Out of the Waters

by David Drake

  The ape-man cried out in echoing rage. He took the bars in his outstretched feet and hands, trying to bend them toward the middle. He shrieked like a bull being gelded.

  “Lann?” Hedia said. He ignored her.

  She shouted, “Lann!” at the top of her lungs. He continued to shake the bars vainly.

  Hedia knew better than to touch him. She had been around a number of very angry men, and had learned how bad an idea startling one could be. She had never known anyone as strong as Lann, however.

  Hedia stepped to the wall and rattled the orichalc spear-butt across the grating, making a musical clamor that cut through even the ape-man’s bellows. Her hands tingled on the verge of numbness from the vibration.

  To Lann, the grate must have felt like the breath of nearby lightning. He shouted, “Waugh!” and leaped backward.

  Hedia offered the spear to him. He stared at it for a moment in confusion; then his expression brightened into a smile that displayed fangs which could have cracked the joint of an ox.

  Two bolts on either side locked the grate to the crystal wall. Lann thrust the spear between the grate and the left-hand wall.

  Hedia stepped away as the ape-man worked. He knew his own strength, but she had the impression that he didn’t fully appreciate the weakness of those around him.

  The ape-man was clearly more than just a beast. He had entered her prison by coming down the air shaft, but even he hadn’t tried to climb back that way while carrying Hedia. He had known the way the sewer was constructed—he had been one of the rulers, after all—and he had intelligently exploited that design to escape with her.

  But though Lann had used a spear to break the cell door loose, he hadn’t thought to bring it along in case he needed a lever again. His enemy Procron hadn’t put a man’s brain into an ape’s body … but it did appear that he had put part of a man’s brain into an ape.

  The grating rang like anvils falling together. Hedia thought the spear must have snapped, but the orichalc shaft had held. The sound was the thick steel bolt breaking.

  Hedia thought the obvious way to proceed was for Lann to use the lever to break the remaining bolt on that side. Instead he dropped the spear, gripped the edge of the grate with both hands, and set his feet on the wall.

  The grating was taller than the cell, giving the ape-man more leverage on the upper bolt than he’d had on the door hinge. It flexed upward only a few inches when the bolt sheared with another ringing crash.

  Water trapped behind the debris at the bottom of the screen gushed through. Grunting in thunderous triumph, Lann walked backward along the wall, dragging the grate with him.

  At last he dropped to all fours in the water, snorting like a winded horse. He had bent back the grating so that it left a broad passage, but the ape-man was blocking it.

  Hedia smiled wryly. She didn’t intend to go on without him, even if she had been able to get by.

  Lann rose to his usual crouch, glanced at Hedia, and shambled past the grating. She fished out the spear again and followed. His strength was incredible, but even so his exertions must have taken a toll; he seemed logy, though—

  She was thinking of him as human. An ape couldn’t be expected to be sprightly in human terms.

  They sloshed from the inlet into a sea which got deeper very quickly. Lann hooted in concern and pulled Hedia with him to the muddy bank.

  The water shone in moonlight. In the far distance she could see the opposite shore, not as a place but as a boundary to the shimmering smoothness. Occasional streaks indicated that things were swimming close to the surface, and the water slapped once.

  They continued along the edge of the water. Behind them Poseidonis rose as a series of glittering angles beyond a band of jungle. Hedia didn’t see guards, and she doubted whether human eyes could have sorted the escapees from flotsam and animals even if someone were watching.

  Lann stopped. They had reached a mass of lily pads ten feet and more in diameter with upturned rims. They covered a portion of the sea and pressed onto the shore.

  The ape-man walked cautiously onto the nearest, then crossed it to the next. The pad wobbled and deformed, but it supported his weight. Thick veins stiffened the leaves the way a wicker framework did the skin boats which Hedia had seen Gauls using in the lagoons at the mouth of the Po River.

  She followed, puzzled but willing to assume that Lann knew what he was doing. The pads were so buoyant that she was sure—almost sure—that she and the ape-man could stand on the same one without overburdening it, but she chose not to test her belief. The mass of vegetation reached some distance out into the sea, but it would be at least a half mile from the edge to the opposite shore.

  After crossing at least a dozen of the great leaves, the ape-man stopped on the last row of pads. He gripped the rim of an adjacent pad and manhandled it partway onto the one he squatted on, then folded it over with a struggle.

  The undersides of the veins were covered with finger-length spines. They weren’t thorns, apparently, because they bent without drawing blood when Lann pressed against them, but Hedia shivered when she saw them. They brought home the alien nature of this place as nothing else had done.

  A stem as thick as a man’s leg connected the pad to roots in the floor of the sea. Lann began chewing on it about six feet below the pad.

  Hedia didn’t understand for a moment what was happening. Then she drew the dagger and called, “Lann? Can’t you use this?”

  The ape-man turned and blinked; then he went back to chewing on the stem. Hedia grimaced and got onto the same pad as the ape-man. Even with their combined weight and that of the pad Lann was working on, the edge didn’t quite go underwater.

  Lann looked at her again and hooted in confusion. Hedia stabbed into the middle of the stem where he was gnawing, then shoved the blade downward. It sliced through the tough fibers as easily as a cook would joint a chicken. She had seen how strong orichalc was; now she learned that it held a razor edge as well.

  She severed the remainder of the stem with an upward stroke, then stepped back feeling pleased. She wanted to wipe the blade, but she hadn’t brought the garment from her cell.

  Still, she had the bandolier. She lifted it away from her body to use it for a rag. Lann had been chirping with delight. Now he caught her wrist and pointed with his free hand to the stem close to the pad itself.

  “You want me to cut it there?” Hedia said in puzzlement—knowing as she spoke that she might as well whistle as speak for her chances of being understood.

  But Lann did understand. At any rate he bit into the stem where he had pointed, then leaned back and gave her a broad, bestial grin. Hedia braced her left hand on his shoulder and cut the stem again, this time with a single stroke.

  She grinned. She was used to not understanding what a man was doing but going along with it anyway. Not infrequently it turned out to be a pleasant experience.

  Gurgling in delight, Lann unfolded the severed leaf and shoved it into the sea again. Holding it with one hand, he tossed the length of stem into it with his free hand, then motioned Hedia imperiously to get in also. When she delayed a moment to sheathe the dagger, the ape-man caught her by the thigh and tugged.

  Her eyes narrowed though she said nothing. The ten-inch blade might not cut bone, but it was certainly sharp enough to slice even Lann’s massive throat to the spine. He really needs to learn some courtesy when dealing with a lady of Carce.…

  Hedia walked carefully to the middle of the leaf. The surface was resilient but not really disquieting; it reminded her of walking up a ship’s gangplank.

  The ape-man got on behind her, making the pad sway dangerously. Hedia moved to the far edge. That helped slightly with the balance, and the veins proved to be strong enough to keep the leaf from folding downward and dropping them both into the water.

  Lann pushed off from the remaining vegetation and began lashing the water with the length of stem. It made an extremely clumsy paddle, but Hedia didn’t have a better idea
.

  Wobbling, dipping, and rotating enough that occasionally the ape-man reversed his stroke to counteract it, the makeshift boat started across the sea. If things were ideal, I’d be sharing a dinner couch with a very stalwart young man, and we would be considering how to proceed after dessert, Hedia thought. But considering the alternatives, the present situation was just fine.

  She leaned over the rim and looked down. All she could see was her own reflection, distorted by ripples from the pad’s motion. Absently she trailed her fingertips in the water. It was cool if not cold, unlike the warmth of the Bay of Puteoli. She thought of the relaxing days she had spent in villas at Baiae, wondering if she would ever—

  “Waugh!” Lann shouted. The leaf bucked as he flopped across it and caught Hedia’s leg.

  He jerked her away from the edge with the kind of violence he had displayed toward the Servitors. She let out a startled yelp, then broke into tears: a defensive reflex honed by the number of times powerful men had attacked her.

  The pad lurched again. Hedia twisted around just as jaws clopped shut like the stroke of a battering ram. She didn’t know what the creature was—fish or snake or something still worse—but it could have bitten Lann in half, let alone her.

  It sank back and swirled off, brushing the pad with its tail. Hedia stopped crying. Now her fright was completely real.

  Muttering to himself, the ape-man resumed stroking the boat forward. Onward, at any rate.

  Hedia crouched, well back from the edge. She wanted to apologize, but she didn’t know how to. At least she could avoid repeating her mistakes.

  Though the sky wasn’t visibly brighter, Hedia no longer saw the stars as clearly as she had when she emerged from the sewer inlet. She wondered what would happen if they remained on open water during daylight.

  Under other circumstances she might have suggested to Lann that they climb into the water and kick their way along, using the leaf for flotation. The only value she could see in that now is that she would wind up feeding Atlantean sea life instead of becoming bait for an even larger monster as the Minoi planned for her.

  Hedia looked forward again and to her surprise saw trees. We’re going to make it! she thought, delighted that the shore hadn’t been as far as she thought when last she strained her eyes to see ahead.

  Lann rumbled a challenge from deep in his chest. The sound rose and fell as though its jaggedness caught his throat when it tumbled out. Hedia jerked around, wondering what she had done wrong this time; but the ape-man was looking beyond her.

  She turned again. What she had thought were trees were walking off. The trunks leaned to the side and the roots—or dangling branches?—bent and lifted and set down again well forward of where they had been. She supposed they had to be walking on the bottom, but in the doubtful light it really looked as though they were skimming the surface of the water.

  “I thought they were trees,” she repeated, this time in a whisper. And perhaps they were trees.…

  Lann resumed paddling. Hedia watched him; in part because she was afraid to look at anything else in this terrible place, but also because she was beginning to appreciate the economy of the ape-man’s movements.

  She had thought he was clumsy, but she now realized his seeming awkwardness was a result of the sheer mass of his muscles and the skeleton that anchored them. She had seen warships carrying out combat maneuvers. Their long, slender hulls resisted turning, but even so a trained crew could send its ram crushing through the center of a target or could slip between pillars with only a hand’s breadth of clearance to either side for the oar tips.

  The boat jerked violently again: something was scraping along its underside. Hedia wailed, but she jumped up with the spear in her hands. If she plunged it straight down between her feet, whatever was under the lily pad would—

  Lann closed his hand over the spear shaft, preventing her from thrusting. He hooted in question. Hedia looked over her shoulder: they had grounded on the other side of the sea. The pad had been rubbing the sloped edge of the land.

  “Oh,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”

  Lann strode past her into the lowering jungle. Hedia, still carrying the spear, followed.

  I’m almost back to where I started, she thought. Which meant she was was a great deal better off than she’d been a few hours earlier.

  * * *

  THE SUN REMAINED ABOVE THE HORIZON, but its ball had flattened and its light was deepening to red. Corylus pressed his hands together, wishing there was something he could do.

  The sails continued to beat, but it seemed to Corylus that the strokes were slower and becoming flaccid. The ship was certainly descending, though the keel was still a hundred feet in the air. Almost a hundred feet.

  Something thrust up from the sea about three miles ahead, or it looked like something did. Corylus grasped the sprite’s shoulder and said, “There, isn’t that an island, Coryla? Or anyway a rock. Is it big enough to land on?”

  “Am I a sailor?” the sprite said. “Or a magician? I don’t know what this ship can do.”

  Corylus turned toward the Ancient and bowed. The wizard didn’t acknowledge his presence except by the focus of his golden eyes.

  “Master,” Corylus said. “Would you please take us toward that island—”

  He pointed.

  “—so that I can take a look at it. We’re going to need to land, soon.”

  Corylus looked beyond the magician, back over the course they had travelled since leaving the Cyclops’ island. They had outdistanced the great eel, but he didn’t doubt the sprite’s warning that it would follow until it died or it caught them. A night spent rolling on the surface would be long enough for the latter—and he didn’t see any reason why the monster should courteously manage to die before that happened.

  Corylus had taken his hand from the sprite’s shoulder when he turned. She nuzzled close to him again. He eased back, though he didn’t break contact. He said, “Is there anything alive on the island? It looks pretty barren to me.”

  He couldn’t decipher the look that Coryla gave him. “It’s barren,” she said. “But there is life, of sorts.”

  The island was a square-sided vertical pillar that rose out of the sea to the level of the ship’s keel. The top was about twenty feet on a side and slightly domed rather than flat. Grass grew in patches and there were occasional bushes, but it was mostly bare rock.

  Because of the island’s shape, Corylus wondered if it might be artificial. As they drew closer, he could see that the striations which he’d taken for masonry were actually natural rock layers. Some were reddish, darkened further by the setting sun. Iron had bled from them and draped rusty banners down the paler rocks beneath.

  He estimated how difficult it would be to climb the rock face. He could still do it, he was pretty sure; but he’d been in Carce for long enough that he’d like to have a few days to train on lesser slopes first. He grinned.

  The Ancient made a sound that started low but climbed in pitch and volume. Corylus had his sword out by the time he had faced completely around, expecting to see the eel or something worse rising toward them from the sea.

  He almost didn’t recognize the Ancient. The golden fur was fluffed out, making him look more like an angry bear than the starving cat Corylus would previously have used as a comparison. His mouth was slightly open: irregular teeth gave his jaws the contours of saw blades. He extended one long arm toward the island.

  Corylus followed the gesture. A man with wild hair and a dark tunic climbed to the center of the dome. Could he have been hiding in the vegetation? That would seem impossible to a civilian, but Corylus had twice seen a hulking blond German lunge from a bush that shouldn’t have been able to hide a coney.

  A dozen more men appeared; they must have come out of the rock or condensed from the air itself. They were gesturing and speaking among themselves. Corylus could hear the sounds, but he couldn’t make out words if they even were words.

  The ship wallowe
d from side to side and lost way. They were sinking as well, though slowly. That wasn’t what most concerned Corylus. This savage outbreak on the part of the magician he depended on mattered more than mere details of the ship’s course.

  The Ancient extended both arms and shrieked, still louder than before. His hands bent toward one another as though he were holding an invisible globe. Blue-white flashes glittered between his palms; then a line of sparks curved raggedly from them toward the island.

  Scores of men stood now on the rock, impossible numbers to exist on so small an island. Several dropped to all fours and began to howl. Their companions took up the sound.

  As swiftly as images change when a mirror tilts, human forms became wolves and as swiftly changed back to human. The top of the island seethed like water coming to a boil, and the howls seemed to Corylus to echo from the roof of heaven.

  “Sheer off!” he shouted. He stepped between the Ancient and the wolfmen who had driven him to frothing rage. “Take us away! We can’t land here, no matter what the choice is!”

  For a moment, Corylus thought that the magician was going to ignore him—or worse, strike with the power which allowed him to lift this ship and drive it hundreds of miles in a day. The armor might protect me, but—

  The Ancient hunched back to the stern where he had been standing until the wolfmen called him forward. His fur began to settle, though hints lasted like the flush on the face of a man who had controlled his anger.

  The sails beat more strongly; the ship rose sluggishly as it left the island behind. The wolfmen continued to howl behind them.

  Only the upper half of the sun showed above the horizon. Corylus hugged himself.

  How long? How long before the eel catches up with us?

  * * *

  VARUS REMEMBERED TALKING with his father, but now he climbed the craggy, fog-wrapped hillside. He never took the same route to the Sybil’s eyrie, though the differences were trivial: here white gravel had spilled across the path, marble chips perhaps; there was an outcrop which in the mist looked like an unfamiliar human profile.

  He reached the top of the ridge. The Sibyl sat like a senator on a folding ivory stool. Beside her was a wicker basket from which she took peas. She was shelling them into an earthenware pot on the other side and tossing the hulls down the opposite slope. She turned to watch Varus as he approached.