singing death. Battle snarled about the mast, men against monsters, sword and halberd and ax belling in cloven bone.
A giant’s blow bowled Corun off his feet, the tail of a Xanthian. He rolled over and thrust upward as the Sea Demon sprang on him. The sword went through the heart. Hissing and snapping, his foe toppled on him. He heaved the struggling body away and sprang back to his stance.
“To me!” bellowed Imazu. “To me, men!”
He stood wielding a huge battle ax by the mast, striking at the beasts that raged around him, lopping heads and arms and tails like a woodman. The scattered humans rallied and began to fight their way toward him, step by bloody step.
Perias the erinye was everywhere, a flying fury, ripping and biting and smashing with wing-blows. Corun loomed huge over the men who fought beside him, the sword shrieking and thundering in his hands. Imazu stood stolidly against the mast, smashing at all comers. A rush of Xanthi broke past him and surged against the foredeck. The defenders beat them off, Chryseis thrusting as savagely with her sword as any man, and they reeled back against the masthead warriors to be cut down.
A Xanthian sprang at Corun, wielding a long-shafted ax that shivered the sword in his hand. The Conahurian struck back, his blade darting past the monster’s guard to stab through the throat. The Xanthian staggered. Corun wrenched the blade loose and brought it down again to sing in the reptile skull.
Before he could pull it loose, another was on him. Corun ducked under the spear he carried and closed his hands around the slippery sides. The clawed feet raked his legs. He lifted the thing and hurled it into another with bone-shattering force. One of them threshed wildly, neck broken—the other bounded at Corun. The man yanked his sword free and it whistled against the golden head.
* * * *
Back and forth the struggle swayed, crashing of metal and howling of warriors. And the Xanthi were driven to the rails—they could not stand against the rallying human line in the narrow confines of the ship.
“Kill them!” roared Imazu. “Kill the misbegotten snakes!”
Suddenly the Xanthi were slipping overboard, swimming for their mounts beyond the zone of magic. Perias followed, harrying them, pulling them half out of the water to rip their throats out.
The ship was wet, streaming with human red and reptile yellow blood. Dead and wounded littered the decks. Corun saw the Xanthi cavalry retreating out of sight.
“We’ve won,” he gasped. “We’ve won—”
“No—wait—” Chryseis inclined her head sharply, seeming to listen, then darted past him to open a hatch. Light streamed down into the hold. It was filling—the bilge was rising. “I thought so,” she said grimly. “They’re below us, chopping into the hull.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Corun, and unbuckled his cuirass. “All who can swim, after me!”
“No—no, they’ll kill you—”
“Come on!” rapped Imazu, letting his own breastplate clang to the deck.
Corun sprang overboard. He was wearing nothing but a kilt now, and had a spear in one hand and a dirk in his teeth. Fear was gone, washed out by the red tides of battle. There was only a bleak, terrible triumph in him. Men had beaten the Sea Demons!
Underwater, it was green and dim. He swam down, down, brushing the hull, pulling himself along the length of the keel. There were half a dozen shapes clustered near the waist, working with axes.
He pushed against the keel and darted at them, holding the spear like a lance. The keen point stabbed into the belly of one monster. The others turned, their eyes terrible in the gloom. Corun took the dirk in his hand, got a grip on the next nearest, and stabbed.
Claws ripped his flanks and back. His lungs were bursting, there was a roaring in his head and darkness before his eyes. He stabbed blindly, furiously.
Suddenly the struggling form let go. Corun broke the surface and gasped in a lungful of air. A Sea Demon leaped up beside him. At once the erinye was on him. The Xanthian screamed as he was torn apart.
Corun dove back under water. The other seamen were down there, fighting for their lives. They outnumbered the Xanthi, but the monsters were in their native element. Blood streaked the water, blinding them all. It was a strange, horrible battle for survival.
In the end, Corun and Imazu and the others—except for four—were hauled back aboard. “We drove them off,” said the pirate wearily.
“Oh, my dear—my dearest dear—” Chryseis, who had laughed in battle, was sobbing on his breast.
Shorzon was on deck, looking over the scene. “We did well,” he said. “We stood them off, killed about thirty, and only lost fifteen men.”
“At that rate,” said Corun, “it won’t take them long to clear our decks.”
“I don’t think they will try again,” said Shorzon.
He went over to a captured Xanthian. The Sea Demon had had a foot chopped off in the battle and been pinned to the deck by a pike, but he still lived and rasped defiance at them. If allowed to live, he would grow new members—the monsters were tougher than they had a right to be.
“Hark, you,” said Shorzon in the Xanthian tongue, which he had learned with astonishing ease. “We come on a mission of peace, with an offer that your king will be pleased to hear. You have seen only a small part of our powers. It is not beyond us to sail to your palace and bring it crumbling to earth.”
Corun wondered how much was bluff. The old sorcerer might really be able to do it. In any case—he had nerve!
“What can you things offer us?” asked the Xanthian.
“That is only for the king to hear,” said Shorzon coldly. “He will not thank you for molesting us. Now we will let you go to bear word back to your rulers. Tell them we are coming whether they will or no, but that we come in friendship if they will but show it. After all, if they wish to kill us it can be just as easily done—if at all—after they have heard us out. Now go!”
Imazu pulled the pike loose and the yellow-bleeding Xanthian writhed overboard.
“I do not think we will be bothered again,” said Shorzon calmly. “Not before we get to the black palace.”
“You may be right,” admitted Corun. “You gave them a good argument by their standards.”
“Friends?” muttered Imazu. “Friends with those things? As soon expect the erinye to lie down by the bovan, I think.”
“Come,” said Chryseis impatiently. “We have to repair the leak and clean the decks and get under way again. It is a long trip yet to the black palace.”
She turned to Corun and her eyes were dark flames. “How you fought!” she whispered. “How you fought, beloved!”