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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 passing 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 assassin 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
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was clearly visible, perched on the bow just above a ram that was
half-submerged in green water by the speed of Witch's passage. 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 ichor, 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 snatched 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
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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 snatched 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, snatched up a javelin, ran forward, drove it into the
back of the serpent's skull. The monster dropped its first victim in bloody
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 massive 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 space. But it seemed that the woman on [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]