A Time of Ghosts

by Robert Holdstock

  “To touch me is to die,” said Raven. She reached up and unclasped the cloak so that it fell from her shoulders and left her naked but for the short tunic, and the wide belt of throwing stars. The sailors cheered, gathered around their Captain, all eyes eager and fixed on Raven’s voluptuous body.

  Moonshadow, armed and tense, walked forward to stand in front of Raven. “If you have any sense at all you will forget this foolishness. We are three trained warriors to your untrained rabble. Tell them to throw down their arms.”

  His answer came in the form of a throwing knife that slashed through the air, narrowly missing him; the weapon thudded into the prow and Karmana plucked it deftly from the wood. But Raven beat her to the return throw—she plucked a throwing star from her belt and sent it skimming noiselessly through the damp air to slice through a sailor’s throat, taking half his gullet with it as it skittered over the side of the ship.

  The man’s scream of death provoked an immediate attack.

  Jharnok was not quite the first to die. Swinging his sabre he rushed at Moonshadow, who parried his wild strokes with an almost arrogant ease. He ducked under the fat man’s guard and pushed the point of his sword into the mound of flesh that hung across Jharnok’s belt.

  Jharnok froze, aware that he was probably a dead man, but conscious that Moonshadow’s hesitation meant something.

  Raven had been forced against the starboard railing by three of the more aggressive crewmen.

  One of them shouted, “Cut her as much as you like above the waist, but keep her intact below it!”

  Raven’s response to that was to slash across his face, removing his nose so that he toppled blindly, and shrieking like a dusk-hawk, into the waters that surged past them.

  One by one Raven cut the sailors down; Karmana had less success. She had been struck on the shoulder, and was bleeding profusely; through she danced and ducked, and tore guts and throats with neat, economic strokes of her blade, brute strength forced her down to the deck, and finally her sword was knocked from her grip.

  With a sabre point at her throat, she lay still, and the crewman who so held her prone reached down and tore the clothes from her body. The blood from her shoulder had trickled between her full breasts and was congealing in the tick mat of hair above her thighs. A man dropped to her and buried his muzzle in that warmth; Karmana’s fists clenched and her eyes closed, but with Zantarian alloy pricking blood from her gullet she was helpless.

  Then Moonshadow’s voice resounded across the deck. “If you value your Captain, lay down your arms.”

  “Do as he says!” screamed Jharnok, the pain and anxiety on his face only faintly relieved by the knowledge that he might survive. Blood spread about the entry point of Moonshadow’s blade in his belly. It ran along the gleaming metal and dripped in large quantities from the guard. Jharnok’s fists were clenched white and blood trickled from his lips where his teeth had clenched too soon with the agony of being cut open.

  Only briefly did the fighting stop, and then answering cry sent a cold chill down Raven’s neck. “Split the pig open, and be split yourself. We care not!”

  A sword cut hard at Raven, and a man tried to duck under her guard to grab her hands, she struck his neck from his shoulders and kicked the falling head so that it flew into the face of another. Moonshadow deftly ran his blade criss-cross through the Captain, and Jharnok, with a dying wail, fell to the deck, kicking and squirming in his own greasy viscera.

  Turning to help Karmana, Moonshadow slipped himself on the slime trail, and a moment later received a glancing blow on the head that split the skin, caused blood to spurt, and knocked him unconscious.

  The sailor, believing Moonshadow to be dead, turned from him, more anxious to take his turn with the captured girl.

  Raven, noticing her companion fall, was surprised by the sudden violence of the next attack; she felt her sword knocked from her grasp. She managed to unhook one of the throwing stars and sent it violently across the deck towards the man who was licking the blood from Karmana; she felt a fleeting satisfaction as she saw the weapon thud into the delicate flesh between the man’s haunches, probably not killing him but certainly inconveniencing him.

  Then the belt of stars had been torn from her.

  A blade thrust against her throat, forcing her head back. Pressed against the rail, the hard wood of which drove deeply into her shoulder blades, she raised her hands slightly, her mind racing as she sought a way out.

  A rough hand tore her shift from her. Eager fingers grasped her breasts, and she felt teeth bite the nipples of them. Coarse laughter accompanied a deep probe into her, a finger thrust into her sex with all the delicacy of a man filleting a fish. The same rough hands forced her to the deck, others wrenched her legs apart. Then she felt the weight of a man on her, his hands twining into her long, golden hair, as his member jarred against her dry flesh.

  “Quickly!” she heard a voice snap.

  “Hold her head up,” said another, and she felt her whole body wrenched around so that her face was free to please another’s lust.

  Karmana screamed, then choked loudly and started to weep…

  The boat surged!

  Whatever it was, it had come up beneath the ship and struck it a glancing blow. The vessel almost toppled over, throwing crewmen and the two women to the port rail in a large, ungainly heap. Raven, her wits as sharp as ever, saw Moonshadow’s unconscious form about to fall overboard and she grabbed for him, finding a grip upon his wrist. The boat righted, huge waves breaking across the starboard and drenching them. White-flecked water ran about the deck, washing away the blood of the dead, and even the dead themselves.

  The sail had ripped and it came crashing and billowing down to the deck, and Raven squirmed from beneath it, dragging Moonshadow with her. She grabbed her throwing stars and tied them round her naked waist, and looked around, then, for her sword.

  At that moment, with a noise like the surge of a waterspout and the roar of a volcano, the thing broke from the surface of the sea.

  It rose swiftly above the tiny vessel, an enormous neck, thick as a Lyandian tower, high as twenty men, a great, gleaming blue-green column of flexing muscle and sinew, topped by a monstrous single eye, edged around with flailing, dripping tentacles.

  Below the vast eye, which grew huge as the creature bent to peer at its prey, a cavernous mouth opened wide, and multiple rows of white, fanged teeth set Raven’s heart thundering, and brought her image of death that much closer.

  She ran with the now conscious Moonshadow behind the great mast. The creature’s head snapped at the mast broke it in the middle. The boat bobbed and swung around as the monster’s body heaved below it, and then the enormous neck swung back, the jaws snapped closed on one of the seamen as he ran from the threshing sail to the back of the ship.

  Bitten clean through, his legs collapsed to the deck while his torso trailing viscera in a single, endless strand, vanished into the creature’s muzzle.

  It roared again, the wind of its fishy-smelling and foul breath pushing the wooden vessel away from it.

  Crawling out from beneath the sail, the sailors screamed as they saw the hideous behemoth. They ran amok, struggling to find some way to hide from the beast. Many jumped overboard, most cowered behind barrels or the figureheads. One by one they were plucked by the darting neck and swallowed whole, still screaming.

  The man who had come close to raping Raven dropped on his knees before her, clutching her naked hips. Never had Raven seen such rank fear on a man’s face, never such deep felt terror and confusion.

  “Save us!” he screamed. Raven wondered, fleetingly, how she must seem to these imbeciles that they thought she might be able to save them.

  Karmana ran from the rear deck, clutching a cloak to her white body. The creature snapped at her and she struck at it with a curved sword. The beast reared back and a threshing tentacle struck the deck until it was hewn clean through. Karmana stopped, picked up Raven’s sword and tossed it to her fr
iend, who caught it deftly, despite the man who grappled for mercy at her feet. Again the beast struck towards Karmana, the jaw closing so near to her that the threshing tentacles around its eye brushed her hair.

  The sailor screamed as the sea creature’s shadow fell across him. His grip on Raven became almost too painful to bear.

  “Get up!” she napped, realising that this foolish man would impair her escape chances.

  The man stared up at her, and for a second she remembered the grip of his fingers and the frantic thrusting of his hips against her, the obscene swelling of him trying to stretch her in the most intimate of ways. She felt cold hatred.

  “Save me and I shall be your servant, I swear!”

  Raven smiled grimly. “Bite the edge of my sword as a sign of trust,” she said, and the man, only too eager to be saved, clamped his teeth on the razor sharp steel edge.

  In two brutal motions Raven sawed the man’s lower jaw from his skull, and left him thrashing and bubbling until the beast reached down and plucked him to his doom.

  “We are lost, Raven,” said Moonshadow, as they followed Karmana to the aft of the vessel, and crouched in the shelter of the rear deck, watching the great neck as it rose higher to allow another man to be swallowed.

  “It could eat a thousand of us and never be satisfied,” said Karmana.

  “We must count on remaining hidden, and hope that it will not break the ship.”

  And as if to tell Raven that it had heard her, an enormous forked tail threshed up from the port side and shattered the flimsy vessel with two strokes.

  They fell into the cold water and submerged, aware of the great bulk of the leviathan below them. Raven grasped hold of a spar and dragged Karmana to its temporary safety. Heads above water they saw Moonshadow floating in the shadow of the rear deck. The two women swam to him through the turmoil and confusion of the sea. Men still screamed and again and again the sun was blocked by the huge neck as it darted down to suck another sailor from the water.

  “Know you of any friendly sea gods?” asked Moonshadow as the three of them floated and listened to the slaughter.

  “Know you of any friendly bird gods?” asked Karmana, and Raven stared at her in surprise.

  “Bird gods?” And almost immediately she understood! Karmana was staring into the sky. Raven swam a little way out of the cover of the sinking ship and stared upwards.

  “By the All Mother, we are not yet done! We may well be saved, friend Moonshadow.”

  Moonshadow too watched the bird, and as the great black shape circled lower, wings spread, head lowered so that its great burning eyes could watch the scene below, so he grew aware of its immense size compared to the birds he had known.

  “A giant among our feathered friends indeed! But is it with us or against us? Comes it for pickings or a fight?”

  “A fight,” said Raven, and grinned. “The bird is known to me, and it has seen me. Watch.”

  Already the behemoth had seen the great curve-billed avian, and it towered even higher from the water, the small creatures in the waves forgotten in favour of this tastier morsel that swung around its head.

  Like a snake the beast swayed in a tight circle, eye watching the bird, mouth agape and ready to snap.

  Like a stone the bird suddenly fell towards the sea; the great neck flexed to follow it down; but as its winged nemesis fell, so it extended its claws and ripped a great wound in the green flesh of the beast.

  Blue liquid spouted and jetted across the ocean, and a high pitched keening threatened to deafen all those fragile humans left alive.

  “It has struck at the creature’s heart, or at a vulnerable point. By the Sword, our friend knows his business.” It was Raven who spoke thus, for she learned more of the forces that protected her with every passing day.

  Slowly the sea-beast subsided back into the ocean, all malevolence gone from it, all sparkle and lustre vanished from its eye.

  The blue ichor spread across the sea and enveloped Raven. She gagged at its stench and swum into open water to escape it, followed by her companions. As she floated there so the bird circled above them, and then it darted to the water’s surface and settled on a great floating wooden wall.

  Raven struck strongly for this raft and crawled across it, glad to get her naked body out of the water. She still clutched her precious sword. Karmana heaved herself on to the haven, next, and then came Moonshadow, gasping for breath. With their combined weight across its sturdy planks the raft was inches below the water, but it floated nonetheless, and would keep them from drowning.

  As they drifted at the mercy of the currents, so the bird passed overhead once again and a great billowing garment of the sail fell from its grasp, draping across the raft and its occupants.

  Then the bird was gone, wining eastwards, following the sea currents that would take Raven ashore, somewhere in the no-man’s-land south of Lym.

  A storm blew up during the night, and feeling like three wretched and miserable dogs, Raven, Karmana and the strangely weakened Moonshadow clung to the raft with a conviction that began to vanish as the night and the cruel seas wore on. Why drag on the misery? How much easier to slip below the waves and end it all. And yet their bodies remained rigid and frozen, grasping the straps they had made from the strips of the sail. Both women were clad in functional, supporting garments, no more than pieces of sail tied about their hips, waists and breasts. Their bodies were pierced and sore with wood splinters and knife woods; their throats craved fresh water, and their eyes and skin cried out for bathing in warm, scented liquids that would ease their pain and refresh them. But the greatest pain was the helplessness, the sure knowledge that only fate could control their actions now, that they could do nothing but cling to the raft for life, and must trust in the unstable and unfriendly elements to either spare them or not.

  By the middle of their second day on the raft Moonshadow was very ill indeed, and Raven and Karmana took turns to lie athwart his body, clinging on for the both of them so that the deep oceans should not claim their friend. Raven had never seen the like of his ailment; there was, about his skin, an unnatural translucency, an almost insubstantial texture, so that to touch him was to touch something almost intangibly silky. Fingers could not sense the man, and only the fact of his presence there served to convince Raven, salt-caked and wretched, that she did not ride the storm with a ghost.

  The wild weather had eased a fraction, though the waves still rolled high and fierce about them, when Raven saw the tall hills and scattered forests of a land, showing through the haze of rain and mist ahead of them.

  The raft, shortly, broke apart on rocks and three of them were consigned to the cold, treacherous waters. A reef claimed cuts and bruises upon them all, but they were miraculously carried through the deeper waters across its jagged surface, and at length Karmana cried out that she could feel soft sand beneath her feet, and wept for joy.

  Moments later they were pitched on to the sandy beach of an unknown part of the eastern lands. Too weak to do anything else and conscious of dusk falling across the shore, the three of them crawled above the tide-line, up to the wind- and rain-smoothed boulders of the high short, where they fell heavily into the rock crevasses and slept, despite the cold and the dampness of their meagre clothing.

  It was well past dawn when Raven opened her eyes. She could feel warmth on her half naked back, the warmth of the sun. Her skin was white with salt, and her mouth dry and cracked. Her muscles ached, and she could scarce move her joints, so stiff were they after the hours of being held in one position.

  Karmana woke too, and moaned in discomfort.

  Beside them a pebble rolled and rattled down a rock, and a dark shadow fell across Raven. Reacting with every ounce of strength left to her she swung over on to her back and fumbled at her waist for one of the stars.

  A heavy hand gripped her wrist, and against the glare of the mid-morning sun she stared up at the man who crouched there.

  “By the Runes of Quarl, Rav
en, even caked and crusted from a shipwreck, you are the most beautiful woman I know.”

  “Spellbinder!” she gasped, and her relief was so great that she pulled him down upon her, laughing and weeping simultaneously until he pressed his lips to hers and welcomed her to safety.

  Seven

  “It is usually easier to trust in a friend’s integrity than to believe ill of him. This is the way great empires fall.”

  The Books of Kharwhan

  They had come ashore no more than two days’ ride from Lym, southwards where the land was fertile and divided by deep, craggy valleys and forested hills. Here there wandered a pleasant and friendly people, many of them refugees from the more oppressive land of the Altanate, but many more that were refugees from all parts of the world. Most please of all, the communities were not segregated. As Spellbinder led the small band, with the three weary travelers—Moonshadow supported by Raven—away from the coast and back across the hills, so they passed through small villages, and sprawling market towns, where men and women of Kragg mixed and laughed with swarthy-skinned outcasts of Ishkar and Xandrone, and the tall, lean-built children of the south.

  In one wood-housed community, living beneath a low-built thatch and dressed in the blue clothes of a nomadic desert tribesman, was a creature that filled Raven’s heart with fear and repulsion, and yet it waved at the travelers as they rode stiffly past. It had been a beastman of the central rift of Ishkar, a half human creature, more catlike about its face than anything, a mutant from the days when strange powers and energies had flowed across the west.

  The green land soon gave way, after the first day’s ride. Distantly, southwards, the shimmering heat-waves of the Desert of Lorn were an uninviting barrier between the fertile Altanate and the great nomadic cities of the Sons of Lorn, who often raided far and wide, but who were for the moment, peaceful.

  Spellbinder told Raven that they had been riding inland, and slightly to the north, so that now they were due south of Lym, which lay just a short distance off, across the hills.