Out of the Waters-ARC

by David Drake

  Varus lifted his chin. "That's what they were doing when we broke in on them and Pandareus," he said, frowning. "The one with the censer blew smoke onto Corylus--he was the first one of us through the doorway. There was a flash and I couldn't see anything--none of us could. When we could, Corylus was gone as well as the Sages and Pandareus."

  "One of them blew smoke at me too," said Tardus. He was turned toward the manumission ceremony--the fifth slave was being freed--but his mind was clearly in another place. "I couldn't move except by their choice after that--until you freed me."

  He shook his head as though trying to cast out the memory. "They said the murrhine pipe was half the representation of an amphisbaena. It had great power."

  "The snake with a head on each end of its body," Varus said, speaking to solidify the reference in his mind. "Yes, I understand now. And father has the other half."

  "They knew that Lord Saxa has it," Tardus said. "They took me to your house to gain it. I was a slipper and they were the foot that wore me, whether I would or no. I was less than a slave to them."

  "Father and I sympathize with you, Lord Tardus," Varus said in a suitably solemn tone. It was a relief to learn that the senator was more concerned with forgiveness for his own behavior than redress for what Varus and his friends had done. "Were you present when the Sages discussed their plans, perchance? Though--"

  He frowned at his error.

  "I suppose they would have been talking in their own language, even if you could hear them."

  Tardus looked at him, frowning in concentration. "Yes, I suppose they were...," he said, "but I could understand them perfectly well. I hadn't thought of that."

  He shook his head. "I wasn't myself, you see," he said. "That is, the Sages were me; but that means I was them too, I suppose. But--"

  He shrugged. "But I can't tell you where they took Master Pandareus," he said. "From what you describe, they must have acted in the crisis. Certainly they didn't plan anything of the sort when I was with them."

  "I understand," said Varus; and he did, though he'd hoped that Tardus would be able to help them. "Well, we'll have to find Pandareus--"

  And Corylus, but no reason to emphasize that.

  "--in some other fashion. Will these Sages stay here in Carce, do you think? If they do, perhaps they'll reappear and we'll be able to find them."

  "I suppose they will remain," Tardus said. "Their business is here, after all."

  "Their business?" said Varus, irritated at himself for not having asked the most obvious question before Tardus reminded him of it. "What are they doing here, your lordship?"

  "They don't think they can hold Uktena where he is for very much longer," Tardus said. As he spoke, his voice became thinner and his face began to look gray. "They plan to gain time by releasing himhere in Carce, a long distance from the Western Isles, while they either create defenses or find a way to bind the monster again."

  The manumission ceremony had just concluded. Hundreds of servants shouted, "Yo, hail Lord Saxa!" waving caps and pieces of cloth in the air.

  The cheering smothered Tardus' voice, but his lips and the obvious logic left Varus in no doubt that Uktena terrified the old man.

  It terrifies me as well.

  ***

  Corylus couldn't move and he couldn't see his own body. He wasn't sure that he had a body in this place.

  "Where am I?" he said to the slim, straight woman. Her hair was a lustrous dark brunette, but there were green highlights in it.

  She laughed with friendly amusement. "You're here, cousin," she said. "That's all one can ever say, I think. Though I know you humans have other ideas about it."

  That was the answer I should have expected when I asked a dryad about geography, Corylus realized. Though he wasn't sure that "geography" was the right word.

  The inhuman creature squatted on its haunches. Its narrow mouth opened enough to let its tongue loll out between hedges of small, sharp teeth. It rested its arms on its thin thighs; its hands stuck out before it.

  "Mistress...," Corylus said, looking at the woman but really concentrating on the creature beside her. Standing, it would be no taller than the sprite and it wasn't nearly as heavily built as Corylus himself. Its bite could be unpleasant but no more dangerous than that of one of the mongrel dogs which lived on Carce's streets, and its claws were as blunt as a dog's also.

  Despite that, Corylus really hoped that the creature wouldn't decide he was an enemy. He recalled Caesar's description of Germans laughing the first time they saw the soldiers of Carce who were so much smaller than the barbarians themselves.

  They didn't laugh after the first battle, though; those who were still alive. Corylus wasn't laughing at this creature.

  "I am Gaius Cispius Corylus," he said. "May I ask your name?"

  "Of course you're Corylus, cousin," the woman said with another trill of laughter. "And I'm Coryla, silly. My tree was struck by a rain of burning glass from the moon. The rest of it perished in the fire, but the glass sealed the air away from one nut, so I still survive. As for the Ancient--"

  She ran an affectionate hand through the fur over the creature's spine. It writhed toward her touch but continued to keep its unwinking eyes on Corylus.

  "--I don't know what his name is; I don't know if he has a name. My tree grew over his grave, but he wasn't with me until the glass fell."

  Corylus would have touched the tektite amulet if he could have moved his hand. Or if he'd had a hand to move, which might be closer to the real situation.

  "Is the glass, ah, magical?" Corylus said. He was speaking and she was understanding him, but he couldn't feel his lips move.

  "What?" the sprite said. She bent to rub the base of the creature's ear. It tilted its fox-like head toward the touch, but it never took its eyes off Corylus. They had the same golden cast as its fur, but the pupils were slitted horizontally instead of vertically like a cat's. "I shouldn't think so, no."

  She gave the creature a final pat over the ribs and straightened. "But he is, of course," she added. "He's a great magician. Did he bring you to him, do you suppose? I'm not always sure what he's planning, even though he's part of me, in a way."

  "Him?" said Corylus in amazement. "It? But it's just an animal, isn't it?"

  The sprite's laughter was as sweet and musical as a nightingale singing in the dusk. "Of course he's an animal, cousin," she said. "You're all animals, you and him and the squirrels in the branches of my tree. Didn't you know that?"

  "I mean...," said Corylus. "It doesn't think the way a man does. Or you do. It, he, isn't he your pet?"

  The creature made a clicking sound at the back of its throat and stood up. It continued to stare at Corylus. Its hind legs folded the way a man's did, not a dog's.

  "Pet?" said Coryla. He thought she would laugh again, but the look she gave him had nothing of humor in it. "Him? Are you mad, cousin?"

  The creature reached toward Corylus; toward where his face should be, if he had a face. It had four slender fingers. One was opposed to the other three like the hind claw of an eagle, not a human thumb.

  I am a soldier of Carce. I will not flinch.

  Fingertips as gentle as a fly's wing touched Corylus' cheek.

  I can feel it! he realized, and as he did, light bloomed around him. He was lying on his back on the cliff top where he had fought the Cyclops. He breathed with a gasp of surprise--and shouted with the sudden pain of it. My ribs are broken!

  Coryla and the creature were looking down at him. She seemed sympathetic and perhaps a little concerned; the creature....

  It wasn't safe to read the expression on a face as inhuman as that of the creature, but it certainly seemed to be laughing at him. How did I ever imagine that it wasn't intelligent?

  "You can sit up, can't you?" the sprite said. "Because there are other giants besides the one you killed. And worse things."

  "I don't know," Corylus said. He touched his chest gently, trying not to move his body. He must be bruised as
badly as he ever had been in his life, but there wasn't the stabbing, grating pain that would have meant that he had broken ribs. "You said I killed the Cyclops?"

  Coryla offered him her hand. He took it carefully, expecting the lightly built sprite to stagger forward when he started to put real weight on her. Instead, she remained as fixed a support as a deeply rooted hazel tree.

  After a flash of blazing agony, the pain in Corylus' chest subsided to a throbbing ache, as though he were sitting too close to a hot fire. Several of the catches of his breastplate had popped. He undid the remaining one, then dropped the dented armor to the ground. That done, he turned slowly. He was looking for the Cyclops and hoping to see its body.

  "Well, you did and he did himself, I suppose," she said. "He stumbled after you stabbed him and broke his neck. But if you hadn't stabbed him, he probably wouldn't have fallen, don't you think? So I said you killed him."

  Corylus walked cautiously to the edge of the crag and looked over. His chest hurt and his left leg was as stiff as a statue's, except for the hip joint. That felt like the blazing pit of Aetna.

  Two ships lay on their sides just above the water; their decks were tilted at a thirty-degree angle. That much was the same as the mural he had seen in the instant before the smoke swept him here. Close up he now saw that the vessels were winged craft like those of the vision, not ordinary fifty-oared galleys as he had assumed.

  The mangled bodies of their crews were scattered on the shingle. On the ground near the Cyclops' cave was an iron-bound club the length of a ship's mast. The monster's strength would have made it devastating.

  Among the dead were two figures whose bright armor hadn't saved them from crushing blows. One's corselet had been dished in; the other's helmet was flattened so completely that blood and brains oozed through the grill that covered the face.

  Directly at the base of the crag was the Cyclops, sprawled on his face with his head cocked sharply to the right. Corylus frowned. Any of the Scouts could have jumped the twenty feet to the shingle and expected--reasonably hoped, at least--to have staggered off without serious injury, but the giant weighed more than an ox. Even the bones of its short, thick neck couldn't take the shock of that hard landing.

  "I told you he was dead," the sprite said chidingly. "Don't you suppose we'd better leave? That you should, I mean. It's all the same to us, you know."

  Corylus looked at her. The slope rising above the Cyclops' cave wasn't nearly as steep as the escarpment to the beach, but he wasn't sure he could climb it in his present condition.

  He was sure that he couldn't get down to the beach, unless he did it the way the Cyclops had. And probably with the same result, since he couldn't land with flexed legs and roll as he'd learned to do with the Scouts.

  "Mistress," he said, "I can't go anywhere until I've recovered some. If I ever do: my leg may be permanently injured. If you can save yourselves, you'd best go do it."

  The furry creature stood a pace behind her, its torso leaning forward and its hips thrust back for balance. It clicked in its throat and stepped to Corylus' side. He couldn't jerk away--he stood on the edge of the crag--and if he tried to run, he suspected he'd faint with pain.

  "What's he doing?" the sprite said. She cocked her head quizzically.

  And by Haides, how would I know? Corylus thought, but he kept his face impassive.

  The creature touched Corylus' left hip; moved its slender hand down to his knee; and then dropped into a near squat to touch his ankle as well. The fingers pressed, but instead of greater agony, they brought relief.

  The creature straightened. Its tongue waggled from the side of its jaw again; perhaps it really was laughing. It reached out with both hands and caressed Corylus' chest through the sweat-soaked tunic. The pain in his ribs vanished like chaff in a windstorm. Its tongue still lolling, the creature backed to where it had been behind the sprite.

  Corylus swallowed. "Thank you, master," he said as formally as if he were addressing a magistrate, not something frighteningly inhuman. To the sprite he added, "I believe I can walk normally now. Where do you suggest we go? Since you appear to be more familiar with this place than I am."

  She shrugged. "Let's take one of the ships," she said. "I suppose it shouldn't matter to me, being as I am now--"

  She gestured toward the amulet now hanging outside Corylus' tunic.

  "--but those hills are bleak, not fit for anything but tamarisk and bergamot. And besides, you'll need to eat. There'll be food and water on the ships."

  "I can't--" Corylus began, then stopped himself. I don't need to push the ship down into the water; it flies. But--

  Correcting himself aloud, he said, "Mistress, I'm not a magician; I can't make the ship move. Though we can take the food and water, or some of it. Maybe I can make a cart."

  In a bemused tone the sprite said, "You are such a silly, cousin."

  She turned to the creature and chirruped like a hen on her eggs. It--he--didn't reply in a fashion Corylus could see, but the sprite beamed and stroked the golden fur of his throat. He writhed toward her, even more like a serpent than before.

  "Which ship shall we take?" she asked Corylus.

  "We'll take a look at them before we decide," he said. "Ah, can you make it down the slope by yourself?"

  The sprite ran her fingers through his hair in the same affectionate fashion as she had just petted the creature. Without answering, she started down the escarpment facing forward, as though she were descending a staircase. Corylus felt his eyes narrow; then he smiled. Of course the soles of her feet would be able to cling to crevices too tiny for his eye to see.

  The furry creature watched him. Corylus thought about asking if it too could get to the beach unaided, then simply turned around and started down himself. He'd been called silly quite a number of times since he met the sprite, and he was beginning to wonder if she wasn't correct.

  His body no longer hurt the way it had immediately after the fight with the Cyclops, but he had taken enough of a pounding to leave anybody groggy. Maybe that was an excuse for being slow to understand what was happening.

  The cliff was limestone, steep but corroded by salt and storms. There were plenty of hand- and footholds, though Corylus had to test each one before he put his full weight on it. He simply kept going down until his hobnailed sandal clashed on the beach.

  He looked up. The creature was peering over the edge at him. When it saw that he had reached the ground, it leaped like a squirrel.

  Corylus flattened against the escarpment reflexively. His first thought had been to try to catch the creature, but keeping out of the way was a better idea.

  Its narrow feet sprayed shingle. It bounced up as part of the same motion, spun in the air, and landed again: lightly this time, and facing Corylus.

  It's laughing. I'm sure it's laughing.

  Whether the creature was or not, Coryla certainly laughed merrily. "You males," she said affectionately. "Always posturing to each other."

  She turned and walked toward the nearer ship. She was still giggling.

  Instead of following the sprite and her companion, Corylus walked to the man in armor with his skull crushed. He had been killed very recently, but the fierce sun was already beginning to rot the blood and other leaking fluids.

  The fellow's sword was still in its scabbard. Corylus drew it. The blade was made of the same fiery metal as the armor. It was slim, slightly curved, and a little longer than the infantry sword he was used to. He'd practiced with the horsemen's longer weapons, though.

  It wouldn't be his first choice, but it was the only thing available here. Maybe he would have a chance to replace it with steel before he found himself in a real fight. He squatted to unfasten the sword belt. Instead of a buckle it had an unfamiliar latch that opened when he turned it.

  "You should take orichalc armor for yourself too," the sprite said as she wandered back from the ship she had been looking at.

  "Orichalc?" Corylus said, pinging the breastplate wit
h his fingernail. "This?"

  The orichalc he knew about was a copper alloy which could be polished to look like gold. Whatever this metal was, it certainly wasn't that.

  "Yes, orichalc," she said, rocking what was left of the corpse's head back and forth with a toe. She giggled again and added, "You'll have to take the helmet from the other Minos, I guess, won't you?"

  "Yes," said Corylus. The body armor had the same kind of catches as the belt; he began to turn them. He wasn't squeamish, but he didn't care to strip bodies quite so thoroughly dead.

  The furry creature had prowled the deck of the nearer ship, then disappeared through a hatch into what must have been a very small hold. When it reappeared, it dropped to the beach and walked to the other ship.

  It walked in a hunched posture. Its arms were long enough that it could have put them down without stooping further, but instead it kept them close to its chest.

  Like a praying mantis, Corylus thought. Not a snake.

  He grinned, remembering the sprite's comment about posturing. She was a perceptive little thing.

  Corylus belted on the sword, but he carried the armor in his left hand as he walked to the second corpse; the second Minos, the sprite had called him. "What do you mean by Minos, mistress?" he said. "Are they a tribe?"

  "They claim to be a different tribe from the commoners," Coryla said without particular interest. She continued to stand beside the corpse whose armor he'd taken. "They're probably lying, though. You humans always lie to make yourselves look bigger than you are, don't you?"

  "Some men do," Corylus said. Getting angry because a comment had some truth in it would be childish and, well, silly.

  He set down the armor and squatted by the figure whose chest had been flattened. The helmet seemed undamaged, though. The screen covering the face blurred the corpse's features.

  "Well, anyway, the Minoi rule Atlantis," Coryla said. "They're magicians. When they're born, they get a tattoo on their foreheads. Not that you'd have been able to tell with this one."