Kingdom of Royth Part 9

One was apparently the commander of the guards aboard Charger, judging from his gilded helmet and jeweled sword hilt. He was also a dangerously effective opponent. His long sword darted in and out; Blade frantically parried both the officer's lightning thrusts and the clumsier slashes of the soldier-then the hawser parted with a tw.a.n.g. The deck lurched slightly, throwing the officer off balance long enough for the man with the axe to whip around and bury the head in the other's back. Going down, the officer blocked his subordinate for long enough to let Blade get through the man's clumsy guard and take him in the throat. The two soldiers fell across each other, writhed briefly, then lay still in the blood sluicing across the deck.

Blade suddenly realized that the man who had chopped through the hawser and then cut down the officer was Brora, that the deck was clear of living soldiers, and that Charger was now nearly fifty yards clear of the flagship. He looked back toward the bigger vessel in time to see the foremast boom into a column of flame that spouted above even the black smoke pouring up from below, then turned back to Brora. The sailor was drenched with sweat and the blood oozing from half a dozen minor wounds, but grinned as he looked at Blade.

"Back to our true colors, aye, Captain Blahyd?"

"Yes. Order the men to the oars. I'm going aloft." Blade dropped his sword to the deck, grasped the ratlines, and scrambled upward toward the maintop. Once there, he at last had the view and at least a little of the time he needed to look about him and see what was happening.

The far northern end of the pirate fleet had dissolved into a chaos of burning ships and others that moved purposefully among them-galleys of all sizes, painted a green so dark that they were barely visible against the sea. The sh.o.r.ebased siege engines had apparently ceased fire, because of too much risk of hitting friendly ships. Farther out, off the tip of the peninsula, a ma.s.s of merchant vessels and sailing warships was sliding into view, following as close on the heels of the galleys as the fluky wind would permit. War engines on their decks were still busy, and Blade saw more of the white spouts of falling projectiles creeping down the pirates' line. The royal navy of Royth was riding in to the attack.

And if he could persuade his crew to resist the natural temptation to simply out oars and run for it, Charger could do her share and more. If the galleys on the beach and anch.o.r.ed at the south end of the line had a chance to pull themselves into battle formation, short-handed as they were they might put up a murderous fight. The fleet of Royth might be crippled beyond repair even if victorious. But if Charger lived up to her name, hurling herself into the middle of the a.s.sembling galleys, she might sow mighty confusion among them. And the royal warfleet might well sweep the whole length of the pirate fleet before effective resistance developed. Blade decided it was worth trying, slim as it left their own chances of survival. He scrambled down to the deck, and called Brora to him.

"Brora, we're going to attack the southern end of the pirate fleet."

Brora turned pale and swallowed, then nodded. He didn't need to spend much more time than Blade thinking out what Charger might do-and at what cost. He turned away, bawling orders to the oarmaster and the rowers. The beat of the oars quickened, and Blade felt the timbers under his feet begin to throb with that beat.

So far, no one had connected the sudden attack from Royth with Blade, and Charger was moving away unmolested. Behind her the flagship was now ablaze for nearly half her length, and Blade could see the splashes made by sailors hurling themselves from her high decks into the sea. On sh.o.r.e, people were swarming down the beaches and scrambling aboard ships, and a number of the anch.o.r.ed galleys of the inner line were already underway. There was no sign of Sea Witch or of Cayla's allies. When Cayla appeared, with or without allies, Blade knew he would have a fight on his hands.

A large galley with black and orange checked sails was turning almost broadside to them as her oarsmen settled to their beat. Blade ran aft and stationed himself alongside the tillermen, while Brora ran forward to speak to the oarmaster and then manned the catapult on the bow. Charger's head came around slightly to starboard, aiming for a point nicely calculated to intercept the other galley. The oarsmen bent to their work, the oars thumping in their sockets and the foam curling higher and higher alongside as they worked up to their racing stroke.

The men of the galley ahead had only a brief minute to realize that the other galley racing down on them meant to attack. Blade saw men running on her deck, heard Charger's catapult tw.a.n.g and spray a shower of lead slugs into the men on the enemy's deck. Some of them died, others threw themselves flat. Those who had thrown themselves flat were just beginning to rise when Charger's ram crashed through her opponent's oars and into her side amidships. Oars cracked, timbers splintered, the enemy's mainmast snapped and went over the side, dragging half the tiller crew with it, men mangled by the ram or by the flailing oars howled and screamed below decks. Brora snapped out orders, and Charger's oars went into reverse, pulling her free of the other galley. She was heeling over and sagging low in the water even before Charger had come about on a new course in search of a new victim.

This new victim was a smaller galley, as nimble as Charger and expecting the attack. Her oarsmen worked furiously, swinging her bows-on to the approaching Charger. Blade grinned. He had suggested one or two unorthodox tactics to Brora, who had trained his crew appropriately. Now Brora gave the necessary orders. Charger's bow swung until she was aiming her ram down the side of the approaching enemy, then he bellowed, "In all oars, starboard!" The entire starboard crew jerked their oars in through the ports and everybody aboard Charger braced themselves as she ploughed along her opponent's side, snapping and splintering the whole bank of oars on that side. The archers on Charger's deck had time to add to the enemy's discomfiture with three volleys, then the two ships were pulling apart, Charger building up speed again, the other limping away crab-wise.

The catapult fired again, this time hurling a huge wad of oil-soaked rope across the deck of a small merchantman pa.s.sing under their lee only fifty yards away. A pinnace with a dozen men in it scuttled across Charger's bow, miscalculated its distance, and was trampled underfoot by the rushing galley. Blade saw the men spilled into the water and thrashing wildly to avoid Charger's oars, but there was no time to pick up survivors. Arrows, catapult bolts, and stones were beginning to splash down about Charger or crash and chunk into her decks as the crews of the ships around her realized that she was an enemy.

A galley came backing off the beach now, moving slowly, with only about half her oars in action. She was keeping such a poor lookout that Charger easily darted in and rammed her in the stern, smashing her rudder, then threw a firepot onto her deck as she tried to turn under oars alone. Three down! Blade began to wonder whether the arms of the rowers-or Charger's seams-could take the strain of much more high-speed maneuvering and violent ramming.

Then Brora squalled incoherently, with the note of panic in his voice sounding so loud that Blade spun about as though an a.s.sa.s.sin were striking at his back, whipping his sword free in the same instant. Racing toward them out of the smoke pall laid across the water by the burning flagship was Sea Witch. Cayla was clearly visible, perched on the bow just above a ram that was half-submerged in green water by the speed of Witch's pa.s.sage. She had her arms stretched out toward the sea, and as Blade watched, his jaw set, she raised her arms.

Five monstrous fanged heads rose out of the sea, turning inquiringly on the ends of twenty-foot lengths of scaled green neck. Blade saw those heads turn toward Charger, felt the glare of five pairs of angry red eyes sear him. Then he instinctively stepped back from the railing as the heads and necks fell back into the water. Five mounds of water rose up where they had been, five mounds arrowing straight for Charger. Here were Cayla and her allies-here were the Serpent Priestess and the Serpent Guardians-she had summoned them out of the depths of the sea, out of the depths of nightmare. And here was a last deadly battle for life itself.

CHAPTER 21.

Whatever arcane skills had conjured these beasts out of their lairs, they were still flesh and blood. Blade was the first to realize this and feel his own cold fear fade, but Brora was the first to act. He leaped back onto the foc'sle where the catapult stood loaded for another shot, swung it around on its pivot, and jerked the firing lanyard. The bolt whistled across the narrowing gap of water and struck one of the creatures a glancing blow on the neck, ripping away scales and part of the long crest of bony spines that ran down its back. It hissed with a fury like a boiler releasing steam, opened its mouth in a wider gape, and came on. But now there was blood flowing down its neck, a green, thick, gluey ichon, whose foul reek came even across the water.

Seeing one of the creatures wounded put new heart in Charger's crew. Arrows whistled from bows, bounced off scales, fell into the churning water. Other sailors s.n.a.t.c.hed up javelins and shields and braced themselves to throw.

"Aim for the eyes!" Blade roared. "Ramming speed! Tiller hard a-port!" Charger heeled over sharply, throwing some of the men off their feet. Blade was aiming away to the right of the approaching monsters, toward Sea Witch and Cayla herself. Slay their mistress and guide, and the serpents would be reduced to mindless hulks of muscle and ferocity, a menace to all and therefore the foe of all. They would not stand or survive in the face of a hundred ships, whatever they might do to Charger.

He stared at Sea Witch, trying to make out Cayla in the smoke that hung thicker and thicker over the water. She no longer rode her ship's prow like a figurehead; was that she, the slim figure amidships? Yes! Blade ran forward to the catapult and slapped Brora on the arm, pointing toward Cayla. The sailor nodded. "Aye, 'tis finally time to reckon things up with that she-demon!" The catapult went spung and its bolt splintered a section of railing beside the figure on Witch's deck. But the figure only waved a mocking arm, and then the five monsters were on Charger and it was time to fight them off before turning against their mistress.

Charger heaved as though caught in a tidal wave as three of the creatures rose under her, tilting so far over that one whole bank of oars thrashed the air futilely. The fighting men on deck either held onto things or were tossed wildly down the length of her deck. Two of them clawed at splintered lengths of railing, missed, went over the side with a splash. A fanged head turned their way, lifted, dipped, plunged into the sea in a spray of foam and blood, its hisses drowning their screams. Then Charger lurched back the other way, and those who had kept their feet during the first heave went sailing into the bilges in a clatter of weapons and gear.

All except Blade and Brora. They clung like monkeys in a tree to the catapult, and as one of the creatures threw a yard-thick coil into the air, skewered it with a pointblank bolt. The air split apart with a hiss of agony, foam and blood showered them, and the writhing creature hurled itself at them, jaws opened to seize, the head smashing like a battering ram into the catapult. It flew to pieces, and in the seconds when the half-stunned creature's head lay motionless in the wreckage, Blade lunged forward and drove his sword deep through one glaring red eye into the brain. The beast convulsed in one gigantic jerk that whipped the six-foot head forward almost to Blade's feet, fanged jaws snapping in a final spasm, then lurched over the side and vanished.

Blade and Brora bent to pick up axes-more suitable for this butcher's work because more robust-then spun around as screams sounded from aft. The oarsmen had s.n.a.t.c.hed up their weapons and armor and were pouring up onto the deck. The fanged jaws closed on one sailor, crumpling his armor and crunching his bones in a single motion; twenty feet of its body swept like a giant flail across the deck, knocking another half-dozen off their feet. One brave soul rolled clear, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a javelin, ran forward, drove it into the back of the serpent's skull. The monster dropped its first victim in b.l.o.o.d.y rags on the deck, turned to confront this new opponent. As it did so Blade and Brora ran in, one on each side, waving their axes. The two broad iron heads came down, splintering the skull and chopping through the spine and a foot into the ma.s.sive body. The creature died without a further motion, the sheer weight of its body dragging it over the side.

With two of her allies slain and a third wounded, Blade wondered for a moment if Cayla might not call them off for a s.p.a.ce. But it seemed that the woman on Sea Witch's deck was now driven by a l.u.s.t for blood and vengeance only a little less mindless than the hunger and fury which drove her serpents. At least she could guide them into a more cunning attack than the headlong charge they had used until now.

This time, the three survivors came on together. It seemed that the sea itself had risen against Charger as the creatures hurled themselves out of the water to smash down on her decks like falling trees, pulping the men caught underneath, sweeping others overboard, flailing and thrashing about. Their weight dragged Charger down until her lee rail was only a few feet above the water, their hissing deafened, their musky odor clawed at Blade's nose and throat, their thrashing made the deck seams gape and the hull timbers groan.

Blade saw that he and Brora were alone on Charger's deck now and that the ship herself was coming apart under the punishment the three monsters were inflicting. A few more minutes of this, and he and Brora would be swimming for their lives in the water, where any of the serpents could pluck them up as easily as a fish. He had forgotten about the larger battle, forgotten even to care whether Royth was winning or losing, in the struggle against the serpents.

He and Brora backed as far forward as they could go and looked at each other. Even now, Brora hefted his axe and grinned savagely. Under their feet the deck gave another lurch, and Blade felt the bow rise higher out of the water as the creatures writhed their way aft and pressed the stern down into the water. The water would be flooding through the stern windows now, dragging Charger deeper and deeper.

There were a few remaining catapult bolts lying on the tilting deck along with the rest of the debris. Six feet long and steel-tipped, they were clumsy but serviceable spears. Blade bent to pick one up, saw Brora do the same. He hefted his, testing it for balance. The sun flashed on its head, flashed into the eyes of one of the beasts until now too concerned with obeying its orders to smash the ship down into the sea. It lifted its head, opened its mouth, swelled out its sides and throat with a deadly hissing. Then it lunged.

Blade and Brora leaped aside. Blade saw his companion backed up against the opposite railing, saw his mouth open in a scream as the creature's head swung toward him. Then Blade shut everything else out of his mind, concentrating only on placing his thrust and his axe blow as he hurled himself forward for the kill.

He moved so fast that his bolt skittered across the scales of the head, flew out of his hand and over the side. He sprawled headlong across the creature's back as his axe came down, chopping through scales and flesh and into the spine. The hiss of the creature in its death agony almost deafened him, and the putrid green mud that gushed forth from the wound seared his skin like scalding water and choked him like the odor of a cesspool. Halfblinded, he clawed at the creature's scales for a handhold as it reared up, until the dangling head was thirty feet above the deck. Then the serpent twisted in its final convulsion, flinging Blade high into the air like a stone from a sling.

Clinging by instinct to his axe, he saw the water coming up, felt it slam him across face and body, and kicked out furiously the moment he hit. But he went far under, far enough to see the weeds wriggling on the sandy bottom, far enough so that when he turned on his back and looked up the surface was a silver roof over a gray-green cave. Then he was struggling upward toward the surface, kicking off his boots as he went, dropping his belt and trousers, coming to the surface clad only in his shirt. He stripped that off with two quick motions of his free hand and looked about him.

He had expected that the two remaining serpents would be on him the moment he hit the water, but he suddenly realized that Cayla might not have seen him hurtle through the air and plunge under the water. If that were the case, she would not know to call her allies off from their job of sinking Charger to comb the waters about her for Blade. As long as he was invisible to Cayla he might have a chance of safety. He turned his head and began scanning around him for Witch. The murk of gray-brown smoke, spreading now from other burning ships besides the flagship, ebbed and flowed across the surface of the water. It made his eyes sting all over again and reduced the ships about him to lurking wraith-shapes.

He saw Charger, her ram now jutting green and slimy from the water as the writhings of the great serpents dragged her farther and farther down, churning the water white about her now-submerged stern. Bodies and wreckage were floating away from her as she dipped lower. He saw no sign of Brora. But he knew that in the murk the half-sighted monsters would have little hope of detecting anything more than fifty feet from their scaled noses without their mistress' aid. If Brora had clawed his way clear of the sinking ship, he might be hundreds of yards away by now and safe.

He turned back toward the flagship, in the direction where he had last seen Witch, and saw only the smoke and a skiff making her cautious way through the murk under oars. Then, turning farther, he saw two ships grappled together-a galley of Royth and a pirate galley beyond her-their decks a ma.s.s of struggling figures. He blinked water out of his eyes and looked again. Was one of the figures standing apart from the ma.s.s slim, with a head of hair so blonde and fair it gleamed even in the murk? Yes! His powerful legs churned the water behind him as he hurled himself through the water like a human torpedo toward the two ships. As he closed the distance, his few doubts vanished-here was Cayla, here was the final reckoning with the she-demon! Would tough and faithful Brora ever know about it?

The battle on the ships' decks had risen to its climax as Blade pulled himself alongside the Royth galley. Every few seconds a living man or a dead body would topple over the side, to strike out frantically or sink or drift away. Blade seized a rope trailing over the side, braced his feet against the weed-slick planks of the galley's bull, and scrambled up onto the deck.

He took a few seconds to size up the situation. In that few seconds the men ramping and struggling on the deck had time to turn and notice the apparition that had burst onto their deck-a colossal naked man, with skin burnt dark by sun and wind stretched over ma.s.ses of rippling muscles, swinging an axe in one hand as though it were as light as a quill pen. Then he bellowed "Cayla!" in a terrible roaring voice and charged forward. Pirates and navymen sprang aside from his path.

Blade's few seconds of observation had told his trained eye that here at least the pirates had the edge of it, having hurled the navy boarding parties back onto their own decks and then gone over to the attack. He crossed the galley's quarterdeck in a half dozen long strides, the axe whirling in his right hand, and sprang down onto the main deck in a single bound. Once again he was a killing machine, and now the small part of him still fully rational knew that Cayla was almost within his grasp, and both reason and the urge to kill drove him onward together at a frightening pace.

A pirate whirled, aiming a sword thrust at Blade's stomach. Blade danced to one side, brought the axe up, saw the head sink into the man's stomach, and felt the handle smash into his arm. The man's sword flew into the air. Blade s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the deck and parried a pike thrust with it almost in the same motion. Another pirate ran at Blade, also wielding a pike. Blade feinted left with the sword, brought the axe up as the pirate responded, then leaped aside and brought it down on the man's skull. The pirate was dead before he hit the deck and Blade sprang over the falling body to engage two more.

One of these had a shield and Blade launched a kick at the man's knee to force the shield down, then thrust over the top into his face with the sword. Simultaneously he whipped the axe up in time to take the other pirate's frantic downstroke on the axe-head. Sparks flew, metal clanged, the shock half-numbed Blade's arm. But the other pirate's sword flew from his hand and before he could leap back Blade swung his left arm with the b.l.o.o.d.y sword across and thrust the man through the belly.

Blade had now cleared a s.p.a.ce around him, and the pirates were beginning to lose heart, while fore and aft the navymen were rallying. A pirate rushed at Blade with a mace swinging in both hands and died clutching at an arrow rammed through his throat by a navy archer on the foc'sle. Two more pirates fell off the foc'sle, landing hard enough to be stunned for a moment. Blade was on them in seconds, axe swinging. A reluctance to slaughter halfstunned men like pigs made him shift his grip on the haft just enough so that the fiat of the blade, not the edge, struck them down to the deck again.

Then from both forward and aft, the navymen charged out in a full-scale counterattack, the bowmen dropping their bows and pulling out daggers and swords and engaging in a fight so utterly entangled that even Blade was hard put to tell friend from foe. There was a wild moment of balance, when the kettle-mending sound of clashing steel rose to a deafening din. Thrusts and slashes came at Blade so fast that in that moment all even he could do was parry and dodge and occasionally wince as steel slashed his bare skin. He was bleeding from half a dozen minor wounds when a trumpet blared close in his ear. The pirates gave way, those who still could move fast enough. Blade saw them dashing for the railing, leaping up on it, and hurling themselves across to the comparative safety of Witch's deck.

And beyond them, for the first time since he boarded the galley, Blade saw Cayla standing out straight and proud amid the swirl of battle and the retreat of her crew. With no thought of odds or anything else except coming to grips with her, he sprang onto the railing and leaped across onto Witch's deck.

Once again, men drew back at Blade's appearance. Naked, blood-smeared, eyes blazing with fury, he cleared a s.p.a.ce around him by his mere presence, without a single stroke of sword or axe. But Cayla saw her crew giving way before Blade and screamed out in a voice raw and shrill with fury: "There is only one, and he is only a man! Are you men?" As if wakened from a trance, the pirates sprang to life and hurled themselves against Blade.

He almost went down under the a.s.sault; there were at least fifteen coming against him, and he had already been fighting men and monsters for hours, apart from his wounds. He had to give way in his turn, retreating to the railing and making his stand there, sword and axe whirling like some deadly machine. The barrier they made between him and his opponents was impenetrable. Even worse for the pirates, at any slackening of the attack sword or axe would leap out into their ranks, a deadly tongue of steel licking out, smashing, ripping, maiming. There were so many of the pirates that they blundered into each other's way as they sought to get at Blade, and to make a blunder against Blade was a death sentence. There were fifteen pirates to begin with, then twelve, then ten.

Blade found a moment to appreciate the fact that he was nearing the end of his adventure in this Dimension as he had begun it-fighting single-handed against a ma.s.s of Neraler pirates. But he was filled with yet more fury that these poor fools he kept smashing down to the deck were keeping him from getting at Cayla. There were moments when a pause in the swirl of bodies before him let him see her, standing with one hand on her hip and the other urging her men on with flourishes of her sword. Then she disappeared for a time, and when he saw her again, she was stalking away down Witch's deck, hands busy with the straps and buckles of her armor. At that sight Blade's fury boiled still higher, and he bellowed like a bull and launched himself like a battering-ram against the men in front of him, lunging under sword and pike strokes.

The sheer impact of his giant body hurtling forward at full speed threw half the men opposing him to the deck, some of them stunned. Before the others could rally and block his path again or attack his now undefended rear, navymen from the Royth galley alongside began to swarm over the railings to join the battle. Blade turned for a moment to watch them and nearly died for his curiosity, as Cayla sprang around in a complete half-turn as graceful as a ballet dancer's and lunged at him. Her light sword was razor-sharp. It ripped open his right arm deep enough to make him gasp. The axe fell from his suddenly limp fingers and crashed to the deck. He brought the sword up to parry another lunge, but instead Cayla ran lightly forward until she was at the foc'sle. She leaped up on the railing, kicking off her boots as she did so, and gave a wild cry ending in a sibilant note that made Blade's flesh crawl. Then she shrugged her unbuckled cuira.s.s off, leaving herself bare to the waist. She threw up one slim arm in a mocking gesture to Blade, sending her sword flying through the air. As he ducked aside, she sprang from the railing and vanished over the side.

She was already many yards ahead of Blade by the time he hit the water and rose from his dive to follow her, and she was gaining every second. She might have been easy to overtake for Blade at his full strength, but he was far from fresh, and his disabled arm slowed him down even though he had also dropped his axe. But his remaining arm, his legs, and a single desperate thought drove him ahead at a muscle-wrenching, throat-searing pace. It was the thought that he must catch up with Cayla, must silence or stun her, before her serpent allies could respond to her call to rise out of whatever part of this b.l.o.o.d.y sea they now swam through and destroy him.

He soon realized she was making straight for sh.o.r.e. She was keeping well ahead of him, but the gap between them was no longer widening, and she had never found a second chance to pause and call the serpents. On and on they churned, through water now spotted thickly with floating bodies, balks of timber, masts complete with sails and rigging, overturned boats, odd bits of wood, and personal gear. Again, Blade felt he was ending this adventure as he had begun it-swimming through a wreckage-strewn sea-and again reminded himself that the true end to it all swam twenty yards ahead of him, white limbs thrashing along as tirelessly as his own.

Then he saw Cayla lurch to her feet, turn toward the sea, and give her serpent call again, now with a note of desperation that came clear even to Blade's water-deafened ears. And this time it was answered, as two hideously familiar heads writhed their way up out of the sea fifty yards off to the right.

Blade for a moment kept going by sheer reflex, as the prospect of those fanged, slime-dripping jaws closing on his body made him turn chill all over. Then he was churning through the water even faster, angling off to the left but still heading toward sh.o.r.e. He was swimming for life itself now; if he could get ash.o.r.e safely he might find a weapon or at least a chance to outrun the two monsters, a chance he would never find in the water. He swam until he was certain that both arms would snap off like rotten twigs if he lifted them for another stroke, until his chest felt as though one of the giant serpents was already coiled around it, until he could almost feel the joints of his hips and legs squeal protestingly as he forced them to keep moving.

It seemed that the minutes had already stretched into hours and the hours were stretching into days, when he felt solid bottom strike his feet. By reflex alone he changed his legs' motion from swimming to a staggering run. He splashed through the water, and behind him another splashing sounded, growing louder and louder. He was out on the hard-packed sand of the beach now, running like a hare, his eyes darting from right to left, searching less for possible enemies than for loose weapons he might s.n.a.t.c.h up. He would not worry about human opponents now; what was slithering out of the sea behind him was a far more deadly danger.

A low rise loomed ahead, and behind him he heard the splashing die away in favor of a grating noise of scales on sand as the monsters writhed their way up onto the beach. He topped the rise, tripped, went face down in the sand, rolled down into a hollow, and fetched up hard against an abandoned tent. Cautiously he rose to hands and knees and peered inside the tent-then grinned. The tent was full of barrels and bales, except for the center, where a hastily-pegged-together rack held a long row of spears and pikes, some upright and some lying flat. There was no one to stop him as he darted in and s.n.a.t.c.hed up three twelve-foot spears.

Now it was his turn to attack. Keeping low, he crawled up the tumbled sand and peered through a clump of beach gra.s.s. To the north was nothing but a swirling gray-brown wall, fed by fires both afloat and ash.o.r.e, with the northern breeze drifting the murk thicker and thicker toward where he lay. He could see nothing and hear little to suggest how the battle was going elsewhere. He cared even less, for his own private fight was not yet finished.

Cayla herself now stood ankle deep in the water, entirely nude. The two great serpents were coiled up on the beach in front of her, with perhaps the rear thirty feet of their bodies still submerged and their vast heads swaying gently back and forth some ten feet above the sand. Their mouths open and shut as she spoke to them in the half-bark, half-hiss Blade now knew so well. Behind her, drifting in toward sh.o.r.e, bobbed a great tangle of planks, spars, and canvas. Blade rose to his knees and hefted a spear. It was not his preference to kill an unarmed woman, but far too many attempts to kill him lay between them, and from this distance it would in any case be folly to try for a disabling shot. He might well miss entirely and have the serpents on him in seconds. He sprang to his feet and hurled the spear.

It was a good throw but not good enough. The spear grazed Cayla's hip and skittered into the water behind her. Before the ripples of its fall had vanished, she spun about, thrust out a hand toward Blade, and screamed out triumphantly. Blade s.n.a.t.c.hed up the second spear and ran at the nearer serpent before it had time to uncoil most of itself. The head was still hovering uncertainly in the air as the flaring red eyes sought to focus on its prey when Blade ran in under that head, leaped as high as he could, and thrust the spear into the monster's throat.

Again a death-hiss tore at Blade's ears, again the fumes of the thing's blood tore at his lungs and stung his skin. He let go of the spearshaft barely in time to avoid being hurled into the air, as the monster reared up with the spear still embedded in its throat and lunged toward the sea. But he did not avoid its flailing coils entirely, as a yard-thick section of body whipped out and slammed into him hard enough to hurl him to the sand.

He saw the other monster rear up, clawed frantically backward to get at the remaining spear, then heard Cayla's cry of triumph change to a gasp and a bubbling scream. He lurched to his feet with the last spear in his hand and saw Cayla staggering, the point of a pike jutting from her body just below the left breast. A blood-smeared, smoke-blackened figure stood just behind her, and as Blade watched the figure jerked the pike free and thrust it into Cayla again. This time she went face down into the water, which instantly turned red about her thrashing limbs. As the figure stood over her and raised the pike for a third thrust, Blade recognized the face, darkened as it was by blood, smoke, and rage.

"Brora! Enough!"

"Captain Blahyd!" Brora turned, showed white teeth in a smile, and took a single step toward Blade. Then the last serpent, no longer under the control of its dying mistress, no longer responding to anything except hunger and rage, turned and noticed the two figures almost beneath its head. The head dipped, lunged downward, and Brora's final scream mingled with Cayla's as both vanished in a flurry of water. The creature's jaws snapped shut and blood began to spread in the water; then Blade sprinted across the sand and through the water to drive his last spear into the snake's eyesocket.

It reared up in a final agony, letting its prey drop as the blood-dripping jaws sagged open. Blade had one good look at what Cayla and Brora had become, then turned and ran as though the flames of h.e.l.l were licking at his heels, back onto the dry beach, back up the slope and down the other side into the tent. There, and there only, he finally collapsed, too spent even to be sick, too deaf to the world to hear the final thrashings of the last of Cayla's monsters.

What broke into his semi-oblivion was an unexpected but not unfamiliar sound-the sound of somebody calling cadence, accompanied by the rhythmic thump of a large body of men coming down the beach in step. Such a style of marching did not suggest to Blade a mob of fleeing pirates or camp-followers. It was with as much jauntiness as his sagging limbs could muster up that he went out to greet the approaching men.

It was no surprise to see two companies of the Royal Guard of Royth coming down the beach at full march-step, weapons drawn and scouts thrown out in front. But what was a surprise was to see Tralthos tramping along at their head. And Tralthos was equally surprised when he recognized the preposterous figure that tottered into view, naked as the day of its birth, as the Constable Blahyd.

Blade had regained enough energy and had enough sense of the dignity of the occasion to keep from falling on his face a second time as he and Tralthos embraced each other and pounded each other on the back. But after that he had to sit down, and Tralthos followed him. They squatted on the sand while Tralthos told Blade of the great victory of Royth.

"We got out of the Keltz as easy as eating a gooseberry tart and hugged the coast all the way south, moving by night. Last night we sent some tough lads ash.o.r.e from the fleet to take out the sentries on that little peninsula up north-" Blade nodded as Tralthos pointed "-and mounted some of our engines up there. This morning, we got the galleys around the point and in through a deep pa.s.sage the local pilots knew about but the pirates didn't. Then we just rolled up their line from the north while the merchantmen went farther out and kept their big ships from getting away. I think we must have sunk or burned or captured more than three hundred ships. The admiral decided a couple of hours ago we might as well land some troops to clean up the camp, so he ran the transports insh.o.r.e and unloaded the two battalions of the Guard he had along."

Blade nodded. As with any brief account of a great battle, he knew that Tralthos was leaving two-thirds of it out. But Blade was not sure that his fogged mind and aching head could take in any more. But also: "What about the army?"

Tralthos' grin broadened still further. "Hors.e.m.e.n with messages rode over the bluff not half an hour ago. Said we'd put four brigades between the pirates and the beach and the other five on their front and right. If they're smart, they'll surrender now. If not, it'll take a while to kill them all, but there won't be anything left but bandits in another two weeks."

Blade nodded again. He had no more questions at this point and no energy to ask them even if he had. But Tralthos was going on.

"Pelthros is on his way back to High Royth posthaste. Can't wait to get back to his crafts, I wager, now that he doesn't need to be a big fighting man any more. He'd still rather leave that to people like you and me. But you'll be getting more rewards for this, believe me! He'll be lucky if the people let him get away with making you a count! And when you marry Alixa-"

But Blade suddenly could no longer hear the cheerful soldier. The ache in his head suddenly flared up to the point of driving in on his fatigue-dulled consciousness, flared to an agonizing wrenching as the computer reached out across the dimensions to s.n.a.t.c.h him home. He could no longer even sit; he was falling face down on the sand.

Then the sand that he was digging up with his clawing fingers and toes turned completely over, and he was clinging to the roof of a vast chamber, filled with a murky green vapor that curled about him. Half-hidden in the vapor, Tralthos and his soldiers hung head-down from the same ceiling, like bats from the ceiling of a cave. And then they were bats, squeaking and beating their wings and darting off to become lost in the darkness.

A light appeared below, soft and pearly, spreading out, taking shape, taking the shape of Alixa, her proud body bare, rising toward Blade. And Blade let himself fall away from the sandy ceiling, down, down toward Alixa, down into her, down through, down into the murk that suddenly lost all its tint of green and turned cold and black.

CHAPTER 22.

"And now," said J as he and Lord Leighton settled themselves in armchairs, "I think it's high time we thrashed out some questions this last mission has raised."

"Certainly, certainly," replied the scientist, opening a cabinet beside his chair and pulling out a bottle and gla.s.ses. "Would you care for some brandy?"

J shook his head. "Not now, thank you." They were in a small but lavishly furnished waiting room, part of the hospital complex that lay a further hundred feet down below the computer room under the Tower. Three rooms away, Richard Blade, bathed, bandaged, and electronically monitored down to the slightest wiggle of his little finger, was sleeping peacefully. It was a hypnotically induced sleep, into which he had been sent after finishing his narrative of his latest adventure in Dimension X. It was this adventure and some particularly disturbing things about it that J wanted to thrash out with Lord Leighton.

Lord Leighton poured himself a small gla.s.s of brandy and sniffed at it, then set it on the cabinet and made a steeple of his thin fingers. "I hope you realize that the chronic distortion involved in this mission is a very disturbing phenomenon. Previously we have had a one-to-one congruence between X Dimension and Home Dimension time. That is, if Blade felt nine months had pa.s.sed in Dimension X, nine months had also pa.s.sed here. But now Blade comes back after what was the better part of a year to him, and only four months have pa.s.sed here. The chronic distortion has reached two for one or more the first time we encounter it."

J nodded. That was indeed one of the matters he wanted to discuss with Lord L but not the princ.i.p.al one. "Frankly, I think what we need to consider is whether we had any reason to keep him there so long at all. If he had returned after only-"

"Quite true, quite true," said Lord Leighton, in a tone of voice that J recognized as actually admitting nothing of the kind. "But we have to consider this in the perspective of repeated missions. Suppose the next time we get a distortion but in the reverse direction? Let us say Blade stays in Dimension X a time that is for him only a few days, but several months pa.s.s here. It lends an extremely disturbing element of unpredictability to the whole Project."

"As if we didn't have enough already," said J rather sourly. He was not particularly interested in running to earth this particular hare that Leighton had started. But he held his peace for nearly ten minutes while the scientist wandered off into totally unintelligible realms of technical and scientific abstraction. Even Lord Leighton, and even when discussing a scientific topic dear to his heart, could run out of things to say, however. When this finally happened, J was ready.

"It's all very well to worry about things we can't control-oh, very well, that we can't control now-but the more immediate problem is something else. Richard was gone nearly nine months, came as close to being killed as he ever has-and for what? The people in that Dimension were, frankly, a collection of the most unprepossessing specimens I've ever heard of. Life there seems to have been 'dull, nasty, brutish and short,' but Richard spent nine whole months there, helping them to solve a perfectly ordinary problem with pirates that they probably could have handled just as well themselves."

Leighton sipped his brandy and nodded.

"My G.o.d, Leighton, when I think of how close we came to losing him in some squalid little affair with a mess of pirates .... Pirates!" He uttered the word as though it were the blackest obscenity he could think of.

J was still shaking his head in disgust when a nurse entered, trim and crisp in her hospital uniform. "Excuse me, gentlemen. Mr. Blade is awake and asking for both of you."

Leighton laboriously pulled himself out of the chair and stood up. "Well, then, since Richard is awake, why don't you ask him yourself?"

"Eh?"

"Did he think it was worthwhile, getting involved in that 'squalid little affair'?"

They followed the nurse out of the waiting room and down the hall to Blade's room. He was sitting up in bed, looking tired but cheerful, and greeted them warmly as they entered. After the initial handshakings, Leighton looked at J with a well-why-don't-you-ask-him expression written all over his face. J cleared his throat, looked first at the ceiling, then at the floor, then finally at Blade, and said: "Richard, there's something I've been meaning to ask you about this last affair. Did you think it was worth it, in terms of what Project Dimension X set out to do?"

"Meaning exploring the various phases of Dimension X to bring back things of value for England's use?"

"That's one way of putting it, yes."

Blade appeared to be having an unusual amount of trouble phrasing his answer. He grimaced, frowned, pulled at his lower lip for a time, then said, "Yes, sir, I think it was. In an odd sort of way, I'll admit. There's nothing that I can see wrong with exploring these X Dimensions for England and bringing back materials and techniques for our use here. But it seems to me that we ought to be able to offer them something in return. Since we haven't yet worked out a way to take anything material through the computer transfer, the next best thing seems to me the sort of thing I just did-helping them cope with their problems. Sometimes I have a perspective on the problem that they don't, or skills, or something like that. And this wasn't the first time I've spent extra time helping the local people. Remember Tharn? Or the Gnomen?"

J did. Lord Leighton smiled. "I see your point, Richard. Well, as long as you are willing to keep at it, you'll have plenty of opportunities to arrange your little aid-for-trade exchanges. And now, I think you look like you need some more sleep." He ushered J out into the corridor and closed the door behind them, then turned to the other and grinned impishly.

"I rather suspected Blade was going to say what he did, so I let him say it. I agree with him absolutely, but of course I knew you'd take it much better from him than from me."

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!" said J, in frank amazement. "You are getting to be a romantic altruist in your old age!"