by Brian Lumley
“Look,” said Limnar, “it will be daylight soon, or as close as it ever gets to daylight around here. I’ll have the ships readied for flight, and when you think there’s enough light you can go off with your grim and give this entire area a minute going over. Then, if you find anything, the flotilla will be ready to back up any action you may have started. How does that sound?”
“Mist’s clearing, Cap’n Dass,” came a cry from the bridge, complementing Gytherik’s nod of agreement. “Air’s pretty still. Sunup is forty minutes, full daylight in one hour forty-five.”
“I may not wait for full light,” said Gytherik to the sky-Captain. “I don’t like the idea of just sitting here doing nothing. The feeling is growing in me that something is very wrong. If I get the grim airborne now, when daylight comes we’ll be that much further ahead.”
“Mist still clearing, Cap’n,” came the watch’s cry once more. “And—” the crewman’s voice paused and went up a notch, “—and something coming this way. Something in the clouds!”
“Where?” yelled Limnar at once, his eyes scanning gray, sluggish heavens. And to Gytherik, in a lower tone: “Could it be your gaunts?”
“Could be,” the youth answered, “—or a Leng ship!” And suddenly, excitedly he pointed up and north-westward into the sky. “There it is! But what in—?”
His question, unspoken, hung in the air in imitation of the weird aerial device which now hove into view through a gap in the clouds. The clouds, along with the mist, were thinning, but the mad moon was already down and disappeared beyond dreamland’s rim. And blown on a falling north wind the thing in the sky loomed closer, until its outlines became unmistakable.
“Why, that’s the mast and basket from Hrill’s ship!” gasped Limnar Dass. “The contraption those horned ones used to flee from the wreck in the desert.”
“Right,” Gytherik agreed. “Except it no longer has a sail—and it’s in tow behind Sniffer and Biffer!”
“There’s someone in that net,” Limnar went on, squinting his eyes as the aerial device drifted, was blown and towed closer to the ship.
“And someone else—three someones—on the mast itself,” Gytherik added. Then, suddenly filled with urgency, he turned to his depleted grim and ordered them aloft. Moments later they joined the straining Sniffer and Biffer in the sky above Gnorri II, and in a short while the flying contraption was brought safely down and secured to the ship.
By then it could clearly be seen that two of the three figures on the mast were horned ones, lashed in position with ropes. Above them, Hero was quite literally frozen to the broken mast—while in the net Eldin blustered and roared as always until he was set free. Then the remaining flotation bags were punctured and the entire device allowed to collapse gently onto the deck, the horned ones were cut down and taken away for questioning, and Hero was gently prised from his position and carried into Limnar’s cabin. There he was given brandy and covered with warm blankets.
With the horned ones out of the way, and after Sniffer and Biffer had been severely chastised—then petted and fondled to a ridiculous extent—by their youthful master, then Eldin, fortifying himself with a bottle of mellow golden wine, told all of what had happened. This was in the sky-Captain’s cabin, where Hero, still recovering from his near-fatal freezing, merely sat and sipped at brandy while Eldin talked.
“And that was that,” the Wanderer finished. “In like a flash—like twin flashes—came Sniffer and Biffer, puncturing half of the bags in as much time as it takes to tell, and down we came out of the sky. The wind was in our favor, of course, but those two bloody marvelous gaunts did most of the work!”
When he sat back with his wine, both Limnar Dass and Gytherik were rightly full of questions. “But who was it called you away in the first place?” the gaunt-master wanted to know.
“And how far away exactly is this centuried city?” asked Limnar. “And just how do we get to it?”
“And do you really think that these two girls of yours—Ula and Una—are there?” (Gytherik again.)
“Would we have a chance, do you think, in a surprise aerial attack?” (Limnar.)
And all the time Eldin’s great bearded face turning first to one of his questioners, then the other, until his brows began to come down like angry thunderheads. Then it was that Hero managed to get his shivering and the chattering of his teeth under control, and with something of his old authority he commanded all:
“Now slow down, I-lads, and let’s take it one qu-question at a t-time. Ula and U-Una, you ask: did they call us into a trap? I think n-not.”
“Not them, no,” growled Eldin, “but some dark demonic voice in our minds. They are there, though—of that we’re pretty sure. As for the exact location of Sarkomand: we should find it again easily enough, simply by following the shoreline westward. We’d see the ruins from the air; and if we stayed close to the ground—”
“Then we m-might also have a chance in a surprise attack, y-yes,” Hero finished it. “But I don’t think we’d better let it come to that. I have a few ideas of my own—which I’ll come to in a moment. But for now, since it seems we’ve answered most of your questions, I have one f-for you.”
“Go ahead,” said Limnar.
“F-first off, did Sniffer and Biffer bring back our swords? They did? Good! And secondly:” he lifted his blankets to peer under them at his nakedness and grinned ruefully, “does someone have a spare set of clothes I could use?”
Suitable clothes were sent for, and while Hero waited he sipped more brandy and further recovered. His wits, it seemed, had been honed to a fine edge by his ordeal. As dawn broke on a drear but much less cloudy day, finally he gave his friends the benefit of his reasoning.
“We were above the clouds when Sniffer and Biffer rescued us. Out of sight of the Isharrans, Zura and Lathi alike. My guess is that they’ll think we’ve gone right off into space. They’ll think we’re finally done for.” He shrugged. “Well and good, let them continue to think so. And just in case they’ve spies out, let’s have the mast from old Hrill’s ship chopped up and destroyed once and for all. If it’s spotted aboard Gnorri II it will be a dead giveaway. As for our prisoners—”
“I had all but forgotten them!” Eldin excitedly, rumblingly broke in. “They might know the whereabouts of Ula and Una!”
“Right,” said Hero, “and if they do—”
“We’ll launch a rescue mission,” cried Eldin, “—a proper one this time. A full-scale attack, and—” He paused as Hero slowly shook his head.
“No,” said the younger quester. “Stealthy does it this time, my friend: Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey!”
“Eh?” said Eldin, Limnar and Gytherik as a man. And Eldin added: “Has the cold addled your brains, lad? We’re not after catching any oriental monkeys!”
Hero frowned. “That’s a saying I remember from the waking world,” he informed. “I think … Anyway, it doesn’t matter, for even if we went at ’em full tilt we couldn’t win. They outnumber us two or even three ships to one. Even if we did win our losses would be enormous—and probably unnecessary. No, that’s not the way. Look, they think we two are finished. That’s our trump card! See, I believe their snatching us was purely a delaying tactic.”
He paused, then turned to Limnar. “What would your course of action be if we hadn’t come back?”
“Why, we’d be airborne and searching for you—starting just about now!” answered the sky-Captain.
“So let’s be at it,” said Hero. “That’s what they’d expect, right? All you have to do is avoid the coastal region to the west—Sarkomand—where the enemy is actually encamped. I figure it’s not an easy place to spot from the air anyway. Toward evening, however—as night falls and before the moon rises—the flotilla can close in, seemingly haphazardly, until the last moment. Then—”
“Then we catch ’em with their pants, down, eh?” guessed Eldin, only to be frustrated once more.
“No,” Hero shook his head, “for they
’ll have spotted our ships long before that. But while they’re watching the ships, and as soon as the light begins to fail, you and me and Gytherik—and the gaunts of course—we’ll be sneaking in on them at a very low level, perhaps out of the sea mists. While they’re getting their fleet airborne to fight off Limnar’s possible attack, we’ll hit ’em from the rear and snatch Ula and Una.”
“But what’s to stop them attacking our ships during the day?” asked the sky-Captain, not unreasonably. He frowned. “If they have superiority of numbers—”
“That’s a chance we’ll take,” Hero answered. “But personally, I don’t think they will attack. This is the way I see it:
“This whole thing has got to climax soon. Perhaps tonight, maybe tomorrow, certainly within three days. When we were up there above the clouds I saw the moon, and I just know that this can’t go on much longer. That being so, the dreamlands are in for one hell of a battering—from which they’re not supposed to recover. Now then, the root of the problem lies in Sarkomand—”
“Oorn,” put in Eldin. “Mnomquah’s mate.”
“Aye,” said Hero, “Oorn.”
“So the horned ones and their allies are here simply to protect Oorn,” said Gytherik, pulling at his chin. “Is that the way you see it?”
“Something like that, yes,” Hero agreed.
“And you think they’ll be loath to risk any sort of fight where there’s a chance Oorn’s life may be jeopardized?” This from Limnar Dass.
“Right again,” Hero nodded, then pursed his lips. “Well, not her life, exactly. No, for I’m told it’s difficult to kill these Great Old Ones. Come to think of it, I’ve also heard that they have telepathic powers. They can call with their minds!” He glanced at Eldin. “Maybe that explains last night’s little trap, eh?
“But at any rate, the way I see it is that the enemy won’t want anything to go wrong with Mnomquah’s leap to Earth, which is why they’ll sit still and chew their fingernails while our seven ships are nosing about. And while they’re all concentrating on a possible attack from the air or the land, we must try to get Ula and Una out the back door. Our ships will be the decoy, if you see what I mean. They’re faster after all and can easily outrun the Leng ships.”
“Outrun them?” Limnar Dass still seemed a little uncertain; his tone was a trifle indignant. “We are to run before them?”
“Now don’t go getting upset,” said Hero placatingly, holding up a hand. “Actually, I believe my trip into the heavens has done me a lot of good. Cleared my head, as it were, of the mad moon’s influence. I can see things a lot more clearly now.”
“Oh?” rumbled Eldin. “Well, I wish to hell I could! You’d better explain yourself fully.”
“Look,” Hero sighed. “If there’re going to be large bits of moon’s crust flying about, and tidal waves and all, and Mnomquah—in whatever shape or form he takes—streaking from broken moon to dreamlands, and this place is to be the epicenter, more or less—”
“I begin to see,” whispered Gytherik. “Why, it’s obvious! The last place on Earth that Zura and Lathi and all the others would want to be is here, right?”
Smiling, however wryly, Hero nodded. “The way I see it, they’ll be off into space—maybe even a safe spot on the dark side of the moon itself—until it’s all over. That’s why the horned ones have gathered together a regular fleet: so that they can make a mass escape. When it is all over, then Lathi, Zura and the Dukes get theirs—whatever has been arranged for them—and Mnomquah and Oorn, and their workshippers the moonbeasts, and the horned ones too, inherit the dreamlands. Except—”
“Yes?” the others queried as a man.
“Except we’re not going to let them.” Hero’s smile was grim. “As soon as they make tracks for the moon—signalling the beginning of the end—we sail in, find Oorn’s pit and do whatever we can toward preventing her aeon-deferred reunion with old Mnomquah.”
“Brilliant!” said Eldin with feeling.
“Glad you like it,” Hero remained grim.
“But how shall we deal with Oorn?” Gytherik was less sure.
“We might seal her pit,” Hero shrugged. “Something like that.”
“How seal her pit?” Limnar now demanded.
“Hell’s teeth, I don’t know!” Hero growled. “With an avalanche, maybe. A landslide.”
“With fire!” cried Eldin. “A blazing ship to scorch her … well, whatever she’s got.”
“Good!” cried Hero, shaking a fist. “That’s it! Now you’ve got the idea. Now get on with it. Think, you dodos—get your damned brains working! Me … I’m knackered. As soon as I get some clothes on that fit me half decently, I’m for bed. I’ve had a rough old night, one way or another.
“As for you lot: Cap’n Dass, you’d best get the flotilla mobile. Eldin: you can talk to the horned ones. Find out where the girls are. But don’t hurt ’em, mind! Well, not a lot, anyway. And then you’d best get some sleep too.”
“What about me?” asked Gytherik, full of excitement.
“You look after those gaunts of yours,” ordered Hero. “Make sure they get a good day’s rest. And Gytherik—”
“Yes?”
“Give Sniffer and Biffer a kiss from me, will you? Not only did they track us, recover our swords, follow us to Sarkomand and save our lives, but they did it with a great deal of … of …”
“They did it right, eh?” grinned Gytherik.
“Damned right!” Hero emphatically agreed. Then, seeing the gaunt-master’s sudden grimace, he added: “Well, if not a kiss, a hug at least!”
CHAPTER VI
Strange Sanctuary
Ula and Una, as fine and desirable a pair of ladies as ever were lusted after (and won, however contrived the double “conquest” had been) by dreamland’s most fabled-to-be questers, were in dire straits. Well-proportioned girls—to say the least—from an early age, their father Ham Gidduf of Andahad had used not so jokingly to threaten them with chastity belts if they so much as looked at boys. (Not that this had stopped boys looking at them!) How dearly they wished they might be secured in just such weighty nether-garments right now …
Dark-haired, green-eyed and delicately elfin-featured, despite their very worldly prominence in other areas, they were supple and willowy … and very much on edge. Neither one of the girls had slept but in brief snatches for two days now, since the first reports had reached their captors of the approach of a flotilla of ships out of the south. For Ula and Una had known that they were merely bait on the hook, and that the hoped-for catch would be David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer.
If the Lengites and their allies could only remove these two obstacles to their Master’s plans, then all should go very well indeed. Since it had been known well in advance that eventually the pair must be recruited on the side of the dreamlands, plans had early been laid first to lure, then to dispatch them. And if anything at all were guaranteed to bring the questers a-running, surely it was the knowledge that former friends of theirs—and most certainly former lovers—were in trouble. Hence Ula and Una’s this time very genuine abduction.
And yet strangely, they had not been harmed. Perhaps there was logic in this, too: if the questers should get it into their heads that the girls had been mistreated, then perhaps they might carry such a notion to its ultimate conclusion and suspect that they had been murdered—horribly. Which in turn would doubtless provoke or precipitate a berserker attack in which the men of the flotilla would fight like madmen, regardless of the cost. This might well endanger not only Oorn but the aeon-awaited arrival in the dreamlands of her Lord, the moon-god Mnomquah himself.
Last night, however, the luck of the twin beauties had seemed dramatically to change, and then it had become apparent that a certain promise made by the Dukes of Isharra to the degenerate human members of their ship’s crew was about to be kept. Namely: that as soon as Hero and Eldin were in chains, then the twin daughters of Ham Gidduf would be handed over to the crew for their amusement. An
d the horned ones, who formed an even larger percentage of the ship’s contingent, had likewise been offered whatever was left when the Isharrans were finished!
Which was why, as soon as they heard jubilant whispers that indeed Hero and Eldin had been trapped, Ula and Una—who thus far had enjoyed a small measure of freedom—had contrived to lock, bolt and bar themselves into the comparative opulence of the Dukes’ own cabin aboard the bad ship Shantak. Which was also why, when the questers had been delivered to the Dukes, the meeting had taken place in Sarkomand’s ruins and not aboard Shantak herself. No, for there the crew’s more rapacious members had been dicing for the doubtful privilege of being first, second, third and so on to attempt forced entries on the twins in their retreat.
One enterprising youth, the highest scorer and therefore the first to try his hand, had got himself down in the ribs of the ship beneath the cabin refuge, where he had loosened a floorboard; and had then made the mistake of exploring the gap with a free hand. For the girls had found an assortment of weapons in the cabin, the outcome being that the luckless bravo had lost two of his fingers and one thumb, and had earned for himself a broken thigh in the resultant plunge from precarious perch in the rafters to hold’s thick-planked bottom.
When a second man had smashed in a small-paned leaded window, and after he had been fatally skewered through the left eye for his pains, then the horned ones had been invited to join in the game. Why, after all, should the humans hog all of the fun? Fair-minded fellows these Isharrans …
The Lengites had fared no better, however, though one of them made an attempt of sorts; had managed at least to carry out the preliminaries. He had climbed up onto the cabin’s roof, stretched out flat and found himself a tiny peephole where a knot had fallen from the timbers. He had forgotten, alas, a basic principle (what may be seen into may also be looked out of) and paid the price of his folly. A single great thump had been heard; his prone, roof-hugging body had been seen to give a jerk; and when his corpse was taken down a second knothole had been discovered in the region of his heart, through which had been driven with considerable force a stout, sharp, six-inch ship’s nail.