An Empire Unacquainted With Defeat (39 page)

What did the shifting direction of the seas mean? My guess was, we were in shallow water. Or near land. Or both.

"Tor. Post lookouts." I left the poop to Mica, went down to examine our prisoner. "Ugly bastard, ain't he?"

"
What
is he?" Buckets wanted to know.

"I got no idea. We're going to ask. Get him strapped down. Let's see what's under those togs." He wore doublet and hose like they do in Hellin Daimiel, but with a definite alien turn.

He had no visible sex organs, and no hair. Naked, he was more lizard-like than ever. His skin even had a scaly texture. His back was darker and rougher than his front.

Tor returned from posting the lookouts. He drew his iron from his charcoal, spat upon it. The spittle hissed. "Need to let it cook a little more," he said. "Got to do these things right." He patted our prisoner's shoulder.

"Captain," Mica called. "Come here a minute."

"What for?"

"I think I hear something."

A moment later, as I strode toward the stern castle, a lookout called, "Break in the clouds ahead, Skipper. Looks like moonlight coming through."

He was right. I made a quick side trip, collected the sextant and navigational tables. I joined Mica. He asked, "Much for me to do?" He was our sail maker.

"Yes. One sheet is ripped all to hell. Two others need minor repairs. What did you want me to hear?"

"Be real quiet. Hold your breath. Listen."

I did. I heard wind and sea. Then, as
Dragon
crested a swell, I heard it. A single remote sound that might have been a bell.

"What direction?"

Mica pointed. Directly along the course we would have been making had we kept running with the wind instead of taking the point off it that we could steal.

Land? A warning to ships? I squinted. I could see nothing. But the bell notion seemed somehow familiar. I thought I'd heard the sound before but could not remember where or when.

"Keep a sharp lookout," I told the watch. "And use your ears. We're coming up on something." I placed my sextant and book of tables in the rack provided, went back down to the main deck. "How's your rod, Tor? Ready?"

"Any time, Captain."

"Let's get started, then. Couple of you men keep him from flopping around." I leaned forward, so Fish could see me clearly. "Who are you?"

He looked back with blank eyes. He meant to play rough. I removed the gag. "It won't work. Eventually we'll give you more than you can handle. Save yourself the trouble."

He rolled his head slightly, plainly unaccustomed to that sort of communication.

"Name."

Headshake.

"Tor."

Again a response more powerful than any human would have managed.

We repeated the cycle four times. The bell kept getting closer. Only now it sounded like somebody hammering out horseshoes. Slowly.

"Lookouts. You see anything?"

"No, sir."

I checked the clear patch of sky. We were close. It was moving our way as we approached it. I glimpsed a full moon. A full moon but not
the
moon. Not unless we had been away so long the moon had grown larger and developed different acne.

Raw fear. A different moon? Impossible. I rushed to the poop and the sextant.

The men realized that the moon was not the one they knew.

We entered the break.

The constellations were all askew. A few stars looked like ones I'd used for taking sights but they were not in the right places in the sky.

I put the sextant aside. And as I did, I wondered, for half a second, how come I knew how to use it. I'd never picked one up before.

My curiosity slipped away as the distant blacksmith gave his anvil sudden hell. All I could see was a deeper darkness on the horizon, though it was hard to tell where the horizon ought to be.

A lookout called, "Think I see land, Captain."

"Keep a sharp watch, then. Doing any good, Tor?" I asked.

"Negative. He's stubborn."

"Toke, haul back on the canvas. We may be coming up on land." I returned to the interrogation.

The creature was in pain but pain had not broken him. His hate-filled eyes told me he had reserves left. "This isn't working. Any suggestions, Tor?"

"Not without knowing what it is."

I'd thought not. "Keep plugging." I went forward, to the forecastle deck, where I leaned against the rail, watched the horizon rise and fall. Something lay ahead. Besides the obvious ringing.

Once the forecastle had been my domain. When Colgrave was captain. I'd stood my station there when we attacked. I was the Bowman, feared all down the western coast. A coast that did not exist here, perhaps.

The strange stars began to disappear behind thickening clouds.

Tor got a name. Nobody could pronounce it. Fish's translation went: Assistant-to-the-Great-Master-of-the-Hope-of-Callidor-Beside-the-Sea.

"Now we're getting somewhere," Tor observed with unwonted sarcasm.

The sky began to lighten, from black to shades of lead. There
was
land ahead. A low promontory jutted into the gray sea to starboard. We would have run aground there had we let the spell control our course. Great breakers smashed upon that shore, hurling mountains of foam at the sky. "Tor, put your toys away. I want everybody working. We've got to dodge that headland."

The banging of the anvil was so loud it hurt.

We passed the promontory, which sank slowly into the sea, becoming a rocky reef. Foam swirled around rocks that never quite broke water, fifty yards off our starboard beam. There were furiously treacherous currents, too.

We entered calmer water. The diminished seas were on our beam, now.
Vengeful D.
rode those poorly.

Hengis was on the helm. Little Mica was mending sails. Hengis called, "She won't respond to port, Captain."

Up I went, demanding more information.

"If I turn to starboard, she answers. But if I want to swing port, no dice."

I tried the helm. He was right. I could not muscle the rudder past midships. I had Tor check it. He could find nothing physically wrong. Still, I sent Toke below to rig the emergency steering arm. I doubted there would be time to use it.

Tor has the best eyes aboard. He spotted the ruins first. He pointed. I looked. "What?"

"Looks like a ruined city."

We moved closer. The rudder would permit nothing else. The ruins became more obvious. "You're right." I could see where streets had run, where buildings had stood.

The heavy-handed smith picked up the beat.

Dragon
turned directly toward shore.

Nothing helped. Not even taking in all sail. We had one spot of luck. I managed to run aground on deep, fine sand.
Dragon
rode up the beach, canted over, halted.

In moments Toke and Tor had working parties over the side, belaying lines, getting
Vengeful Dragon
secured, lest unknown tides sweep her away or drive her onto the rocks above the beach. The Kid and our better fighters ranged inland a hundred yards, making sure no trouble surprised us while we worked.

I stood on the canted forecastle, bow in hand. Mica held my arrows. The old fever was in me. I wanted to kill somebody.

That had been with me since my dimly recollected time as a soldier. A fire in my soul both cruel and self-destructive. Once I hadn't noticed, hadn't cared, hadn't been aware. Now I was. But the fever remained, dark and deadly.

She was a good weapon, my bow. Crafted by the best boyer, accompanied by arrows from the hands of the best fletcher and best arrowsmith. Masterpieces of murder, all.

"What's up?" Mica asked softly.

"Eh?"

"I haven't seen your eyes so hot since the time we caught those two Trolledyngjan longships."

I fought the urge to lie. We are all liars aboard
Vengeful D.
Every man jack blames his situation on externals. "It's the devil inside. The beast that got me here. It's slavering eager to get loose."

"I thought so. Control it. We're riding the edge."

"What?"

"We're here. Again. Another chance." He glanced at the sky. The clouds moved oddly, their bellies boiling. If I turned my imagination loose I had no trouble seeing faces up there. Off north a few knife-slit gaps appeared in the overcast. Spears of sunlight stabbed through and struck what looked like distant fields of ice. "Would they let us be wakened otherwise?"

Little Mica was not religious. But he had developed a mystical quality, as though he was a nonbeliever chosen spokesman for the powers that shape the world.

His sins were as black as mine, else he would not be aboard
Vengeful Dragon.
But I counted on him to nurture what conscience I retained. "Maybe. And maybe we're somewhere where old debts don't matter."

"Huh?"

"This isn't the world where we died, Mica. But it's not Heaven or Hell, either. I don't know what it is."

"Scared?"

I battled the instant rage his suggestion stirred. "A little." Odd. Fear was a stranger. I'd never had anything to lose, nor had I entertained doubts about my own invulnerability. We sailed for generations without fear, till we fell foul of the sorcerer who first consigned us to the place where Fish had wakened us.

I stared at the dead city, the alien city. It was barely a ghost of a memory in stone. Whatever hand Fate held, it would be played out there.

The men finished making fast, awaited direction. "Muster on the beach," I said. "Tor, drag the prisoner down there."

They were not kind, getting Fish ashore. But he did not protest. Of course, somebody had replaced his gag, just in case he developed an itch to cast a vengeful spell.

"Turn him loose," I said. "Somebody wants us here, Fish can lead us to them."

Toke and Tor seemed reluctant to walk into something blind. Amazing. In times gone by they were fiery eager to jump into anything where they could cut somebody up.

The clouds still rolled weirdly overhead. The knife slits through which light fell were approaching the ruins. Seeing those hints of faces up there inspired me. "Aid us, O Great Ones, in this our hour of peril. Aid us, O Great Ones, in fulfilling the destiny you have set us." I'm not much at prayer.

The men gave me weird looks. Several snickered. For a moment I feared I'd made a wrong move. Colgrave had set the standard for leadership aboard
Vengeful Dragon
: be the meanest, scariest sonofabitch aboard. Then several others sent up clumsy prayers of their own. The slow change was continuing.

The clouds opened and dropped a beam of light on us briefly. Coincidence? Whatever, it buoyed morale dramatically.

The hammering in the ruins had diminished to a spine-tickling nuisance once
Dragon
beached herself. It waxed stronger now, demanding, firing my bloodthirsty mood. I do not like to be pressed.

"Billow. Three-Fingers. Walleye. Clabber. Stay here. Don't let nothing near the ship. The rest of you, form up. Tor. Toke. Take the flanks. Spread out. Mica. Kid. Stay with me." I tested the flex of my bow. She was as smooth and powerful as ever.

Toke and Tor spread the men. A sorrier, nastier bunch I couldn't imagine. They did not properly belong in this scene, but rather in a mad painter's portrait of a city being raped.

Fish just stood there. I gestured for him to go. He didn't move. He seemed frightened. But that was judging by human standards. Kid and Mica urged Fish along with the tips of their blades. He walked with difficulty.

I gave Toke and Tor the signal.

We reached the nearest ruins. They were extremely ancient. Up close, you could hardly tell that the stones once formed buildings. There was no evidence of occupation, present or past. Time had devoured everything but the stones themselves.

The bell sounded louder as we advanced. I had the men fashion earplugs. That helped only a little. We could
feel
the sound.

The slits in the clouds became more numerous. A dozen fingers of light played across the city. From the peak of a rubble pile I saw that it sprawled for miles. It had been vast in its time.

Kid grabbed my elbow, indicated a particular column of light. For a moment I saw nothing. Then light flashed, reflected. There were more flashes when the beam drifted. The ruins sparkled briefly.

I checked the other columns of light. Each trailed sparkles across the ruins. Curious.

Mica and the Kid yelped. There had been a brilliant flash directly ahead. A moment later a sailor called, "Skipper! Look here." He was on one knee. I knelt myself. A soft gleam shone between the stones, something in there giving off light.

"Dig it out." I glanced at Fish. He remained indifferent. He stared toward the source of the ringing.

The men dug out a triangle of glass an inch in its long direction. Its reverse was a grayish black. Its edges were the green of a deep tropical sea. It looked like a mirror shard, yet it reflected nothing. I moved it around, glimpsed something momentarily but could not catch it again.

We discovered scores of similar fragments, none bigger than the first. Occasionally, we found handfuls crushed to gravel. Mica chirruped, "That stuff would be worth a fortune back home. For making jewelry."

Typical Mica thinking. He always went for the treasure.
Dragon
used it for ballast. "Thought you were cured of that."

"Sure. Only . . . ."

"On our way back. We'll fill a sack."

Kid found a fragment an inch across and round. He sailed it toward the apparent source of the ringing. "Gonna hammer that bastard when I get hold of him," he yelled.

"Keep moving," I said. "And be careful. We're getting close."

I whirled, arrow drawn.

"What?" Mica demanded.

"Saw something. I thought."

"Know what you mean. I keep getting that myself. But there's never anything there."

A shadow moved in the corner of my eye. I looked. Nothing. The men were all uneasy. "Tor! Hold up." Time to call on his remarkable eyes. "You see anything? Like from the corner of your eye?"