by David Drake
The Ancient looked at Corylus from the stern. He raised his right hand, crooked the fingers into claws, and with a terrible scream ripped them down.
Corylus grinned through his mesh visor. He and the Ancient didn’t share a language, but they could communicate well enough. He drew his sword.
The ship was climbing again to get higher than the portal. A pair of Atlantean vessels were squeezing through together. The Minoi understood the danger now, but their ships were too overloaded for nimble maneuvers.
“Master Corylus?” Pandareus said. “Is there a way I can be of service?”
Corylus took a deep breath. His nose and throat were dry because of backwash from the fire projector. Even with his armor, he had found it unpleasant to use. No wonder the glass men crewed the weapons on Atlantean ships.
“Thank you, master, no,” Corylus said. “We’ll come alongside their ships now and I’ll kill the Minoi who control them. You wouldn’t—well, you don’t have armor.”
Pandareus laughed. “A matter of no present significance, as we both know,” he said.
Corylus coughed into his hand. He had seen how many ships were lined up on the other side of the portal. Speaking as much to himself as to the scholar, he said, “There’s a lot of them, but they’re very sluggish. They should have landed the civilians when they realized they were going to have to fight.”
“Do you think any of the passengers would have been willing to disembark, my student?” Pandareus said, arching an eyebrow in question. “Since they know what surely awaits all who are left behind in Atlantis.”
“Ah,” said Corylus. “Sorry, master. I wasn’t thinking.”
“You were thinking as a soldier, Master Corylus,” Pandareus said. “As you should be, in the present circumstances.”
The pair of ships wallowing through the portal would have been an ideal target if the flame projector were still working. The Atlanteans had to crawl even more slowly through the portal than usual so that the ships didn’t smash one another even before they met the enemy.
Without the flame projector, though, it meant that Corylus had two enemies to deal with when they finally did arrive. The Minoi were using bad tactics, but they’d gotten lucky.
Corylus smiled grimly. That wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened in battle. A pity that it was working against the defenders of Carce now, but it wasn’t the first time for that either.
The Ancient had lifted them well above the portal and to the starboard side of their enemies. Their flame projectors would be lethal; Corylus could only defeat the Atlanteans if he approached them individually from the stern, and even then there were still more coming through.
Spectators on the Field of Mars were shouting with enthusiasm. Even the greatest fool born could see how dangerous it was to stand on ground where warships, each weighing as much as several elephants, were likely to fall, but the field was if anything more crowded than it had been when Corylus first arrived over Carce.
On the other hand, the spectators were likely to survive longer than he was. He balanced the sword in his hand as the Atlantean ships turned sunwise together toward their enemy.
The Ancient slanted down like an eagle stooping on an osprey, using their advantage of speed and maneuverability to curve toward the enemy’s sterns. The Minoi weren’t used to real combat. If they had turned against one another instead of in parallel, one or the other would be prow-on to the attack.
There was a new commotion in the crowd. What at first Corylus thought was a bear pushed its way out of the crush and loped through the relatively fewer spectators close to the obelisk. The portal gleamed and sizzled above him.
The creature ran with an odd rocking motion, swinging its forelegs together, then its hind legs. Only when it leaped to the obelisk and began climbing did Corylus realize it must be an ape. The pink granite was carved with Egyptian picture-writing, but he didn’t think he would be able to climb it with such handholds. The bears he had frequently hunted on the frontiers couldn’t climb as well as he did.
The ape was a question for another time, and probably for another person—a living person—to ask. Corylus gripped the railing with his left hand, then remembered that Pandareus might not understand what was about to happen.
Turning his head slightly—he didn’t dare look away when they were running up on the enemy’s stern so quickly—Corylus shouted, “Brace yourself, master! There’ll be a shock!”
Bare-chested bowmen on the Atlantean vessel were shooting at them. An arrow hit Corylus’ helmet squarely and clanged off; another buried its head in the railing beside his left gauntlet. The archers were less accurate than he expected, perhaps because they were so crowded on the ship’s deck that they couldn’t draw their bows to full nock.
The Minos in the stern dropped his crystal talisman to dangle on the golden chain about his neck; his vessel lost way. Drawing his sword, he turned to face Corylus. The ships would glance against one another, port bow to starboard quarter. At any moment—
The sails of Corylus’ ship, of the Ancient’s ship, stroked back and down with unexpected force. Their bow lifted over the Atlantean’s rail and coursed through the screaming passengers. It struck the mast—which held—and the boom supporting the starboard sail, which snapped off short.
Corylus rocked back, then slammed forward. His breastplate took the impact, but even spread across his whole torso the shock was bruisingly severe.
Driven by one sail alone, the Atlantean ship rotated on its axis, then broke loose and fell away. It was upside down when it hit the ground. The crash sent man-sized splinters spinning high in the air.
The remaining Atlantean vessel had turned and was approaching from the port side at the speed of a fast walk. Corylus ran toward that railing, forgetting in the stress of the moment his fear of a ship’s wobbling deck. The Ancient swung them down and to the right, using the collision with their most recent victim to aid the maneuver.
The Atlantean wizard tried to follow, but his ship wobbled badly and nearly overturned from the excessive weight on its deck. Several of the passengers fell over the side to starboard, and the rush of the panicked survivors to the port railing almost precipitated a reverse disaster.
The Minos shouted something which Corylus couldn’t make out because of the excited cheering from the crowd below. The Servitor in the bow sprayed fire more or less toward the defenders. The jet burned out far short of its target, as the glass man must have known it would.
Corylus was breathing hard, although he hadn’t been called on to really do anything. He was sweating furiously under the breastplate, and he half considered taking off the helmet for a moment to let his head cool.
He wouldn’t do that: he didn’t understand the situation well enough to predict the dangers accurately. Which was what the sprite had told him beside the body of the Cyclops on the beach.
He turned to her. Lifting the visor, he said, “We’re done with the fire, cousin.”
Pausing half a moment to choose his phrasing, he added, “I’m truly sorry for the situation.”
The sprite rose by curling her legs under her in a movement more like that of a serpent than a human being. To Corylus’ surprise, she gave him a cheerful smile and said, “Well, it all ends, doesn’t it? I’ve been in that bead—”
She ran her fingertips over the orichalc breastplate where it covered the amulet.
“—for so long that it will be a relief. We hazels aren’t like those ugly gnarled desert pines, you know.”
She raised her hand and caressed Corylus’ face instead. It felt like a butterfly walking on his cheek.
“I feel sorry for the ship, though,” she said, looking up at the mast. “The magicians took the souls away from all the pieces when they made it, but the ship was starting to talk to me. It’s broken now, and that lot—”
She glared at the Atlantean vessel turning toward them.
“—won’t fix it. Well, they’ll probably burn us all, won’t they?”
“Yes, I suppose that’s likely enough,” Corylus said. He had shut down emotionally. The logical part of his mind had addressed the question which the sprite had asked and agreed with her analysis.
For the first time Corylus realized that they weren’t climbing as quickly since the most recent attack as they had before. In fact they were scarcely climbing at all, and the sails beat with an irregular rhythm.
“The mast is breaking, I think,” Pandareus said, looking upward. He spoke with the interest he showed in everything new. “I was holding onto it when we hit the other ship, and it shook very hard.”
He touched his cheek with a rueful smile. It was swollen, and there was a pressure cut over the bone. The bruise would close his eye by tomorrow.
Corylus looked up. The collision didn’t appear to have damaged their hull, but the mast had whipped violently at the impact. It must have struck Pandareus a short, massive blow where his face was pressed against it.
The yards grew from the central pole like branches from a tree. When they flexed with the weight of the sails added, the starboard one had started to split away at the crotch just as a fir bough might break in a heavy snow. It labored now, and as it did so the crack spread further down the mast. At any moment the yard and sail would tear away completely. The ship would overturn and drop like the one it had rammed.
Unless, as the sprite had suggested, they burned instead. Corylus let his visor drop and trotted back to the bow.
They weren’t going to be able to circle around their opponent this time. They were only slightly higher than the Atlantean ship, and it was moving faster than they could. Two more ships were coming through the portal. It was unlikely that they would be required to deal with the only defender of Carce.
The Ancient swung toward the prow of their opponent: there was no choice. The Servitor lifted the spout of his fire projector, and several archers began shooting. One arrow thunked hard into the hull and another zipped not far overhead.
“Watch out, master!” Corylus said. His orichalc armor had shrugged off an arrow, but the teacher wore only a tunic. Not that it would make much difference. An arrow might even be merciful.
When Corylus turned his head slightly to shout the warning, he noticed movement on the obelisk. The ape had reached the top and was wrenching at the metal ball that Novius Facundus, the astronomer who erected the sundial, had placed there to diffuse light around the top of the granite shaft. The portal throbbed and pulsed just above the creature’s head.
But that wasn’t a present concern.
The Ancient lifted their bow an instant before the Servitor spurted fire toward them. Coupled with their existing slight advantage in height, the jet washed across the timbers of the forward bow and the lower hull instead of bathing Corylus and the deck beyond him. He wasn’t sure that flames would affect Coryla and the Ancient so long as the amulet remained intact, but he knew from watching the victims of his own weapon what would happen to Pandareus and—despite the armor—himself.
The ships crashed together, not a glancing blow like the previous ramming attempt but a bow-to-bow collision between vessels which were each proceeding at faster than a walking pace. Timbers broke, scattering burning fragments. The flame projector and the Servitor crewing it had been crushed by the impact, but the hull of Corylus’ ship was already alight.
The ships were locked together, rotating widdershins around their common axis. Their anchor flukes had become tangled; the sterns were swinging together. Both pairs of sails continued to beat, but the ships were sinking swiftly.
The crash had thrown many of the Atlanteans overboard, but the Minos in the stern gave a roar of fury and stumped forward. He used armored elbows and even his sword on his own retainers in his haste. Blood streaked his bright armor.
Corylus paused. The Minos was as big as a German warrior, and he held his sword with the ease of familiarity. Corylus had practiced with a sword also, but his real skill had been in throwing javelins.
He had never used a sword without a shield on his left arm. He wasn’t afraid of the Minos or of any other barbarian, but if he were advising a friend how to bet on the match—
A thought struck him. He unlatched his chin strap, then pulled off his helmet. With the chin strap in his left fist, he presented the helmet like a buckler. Given his training, being without a helmet wasn’t nearly as great a handicap as being without a shield would have been.
“Ears for Nerthus!” he shouted. He leaped across to the other ship’s deck to meet the rush of its commander.
The Minos was poised for another stride, thinking that his enemy would wait for his charge, but without hesitation he slashed overhand at the base of Corylus’ neck. Corylus met the edge with his makeshift buckler. The shock numbed his left hand to the wrist and dented the orichalc, but the helmet’s curve deflected the blade to the side.
Corylus thrust. His blade was slightly curved and longer than the cut-and-thrust sword he was used to, but principles were the same. The point slipped in beneath the Minos’ chin. When the point pierced the back of his skull, the tip lifted off his helmet with a clang.
The ships hit the ground together, throwing Corylus up in an unexpected backflip. He lost both sword and helmet, but his knees had been flexed for the thrust and the hull timbers breaking had absorbed the worst of the shock.
Corylus hit the deck again on all fours, then bounded to his feet. I couldn’t have done that once in a thousand tries if I’d been training, he thought.
The whole world seemed to be shouting. Some of the Atlanteans may have been alive, but they were no danger to Carce now.
The two ships coming through the portal and the scores behind them, though—they would be enough.
Corylus looked up. As he did so, the ape wrenched the metal ball from its socket on top of the obelisk. The portal wavered, and an Atlantean screamed in terror.
The ape gripped the obelisk with both legs and smashed the ball down on the wedge-shaped granite point with the strength of his arms and upper body. The metal deformed with a hollow boom.
The portal shrank. The storm rushed from all sides as the bubble of clear heaven reduced. Lightning and thunder overwhelmed the sound of the crowd.
The ape swung again, ripping the ball open. The portal vanished like mist in the sun. The bows of the ships on the way into this world tumbled downward, their hulls sheared more neatly than a saw could have done.
The ape stood on the peak of the obelisk, shrieking a challenge to the sky. The thunderbolt that struck him was blinding in its intensity.
The ape froze where it was for a moment, its fur blazing. Then it tumbled, and rain from the breaking storm hissed on the flames.
EPILOGUE
Hedia watched Lann fall as stiffly as a burning statue. The lightning must have frozen his muscles. She had seen antelope shot through the head in the arena stiffen that way. There is no chance he can be alive.
Then, He saved me.
She felt nothing for a moment. She was floating in a prickly white fog.
Her vision cleared. “You, Lenatus!” she said; her voice clear, her enunciation perfect. “You and your men clear my way to the sundial!”
She’d thought the trainer might hesitate. Instead he instantly bellowed, “Come on, squad! Batons only until I tell you different!”
Leading the newly freed servants, Lenatus pushed through the line of lictors who had taken the place of honor in front of the consul. From the way they moved, each man wore a sword under his tunic despite the fact that it would be certain crucifixion to be caught with military arms within the sacred boundaries of Carce.
Hedia followed, holding the borrowed toga over her shoulders with both hands. It was a stupid garment, clumsy and ugly and stupid. She’d like to burn alive the man who decreed it for formal wear!
She knew she was being irrational. She didn’t care. She had never cared what other people thought of her behavior.
Lenatus and his bullies formed a wedge that
shoved through the crowd. Lann might have been a trifle quicker about it, but he hadn’t been clearing a path for a noble lady. Instead of just knocking down spectators who hadn’t gotten out of the way, the men in front of Hedia were hurling them to one side or another so that she wouldn’t trip over their groaning bodies.
Rain had begun to hammer down by the time they reached the obelisk. One of the men—a bulky Galatian well over six feet tall, named Minimus by a former owner with a sense of humor—shouted at something on the pavement. He jumped back, drawing his sword.
He’s alive!
“Put that away or you’ll be crow bait!” Lenatus bellowed. “It’s dead, don’t you see?”
“Let me through,” said Hedia. Her voice was clear, her enunciation perfect. She floated in a white stinging cloud.
“Your ladyship?” Lenatus said in concern. His hand was under his tunic also.
“He’s dead, you say, so there’s no problem, is there?” Hedia said. She brushed past and squatted beside Lann. Beside Lann’s body.
Despite the rain, the ape-man’s fur was still smoldering. The smell was terrible. She brushed his cheek with her fingertips and felt crisp tendrils break off beneath them.
He was as stiff as bronze, though the body was still warm. Brains were leaking from his crushed skull, but he must have died from the thunderbolt. The fall had flattened his head in line with his heavy brow ridges. The poor dear had never had the high forehead of a philosopher, of course.
He couldn’t have felt a thing. No pain, nothing. Triumph and then oblivion. Quite a good way to go, and certainly he was now in a better afterlife than that which awaited the noble Hedia.…
“Dear heart?” a voice said.
Hedia looked over her shoulder. Lenatus had formed his squad in a circle around her and the body of the ape-man. They had allowed Saxa through, but the lictors were on the other side.
She got to her feet, swaying with exhaustion—mental and physical both. She didn’t know how long she had been kneeling on the marble pavement, but the borrowed toga was soaked.