"And what was that to you?" said Heath.
It was a foolish question. Already Heath knew what was coming. His whole being drew in upon itself, retreated.
The stranger did not answer directly. Instead he said, "You know the cult that calls itself guardian of the Mysteries of the Moon."
"The oldest cult on Venus and one of the strongest. One of the strangest, too, on a moonless planet," Heath said slowly to no one in particular. "The Moonfire is their symbol of godhead."
The woman laughed without mirth. "Although," she said, "they've never seen it."
The stranger went on, "All Venus knows about you, David Heath. The word travels. The priests know too—the Children of the Moon. They have a special interest in you."
Heath waited. He did not speak.
"You belong to the gods for their own vengeance," the stranger said. "But the vengeance hasn't come. Perhaps because you're an Earthman and therefore less obedient to the gods of Venus. Anyway, the Children of the Moon are tired of waiting. The longer you live the more men may be tempted to blasphemy, the less faith there will be in the ability of the gods to punish men for their sins." His voice had a biting edge of sarcasm. "So," he finished, "the Children of the Moon are coming to see to it that you die."
Heath smiled. "Do the priests tell you their secrets?"
The man turned his head and said, "Alor."
The woman stepped in front of Heath and loosed her tunic at the shoulder. "There," she said furiously. "Look!"
Her anger was not with Heath. It was with what he saw. The tattoo branded between her white breasts—the round rayed symbol of the Moon.
Heath caught his breath and let it out in a long sigh. "A handmaiden of the temple," he said and looked again at her face. Her eyes met his, silvery-cold, level, daring him to say more.
"We are sold out of our cradles," she said. "We have no choice. And our families are very proud to have a daughter chosen for the temple."
Bitterness and pride and the smoldering anger of the slave.
She said, "Broca tells the truth."
Heath's body seemed to tighten in upon itself. He glanced from one to the other and back again, not saying anything, and his heart beat fast and hard, knocking against his ribs.
Alor said, "They will kill you and it won't be easy dying. I know. I've heard men screaming sometimes for many nights and their sin was less than yours."
Heath said out of a dry mouth, "A runaway girl from the temple gardens and a thrower of spears. Their sin is great too. They didn't come halfway across Venus just to warn me. I think they lie. I think the priests are after them."
"We're all three proscribed," said Broca, "but Alor and I could get away. You they'll hunt down no matter where you go—except one place."
And Heath said, "Where is that?"
"The Moonfire."
After a long while Heath uttered a harsh grating sound that might have been a laugh.
"Get out," he said. "Get away from me."
He got to his feet, shaking with weakness and fury. "You lie, both of you—because I'm the only living man who has seen the Moonfire and you want me to take you there. You believe the legends. You think the Moonfire will change you into gods. You're mad, like all the other fools, for the power and the glory you think you'll have. Well, I can tell you this—the Moonfire will give you nothing but suffering and death."
His voice rose. "Go lie to someone else. Frighten the Guardians of the Upper Seas. Bribe the gods themselves to take you there. But get away from me!"
The Venusian rose slowly. The cabin was small for him, the deck beams riding his shoulders. He swept the little dragon aside. He took Heath in his two hands and he said, "I will reach the Moonfire, and you will take me there."
Heath struck him across the face.
Sheer astonishment held Broca still for a moment and Heath said, "You're not a god yet."
The Venusian opened his mouth in a snarling grin. His hands shifted and tightened.
The woman said sharply, "Broca!" She stepped in close, wrenching at Broca's wrists. "Don't kill him, you fool!"
Broca let his breath out hard between his teeth. Gradually his hands relaxed. Heath's face was suffused with dark blood. He would have fallen if the woman had not caught him.
She said to Broca, "Strike him—but not too hard."
Broca raised his fist and struck Heath carefully on the point of the jaw.
It could not have been more than two of the long Venusian hours before Heath came to. He did that slowly as always—progressing from a vast vague wretchedness to an acute awareness of everything that was the matter with him. His head felt as though it had been cleft in two with an axe from the jaw upward.
He could not understand why he should have wakened. The drug alone should have been good for hours of heavy sleep. The sky beyond the cabin port had changed. The night was almost over. He lay for a moment, wondering whether or not he was going to be sick, and then suddenly he realized what had wakened him in spite of everything.
The Ethne was under way.
His anger choked him so that he could not even swear. He dragged himself to his feet and crossed the cabin, feeling even then that she was not going right, that the dawn wind was strong and she was rolling to it, yawing.
He kicked open the door and came out on deck.
The great lateen sail of golden spider silk, ghostly in the blue air, slatted and spilled wind, shaking against loose yards. Heath turned and made for the raised poop, finding strength in his fear for the ship. Broca was up there, braced against the loom of the stern sweep. The wake lay white on the black water, twisting like a snake.
The woman Alor stood at the rail, staring at the low land that lay behind them.
Broca made no protest as Heath knocked him aside and took the sweep. Alor turned and watched but did not speak.
The Ethne was small and the simple rig was such that one man could handle it. Heath trimmed the sail and in a few seconds she was stepping light and dainty as her namesake, her wake straight as a ruled line.
When that was done Heath turned upon them and cursed them in a fury greater than that of a woman whose child has been stolen.
Broca ignored him. He stood watching the land and the lightening sky. When Heath was all through the woman said, "We had to go. It may already be too late. And you weren't going to help."
Heath didn't say anything more. There weren't any words. He swung the helm hard over.
Broca was beside him in one step, his hand raised and then suddenly Alor cried out, "Wait!"
Something in her voice brought both men around to look at her. She stood at the rail, facing into the wind, her hair flying, the short skirt of her tunic whipped back against her thighs. Her arm was raised in a pointing gesture.
It was dawn now.
For a moment Heath lost all sense of time. The deck lifting lightly under his feet, the low mist and dawn over the Sea of Morning Opals, the dawn that gave the sea its name. It seemed that there had never been a Moonfire, never been a past or a future, but only David Heath and his ship and the light coming over the water.
It came slowly, sifting down like a rain of jewels through the miles of pearl-gray cloud. Cool and slow at first, then warming and spreading, turning the misty air to drops of rosy fire, opaline, glowing, low to the water, so that the little ship seemed to be drifting through the heart of a fire-opal as vast as the universe.
The sea turned color, from black to indigo streaked with milky bands. Flights of the small bright dragons rose flashing from the weed-beds that lay scattered on the surface in careless patterns of purple and ochre and cinnabar and the weed itself stirred with dim sentient life, lifting its tendrils to the light.
For one short moment David Heath was completely happy.
Then he saw that Broca had caught up a bow from under the taffrail. Heath realized that they must have fetched all their traps coolly aboard while he was in Kalruna's. It was one of the great longbows of the Upland barbar
ians and Broca bent its massive arc as though it had been a twig and laid across it a bone-barbed shaft.
A ship was coming toward them, a slender shape of pearl flying through the softly burning veils of mist. Her sail was emerald green. She was a long way off but she had the wind behind her and she was coming down with it like a swooping dragon.
"That's the Lahal," said Heath. "What does Johor think he's doing?"
Then he saw, with a start of incredulous horror, that on the prow of the oncoming ship the great spiked ram had been lowered into place.
During the moment when Heath's brain struggled to understand why Johor, ordinary trading skipper of an ordinary ship, should wish to sink him, Alor said five words.
"The Children of the Moon."
Now, on the Lahal's foredeck, Heath could distinguish four tiny figures dressed in black.
The long shining ram dipped and glittered in the dawn.
Heath flung himself against the stern sweep. The Ethne's golden sail cracked taut. She headed up into the wind. Heath measured his distance grimly and settled down.
Broca turned on him furiously. "Are you mad? They'll run us down! Go the other way."
Heath said, "There is no other way. They've got me pinned on a lee shore." He was suddenly full of a blind rage against Johor and the four black-clad priests.
There was nothing to do but wait—wait and sail the heart out of his ship and hope that enough of David Heath still lived to get them through. And if not, Heath thought, I'll take the Lahal down with me!
Broca and Alor stood by the rail together, watching the racing green sail. They did not speak. There was nothing to say. Heath saw that now and again the woman turned to study him.
The wakes of the two ships lay white on the water, two legs of a triangle rushing toward their apex.
Heath could see Johor now, manning the sweep. He could see the crew crouching in the waist, frightened sailors rounded up to do the bidding of the priests. They were armed and standing by with grapnels.
Now, on the foredeck, he could see the Children of the Moon.
They were tall men. They wore tunics of black link mail with the rayed symbol of the Moon blazed in jewels on their breasts. They rode the pitching deck, their silver hair flying loose in the wind, and their bodies were as the bodies of wolves that run down their prey and devour it.
Heath fought the stern sweep, fought the straining ship, fought with wind and distance to cheat them of their will.
And the woman Alor kept watching David Heath with her bitter challenging eyes and Heath hated her as he did the priests, with a deadly hatred, because he knew what he must look like with his beaked bony face and wasted body, swaying and shivering over the loom of the sweep.
Closer and closer swept the emerald sail, rounded and gleaming like a peacock's breast in the light. Pearl white and emerald, purple and gold, on a dark blue sea, the spiked ram glittering—two bright dragons racing toward marriage, toward death.
Close, very close. The rayed symbols blazed fire on the breasts of the Children of the Moon.
The woman Alor lifted her head high into the wind and cried out—a long harsh ringing cry like the scream of an eagle. It ended in a name, and she spoke it like a curse.
"Vakor!"
One of the priests wore the jeweled fillet that marked him leader. He flung up his arms, and the words of his malediction came hot and bitter down the wind.
Broca's bowstring thrummed like a great harp. The shaft fell short and Vakor laughed.
The priests went aft to be safe from buckling timbers and the faces of the seamen were full of fear.
Heath cried out a warning. He saw Alor and Broca drop flat to the deck. He saw their faces. They were the faces of a man and a woman who were on the point of death and did not like it but were not afraid. Broca reached out and braced the woman's body with his own.
Heath shoved Ethne's nose fair into the wind and let her jibe.
The Lahal went thundering by not three yards away, helpless to do anything about it.
The kicking sweep had knocked Heath into the scuppers, half dazed. He heard the booming sail slat over, felt the wrenching shudder that shook the Ethne down to her last spike and prayed that the mast would stay in her. As he dragged himself back he saw that the priest Vakor had leaped onto the Lahal's high stern. He was close enough for Heath to see his face.
They looked into each other's eyes and the eyes of Vakor were brilliant and wild, the eyes of a fanatic. He was not old. His body was virile and strong, his face cut in fine sweeping lines, the mouth full and sensuous and proud. He was tense with cheated fury and his voice rang against the wind like the howling of a beast.
"We will follow! We will follow, and the gods will slay!"
As the rush of the Lahal carried him away, Heath heard the last echo of his cry.
"Alor!"
With all the strength he had left Heath quieted his outraged ship and let her fall away on the starboard tack. Broca and Alor got slowly to their feet. Broca said, "I thought you'd wrecked her."
"They had the wind of me," Heath said. "I couldn't come about like a Christian."
Alor walked to the stern and watched where the Lahal wallowed and staggered as she tried to stop her headlong rush. "Vakor!" she whispered, and spat into the sea.
Broca said, "They will follow us. Alor told me—they have a chart, the only one that shows the way to the Moonfire."
Heath shrugged. He was too weary now to care. He pointed off to the right.
"There's a strong ocean current runs there, like a river in the sea. Most skippers are afraid of it but their ships aren't like the Ethne. We'll ride it. After that we'll have to trust to luck."
Alor swung around sharply. "Then you will go to the Moonfire."
"I didn't say that. Broca, get me the bottle out of my cabin locker."
But it was the woman who fetched it to him and watched him drink, then said, "Are you all right?"
"I'm dying, and she asks me that," said Heath.
She looked a moment steadily into his eyes and oddly enough there was no mockery in her voice when she spoke, only respect.
"You won't die," she said and went away.
In a few moments the current took the Ethne and swept her away northward. The Lahal vanished into the mists behind them. She was cranky in close handling and Heath knew that Johor would not dare the swirling current.
For nearly three hours he stayed at his post and took the ship through. When the ocean stream curved east he rode out of it into still water. Then he fell down on the deck and slept.
Once again the tall barbarian lifted him like a child and laid him in his bunk.
All through the rest of that day and the long Venusian night, while Broca steered, Heath lay in bitter sleep. Alor sat beside him, watching the nightmare shadows that crossed his face, listening as he moaned and talked, soothing his worst tremors.
He repeated the name of Ethne over and over again and a puzzled strangely wistful look came in the eyes of Alor.
When it was dawn again Heath awoke and went on deck. Broca said with barbarian bluntness, "Have you decided?"
Heath did not answer and Alor said, "Vakor will hunt you down. The word has gone out all over Venus, wherever there are men. There'll be no refuge for you—except one."
Heath smiled, a mirthless baring of the teeth. "And that's the Moonfire. You make it all so simple."
And yet he knew she spoke the truth. The Children of the Moon would never leave his track. He was a rat in a maze and every passage led to death.
But there were different deaths. If he had to die it would not be as Vakor willed but with Ethne—an Ethne more real than a shadow—in his arms again.
He realized now that deep in his mind he had always known, all these three seasons and more that he had clung to a life not worth the living. He had known that someday he must go back again.
"We'll go to the Moonfire," he said, "and perhaps we shall all be gods."
Broc
a said, "You are weak, Earthman. You didn't have the courage."
Heath said one word.
"Wait."
3: Over the Bar
The days and the nights went by, and the Ethne fled north across the Sea of Morning Opals, north toward the equator. They were far out of the trade lanes. All these vast upper reaches were wilderness. There were not even fishing villages along the coast. The great cliffs rose sheer from the water and nothing could find a foothold there. And beyond, past the Dragon's Throat, lay only the barren death-trap of the Upper Seas.
The Ethne ran as sweetly as though she joyed to be free again, free of the muddy harbor and the chains. And a change came over Heath. He was a man again. He stood shaved and clean and erect on his own deck and there was no decision to be made anymore, no doubt. The long dread, the long delay, were over and he too, in his own bitter way, was happy.
They had seen nothing more of the Lahal but Heath knew quite well that she was there somewhere, following. She was not as fleet as the Ethne but she was sound and Johor was a good sailor. Moreover, the priest Vakor was there and he would drive the Lahal over the Mountains of White Cloud if he had to—to catch them.
He said once to Alor, "Vakor seems to have a special hatred for you."
Her face twisted with revulsion and remembered shame. "He is a beast," she said. "He is a serpent, a lizard that walks like a king." She added, "We've made it easy for him, the three of us together like this."
From where he sat steering Heath looked at her with a remote curiosity. She stood, long legged, bold-mouthed, looking back with somber smoky eyes at the white wake unrolling behind them.
He said, "You must have loved Broca to break your vows for him. Considering what it means if they catch you."
Alor looked at him, then laughed, a brief sound that had no humor in it.
"I'd have gone with any man strong enough to take me out of the temple," she said. "And Broca is strong and he worships me."
Heath was genuinely astonished. "You don't love him?"
She shrugged. "He is good to look at. He is a chief of warriors and he is a man and not a priest. But love—"
She asked suddenly, "What is it like—to love as you loved your Ethne?"
Sea Kings of Mars Page 21