by Lin Carter
Tossing back his lion’s mane of coarse black hair, he broke into laughter. Karm Karvus stared at him as if he had suddenly gone mad before their very eyes. Yian frowned in puzzlement and stole a bit closer to the gallant Tsargolian as if for protection.
Thongor turned to grin at them.
“No, my friends, I have not lost my reason,” he chuckled. “But this would seem indeed the day for old, long-parted friends to meet again—for yonder black galley is none other than the Scimitar, and unless mine eyes have lost their wonted keenness, I think I can even see the burning red whiskers of Barim Redbeard himself upon the quarterdeck, aye, and young Charn Thovis, too!”
IT was somewhat less than an hour later when the Scimitar under full sail came scudding up the wind to rejoin the last rank of the pirate armada, her signal flags reporting the leak repaired and her hull sound once more. And all that day she sailed quietly in her place as the mighty armada paced the length of the Gulf, league after shining league falling away to the stern, lost in the boiling wake of the great armada.
Very great had been the rejoicing aboard the Scimitar when Minga and Thangmar returned from the cove, bearing Thongor of Valkarth, Karm Karvus of Tsargol, and the Princess Yian of Cadorna in the longboat. When Thongor climbed up over the rail and waved one mighty hand in salute to the grinning faces that greeted him, a man-throated roar of welcome arose from the men of the pirate crew.
Barim Redbeard was the first to thump him on the back, clearing his throat and fiercely blinking back the tears. He had thought Thongor long since dead and at the bottom of the Gulf; never had he thought to see the mighty Valkarthan alive on this side of the Shadow Gates that divide the Lands of the Living from the dim and illusory Country of the Dead. Indeed, he had bitterly castigated himself for a fancied guilt in Thongor’s tragic fall. But here, by some incredible miracle, was the Lord of the West, hale and hearty and—alive!
“Now, Black Hawk, by Gorm, Shastadian and Lady Tiandra!” he roared, clapping Thongor’s shoulder with a powerful blow that would have sent a lesser man head over heels into the rowing benches. “Gorm, and All Gods! Alive, eh? Well, Gorm! I—I should have known it takes a lot to kill a Northlanderman!”
Thongor returned his greetings, and those of fat Blay and grinning Thangmar, dour Durgan, smiling Minga, and the rest of his friends aboard the pirate galley. Charn Thovis was overcome with the surprise of finding his Lord alive, and stammered inarticulate words of greeting.
Thongor made Karm Karvus and the Princess of Cadorna known to Captain Barim and the men; then, turning to the master of the Scimitar, he said:
“Somewhat later we must exchange an account of all that has happened to us since we were parted, but for now, Redbeard, I trust your galley is well stocked? For I have been hacking my way through the jungles and I find myself in possession of a hearty appetite … would there be such a thing as a good big steak aboard this ship, and perhaps a bottle or two of wine?”
Karm Karvus laughed. “I have never known you when you were not thinking of filling your belly!”
Thongor grinned and shrugged.
“If I don’t think of it, who will? Besides, adventuring is hungry work …”
SOME hours later, washed, clad in fresh garments and well fed, Thongor, Karm Karvus and Yian of Cadorna met with Barim Redbeard and Charn Thovis in the great cabin to plan their future moves.
They had each told of their adventures, and Thongor’s grim face was impassive as he heard of the terrible powers of the Lamp of Madness, and of Kashtar’s plan to use it against Patanga.
“Tis a pity we know so little about the plans of the Red Wolf,” he growled. “Surely he has some clever scheme in mind … I cannot believe he intends to simply sail into the harbor of Patanga in broad daylight …”
“Perhaps, Lord, he will time his approach so as to enter the harbor under the cover of darkness,” Charn Thovis suggested. “For, as you say, ’twould be foolhardy in the extreme for him to assault Patanga in the full light of day. The Air Guard of Thom Pervis would sight the approach of the fleet long in advance, and the City of the Flame would be alert and in arms by the time the pirate armada arrived.”
“Trust that scarlet-clad devil to have some clever scheme in mind,” Redbeard growled. “As for myself, Black Hawk, I can think of no better way to frustrate his plans than by the method I told ye … to circle the main body of the fleet by darkness o’ night, and ram and sink the Red Wolf, drowning this Kashtar, his Gray Magician and their hellish weapon under the waters of the Gulf … ’tis a risky scheme, and could easily go awry, and it might well sink the old Scimitar as well, but flay me if I can think of a better!”
Thongor mused, his strange gold eyes brooding under scowling black brows.
“I agree, Redbeard. Patanga will have an excellent chance to defend herself if we can disable the Gray Death, and I can see no more certain way than that you suggest. Let us prepare for the coming of darkness, and strike when midnight is near and the watchmen in the rigging will be less vigilant …”
On this decision the council adjourned. Charn Thovis and Karm Karvus took a last turn around the deck, before going below to sleep so as to be well rested when nightfall came and their plan of action would begin.
“Think you it will work, Prince? Redbeard’s plan, I mean?” asked the young chanthar.
The Lord of Tsargol shrugged.
“I cannot say, Charn Thovis. It seems like desperate folly to me … but desperate men must sometimes take foolish chances, when all else fails. I like not to endanger the life of the Princess of Cadorna. And it seems we run a very great risk of being seen from another ship as we try to skirt the main body of the fleet … but Gorm help me, I can see no better way. Can you?”
Charn Thovis shook his head. Then, peering at the bright sky, he smiled grimly.
“May the Nineteen Gods send us a dark and moonless night,” he said quietly.
“I will join you in that wish. And now for my bunk and a few hours of sleep before the night’s grim business begins …”
They went below, the brave young warrior and the gallant Prince. And the Scimitar sailed on across the blue waves of the mighty Gulf, amidst the mighty fleet of the pirates of Tarakus. Night would come all too soon, and no man of them could guess the outcome of the desperate struggle that lay ahead for them all.
CHAPTER 13:
MAGIC MIST
Sometimes it chances in the ways of war,
and whether it be but a grim jest of the
Gods or a trick of mocking Fate no man
can say, that the cunning of one foe plays
into the very hands of his enemy.
—The Scarlet Edda
ALL that day the armada of Tarakus sailed up the shining waters of the Gulf of Patanga. Kashtar had instructed his captains to seek the very center of the channel. For the Patangan Gulf was broad and a fleet that rode in the midway between either shore had small chances of being sighted even by keen-eyed and vigilant watchmen in the ports along the coasts.
Their only genuine risk of discovery lay in a chance merchant ship. In case they were sighted by such a craft, Kashtar had given forth commands to board and sink the vessel on the instant, rather than giving it a chance to escape and spread the alarm. But, as the luck of the pirates would have it, no single ship came their way. These were the days of the stormy months that straddled the year halfway between late fall and the beginnings of winter: strong winds blew down from the Mountains of Mommur to the North, and the waters were choppy and hazardous, with sudden squalls and unexpected lightning storms that broke without warning. Few merchant captains dared risk craft, crew and cargo at such a chancy time of year. Hence they sailed north all that day unseen.
Aedir the Sun-god declined slowly, hour by hour, in the West, until at length the azure sky darkened gradually with film on film of deepening gloom, while the horizon of the West became a glorious furnace of crimson and gold.
They had made splendid time up the Gulf, and
would reach the harbor of Patanga perhaps before the coming of dawn. Thongor was at a loss to, explain the unusual swiftness of their passage, for when he had sailed forth from Patanga aboard the Scimitar, the voyage south to Tarakus had taken much longer. But his grim jaw tightened and his gold eyes burned with inscrutable fires: when wizards go forth to war, the ordinary laws of Space and Time are sometimes set aside. Yes, it was doubtless the dark work of that devil Belshathla! The last of the Gray Magicians of Nianga had doubtless eased their seapassage with the cunning; skills of his demon-wrested arts.
As night came down on dark and shadowy wings across the far edges of the world, the men of the Scimitar prepared them for their great battle. The silent decks were crowded with hard-faced men, and the hand of every sailor held naked steel. Some were armed with the slim rapiers of Tsargol or the wicked cutlasses of Tarakus, others with the curved sabres of Cadorna, or the straight-bladed longswords of Patanga. Sash and belt and harness bristled with dirk and dagger. The archers were ready to ascend into the rigging at the command, and from high perches aloft they would send a barbed rain of feathered death whistling down to sweep the decks of the Red Wolf with swift shafts.
Barim Redbeard had donned a burnished breastplate of bright steel, and a horned steel helm, and glittering greaves shod his booted legs. So that the mirror-like cuirass would not catch and flash forth a vagrant glimmer of light, to catch a wary eye aboard some near ship, he had robed himself in a surcoat of dark wool that concealed the steel armor. The glittering helm he hid beneath a turban-like affair of dark cloth wound about his brows. His great battle-axe hung from its baldric which was slung across his chest and shoulders on the outside of the long robe, so that its hilt would be ready to hand when need came.
Thongor was stripped to a plain warrior’s harness of black leather, set with studs of iron. No badge or medallion of precious metals displayed his rank; no jewels flashed at collar or girdle or scabbard. The great Lord of the West, the Sarkon of the Empire of the Six Cities, went into battle clad like any common warrior of savage Valkarth.
Charn Thovis, too, wore no badge or insignia of his noble rank, but was clothed like a simple warrior. His black harness revealed his lithe and supple body, that of a trim young fighting man. But in contrast with the great Barbarian who stood next to him, the young chanthar seemed insignificant. For Thongor towered over him, aye, and over all the seamen that stood near; thewed like some savage gladiator of the Gods was Thongor, with the broad shoulders, the deep chest, the long and powerfully-muscled arms of a mighty Champion. His coarse mane of thick hair was held back from his scowling brows by a band of unadorned leather. The massy hilt of Sarkozan lay near his strong hand. His great chest rose and fell with deep, quiet breathing. His face was dark and expressionless, but his eyes blazed with golden fire like the burning orbs of a lion in its kingly wrath.
Aye, Thongor was ready to do battle to save his city …
The crew of the Scimitar had massed between decks, waiting for darkness to fall. Here were they well concealed from sight, for ahead and behind the raised decks of forecastle and aft sheltered them from observation. High mantlets rose above the benches of the oarsmen, serving to shelter the rowers from arrows in case of assault, and this high wooden wall cast the low deck into deep gloom and helped hide them from any eye. But the chances that they would be seen were very slight, as the Scimitar rode far to one side and in the very last rank of the armada of Tarakus. There were no corsair galleys behind to observe them, and none lay to starboard, where the dully gleaming waters of the Gulf fell away to the forested coasts of northern Ptartha.
As the Sun flared crimson in the West, as the world darkened around them, they waited silently for the fall of night and the desperate battle that lay ahead.
BARIM Redbeard growled a curse and glowered at the star-gemmed sky. The fortune of the Gods, it would seem, was not with them this night, and the prayers of Karm Karvus and Charn Thovis had not been heard in Paradise.
For the great golden Moon of old Lemuria rose slowly up over the edges of the earth to flood the dark sky, the darker land, and the gleaming sea, with her pallid and silken light.
Barim knew that his chances of withdrawing from the body of the fleet without being seen were now very much lessened by this, moonrise. For Illana the Moon Lady showed the full splendor of her shining face this night, and torrents of silver fell across the decks and glittered, flashing, on a thousand dancing waves. It was as if they sailed through a mirror of silver flame, and against the brilliantly illuminated waters of the moonlit Gulf the low black mass of the Scimitar would be all too distinctly visible.
Growling barbarous oaths, he chewed fiercely on his mustaches, eyeing the flashing waters about them. Mayhap, in an hour or two, the Moon would hide her golden face behind thick clouds, for the winds of this cold month of Zorah were at work far above the world, and their swift and viewless wings had built tall castles of dark clouds athwart the West.
But against the hopes of this eventuality, he could not wait. Soon, an hour or two, in the very deep of night, he must be about it, and the galley Scimitar must detach herself from amongst the ranks of the pirate ships to glide far to the East, up and around the main body of the fleet, so as to strike at the Red Wolf where it sailed, as the flagship of the armada, in the foremost rank. And could he do this, unobserved? Would not the watchful eye of some guard stationed high at the masthead of a nearby ship see the black hull of the Scimitar cutting through the bright and silvery waves? Alas, it was all too possible. But he must risk the chance of discovery, for there was no other way. Ere dawn shone crimson in the East, the harbor of Patanga would heave into view and the invasion would begin …
Cursing and grumbling, Barim Redbeard strode his deck angrily, fiercely demanding of his Gods a thick cover of clouds that the shining face of the Moon might be hidden thereby, and her bright radiance quenched in gloom.
AND at this same moment, on the decks of the Red Wolf far to the front of the fleet, Kashtar himself was snarling curses at the shining glory of the Moon. Well did he know that the vigilant flying boats of the Air Guard of Patanga circled tirelessly through the night skies above the City of the Flame, and well was he aware how far out into the Gulf their alert pilots could see from so great a height. He, too, wished for cloudy darkness and the cover of night, so that the bulk of his fleet might creep well within the harbor wall of Patanga before the inevitable alarm aroused the fighting men of the city.
But, unlike the captain of the Scimitar, the master of the Red Wolf had a wizard aboard his ship—and no mere warlock whose abilities were limited to the mixing of philtres or the casting of a minor curse, but one of the mightiest adepts of the Secret Science then alive upon the bosom of the Earth, Belshathla, the last of the Gray Magicians of God-cursed and demon-haunted Nianga, armed with the hellish lore of a lost age of sorcery and science.
And the cunning of Belshathla had taken well into account the need for a secret and unobserved approach to the City of the Flame. For days he had studied the problem, searching through the hieroglyphic pages of age-old tomes of elder magic his hands had rescued from the dark sands of the Gray Barrens and from the oblivion of lost aeons.
There was a mighty spell by which the ships of Tarakus could be rendered invisible to the eyes of men … but this spell involved the use of powerful magnetic fields and the bending and twisting awry of the very waves of light themselves, and over water this Operation of the Art could not be accomplished.
The crumbling pages of the ancient books of sorcery also held a vast and terrible formula whereby the minds of men could be made insensible to the approach of many ships … this formula, alas, required the skills of nine high adepts of the Secret Science, whose combined strength of will was needed to beguile the brains of so many warriors as might well be watching the waters of the Gulf from the harbor front or guard towers or frowning walls of Patanga, or from the ever-circling airboats of Thom Pervis. And Belshathla was the only adept of his Sch
ool alive on earth in this age; save for him alone the grim sciences of Nianga were unknown. So this Operation, too, he was forced to pass over in his search.
But the old grimoires held a third method he might employ to render the invasion fleet hidden from the watchful sentinels of Patanga.
This Operation involved the conjuring up of Yathlabnazoor the Demon of the Mists, who could be forced by potent talismans to enshroud the entire Tarakan fleet with his airy cloak of insubstantial vapor, thus concealing the armada from every eye. For to ordinary mortals, whose gaze could not penetrate the gray robes of Yathlabnazoor, ’twould seem but a mighty and impenetrable bank of fog. This magical Operation he set about performing … and thus, in his ignorance, he veiled behind the symbolic terminology of Elder Magic a simple scientific experiment which utilized an understanding of the forces of nature, and was not really built upon the Shadowy Lords of Chaos at all. But since Belshathla would get the result he wanted, it did not really matter whether he worked through science or sorcery; the result was the same.
A curious instrument was erected on the foredeck of the corsair flagship. A tall shaft of pure copper rose like a slender mast into the clear moonlight, and at its base a mysterious mechanism glittered, heavy insulated coils writhing about the housing of a powerful transformer. As Belshathla bent over the ominous shape of the instrument, muttering spells and chanting a rune to the Demon of the Mists, he set the machinery into action. Even his well-trained mind but dimly comprehended the nature of the Operation he had set into motion, and to his brilliant, but deranged mentality, cloaked as it was in ancient superstition, the positive and negative fields of a powerful electrical generator were invisible Spirits of Power trapped within the core of the heavy transformer, and the crackling blue fire of the electrical discharge that fell in long sparks from the copper antenna, as the current built up these fields, were mindless but potent Elementals from Sithya the Dominion of the Fire Spirits. The metallic stench of ozone that wafted about him was, to his nostrils, the sulphur and brimstone of the Ultimate Pit, and he reveled in the powers that lay, chained and ready, under his trembling hand.
