Carse watched Scyld cross the deck and came down the ladder. He felt a sick apprehension.
He did not want to go up to that cabin again. He did not want to see again that door with its mocking crack nor smell that sickly evil smell.
But he and Boghaz were again unshackled and herded aft, and there was nothing he could do.
The door swung shut behind them. Scyld, Ywain behind the carved table, the sword of Rhiannon gleaming before her. The tainted air and the low door in the bulkhead, not quite closed-not quite.
Ywain spoke. "You've had the first taste of what I can do to you. Do you want the second? Or will you tell me the location of Rhiannon's Tomb and what you found there?"
Carse answered tonelessly. "I told you before that I don't know."
He was not looking at Ywain. That inner door fascinated him, held his gaze. Somewhere, far at the back of his mind, something stirred and woke. A prescience, a hate, a horror that he could not understand.
But he understood well enough that this was the climax, the end. A deep shudder ran through him, an involuntary tightening of nerves.
"What is it that I do not know but can somehow almost remember?"
Ywain leaned forward. "You're strong. You pride yourself on that. You feel that you can stand physical punishment, perhaps more than I would dare to give you. I think you could. But there are other ways. Quicker, surer ways and even a strong man have no defense against them."
She followed the line of his gaze to the inner door. "Perhaps," she said softly, "you can guess what I mean."
Carse's face was empty now of all expression. The musky smell was heavy as smoke in his throat. He felt it coil and writhe inside him, filling his lungs, stealing into his blood. Poisonously subtle, cruel, cold with a primal coldness. He swayed on his feet but his fixed stare did not waver.
He said hoarsely, "I can guess."
"Good. Speak now and that door need not open."
Carse laughed a low, harsh sound. His eyes were clouded and strange.
"Why should I speak? You would only destroy me later to keep the secret safe."
He stepped forward. He knew that he moved. He knew that he spoke though the sound of his own voice was vague in his ears.
But there was a dark confusion in him. The veins of his temples stood out like knotted cords, and the blood throbbed in his brain. Pressure, as of something bursting, breaking its bonds, tearing itself free.
He did not know why he stepped forward, toward that door. He did not know why he cried out in a tone that was not his, "Open then, Child of the Snake!"
Boghaz let out a wailing shriek and crouched down in a corner, hiding his face. Ywain started up, astonished and suddenly pale. The door swung slowly back.
There was nothing behind it but darkness and a shadow. A shadow cloaked and hooded and so crouched in the lightless cabin that it was no more than the ghost of a shadow.
But it was there. And the man Carse, caught fast in the trap of his strange fate, recognized it for what it was.
It was fear, the ancient evil thing that crept among the grasses in the beginning, apart from life but watching it with eyes of cold wisdom, laughing its silent laughter, giving nothing but the bitter death.
It was the Serpent.
The primal ape in Carse wanted to run, to hide away. Every cell of his flesh recoiled, every instinct warned him.
But he did not run and there was an anger in him that grew until it blotted out the fear, blotted out Ywain and the others, everything but the wish to destroy utterly the creature crouching beyond the light.
His own anger-or something greater? Something born of a shame and an agony that he could never know?
A voice spoke to him out of the darkness, soft and sibilant.
"You have willed it. Let it be so."
There was utter silence in the cabin. Scyld had recoiled. Even Ywain had drawn back to the end of the table. The cowering Boghaz hardly breathed.
The shadow had stirred with a slight, dry rustle. A spot of subdued brilliance had appeared, held by unseen hands-a brilliance that shed no glow around it. It seemed to Carse like a ring of little stars, incredibly distant.
The stars began to move, to circle their hidden orbit, to spin faster and faster until they became a wheel, peculiarly blurred. From them now came a thin high note, a crystal song that was like infinity, without beginning and end.
A song, a call, attuned to his hearing alone? Or was it his hearing? He could not tell. Perhaps he heard it with his flesh instead, with every quivering nerve. The others, Ywain and Scyld and Boghaz, seemed unaffected.
Carse felt a coldness stealing over him. It was as though those tiny singing stars called to him across the universe, charming him out into the deeps of space where the empty cosmos sucked him dry of warmth and life.
His muscles loosened. He felt his sinews melt and flow away on the icy tide. He felt his brain dissolving.
He went slowly to his knees. The little stars sang on and on. He understood them now. They were asking him a question. He knew that when he answered he could sleep. He would not wake again but that did not matter. He was afraid now but if he slept he would forget his fear.
Fear-fear! The old, old racial terror that haunts the soul, the dread that slides in the quiet dark-
In sleep and death he could forget that fear. He need only answer that hypnotic whispered question.
"Where is the Tomb?
Answer. Speak. But something still chained his tongue. The red flame of anger still flickered in him, fighting the brilliance of the singing stars.
He struggled but the star-song was too strong. He heard his dry lips slowly speaking. "The Tomb, the place of Rhiannon. . ."
"Rhiannon! Dark Father who taught you power, thou spawn of the serpent's egg!"
The name rang in him like a battle cry. His rage soared up. The smoky jewel in the hilt of the sword on the table seemed suddenly to call to his hand. He leaped and grasped its hilt.
Ywain sprang forward with a startled cry but it was too late.
The great jewel seemed to blaze, to catch up the power of the singing, shining stars and hurl it back.
The crystal song keened and broke. The brilliance faded. He had shattered the strange hypnosis.
Blood flowed again into Carse's veins. The sword felt alive in his hands. He shouted the name Rhiannon and plunged forward into the dark.
He heard a hissing scream as his long blade went home to the heart of the shadow.
9: Galley of Death
Carse straightened slowly and turned in the doorway, his back to the thing he had slain but had not seen. He had no wish to see it. He was utterly shaken and in a strange mood, full of a vaulting strength that verged on madness.
The hysteria, he thought, that comes when you've taken too much, when the walls close in and there's nothing to do but fight before you die.
The cabin was full of a stunned silence. Scyld had the staring look of an idiot, his mouth fallen open. Ywain had put one hand to the edge of the table and it was strange to see in her that one small sign of weakness. She had not taken her eyes from Carse.
She said huskily, "Are you man or demon that you can stand against Caer Dhu?"
Carse did not answer. He was beyond speech. Her face floated before him like a silver mask. He remembered the pain, the shameful labor at the sweep, the scars of the lash that he carried. He remembered the voice that had said to Callus, "Teach him!"
He had slain the Serpent. After that it seemed an easy thing to kill a queen.
He began to move, covering the few short steps that lay between them, and there was something terrible about the slow purposefulness of it, the galled and shackled slave carrying the great sword, its blade dark with alien blood.
Ywain gave back one step. Her hand faltered to her own hilt. She was not afraid of death. She was afraid of the thing that she saw in Carse, the light that blazed in his eyes. A fear of the soul and not the body.
Scyld gave a hoars
e cry. He drew his sword and lunged.
They had all forgotten Boghaz, crouching quiet in his corner. Now the Valkisian rose to his feet, handling his great bulk with unbelievable speed. As Scyld passed him he raised both hands and brought the full weight of his gyves down with tremendous strength on the Sark's head.
Scyld dropped like a stone.
And now Ywain had found her pride again. The sword of Rhiannon rose high for the death stroke and quick, quick as lightning, she drew her own short blade and parried it as it fell.
The force of the blow drove her weapon out of her hands. Carse had only to strike again. But it seemed that with that effort something had gone out of him. He saw her mouth open to voice an angry shout for aid and he struck her across the face with his hilt reversed, so that she slid stunned to the deck, her cheek laid open.
And then Boghaz was thrusting him back, saying, "Don't kill her! We may buy our lives with hers!"
Carse watched as Boghaz bound and gagged her and took the dagger from her belt-sheath.
It occurred to him that they were two slaves who had overpowered Ywain of Sark and struck down her captain and that the lives of Matt Carse and Boghaz of Valkis were worth less than a puff of wind as soon as it was discovered.
So far, they were safe. There had been little noise and there were no sounds of alarm outside.
Boghaz shut the inner door as though to block off even the memory of what lay within. Then he took a closer look at Scyld, who was quite dead. He picked up the man's sword and stood still for a minute, catching his breath.
He was staring at Carse with a new respect that had in it both awe and fear. Glancing at the closed door, he muttered, "I would not have believed it possible. And yet I saw it." He turned back to Carse. "You cried out upon Rhiannon before you struck. Why?"
Carse said impatiently, "How can a man know what he's saying, at a time like that?"
The truth was that he didn't know himself why he had spoken the Cursed One's name; except that it had been thrust at him so often that he supposed it had become a sort of obsession. The Dhuvian's little hypnosis gadget had thrown his whole mind off balance for a while. He remembered only a towering anger-the gods knew he had had enough to make any man angry.
It was probably not so strange that the Dhuvian's hypnotic science hadn't been able to put him completely under. After all he was an Earthman and a product of another age. Even so it had been a near thing-horribly near. He didn't want to think about it anymore.
"That's over now. Forget it. We've got to think how to get ourselves out of this mess."
Boghaz's courage seemed to have drained away. He said glumly, "We'd better kill ourselves at once and have done with it."
He meant it. Carse said, "If you feel that way why did you strike out to save my life?"
"I don't know. Instinct, I suppose."
"All right. My instinct is to go on living as long as possible."
It didn't look as though that would be very long. But he was not going to take Boghaz's advice and fall upon the sword of Rhiannon. He weighted it in his hands, scowling, and then looked from it to his fetters.
He said suddenly, "If we could free the rowers they'd fight. They're all condemned for life-nothing to lose. We might take the ship."
Boghaz's eyes widened, then narrowed shrewdly. He thought it over. Then he shrugged. "I suppose one can always die. It's worth trying. Anything's worth trying."
He tested the point of Ywain's dagger. It was thin and strong. With infinite skill, he began to pick the lock of the Earthman's gyves.
"Have you a plan?" he asked.
Carse grunted. "I'm no magician. I can only try." He glanced at Ywain. "You stay here, Boghaz. Barricade the door. Guard her. If things go wrong she's our last and only hope."
The cuffs hung loose now on his wrist and ankles. Reluctantly he laid down the sword. Boghaz would need the dagger to free himself but there was another one on Scyld's body. Carse took it and hid it under his kilt. As he did so he gave Boghaz a few brief instructions.
A moment later Carse opened the cabin door just widely enough to step outside. From behind him came a good enough imitation of Scyld's gruff voice, calling for a guard. A soldier came.
"Take this slave back to the oar-bank," ordered the voice that aped Scyld's. "And see that the lady Ywain is not disturbed."
The man saluted and began to herd the shuffling Carse away. The cabin door banged shut and Carse heard the sound of the bar dropping into place.
Across the deck, and down the ladder. "Count the soldiers, think how it must be done!"
No. Don't think. Don't, or you'll never try it.
The drummer, who was a slave himself. The two Swimmers. The overseer, up at the forward end of the catwalk, lashing a rower. Rows of shoulders, bending over the oars, back and forth. Rows of faces above them. The faces of rats, of jackals, of wolves. The creak and groan of the looms, the reek of sweat and bilge water, and incessant beat, beat, beat of the drum.
The soldier turned Carse over to Callus and went away. Jaxart was back on the oar and with him a lean Sark convict with a brand on his face. They glanced up at Carse and then away again.
Callus thrust the Earthman roughly onto the bench, where he bent low over the oar. Callus stooped to fix the master chain to his leg-irons, growling as he did so.
"I hope that Ywain lets me have you when she's all through with you, carrion! I'll have fun while you last-"
Callus stopped very suddenly and said no more, then or ever. Carse had stabbed his heart with such swift neatness that not even Callus was aware of the stroke until he ceased to breathe.
"Keep stroke!" snarled Carse to Jaxart under his breath. The big Khond obeyed. A smoldering light came into his eyes. The branded man laughed once, silently, with a terrible eagerness.
Carse cut the key to the master locks free from its thong on Callus' girdle and let the corpse down gently into the bilges.
The man across the catwalk on the port car had seen as had the drummer. "Keep stroke!" said Carse again and Jaxart glared and the stroke was kept. But the drum beat faltered and died.
Carse shook off his manacles. His eyes met the drummer's and the rhythm started again but already the overseer was on his way off, shouting.
"What's the matter there, you pig?"
"My arms are weary," the man quavered.
"Weary are they? I'll weary your back for you too if it happens again!"
The man on the port oar, a Khond, said deliberately, "Much is going to happen, you Sark scum." He took his hands off the oar.
The overseer advanced upon him. "Is it now? Why, the filth is a very prophet!"
His lash rose and fell once and then Carse was on him. One hand clamped the man's mouth shut and the other plunged the dagger in. Swiftly, silently, a second body rolled into the bilges.
A deep animal cry broke out along the car-bank and was choked down as Carse raised his arms in a warning gesture, looking upwards at the deck. No one had noticed, yet. There had been nothing to draw notice.
Inevitably, the rhythm of the oars had broken but that was not unusual and, in any case, it was the concern of the overseer. Unless it stopped altogether no one would wander. If luck would only hold. . .
The drummer had the sense or the habit to keep on. Carse passed the word along-"Keep stroke, until we're all free!" The beat picked up again, slowly. Crouching low, Carse opened the master locks. The men needed no warning to be easy with their chains as they freed themselves, one by one.
Even so, less than half of them were loose when an idle soldier chose to lean on the deck rail and look down.
Carse had just finished releasing the Swimmers. He saw the man's expression change from boredom to incredulous awareness and he caught up the overseer's whip and sent the long lash singing upward. The soldier bellowed the alarm as the lash coiled around his neck and brought him crashing down into the pit.
Carse leaped to the ladder. "Come on, you scum, you rabble!" he shouted. "Here's
your chance!"
And they were after him like one man, roaring the beast roar of creatures hungry for vengeance and blood. Up the ladder they poured, swinging their chains, and those that were still held to the benches worked like madmen to be free.
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, with their fists, the galley slaves charge 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. And gradually the superior force of the soldiery began to tell. 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's name.
The Valkisian drew the bar, and Carse burst in.
"Carry the wench up to the steer man'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.
Sea Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories Page 30
