The Crystal Seas rb-16

by Джеффри Лорд

  Other Fishmen threw three-pronged hooks on long cords, hoping to snag sailors and drag them over the side or make pathways up the ship's side for themselves. One hook did catch around a sailor's neck, but Blade dashed forward and swung his sword down as the rope began to tighten. The rope whipped back over the side with a splash; the hook fell to the deck with a clatter.

  As the bosun helped the bleeding sailor away, another hook came sailing up onto the deck. Blade grabbed it as the rope began to tighten and gave a tremendous heave. From over the side there was a splash and a surprised yell as the Fishman at the other end was hauled above the surface. Then there came a whick and a scream as one of the archers drilled the target. Blade peered over the railing, watching the dying merman drift away, writhing slowly, blood trickling from his mouth. No-her mouth. The latest casualty was a woman. Small-boned and small-breasted, but unmistakable. She drifted away, her hair floating out behind her.

  A shout from the bosun behind Blade made him turn. Off to port, something was approaching Mistress under the water but moving as fast as a speedboat. Then Blade saw three fanged heads lift above the water. Another attack by the yulons? Blade saw some of the sailors turn pale at the thought.

  But apparently the new arrivals were only a team drawing something like an underwater chariot. They slowed, then stopped and sank out of sight. Where they had been the water suddenly came alive with the heads of Fishmen, twenty or thirty of them. Then those too vanished. Blade stared down onto the main deck and saw that the dead reptile was still caught along the starboard side. Suddenly he realized where the new attack was going to come.

  «Archers! Get ready to fire along that-«he roared, pointing and waving his arms. Then he took a running leap down onto the main deck, snatching up a fallen spear as he ran.

  He was barely in time. Fifty yards from the ship's side, a cluster of pale heads rose out of the sea, and crossbow bolts whizzed past Blade on either side. Splinters flew from the masts and decks. Then Blade saw a dark cluster of figures approaching the submerged back of the reptile.

  «Somebody get an ax!» he shouted. He hurled the spear with all his strength down into the middle of the approaching enemy. The mass broke up. Before they could re-form and continue climbing, four armed sailors ran up. One carried a bow, one a trident; two carried cutlasses. But the man with the bow also had an ax slung at his belt.

  Blade snatched the ax and swung it high overhead. An enemy bolt whizzed past him as the ax came down, biting deep into the scales and the flesh of the dead yulon's neck. The whole huge body shook with the force of the blow. Several climbing Fishmen lost balance and splashed into the water. The archer fired, and one of the others clutched at his shoulder and plunged into the water backward. Blade's ax came down again, biting through the massive white vertebrae as well as flesh and scales.

  Then he stared down the creature's back at the last enemy still holding on. Beyond any doubt, it was the same woman he had seen off the reef on the coast of Nurn. The high-cheeked face, the wide golden eyes, the lithe but well-fleshed body were all unmistakable. She still wore only her bright red loinguard and fins, but carried a spear in one long-fingered hand and a short-sword in her belt.

  It seemed that she also recognized Blade. Her eyes widened, and for a moment it looked as though she would raise the spear and hurl it at him. Then with a graceful twist and dive she leaped from the creature's back into the sea. A bolt plunged through the bubbles in her wake, and Blade stiffened, wondering if she had been hit. Then his ax came down again. With a crackling, slithering noise, the last scales holding the yulon's neck together parted and the severed neck slid over the side, following the body down. Only the head was left aboard Mistress.

  The collapse of their strongest attack seemed to take the spirit out of the Fishmen. They drew back almost out of archery range and swam aimlessly around Mistress, just below the surface. Only the woman remained close in, swimming slowly and gracefully, as if daring the sailors to hit her. Occasionally she would turn on her back and mockingly display her superb breasts. Blade hoped she would break off this dangerous game before one of his shipmates got lucky. He himself could no more have shot at her than he could have shot at Svera.

  Eventually the woman got tired of her game. With another graceful flip she upended and went arrowing away into the depths. The other Fishmen followed her. There was a final flurry of water as the drivers of the yulon-drawn chariot put their team in motion. Then the seas spread calm and empty around Mistress. For the first time in hours, her crew could sit down in peace, breathe in comfort, and relax.

  Blade was still too keyed up to sit down. The fight and the tantalizing glimpse of the woman had left him weary but still excited, frustrated, and curious. He strode up and down the main deck like a caged animal, swinging his eyes around the horizon.

  Gainful had now burned almost to the water's edge. There was nothing left of her but a smoldering hulk heaving to the swell. As Blade watched, she dipped still lower. Then a hiss and a cloud of steam rolled across the water. By the time the steam had rolled away, there was no sign of Gainful except a patch of dirty water pocked with wreckage and bubbles.

  Now a breeze sprang up. Mistress's sails began to swell out, and the water began to chuckle and gurgle at her bow as she gained way. Slowly her crew came back to life, as the breeze dried the sweat and blood on their skins. They began to move about, cleaning up their ship and counting the losses among their shipmates. Out of a crew of forty men, five were dead, three were dying, and eleven more or less wounded or battered. The only ones who seemed to have any strength left were Captain Foyn, the bosun, and Blade himself. But gradually these three were able to put some of their own energy into the crew.

  Two hours after the last merman had vanished into the crystal seas, Blade and Foyn were standing on the forecastle again. Mistress was running before a freshening breeze, heading east for Cities, which now lay only some eighty miles beyond the horizon. But Foyn's face was grim. Grim, that is, for a sailor on his way home. Not grim for a captain who has just lost part of his crew and nearly lost his ship.

  What made Foyn particularly grim was not the attack itself as much as the unexpected form of it.

  «It's long been thought that the yulons were beyond taming. But the Fishmen seem to have managed it, and without our hearing a single word of it until now. They must have been saving up this surprise for a really big attack. They could have sent hundreds of those monsters and thousands of their warriors into the western seas.» He hesitated, then swallowed. «Perhaps even against the Cities themselves, the Goddess defend us!» He licked weather-beaten lips, then turned to Blade.

  «Don't mention any of this to Svera, will you? I don't think she'd pass it on to her friends. But it would frighten her, and I don't want her frightened.»

  Blade wished he could believe that. But it was obvious from his tone of voice that Captain Foyn did not entirely trust his daughter. Love her, no doubt, but trust her? It was equally obvious that the voyage to the Sea Cities of Talgar wasn't solving any of the mysteries of this dimension. In fact, it seemed to be adding to them very fast.

  Chapter FIVE

  Before noon they came up with a convoy of two more merchant vessels and three fishing boats. One of the merchant vessels had also beaten off an attack by trained yulons of the Fishmen. All had seen the burning and sinking hulks of other ships and boats. It was obvious that Captain Foyn was right. An immense force of Fishmen was at large in the seas to the west of Talgar, taking a dreadful toll of the Cities' ships and sailors.

  Mistress sailed on. Her crew went about their duties armed to the teeth. The lookouts were doubled, and extra weapons piled ready at hand. All six ships clapped on as much sail as they could carry in the freshening wind. The convoy rolled forward as the sea rose in whitecaps, sails taut and rigging thrumming in the wind.

  Svera came up to Blade as he stood by the railing amidships and slid her arm through his. Her face was pale and her wide eyes were for once comp
letely blank of expression. Blade could feel her trembling slightly. He pulled her gently against him and murmured in her ear, «Don't worry, Svera. We'll be in port by nightfall. I don't think the Fishmen will attack when we're moving this fast, anyway.»

  He felt her nod. Then she said in a small voice, «But what made them do this? What have we done to make them attack us like this? It must have been terrible.»

  Fortunately the wind whipped Svera's words away unheard by any of the sailors. Blade knew what they would have said to her for remarks like that, after losing so many shipmates to the Fishmen. Even he wasn't sure anymore whether war to the death wasn't the only choice the Sea Cities had. Certainly the Fishmen hadn't shown themselves very peace-minded.

  Six ships driving eastward in convoy must indeed have been too formidable a target for the Fishmen. Certainly no one aboard the ships saw any signs of the Fishmen or their tame monsters that afternoon. The wind held steady. As the setting sun spread gold and orange across the sea to the west, the lookouts called down, «Cities, ho!» Aboard Mistress the cheers were deafening-but no louder than the cheers aboard the other five ships. Blade could hear those clearly over the sounds of the wind and the sea.

  Three hours later, Mistress and her companions were dropping anchor in the lee of the Merchant's City. This time the sounds that rose from the ships' decks were sighs of relief.

  Boats promptly swarmed out from the piers and docks of the City. Some of them carried armed and armored fighting men; others carried only the curious. From the questions and answers that flew back and forth, Blade began to realize the scale of the merpeople's attack on the Sea Cities.

  There were six of the Cities, each nearly a mile on a side and all anchored in shallow water in the lee of the southern tip of the island of Talgar. All but a few of the quarter-million people lived aboard the Six Cities, for the Talgarans were ill at ease on land. Only enough free Talgarans to supervise the slave gangs in the forests and mines lived on the island itself.

  Of the Six Cities, the Fishmen had attacked three. They had of course been beaten off before they had pushed more than a few hundred yards inland. But for that distance they had killed and burned and destroyed everything and everybody they could. Over a thousand people lay dead or dying in the Cities tonight, in return for barely two hundred of the enemy.

  Equally surprising, if less destructive, was the attack on the island itself. The Fishmen had actually dared to come out of the water and attack the camps, slaying the guards and releasing more than half the slaves. The mines and logging camps would be paralyzed until these slaves were recaptured or replaced. That would be a long grim task, but a necessary one. Without the food and timber from the Island, the Sea Cities could neither feed their people nor repair and replace their ships.

  A good many ships would need repairs or replacing. No one had a very good idea of what had happened at sea. Everyone was certain that a good many ships and boats had vanished without a trace, overwhelmed in surprise attacks far from any living eyes. But at least a dozen large ships and forty or more smaller craft were certainly gone, with more than a thousand sailors and passengers.

  Blade could tell that the people of Talgar were furiously angry at the Fishmen attack. But he could also be sure that they were badly frightened. There was a tight, barely controlled note of fear in their voices as they told of what they had seen and done. The eyes of the soldiers had a haunted look and were constantly shifting about-in search of what? The Fishmen? Or just some explanation for what had happened? Blade didn't like those eyes, those voices, or the reek of fear and suspicion in the air. He realized that he had landed squarely in the middle of a people reeling in defeat and on the edge of panic. Not that he blamed them. But he didn't like it. This was not a time when strangers were likely to be particularly welcome in the Sea Cities.

  Captain Foyn said as much when he spoke to Blade, after Mistress had been hauled into her dock. The crew was already streaming ashore as fast as they could, sea bags over their shoulders. It was as if they could hardly wait to convince themselves that they were still alive, by swigging down beer and cordial and embracing the tavern wenches.

  «The Silver Goddess only knows what more evil's going to come of all this,» said Foyn with a sigh. «But people are apt to be looking over their shoulders, and if they see a stranger there-well, you see. I'll appoint you arms-master of Mistress, so you'll have some rank and place in the Cities. But that won't explain where you came from.»

  «You found me off the coast of Nurn, didn't you?»

  «Yes, but that won't help. A man from Nurn's likely to find a damp welcome in Talgar now, even damper than usual. We respect none of Nurn but the Sisters of the Night; and-«He broke off. «Wait! What would you say to being an escaped slave? There are a good many captured warriors from the frontier lands among the slaves in Nurn, and some of them do escape to find homes in Talgar.»

  Blade nodded.

  «Good. That will save us both trouble. And the Goddess knows we've got more than enough of that already.»

  On that note they shook hands, and Blade went ashore to see the Cities of Talgar for himself.

  Captain Foyn let him take his sword and dagger and gave him a well-filled purse and directions to the Foyn house, which lay in the City of the Sailors. Blade wanted to quietly buy himself a little light on some of Talgar's problems. Not by anything as crude as bribery, of course. But if you buy a barful of nervous sailors and soldiers a round of drinks-well, when they start talking, they may forget you're a stranger.

  Blade moved several streets away from the docks before he started hunting out taverns. He eventually found one that looked as if it catered to craftsmen and the petty officers off the merchant ships. It was less than half filled, and most of the men in it seemed interested simply in getting drunk as fast as possible. Blade decided to help them. He ordered an entire jug of the seaweed cordial and sat down at a corner table to drink slowly and wait impatiently.

  He did not have long to wait. As he refilled his empty cup, he became aware that someone was looming over his table. Then a slurred deep voice spoke.

  «You goin' to drink that-all 'lone?»

  Blade looked up. The man standing over him was not nine feet tall and eight feet wide. He just looked that way in the dim light of the tavern.

  «No, of course not. Sit down, by all means.»

  «I-thanks. Got to-forget. Damned Fishmen. Sixteen o' my mates. Sixteen!» He looked about to cry. Blade nodded. «You too?»

  «Yes. I'm the new armsmaster off Foyn's Green Mistress. We lost eight.»

  The huge sailor stared blearily at Blade. «I-uh, don't know you. Not-'board, last time I saw Mistressh.»

  «I said I was new. I'm an escaped slave from Nurn. I was a warrior among my own people, so I was able to help Foyn beat off the attack. In return he gave me a place aboard his ship.»

  «Good man, Foyn,» said the sailor, with elaborate gravity. «Too-too damned bad 'bout that daughter of hish, tho'.»

  «What's wrong with her?» said Blade, suddenly alert. He decided not to say anything more until the sailor answered his question.

  That decision produced a long silence. The sailor seemed to be having trouble making up his mind what to say and then getting up the nerve to say it. He eventually had to drain another cup of the cordial before he could speak, and when he did, it was in a guarded whisper.

  «Don't say it 'loud-she's-she's a damned Con-Con — Conshilyator!» He said it as though he were saying Svera had some loathsome disease.

  Blade managed to look authentically shocked. «By the Goddess, no!»

  «Uh-unh,» said the sailor, nodding ponderously. «Disgraysh to a fine family. Brother killed by the Fishmen; mother drowned at sea. Not a blot 'n the whole family, 'cept her, 'lil slut.» Blade tensed internally.

  But apparently the sailor hadn't meant anything in particular by calling Svera a slut. He filled his cup again and rambled on, until Blade began to find it hard to keep from falling asleep. Fatigu
e, alcohol, the stuffy and smokeladen tavern air, and boredom were all working on him. But the sailor's ramblings were about the Conciliators, Svera's group, and Blade badly wanted and needed to know more about them.

  So he managed to stay awake until he suddenly heard something that snapped him to full alertness. «Conshilyators goin' to do somethin' about all thish, betcha. Goin' to say-make peace with the dirty Fishmen. Never!» The sailor's fist slammed down on the table so hard that Blade was afraid the tough wood would split. «Never! Dead not even buried. Damned little fish, not out o' the egg yet even.»

  «I thought there were some captains with them,» said Blade cautiously. He was also looking for the fastest way out of the tavern, just in case the sailor accidentally took offense and became violent. He could easily put the sailor down for the count if he wanted to, but it would be much better to avoid a fight entirely.

  «Hunh!» the sailor snorted like a walrus. «Young 'uns, maybe. No sea sense, no guts.» He looked at Blade with eyes suddenly grown hard. «Know any o' them-names, I mean?»

  «No,» said Blade shoving his chair back a few inches. He didn't like the sailor's belligerent new look or tone of voice. «It's just rumors I've heard. I only got in tonight, remember?»

  The sailor seemed to remember that and was pacified. «Yunh. And you fought off the damned Fishmen for Lando Foyn, too. Good man. Not like the captains with the Conciliators.» Somehow the word came out right, for once. «Well, they're not goin' to do anythin'. We's goin' to raid the Fishmen, kill 'em like they killed us. Conshilyators try-get in our way-smash 'em dead. Killall-«The sailor's head sagged down onto his hairy arms. A final twitch of one massive brown hand knocked over his cup. Green seaweed cordial dripped down onto the floor. A moment later his nostrils flared, and a great rolling, gasping snore floated out.