Swords v. Cthulhu

by Jesse Bullington

  With each passing scene of eerie coastal landscape, Jinny had a disquieting sense that she did not belong, and hoped that in the city ahead she could find passage to a place where she might.

  The spires grew before her, and though her feet felt no fatigue, she looked back and saw a hundred miles had passed, and many days with them.

  As beach became road, she saw cottages and mills on the outskirts, and many colored sails billowing along the horizon, until she rounded the bay’s point and the harbor city came into view, proclaimed dylath-leen in carved letters on a weathered wooden sign.

  Tapered buildings of stained stone and flickering windows arched over narrow streets that wound up the hilly cove, their shade layered in that of the basalt towers and settling dusk.

  Loud songs both melodious and crude drew her to the pier-front boulevard, where men of three dozen hues and statures loaded and embarked on graceful crafts; the tongues of their chants were unfamiliar to her but the mosaic of lyrics formed prodigious sagas in her head. Passengers and laborers alike moved oddly, loping or rolling about, some on fewer than two limbs, others on more.

  Spiced and malted aromas from the dilapidated taverns churned her sudden hunger, and she followed the newly lit lanterns along the promenade to the raucous bustle of the tented marketplace.

  Passing by the canvas stalls, her mouth watered at the hanging six-limbed meats cured and charred to a perfect saffron orange, spectral filigreed stalks whose steam rained sweet crystals, and luminous, leaf-wrapped mushroom caps. A castaway with nothing to her name, she hugged her ribs tightly and found a clutch of prismatic nautilus shells in her frayed pockets. With these and pointing gestures she managed to barter a bowl of dismal soup and a small mug of, if she interpreted correctly, moon-wine.

  The beverage made her giddy, and she perused the crowded bazaar, admiring many curiosities, unafraid to handle gleaming jewelry for aberrantly shaped limbs, peculiar garments, or sinuous carved statues whose faces blurred and shifted at her touch.

  At the last tent, she was drawn to shining cardinal gemstones arranged on an onyx table. A closer look displayed intricate facets and peculiar runes floating within the rubies that filled her with unease. Then an unpleasant odor made her step back. The proprietor held up one of the ruddy gems and smiled at her, his mouth beneath the shabby orange turban opened broadly like a wide wound filled with soot and spiked teeth.

  She tried to hustle away, but several more men in wrapped headgear blocked the market aisle, surrounding her with their moist, rotting pungency.

  She ran between tents into the nearest alley, banging on cold doors, then running harder, hurdling and sliding and dodging through alcoves, careening into moonlit walls, trying to escape the footsteps behind her that rang like hooves on the cobblestones.

  The alley emerged at the pier, and she stood before a baneful dark ship. Its tattered obsidian sail and bulbous pitch-black hull tainted the nearby shadows. The pestiferous stench from the vessel made her gag and weaken. The moon-wine took hold, and her knees hit the dock as the footsteps clattered forward.

  She managed to kick one of the aggressors; a leg bone snapped to the accompaniment of a warbling scream. The impact of his head on the wharf dislodged the turban, exposing two curved, bony horns.

  Night embraced her fully as they dragged her aboard.

  Next Jinny knew, the sea whispered coarsely against the ship’s hull beneath her head. The stench was even worse here, rank and thick, like the inside of a carcass. She breathed through her mouth and lifted herself into a corner by gripping wrought metal bars. Dull light through small round portholes showed only vague outlines of a few cellmates.

  In the gloom beyond the cage, thick gray bodies hunched over oars, their globular limbs pulling and extending like draining mucus. They rocked forward into a moonbeam, divulging eyeless faces with short, flush tentacle mouthparts.

  The beasts rowed harder, surging the galley forward, and she staggered to the porthole, pushing someone aside. She lost all of her meager meal through the small opening. Holding the circular window frame, she breathed the salted spray and gazed at the rolling waves and ancient sky of unfamiliar stars.

  As they passed between two great hexagonal stone pillars, the ship lurched and lifted hard under her, and she fell back with her cellmates. The pull pinned her to the floorboards, but she strained to stand, returning to the window. The ocean waves diminished far below, and so shrank the distant seaport lights. It is like birds see, she thought, as even sharp-toothed mountains shriveled and flattened. Soon the thick white brume of clouds swirled and surrounded them. The milky haze gradually darkened and finally relented to an immense, limitless field of black with stars brighter and crisper than she’d ever known. The curving horizon constricted behind them as a deepening chill settled through the ship.

  Jinny gasped as a thin hand touched her ankle. She saw the other prisoners huddled together, and left the view outside. For warmth, she nestled against smooth skin, wooly hide, scaled and husked bodies, as the moon’s face burned ever brighter through the porthole.

  A roaring crash tilted the entire ship and they tumbled across the cage. From above came shouts and clattering metal, footfalls stamping across the deck, squeals and yowls among wet chops and meaty thuds. Some of the blind glob creatures left the oars and half-rolled, half-flowed to the far stairs, drawing curved clubs from their folded gray bulk.

  The hatch opened above them, and in rushed a vicious blur of slashing longswords and hissing torches. Within the frenzied combat Jinny saw male and female attackers of many skins, but also horns and hooves, hound-like postures, and swiping paws. Their fury felled most of the spongy beasts and turbaned men, and drove the remaining few against the hold wall. In the quiet that fell over the ship like a departed storm, a single pair of booted feet echoed across the deck and descended the stairs.

  Her enthralling movements whispered in dark leather and scales, the red-haired woman strode with authority to the cage, flicking black blood from her triangular blade. A gaunt, cloudy-winged creature perched on her right shoulder, larger than a bat, sable-skinned and faceless, with inward-curving horns and a barbed tail. The woman removed her gloves, uncovering pale white hands spotted with a ruby ring, and wiped bloody grime from her face. Age and measure showed in the creases around her eyes, but their green irises shone fiercely.

  “Now, my friends,” she said, scanning their faces through the bars with a smile both dauntless and comforting, “come up and see the show.”

  With a single strike of her sword’s pommel she shattered the lock on the cage. While one of her crew stepped forward to whistle and grunt translations in at least three languages, her emerald eyes caught Jinny’s, and her grin curled to one side.

  “Well, we ain’t seen one like you in some time.”

  “What you mean, Miss?” Jinny said, keeping her gaze low.

  “That’s Captain Bloodrose you speak with,” her translator barked. He resembled an upright hairless dog with rubbery skin, long teeth, and carrion breath.

  “It’s fine, Richard,” the captain said, then to Jinny, “I mean human, my dear.” The winged creature nuzzled her spiral curls.

  Slowly and gently, the prisoners were helped upstairs.

  The ship’s deck had become an abattoir, strewn with severed limbs and pulpy chunks in dull greasy blood, among the bodies of turbaned men and bulbous creatures. Another ship, sleek and crimson with sharp red sails, groaned against the moon-beasts’ captured vessel. The gibbous moon was large and closer now, while the green-blue globe was contracted far behind.

  Some of the turbaned men had surrendered and removed their headwear and robes, revealing hirsute bodies with short tails. She saw some of their kind among the Bloodrose crew.

  The four surviving gray-blobbed beasts were encouraged with swords and spears to balance themselves on the starboard railing. Jinny understood now that they owned the dark ship.

  Captain Bloodrose and her crew lined up across on port
side. “I give you a choice,” she called to the captured villains. “Jump or be pushed. We’ll see whether you fall to your moon or back to earthen ground.”

  Her translator began and she lifted a silencing hand. “They know what I say.”

  One of the moon-beasts made an obscene gesture with his nebulous arm.

  The captain’s face immediately churned with anger. At the snap of her fingers, the black creature took flight from her shoulder. It tucked in its diaphanous wings and dived at the gray beast. Its claws tore off a warding arm as its sharp tail pierced the tentacled face. Then that face was ripped off for good measure.

  The ruined gray body fell away.

  “Thank you, Emalee.” The flying creature returned to her.

  It took only a moment for the other beasts to decide. Their plump, amorphous forms tumbled overboard.

  “The rest of you may join my crew, for you cannot stay here. We take turns at the rigging and the work. We may get you home to Leng soon, or never.”

  They boarded the Arkham Rose, unhooked grapples, and threw oil and torches back over. The black galley listed and rolled aflame into the dark infinity beyond the planets.

  “And you, my dear…” Captain Bloodrose placed a hand on Jinny’s shoulder, then removed it just as lightly. “You may choose between the crew bunks, or my quarters.”

  The captain’s spacious cabin was finished with exquisite hardwood walls, displaying dozens of weapons. Curved and angled blades etched with obscenely elaborate patterns and inhuman symbols, fearsome hooked axes, worn stone clubs, curved bows crafted from mingled woods, dozens of knives each a different honed shape, and some oddly twisted implements not forged for a five-fingered hand. They all exhibited nicks and scrapes from heavy use.

  Captain Bloodrose seemed engrossed in polishing her battle blade, so Jinny stood in waiting, as night’s chill settled on her skin. She worried at the choice she’d made.

  The painting hung over a map-filled desk caught her attention. She studied the brushstroke detail of the single tree in the harvest field, where something sinister seemed to wait, and she looked away.

  The captain hung her sword and sat heavily at the desk chair, as her gaunt pet flew over to an iron perch by the window. She tried to tug off a boot, and was unsuccessful.

  Jinny knelt and assisted. She paired the footwear together against the wall.

  The captain sighed. “Here I was trying to be so alluring.” She undid her hair tie and curls fell past her shoulders.

  “You look fine, Miss.” And she meant it.

  “I’m sorry — what’s your name, young lady? And where are you from?”

  “It’s Jinny, Miss.” She still could not remember anything before the weird beach. “I can’t…”

  “Georgia, by your accent, or maybe Louisiana?” The captain rubbed her feet.

  “I don’t know such places you say, Miss.”

  “You should, I think. We’ll work on that.”

  Jinny frowned. She looked back at the painting and was startled to see it now depicted carnivorous-looking mountains. Unearthly fires burned on their slopes, around which ominous figures danced.

  “Richard painted this for me,” the captain gestured. “Like all my crew, he had a very different life before joining us. Come now!” She stood and pulled Jinny upright, rubbing her cold arms. “You’re freezing! You need a hot bath.”

  “I’ll warm some water, Miss.”

  “Now, you must call me Captain out there. In here, you can call me Pyrena. Or if you get cross with me, Pyrena Coccineous Meredith Rose.” Then she barked at the door. “Richard!”

  Soon the ghoul brought buckets in his powerful paws, and filled the clawfoot tub in the corner.

  “Miss Captain… Pyrena, have you been to the moon?”

  “It’s my aim to do so. I’ll need more ships to get there.”

  “It always looked far away and colder than ice.”

  “True. In fact you cannot breathe upon it at all, nor in the gulf of space between.”

  Before she could ask more, Pyrena held her gaze and said, “This is one of the ways, Jinny, that we know we are dreaming.” Without looking, she pointed again to the painting. It now showed a verdant garden with a primeval arch crumbling over a yawning, murky pit.

  Pyrena Rose fetched a drying cloth and sendal robe from the closet, and turned away while Jinny dressed. Then she led her behind a folding partition to a gossamer canopy bed. “You sleep here and I have a sofa.” She paused, pulling back the covers. “Until — or if… you should ever like me to join you.”

  Jinny felt a warm sensation she was sure she’d not felt before.

  “We’ll start your training tomorrow. No telling how long you’ll be here.”

  “I’d like to stay, Miss. Miss Pyrena.”

  “I’d like you to. There aren’t many women here.”

  The fine threads of the bed sheets glowed gently, and Jinny slid deep into their celestial sensation.

  She woke in horrendous pain, elsewhere. The skin on her back roared with a deep, itching fire. The air was different, muggy and plant sweet. Mosquitoes whined and bit. Someone touched a damp cloth to her forehead and sang softly of a sweet chariot. And Jinny slipped again. Away.

  The tremolo song of seabirds and rhythmic waves against the ship’s keel eased Jinny awake. Sometime before dawn they’d settled back into terrestrial ocean. The gaunt creature huddled under its wings in the morning sun. The captain was absent, so Jinny dressed in the folded clothes and boots laid out for her. She noticed the unrolled maps and sat at the desk, trying to ignore the painting above it showing a stalactite city hanging in an umbral cavern.

  She studied the hand-inked papyrus filled with jagged mountain coasts, reclusive islands, boundless deserts, and swirling seas labeled in script with names like Sarnath and Xur, Hatheg Kla and Inganok. The continents and islands remained more or less consistent across the maps, but among all the renderings, one location was not fixed. The land called Leng seemed to move.

  The cabin door opened to a panting hooded figure. “The captain is ready for you.” Richard lowered the cowl and huffed.

  Out on the deck, crew scurried like insects among the ropes and spars. The captain and two of her officers stood by the center mast below the largest sail.

  “Good morning, crewman Jinny.” The captain’s expression was devoid of warmth. “Up the ratlines with you to the main top.”

  Jinny did not know what she meant, but followed the captain’s steady glance upward. Her stomach dropped.

  She climbed the rigging very slowly, shaking with terror. Once she reached the crossbeam, she looked out in every direction, where an occasional massive shadow moved beneath the cobalt surface. She remained aloft until she could let go of the mast and stand freely on the yardarm, balanced against each wave and gust.

  She learned the parts and areas of the frigate, from mizzenmast to bowspirit, from headsail to escutcheon. She learned to reeve a rope, gybe a sail, and lash a trice. She learned, and became less afraid.

  When she returned exhausted to the cabin, the captain smiled pleasantly and threw a naked sword at her, point first.

  Jinny closed her eyes, flinching from the expected pain, but then she felt the sword handle tight in her hand and opened her eyes.

  “Good,” Pyrena said. “I thought you had a thing about you. Few can do this.”

  “But how did I…”

  “Don’t think on it. Just be as you want, and will events to be. It doesn’t always work. But it can in this place.”

  Jinny’s confusion became frustration. “And where is this place?”

  “You remember what I said last night?”

  “That we’re… dreaming. Tell me, will I ever wake?”

  “That may be up to you.”

  Jinny gripped the cutlass firmly, swung it to a controlled stop.

  Pyrena attacked with her blade. When Jinny parried the slashes and thrusts, Pyrena snuck a solid elbow into her cheek and swept her legs
.

  “Don’t assume it can be easy, that you’ll wake up whenever you want.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Decades. More than I remember. Probably in a coma hooked up to life support. I have two daughters. Now, stop asking questions.” She nicked her blade edge over Jinny’s forearm. The blood came immediately. “There is real pain here.”

  Jinny’s training began in earnest with the wooden bō staff and many bruises. It would finish with the knife.

  They followed the Southern Sea trade routes and prowled the Zar coast near the Forest of Parg until the lookout spied black sails in the fog. They doused lamps and slid in fast through the white mist, ramming the Arkham Rose’s rostrum into the black ship’s forecabin.

  They boarded in a wedge formation. Jinny watched from the far quarterdeck as Pyrena danced through the swarming ruckus, swung and cut in graceful fury, slashed, ducked and rolled among the fray, delivered knee strikes and headbutts, spun and pierced. The captive Leng servants fought hard, and at each scuffle she stepped back to let them flee or surrender. Those who charged again she cut down, the moon-beasts flowing up malodorously from below.

  One of the toadlike creatures felled two of the mercenary crew, oozed over the railing, and advanced on Jinny with an onyx club. Its tentacled face writhed angry red as its form stretched, looming taller. At the last moment Jinny lifted the bardiche axe from behind her and cleaved the gorger from soft skull to softer belly. Her heart thundered.

  When the battle was won, they hauled crates from the ship’s putrid hold. Captain Bloodrose pried off one of the lids and they gasped at the many thousand glinting rubies. Then they dumped the crates into the frothing brine.

  “Why waste so many jewelstones?” Jinny wondered aloud. “You could buy an armada.”

  One of the Leng women, now a boatswain holding a gory spiked war mace, overheard. “Not everyone the moon-beasts take to their bleak satellite become slaves. Each terrible gem is fashioned from the blood and essence of a stolen life.”