by Andre Norton
Tarlach was not so foolishly optimistic or so ignorant of the medium through which he moved as to imagine he could hope to avoid all injury. The water was too dark and the material littering it of too high a density for that even were the surface dead calm.
He proved more successful at avoiding obstacles than he might have hoped. On four occasions, he did hit against rocks he was either not a quick enough, or a strong enough, swimmer to escape entirely, but those were mere grazes, bruising his flesh but drawing no blood or so much as tearing the sturdy material covering him. For a time, during the second of these incidents, he had cause for fear, when he surfaced into a cresting wind wave. It had caught him up in its mindless anger, but he was able to regain enough control to dive again and was soon below the reach of its fury, before it could break him against the nearest of the three islands in whose midst he had floundered.
At last, the dark shadow shape of a warship loomed very near to the Falconer. It looked huge and ominous, a patch of infinitely deep blackness against an almost equally lightless sky.
His heart beat rapidly. It was not fear spurring him now, or at least not the deadening dread he had known since he had first conceived this mission. The familiar tension that ever preceded battle was upon him.
The man dove, and when he rose again, he was beneath the curved side of the first of the three targets assigned to him.
He remained well back in its shadow so that his eyes might accustom themselves to the additional darkness and, thus, be sensitive to whatever light there was in the sky beyond. The contrast must be sufficient for him to detect the anchor rope with some kind of reasonable speed …
There! He darted toward it as swiftly and silently as a shark and grasped it. Tarlach took yet another deep breath and followed the line down to the point where he would make his cut.
Hooking his left arm and leg around it to give himself support, he drew the foremost of his daggers and brought it to bear upon the rope.
The fibers were thickly packed and tough, and even his keen-edged weapon did not slice through them quickly or with any ease. The task was complicated, too, by the fact that it had to be accomplished well below the surface so that no chance movement of either the vessel or the water around her could expose the sabotaged moorings before the time for their breaking was come.
His relatively slow progress did not cause him to fear discovery. No one could have seen him even were the deck above crowded with sharp-eyed men looking directly at this place, nor would the slight motion his sawing imparted to the line give him away, not with the movement of the warship under the lash of wind and wave. As for sound, he made none, and he would have felt little concern were the very opposite true; he doubted he should be detected this night if he hammered directly upon the hull.
At last, he replaced his knife in its scabbard. A little of the rope still remained intact, enough to hold against the punishment the vessel was now taking. When the tempest worsened another few degrees, only a very few, it would give.
There would be another to assume its work. The Sultanite sailors were not such fools as to trust to one anchor in a gale the like of this.
The Captain was not long in discovering it and in subjecting it to the same treatment as he had given to the first, save that he left barely enough of it that it should not part prematurely to give the invaders warning of their danger; one glance at the severed end of it would be sufficient to reveal that no natural force had caused it to separate.
That done, he moved on to his second target. It was very close, and he was fortunate in locating one of the lines within minutes after reaching its shadow.
He was more accustomed to handling the Sultanites’ ropes by then, as well, and cut it perceptibly more quickly than he had that first one.
Tarlach sought for its mate, but it eluded his eyes.
He raised himself out of the water in an effort to gain a better perspective. The cut rope to which he clung was more than a little slippery, and he would not have cared to climb far on it, but it gave his arms and legs purchase enough for this, particularly with the sea still supporting the better part of his weight.
His eyes slitted with the effort of focusing in this grossly inefficient light as he resumed his search.
A mighty blast of wind, the strongest thus far released by the storm, struck the vessel above him.
The hull rolled under the impact of it. The man's attention was fully fixed on the darkness beyond, and he did not become aware of his danger until it came crashing down upon him.
His skull seemed to explode. His limbs lost their power to grasp, and he sank as if weighted. He tried to fight the water, but his body would not respond. The neck must be broken. …
Tarlach's mind returned to find his lungs screaming for air. He could not have been senseless for more than a moment, he thought numbly, or they would have begun sucking in water.
Even before he could begin to curse whatever power had restored him to consciousness only so that he must experience both his helplessness and his dying, his arms and legs began thrashing wildly in a purely instinctive effort to save himself.
Feeling almost drunk with relief, he forced himself under control and sped upward, not caring where or how he broke surface only so long as this horrible burning anguish in his chest should be ended.
The mercenary found himself very near to the partially severed rope from which he had dropped. He grasped that and clung to it, drawing in great draughts of cold, impossibly sweet air.
Gradually, his breathing returned to a rate more nearly approximating its norm, and he stirred himself to complete his work.
He discovered the second rope at last, located considerably farther from the first than had been the case on the other warship. That notwithstanding, he was but moments in reaching it, not much longer in sabotaging it.
His final target lay a goodly distance from the first two, from all the rest of the fleet. The Sultanites apparently preserved preeminence of person even under battle conditions, and this was their flagship. There was no crowding of her.
The Falconer submerged. His recent accident had not affected his ability to swim, he thought wryly, although his head throbbed violently after it. No one following his grim profession could afford to study himself too closely if he hoped to live very long, much less to prosper at all.
Flagship or nay, his last victim was no better secured than her sisters had been. He found the ropes, and soon she, too, rode with unsuspected death hovering over her.
Tarlach rested for a few minutes. His heart felt strangely heavy. His work was done, successfully done, yet it was not in him to rejoice. His own trial was far from ended. The ordeal of the return remained, the long swim back to the cliff. There would be no stages to break the constant labor, the constant need for vigilance and almost superhuman concentration upon his surroundings the increased strength of the storm now demanded. He would have to complete it in one unbroken dash across this unfriendly ocean, knowing all the while that her most potent hate would be reserved for the very end when he would be most wearied by his long efforts.
The Captain filled his lungs and dove. He had proven himself the equal of this challenge already tonight and would meet it as well a second time. The quick decisions he would be compelled to make and sheer physical effort would soon force his imagination back into more acceptable bounds.
So did it prove. He came into even less trouble, in fact, than he had encountered upon the approach. The pounding inner urge for speed, the nervousness for his mission no longer drove him, and he reduced his pace a little, giving himself a few precious extra moments in which to spot potentially deadly obstacles around him and plan his best course for the avoiding of each.
Although he longed for the peace, the comfort, he would find at its crest, the cliff seemed all too soon to loom up over him, casting the sea below into the deepest shadow.
He was in greater danger now than at any other time during this night save for that moment when his care
lessness had given the rolling warship power over him. Other swimmers would be converging on the cliff face below the ledge. He had to avoid colliding with any of them and had somehow to escape being smashed against the unyielding stone while searching for one of the ropes.
That hunt proved monstrously hard. A great number had been lowered. He knew that, but he knew, too, that each was no more than a slender thread tossing in the vast, dark fury of the storm. It was not possible to seek for them on the surface where what little light there was might have aided his search. That was maelstrom only. No creature could survive long there.
He remained under water as much as possible, but his body needed air, and each time he was forced to go up for it, he was cruelly buffeted in that madness of breaking waves and the backwash they created until he wondered if he would meet his death here after all.
It was a bitter long time before the man succeeded in finding and grasping one of the precious lines. Once he did, he followed it down with nearly frantic haste lest the next of the eternally charging breakers wrest it from his hold again.
His lungs were nigh to bursting by the time he reached the weighted loop that formed its end. Ignoring his pain, he worked his legs through the noose and cut away the stones holding it down. Three times in quick succession, he raised himself up and then dropped upon the rope with the full force and weight at his command. That done, he sat back in the loop to wait.
Would it be enough? Would the prearranged signal be read by those above, or would they lay the vibrations to the workings of wind and wave?
They must act soon! Already, his chest heaved, struggling against the will that kept his lungs from drawing in the water that would end their agony and his life.
Tarlach knew he could hold on only seconds longer before that reflex conquered. He began to make his way to the surface, drawing the line up with him. By doing this, he realized full well that he could cause the rope to foul, but to remain longer was death.
The line tightened. It began to rise swiftly.
He ceased his own efforts and permitted it to catch up to him, turning all his strength and will to battle desperately against the nigh unto overwhelming urge to breathe, only to breathe …
His head broke water. He drew in air with such speed and force that it set him coughing. That did not matter. Nothing did beyond the fact that his body was once more free to take what it needed of the precious gas.
The Falconer remained in that state of numbed euphoria barely long enough for him to be drawn free of the water. There was yet work for him to do if he was to escape injury on this final stage of his attack.
As he had done when he had been lowered into the sea, he used his legs to keep himself away from the wall. It was a harder task this time. The wind was higher and stronger. It tore at him viciously, threatening to rip him from his place even now, when safety was so close.
The rain was enough in itself to throw him down. It fell in a seemingly solid sheet that struck with the force of a blow, its power redoubling the strength of the gale driving it.
Tarlach rested his forehead against the rope during a rare momentary lull. He was infinitely glad he was not forced to actually climb.
He could not have done so. He had been too long in the water. His muscles missed the buoyancy of it, and his usually supple body felt as heavy and unwieldy as if it had been fashioned out of some dense tropical wood. It would not have obeyed him well enough had he tried to put such a demand upon it. He had been all too right in ordering that the rescue of the swimmers be handled in this manner.
The journey up the cliff was of too short duration for cold to be a danger at the present temperature, but still, it was a bitter lash, as if nature herself would score him for the lives his deeds of this night would cause to be lost. It knifed through his saturated clothes like the talons of those un-nameable things native to the caverns of which the Great Hall of the Demons itself was but a part.
His hands were growing numb, but the man only clamped them the more tightly. If they loosened now, he would crash back, down, probably to be broken upon the cliff as the sea seized him once more.
Would this weary ascent never end?
Tarlach compelled his impatience to quieten. He ceased to battle his discomfort, accepting that there could be no escaping it. His part was to endure, and this he was determined to do in a manner befitting a Falconer officer. Whatever his present misery, he knew it would not last much longer.
It did not. He saw the lip that marked the edge of the ledge scant inches above him. Hands reached over to steady and lift him. Then he was standing upon firm ground, leaning heavily on Brennan for support. A cloak was wrapped about him and a flask held to his lips. The brandy burned pleasantly in his mouth and sent a thin stream of warmth flowing down through his frozen body.
Rorick was there as well. He took part of the swimmer's weight from Brennan.
The two Lieutenants urged him to begin moving back toward the rear of the ledge and the steep path leading down into the valley.
This, the Captain resisted. He could not go yet. …
Brennan understood what held him.
“Una is already down,” he shouted, almost screamed, to make himself heard above the combined roar of the gale and the tempest-lashed waves; there was no fear that his voice would carry to alert their foemen now. “You are one of the last.”
Tarlach nodded his thanks. He went with his comrades, allowing them to more than half carry him to the place where his mare was waiting and to lift him onto her saddle.
Brennan mounted as well, and the two mercenaries rode for the shelter of the round tower, leaving Rorick to return to the work above.
16
A dull, grayish light filled his chamber when the Falconer Captain awoke. The air was cold outside the heavy blankets covering him, and he could hear the muted howling of wind and rain and sharp, terrifyingly loud explosions of thunder. Those last accompanied searing flashes of white brilliance so intense that he was forced for a time to screen his eyes beneath the covers until they could become somewhat adapted to the enormous alterations in illumination within the room.
He shuddered in his heart to think of the fate of anyone unfortunate enough to be in the water when even one of those awesome bolts streaked down to meet it.
A sickness filled him. If he and his comrades had done their work well, there should be many men now helpless before that fearsome force.
Ignoring the chill against his bare shoulders, he sat up.
Brennan was standing by the window. He had been gazing at the world outside, whatever little of it was visible through the turmoil of the rampaging elements, but turned when his chief stirred.
“You might as well lie back again. The Lady Una has confined most of you swimmers to bed for several hours yet. She wants you all well rested and somewhat recovered from your bruises before the attack begins.”
“She has put herself under similar bonds, I suppose?” Tarlach asked sarcastically.
“She is not hurt, and we need one of you to remain in command.”
“She cannot fight a war!”
“Rorick and I are there to keep an eye on things. Everything is well in hand. Nothing is going to happen with the storm lashing like this, but just in case, we have the wall manned and reinforcements at ready.” He scowled: “Stay where you are, will you! I never thought I would support a female's stand above my commander's, but she is the one showing sense. There will not be much time for sleep later, so make the most of the luxury now.”
Brennan came over to him. He sat on the edge of the bed. “Are you all right? That was a nasty crack you took on the back of your head. We were afraid for a long while that you. had suffered real injury from it.”
Tarlach grinned. “My skull is too thick for that.”
He recounted all that had happened.
The Lieutenant's lips tightened during the telling. “Your being in the water saved you,” he said after his commander had finished. “You were push
ed down through it instead of being crushed. Still, you were incredibly fortunate.”
“What about the others?”
“All safe. A few bad lacerations but nothing to hold anyone back from the fighting. Most are probably still asleep.”
“Where is Storm Challenger?” he asked, suddenly becoming aware of the empty perch beside his bed.
“Off sulking with Sunbeam and Bravery. They did not appreciate being confined to the round tower last night.”
“Falcons do not sulk!”
“The cat has apparently been giving them some lessons.” Brennan's expression grew troubled. “The Lady Una is fully bonded with her as well, is she not?”
“Yes,” Tarlach answered evenly.
“You have known this for some time?”
He nodded. “I was afraid of the reaction if it became known. First Seakeep needed us as a united force, and now our own people do.”
“I have said before that you must start trusting us, Tarlach.” Brennan arose and went to the window, turning his back on the other.
The Mountain Hawk's head lowered. He was shamed. The rebuke was merited, the more so in the face of the unwavering support this man, the whole company, had given him. “Pardon craved, my friend. I have had to feel my way along strange paths of late, and I fear many of my judgments may have been ill-considered.”
“I know that,” the Lieutenant responded wearily. “We all do, but if you must fight a different sort of war, we want to have our part in it, even as we will carry our part on the wall outside.”
Tarlach sighed. “I wish …”
He pressed his fingers to his eyes. He had more to concern him now than this. “What time is it?”
