The Sword of Rhiannon

by Leigh Brackett

  They had the brief advantage of surprise, for the attack had come so quickly on the heels of the alarm that swords were still half drawn, bows still unstrung. But it wouldn’t last long. Carse knew well how short a time it would last.

  “Strike! Strike hard while you can!”

  With belaying pins, with their shackles, and with their fists, the galley slaves charged in and the soldiers met them. Carse with his whip and his knife, Jaxart howling the word Khondor like a battle-cry, naked bodies against mail, desperation against discipline. The Swimmers slipped like brown shadows through the fray and the slave with the broken wings had somehow possessed himself of a sword. Seamen reinforced the soldiers but still the wolves came up out of the pit.

  From the forecastle and the steersman’s platform bowmen began to take their toll but the fight became so closely locked that they had to stop for fear of killing their own men. The salt-sweet smell of blood rose on the air. The decks were slippery with it. Carse saw that the slaves were being driven back and the number of the dead was growing.

  In a furious surge he broke through to the cabin. The Sarks must have thought it strange that Ywain and Scyld had not appeared but they had had little time to do anything about it. Carse pounded on the cabin door, shouting Boghaz’ name.

  The Valkisian drew the bar, and Carse burst in.

  “Carry the wench up to the steersman’s platform,” he panted. “I’ll cut your way.”

  He snatched up the sword of Rhiannon and went out again with Boghaz behind him, bearing Ywain in his arms.

  The ladder was only a short two paces from the door. The bowmen had come down to fight and there was no one up on the platform but the frightened Sark sailor who clung to the tiller bar. Carse, swinging the great sword, cleared the way and held the ladder foot while Boghaz climbed up and set Ywain on her feet where all could see her.

  “Look you!” he bellowed. “We have Ywain!”

  He did not need to tell them. The sight of her, bound and gagged in the hands of a slave, was like a blow to the soldiers and like a magic potion to the rebels. Two mingled sounds went up, a groan and a cheer.

  Someone found Scyld’s body and dragged it out on deck. Doubly leaderless now, the Sarks lost heart. The tide of battle turned then and the slaves took their advantage in both hands.

  The sword of Rhiannon led them. It slashed the halliards that brought the dragon flag of Sark plunging down from the masthead. And under its blade the last Sark soldier died.

  There was an abrupt cessation of sound and movement. The black galley drifted with the freshening wind. The sun was low on the horizon. Carse climbed wearily to the steersman’s platform.

  Ywain, still fast in Boghaz’s grip, followed him, eyes full of hell-fire.

  Carse went to the forward edge of the platform and stood leaning on the sword. The slaves, exhausted with fighting and drunk with victory, gathered on the deck below like a ring of panting wolves.

  Jaxart came out from searching the cabins. He shook his dripping blade up at Ywain and shouted, “A fine lover she kept in her cabin! The spawn of Caer Dhu, the stinking Serpent!”

  There was an instant reaction from the slaves. They were tense and bristling again at that name, afraid even in their numbers. Carse made his voice heard with difficulty.

  “The thing is dead. Jaxart—will you cleanse the ship?”

  Jaxart paused before he turned to obey. “How did you know it was dead?”

  Carse said, “I killed it.”

  The men stared up at him as though he were something more than human. The awed muttering went around—“He slew the Serpent!”

  With another man Jaxart returned to the cabin and brought the body out. No word was spoken. A wide lane was cleared to the lee rail and the black, shrouded thing was carried along it, faceless, formless, hidden in its robe and cowl, symbol even in death of infinite evil.

  Again Carse fought down that cold repellent fear and the touch of strange anger. He forced himself to watch.

  The splash it made as it fell was shockingly loud in the stillness. Ripples spread in little lines of fire and died away.

  Then men began to talk again. They began to shout up to Ywain, taunting her. Someone yelled for her blood and there would have been a stampede up the ladder but that Carse threatened them with his long blade.

  “No! She’s our hostage and worth her weight in gold.” He did not specify how but he knew the argument would satisfy them for a while. And much as he hated Ywain he somehow did not want to see her torn to pieces by this pack of wild beasts.

  He steered their thoughts to another subject.

  “We have to have a leader now. Whom will you choose?”

  There was only one answer to that. They roared his name until it deafened him, and Carse felt a savage pleasure at the sound of it. After days of torment it was good to know he was a man again, even in an alien world.

  When he could make himself heard he said, “All right. Now listen well. The Sarks will kill us by slow death for what we’ve done—if they catch us. So here’s my plan. We’ll join the free rovers, the Sea-Kings who lair at Khondor!”

  To the last man they agreed and the name Khondor rang up into the sunset sky.

  The Khonds among the slaves were like wild men. One of them stripped a length of yellow cloth from the tunic of a dead soldier, fashioned a banner out of it and ran it up in place of the dragon flag of Sark.

  At Carse’s request, Jaxart took over the handling of the galley and Boghaz carried Ywain down again and locked her in the cabin.

  The men dispersed, eager to be rid of their shackles, eager to loot the bodies of clothes and weapons and to dip into the wine casks. Only Naram and Shallah remained, looking up at Carse in the afterglow.

  “Do you disagree?” he asked them.

  Shallah’s eyes glowed with the same eery light that he had seen in them before.

  “You are a stranger,” she said softly. “Stranger to us, stranger to our world. And I say again that I can sense a black shadow in you that makes me afraid, for you will cast it wherever you go.”

  She turned from him then and Naram said, “We go homeward now.”

  The two Swimmers poised for a moment on the rail. They were free now, free of their chains, and their bodies ached with the joy of it, stretching upward, supple, sure. Then they vanished overside.

  After a moment Carse saw them again, rolling and plunging like dolphins, racing each other, calling to each other in their soft clear voices as they made the waves foam flame.

  Deimos was already high. The afterglow was gone and Phobos came up swiftly out of the east. The sea turned glowing silver. The Swimmers went away toward the west, trailing their wakes of fire, a tracery of sparkling light that grew fainter and vanished altogether.

  The black galley stood on for Khondor, her taut sails dark against the sky. And Carse remained as he was, standing on the platform, holding the sword of Rhiannon between his hands.

  CHAPTER X

  The Sea Kings

  Carse was leaning on the rail, watching the sea, when the Sky Folk came. Time and distance had dropped behind the galley. Carse had rested. He wore a clean kilt, he was washed and shaven, his wounds were healing. He had regained his ornaments and the hilt of the long sword gleamed above his left shoulder.

  Boghaz was beside him. Boghaz was always beside him. He pointed now to the western sky and said, “Look there.”

  Carse saw what he took to be a flight of birds in the distance. But they grew rapidly larger and presently he realized that they were men, or half-men, like the slave with the broken wings.

  They were not slaves and their wings stretched wide, flashing in the sun. Their slim bodies, completely naked, gleamed like ivory. They were incredibly beautiful, arrowing down out of the blue.

  They had a kinship with the Swimmers. The Swimmers were the perfect children of the sea and these were brother to wind and cloud and the clean immensity of the sky. It was as though some master hand had shaped
them both out of separate elements, moulding them in strength and grace that was freed from all the earth-bound clumsiness of men, dreams made into joyous flesh.

  Jaxart, who was at the helm, called down to them, “Scouts from Khondor!”

  Carse mounted to the platform. The men gathered on the deck to watch as the four Sky Folk came down in a soaring rush.

  Carse glanced forward to the sheer of the prow. Lorn, the winged slave, had taken to brooding there by himself, speaking to no one. Now he stood erect and one of the four went to him.

  The others came to rest on the platform, folding their bright wings with a whispering rustle.

  They greeted Jaxart by name, looking curiously at the long black galley and the hard-bitten mongrel crew that sailed her and, above all, at Carse. There was something in their searching gaze that reminded the Earthman uncomfortably of Shallah.

  “Our chief,” Jaxart told them. “A barbarian from the back door of Mars but a man of his hands and no fool, either. The Swimmers will have told the tale, how he took the ship and Ywain of Sark together.”

  “Aye.” They acknowledged Carse with grave courtesy.

  The Earthman said, “Jaxart has told me that all who fight Sark may have freedom of Khondor. I claim that right.”

  “We will carry word to Rold, who heads the council of the Sea Kings.”

  The Khonds on deck began to shout their own messages then, the eager words of men who have been a long time away from home. The Sky Men answered in their clear sweet voices and presently darted away, their opinions beating up into the blue air, higher and higher, growing tiny in the distance.

  Lorn remained standing in the bow, watching until there was nothing left but empty sky.

  “We’ll raise Khondor soon,” said Jaxart and Carse turned to speak to him. Then some instinct made him look back, and he saw that Lorn was gone.

  There was no sign of him in the water. He had gone overside without a sound and he must have sunk like a drowning bird, pulled down by the weight of his useless wings.

  Jaxart growled, “It was his will and better so.” He cursed the Sarks and Carse smiled an ugly smile.

  “Take heart,” he said, “we may thrash them yet. How is it that Khondor has held out when Jekkara and Valkis fell?”

  “Because not even the scientific weapons of the Sarks’ evil allies, the Dhuvians, can touch us there. You’ll understand why when you see Khondor.”

  Before noon they sighted land, a rocky and forbidding coast. The cliffs rose sheer out of the sea and behind them forested mountains towered like a giant’s wall. Here and there a narrow fiord sheltered a fishing village and an occasional lonely steading clung to the high pasture land, a collar of white flame along the cliffs.

  Carse sent Boghaz to the cabin for Ywain. She had remained there under guard and he had not seen her since the mutiny—except once.

  It had been the first night after the mutiny. He had with Boghaz and Jaxart been examining the strange instruments that they had found in the inner cabin of the Dhuvian.

  “These are Dhuvian weapons that only they know how to use,” Boghaz had declared. “Now we know why Ywain had no escort ship. She needed none with a Dhuvian and his weapons aboard her galley.”

  Jaxart looked at the things with loathing and fear. “Science of the accursed Serpent! We should throw them after his body.”

  “No,” Carse said, examining the things. “If it were possible to discover the way in which these devices operate—”

  He had soon found that it would not be possible without prolonged study. He knew science fairly well, yes. But it was the science of his own different world.

  These instruments had been built out of a scientific knowledge alien in nearly every way to his own. The science of Rhiannon, of which these Dhuvian weapons represented but a small part!

  Carse should recognize the little hypnosis machine that the Dhuvian had used upon him in the dark. A little metal wheel set with crystal stars, that revolved by a slight pressure of the fingers. And when he set it turning it whispered a singing note that so chilled his blood with memory that he hastily set the thing down.

  The other Dhuvian instruments were even more incomprehensible. One consisted of a large lens surrounded by oddly asymmetrical crystal prisms. Another had a heavy metal base in which flat metal vibrations were mounted. He could only guess that these weapons exploited the laws of alien and subtle optical and sonic sciences.

  “No man can understand the Dhuvian science,” muttered Jaxart. “Not even the Sarks, who have alliance with the Serpent.”

  He stared at the instruments with the half-superstitious hatred of a nonscientific folk for mechanical purposes.

  “But perhaps Ywain, who is daughter of Sark’s king, might know,” Carse speculated. “It’s worth trying.”

  He went to the cabin where she was being guarded with that purpose in mind. Ywain sat there and she wore now the shackles he had worn.

  He came in upon her suddenly, catching her as she sat with her head bowed and her shoulders bent in utter weariness. But at the sound of the door she straightened and watched him, level-eyed. He saw how white her face was and how the shadow lay in the hollows of the bones.

  He did not speak for a long time. He had no pity for her. He looked at her, liking the taste of victory, liking the thought that he could do what he wanted with her.

  When he asked her about the Dhuvian scientific weapons they had found Ywain laughed mirthlessly.

  “You must be an ignorant barbarian indeed if you think the Dhuvians would instruct even me in their science. One of them came with me to overawe with those things the Jekkaran ruler, who was waxing rebellious. But S’San would not let me even touch those things.”

  Carse believed her. It accorded with what Jaxart had said, that the Dhuvians jealously guarded their scientific weapons from even their allies, the Sarks.

  “Besides,” Ywain said mockingly, “why should Dhuvian science interest you if you hold the key to the far greater science locked in Rhiannon’s tomb?”

  “I do hold that key and that secret,” Carse told her and his answer took the mockery out of her face.

  “What are you going to do with it?” she asked.

  “On that,” Carse said grimly, “my mind is clear. Whatever power that tomb gives me I’ll use against Sark and Caer Dhu—and I hope it’s enough to destroy you down to the last stone in your city!”

  Ywain nodded. “Well answered. And now—what about me? Will you have me flogged and chained to an oar? Or will you kill me here?”

  He shook his head slowly, answering her last question. “I could have let my wolves tear you if I had wished you killed now.”

  Her teeth showed briefly in what might have been a smile. “Small satisfaction in that. Not like doing it with one’s own hands.”

  “I might have done that too, here in the cabin.”

  “And you tried, yet did not. Well then—what?” Carse did not answer. It came to him that, whatever he might do to her, she would still mock him to the very end. There was the steel of pride in this woman.

  He had marked her though. The gash on her cheek would heal and fade but never vanish. She would never forget him as long as she lived. He was glad he had marked her.

  “No answer?” she mocked. “You’re full of indecision for a conqueror.”

  Carse went around the table to her with a pantherish step. He still did not answer because he did not know. He only knew that he hated her as he had never hated anything in his life before. He bent over her, his face dead white, his hands open and hungry.

  She reached up swiftly and found his throat. Her fingers were as strong as steel and the nails bit deep.

  He caught her wrists and bent them away, the muscles of his arms standing out like ropes against her strength. She strove against him in silent fury and then suddenly she broke. Her lips parted as she strained for breath, and Carse suddenly set his own lips against them.

  There was no love, no tenderness in
that kiss. It was a gesture of male contempt, brutal and full of hate. Yet for one strange moment then her sharp teeth had met in his lower lip and his mouth was full of blood and she was laughing.

  “You barbarian swine,” she whispered. “Now my brand is on you.”

  He stood looking at her. Then he reached out and caught her by the shoulders and the chair went over with a crash.

  “Go ahead,” she said, “If it pleases you.”

  He wanted to break her between his two hands. He wanted …

  He thrust her from him and went out and he had not passed the door since.

  Now he fingered the new scar on his lip and watched her come onto the deck with Boghaz. She stood very straight in her jeweled hauberk but the lines around her mouth were deeper and her eyes, for all their bitter pride, were somber.

  He did not go to her. She was left alone with her guard, and Carse could glance at her covertly. It was easy to guess what was in her mind. She was thinking how it felt to stand on the deck of her own ship, a prisoner. She was thinking that the brooding coast ahead was the end of all her voyaging. She was thinking that she was going to die.

  The cry came down from the masthead—“Khondor!”

  Carse saw at first only a great craggy rock that towered high above the surf, a sort of blunt cape between two fiords. Then, from that seemingly barren and uninhabitable place, Sky Folk came flying until the air throbbed with the beating of their wings. Swimmers came also, like a swarm of little comets that left trails of fire in the sea. And from the fiord mouths came longships, smaller than the galley, swift as hornets, with shields along their sides.

  The voyage was over. The black galley was escorted with cheers and shouting into Khondor.

  Carse understood now what Jaxart had meant. Nature had made a virtually impregnable fortress out of the rock itself, walled in by impassable mountains from land attack, protected by unscalable cliffs from the sea, its only gateway the narrow twisting fiord on the north side. That too was guarded by ballistas which could make the fiord a death trap for any ship that entered it.