I shouted a warning and others were crying out as well and the two in the water were struggling back toward shore. One shrieked and was gone and then his body spun to the surface, ripped asunder. Now there was but one man and he was only a few feet from land. It was Ceram, Kele’s chief mate. We were running toward him, hoping to help, shouting, and then he stumbled out of the water, gasping for breath. We’d seen nothing so far and had no clue as to what had taken two of us.
Ceram was a good fifteen feet from the river when we saw the assassin. It was a monstrous crocodile that later I guessed would have been almost twenty feet long. Most people think these lizards of death are slow, supine, stupid, since the most they’re likely to see, unless they’re terribly unlucky, is a log-like scaly length and a pair of eyes or perhaps a smaller one out of the water sleeping in the sand.
I knew better. I’d seen one leap from the water fully five feet into the air, grab a gazelle that had just been coming to drink on the riverbank and disappear in an instant.
This beast moved even more quickly. It burst out of the brown water like a striking snake, gray-green with age, standing almost to a man’s waist, hurtled across the beach and was on Ceram, its massive jaws gaping. It smashed into him and the blow most likely killed the sailor, but the reptile had the poor man locked in its jaws and was twisting, turning, almost tearing him in two as a terrier shakes a rat.
It should have turned and raced back into the water with its prey but instead it dropped Ceram’s body and roared at us, a strange hissing roar.
Now our wits returned and we looked frantically for weapons. Otavi was the only one among us who’d been thinking and he stepped forward. But instead of his ax he’d seized a spear and cast it with all his strength deep into the monster’s head, behind his jaws. It screamed, but its scream wasn’t that high whistling keen of agony a crocodile should make but something else, almost like a man.
None of us could move and the crocodile put one forepaw on the spear’s haft and jerked back, pulling it free. Blood poured on the sand and the animal now turned for the river. But Otavi was blocking his escape, ax raised, and Mithraik crouched beside him, spear butt buried in the ground ready to take the charge and then Janela darted in from the side, sent another spear into the animal’s side and spun away. I seized a javelin from one of the men and hurled it true. It struck the beast between one of his scales and plunged deep.
Again the crocodile screamed and then it ran, but not for the safety of the water but away, into the scrub brush that covered the hummock. As it raced into shelter, bowstrings twanged and four shafts buried themselves in his back and again the monster cried out, rolling in pain and then was gone. Men started after it but Quatervals was shouting “stop, the bastard’ll be turnin back to ambush.”
Another scream and another and brush thrashed as if a great wind was blowing... and then there was silence.
Otavi started forward and I stopped him. “No. We wait a full turning of the glass.”
And so we did and then we went after the crocodile, following the wide trail it had crushed with its weight. We found a corpse no more than twenty feet from where the crocodile had vanished.
But it was the corpse of a man.
For a moment the world was chaos, roiling about all of us. Some of us swore, some gasped, some just paled. Then reality, such as it was, returned. I went forward, sword ready, Janela and Quatervals beside me.
The corpse lay face-down and was naked except for wristlets, anklets and something about its neck. There was no sign of violence. I toed it over. It was a man, clean shaven, close-cropped hair, with a face that was tattooed in blue from forehead to chin.
“A changeling,” Kele said. “I’ve heard, but never seen.”
“Is it?” I wondered. “Look.”
I pointed at the body. There was not a mark of violence on it and the face was quite peaceful, as if the man had died in his sleep.
“I’ve always heard that were-creatures, when taken, would show the wounds they’d taken in their other forms.”
Janela knelt beside the body. “That’s the story I too heard,” she said absently. “But I’ve never seen such a beast and no one I’ve ever trusted ever admitted to seeing one either. But look.”
The wristlets, bracelets and what I now saw was a leathern gorget were all of crocodile hide.
“T’ hell with wounds,” Pip said. “I ain’t believin’ that monsker just happened by where this bastard just happened t’ go an’ lie down an’ die.”
“No. Of course not,” Janela said. “But it is most curious.” She might have been a lycee instructor, sitting in her chambers discussing a strangely-marked butterfly a student had brought in.
“We can discuss natural origins later,” I said. “We’re boarding ship and heading upriver right now.”
But it was too late.
It was coming on twilight when we returned to the beach. We’d moored close inshore and used only six boats to land, leaving four men as anchor watches on the ships. The boats were beached near the water’s edge. It was no more than a hundred yards, if that, out to our ships. But between us and them now floated a dozen or more ominous shapes. More crocodiles, some almost as large as the one that had attacked us.
“It’ll take two trips t’ get us back t’ the ships,” Kele said. “An’ that’ll be packin’ th’ boats to the gunnels. C’n we do that ’fore it’s dark?”
“We’d better,” Chons said. “What’s to stop any of those bastards from just tippin’ the boats o’er an’ then taking their pick once we’re drownin’?”
“You’re right,” Janela said. “We’re safer here on the beach for the night. I can set up wards that should keep them away tonight and prepare a great spell to guard us in the morrow.”
There were mutters of dismay. All of us felt the only safety in this harsh land lay aboard our ships. But Kele and Janela were right. At least we hadn’t gone ashore as total numbwits. All of us had brought weapons and some of us even had some iron rations in belt pouches.
Our companions on the ships had seen some of what had happened and Kele hand-signaled the rest of the story and our intentions. She told them to maintain a full watch and keep torches burning, although none of us thought the crocodiles could manage to board our ships, not even the Ibis with its relatively low freeboard. At Janela’s suggestion she also signaled no one was to be permitted aboard after dark, not even if it appeared to be Kele herself.
“I’m probably overreacting,” Janela said, “but if you can accept shape-changing, why wouldn’t it be as simple for someone to appear as you or me as a four-legged river monster?”
Unlikely, but it paid to be cautious.
We set to work, dividing into parties and going inland and cutting brush and the few scraggly trees for our fires. I feared we’d run out of light before morning but Janela said that at least was not a worry. She took supplies from her purse and found a length of wood. She took out two mirrors and held them opposite each other with the wood in the center, reflections echoing. Then she said a spell and ordered Pip to cut the wood into fragments with his dagger.
She separated each splinter from the other and said another spell and my eyes hurt as the splinters twisted and grew and there was a long line of wood, each length exactly the same as the next. She said the spell twice more and we had wood enough to burn a city.
We made four fires fifty feet apart, just where the brush began and as far from the water as we could get. We buried the torn body of Ceram and said what prayers we knew for the other two seamen, hoping that would be enough to keep their spirits from wandering this horrible country as ghosts for eternity.
None of us were sleepy and few hungry. Quatervals forced a section of jerked beef on me and I gnawed it, tasting nothing. He told me quietly he knew the crocodiles had to be changelings, native sorcerers who’d traded their souls for the ability to become their totems for he’d never heard of a crocodile killing and killing again. They’d take their prey, van
ish into the depths to let it ripen and rot, feed and then, when the satiation wore off in days or weeks, look for another victim.
I took Mithraik aside and thanked him for standing so steadfast when that first crocodile came ashore. He looked at me queerly, nodded thanks and said, “But I’m not for the death here, sir. Not that kind, anyhap.” I thought that an odd phrasing but said nothing.
Janela was readying herself for another spell. She drew me aside. “I don’t know if this will work since I have no idea what laws these men or beasts or whatever the hells they are, are subject to. But at least saying some words will make the others feel better.”
“What about the morning?” I wanted to know. “Could we have the same problems at daybreak trying to get back to the ships?”
“No. That I can guarantee. I can cast a spell using the goodness of the sun to carry my words and devices that nothing on any earth could withstand.”
I sighed, relieved and then Janela had to spoil it by saying, with a wry smile, “or at least the man who taught me that spell believed.
“We shall see, we shall see.”
Now it was very dark and very quiet. The only lights were those on the shipboard lanterns and from our great fires, at least until you stepped a foot or so beyond the pool of light they made.
Then you could see, across the water, the luminescence of the eyes.
Waiting and watching.
Janela used a length of string to form a fence, burnt some dried twigs she said came from a thornbush, added some incense that she said had been made from dried cactus flowers and a spell she’d written on a bit of parchment.
I saw a shimmer between us and the river... then nothing.
We settled down to wait.
Around midnight I heard a roar from the blackness, as if one of the crocodiles had attempted to slink ashore and had been driven back. Archers sent arrows whispering after the sound but I feared we hit nothing. It looked as if Janela’s spell was holding firm.
It lasted until the early hours. In spite of myself I was feeling drowsy and then we heard splashing.
There came a shout from Towra, who was taking charge of the part of the perimeter facing the river — “They’re coming!” and we were on our feet.
The first creature struck out of blackness and it was as if he rushed into an invisible net, caught, struggling, ripping, trying to come at us. Beside him came another and I thought they were working together, tearing in unison, and there were others striking all along the sorcerous barrier. I thought the spell might be weakening and then shafts hummed out. A few struck hard into the unarmored sides of the monsters but all too many bounced off the thick hide of the beasts’ backs. One howled that human scream as an arrow buried itself nearly to its hilt in an eye and rolled away, snapping and tearing in agony.
Spears pinned others to the sand and then I saw what must have been the greatest of them all rushing our barricade. I would swear on any god’s altar the brute was half again the size of the one we’d killed but that cannot be. It came on and I thought the wards were breaking, going down. The crocodile bellowed in expectant triumph just as I grabbed a burning chunk of wood from a fire and pitched it, full into the beast’s gaping jaws.
The beast screamed and screamed again, flopping like a beached fish or perhaps a whale, sending other, smaller monsters spinning. Now as they writhed their soft underbellies were exposed and my fighters had good aim and the arrow storm struck full, spears driving hard behind them. Sand and water flurried and there were howls and then we were standing, panting, holding weapons and there was nothing but the night, the flare of the fires and the hum of the mosquitoes. Some time, perhaps a lifetime later, the sun rose.
Janela cast her spell and ordered the group into the boats. She insisted on being in the lead vessel- she would be the first victim if her spell did not take. I stayed on the beach. I would be the last to leave this hellish islet that had promised a moment’s respite and then turned on us. The boats reached the ships and the men scrambled aboard. The boats returned and somehow all of us packed ourselves aboard.
As we drew near the Ibis I saw four bodies, floating face down. All of them wore the ornaments, if that was what they were, like we’d seen on the man in the brush. None of them showed any marks of violence.
We got aboard, hoisted up the boats and manned the sweeps. There was enough of a wind blowing into the east to set the sails but all of us wanted to do anything, everything to speed us away from that place.
Kele shouted to look overside. I saw a crocodile surface, take one of the bodies and vanish, leaving not much more than a swirl.
“Feedin’,” Kele said. “Now, Lord Antero, since you’re knowin’ all things... was that lizard feedin’ on man... or was man feedin’ on man?”
I shuddered.
CHAPTER TEN
INTO THE GORGE
Quite suddenly the swamp came to an end and the river returned to a common bed, flowing through tree-dotted plains, thick brush lining its banks. Janela and I speculated about the area we’d just passed through. The Old Ones wouldn’t have their main thoroughfare suddenly turn into a mire. Something must have gone wrong. Perhaps a crucial spells had lapsed or maybe even the crocodile folk had strong earth-magic of their own to overcome the time-weakened ancient sorcery.
“That,” Janela said, “or else we stumbled into one of the Old Ones’ traps intended to snare anyone who didn’t have the proper spells or guide with them.”
No one cared. It was enough that our passage was fairly easy now with no more rowing or kedging and the wind held firm from the west. We had to keep men in the bows, however, since there were sandbars and every now and again clotted masses of vegetation that could have snared us.
The land was green and we saw small irrigation ditches leading inland from the river and not long afterward we saw scattered huts and grazing animals. A small herd came to the water’s edge to drink and gave us a chance to look at them closely. They were cattle, but most strange-looking, with high humps, sweeping horns that curled back along their sides and hair long enough to shear for wool. Every now and then we saw herdsmen, primitive-looking folk wearing skin kilts and tunics and carrying spears. But they weren’t that primitive or else traded with people who weren’t, because we saw the bright glint of iron at the spear-tips. We waved and sometimes the herders would signal back, but rather half-heartedly, as if they had little interest in our passage.
“Jus’ like a countryman,” Beran shouted over to us once, when the Firefly sailed nearby, “been so long since they seen anythin’ new it don’t shine through into what little brain’s they got. Don’t it make you want to go farmin’, Kele?”
Kele’s response was a rather vulgar wave.
One day we lay becalmed for an hour or so and Quatervals spotted one of the herders not far from the bank. He was seemingly unaware of us, squatting on his haunches in front of one of his animals, staring at it intently. Quatervals asked permission to go ashore and see if he could get any information from the man. I told him to take Pip to give him something new to complain about and hasten back when we signaled or the wind returned.
We lowered a boat and the two went ashore, taking some beads and fruit from the delta as presents. Pip stayed a few yards back and Quatervals approached the herder. Quatervals’ arms waved and then he squatted and began talking to the man. Evidently the conversation was unsatisfactory, because he soon got up, motioned to Pip and returned to the boat. They still carried our gifts.
Everyone swarmed them when they boarded, wanting to know what had happened, and who was the man — any bit of news that would break the routine of our journey.
Quatervals had a bemused expression. The man’s name was Vindhya, he thought. Or maybe that was his tribe — even with the Spell of Tongues the herder’s speech was hard to understand.
“And,” he added, keeping all emotion from his voice, “the cow’s name is Soenda. He introduced us.”
Janela snickered.
&
nbsp; “Why’d he not want th’ loot,” one of the sailors asked. “Too blasted proud?”
“No. It was,” and I saw Quatervals was trying to keep a solemn expression, “because we were interfering with his worship.”
“Pardon?”
“Vindhya and his people worship cattle.”
Now there was general mirth, increased when Otavi said, “Now, that’s a rare idea. If’n y’r god doesn’t do right by you... he’s dinner. Or she, to put it the way it is here. Guess you could milk your faith for all it’s worth out here.”
Quatervals waited until the laughter subsided, then continued gamely on.
“The reason Vindhya didn’t much want to talk,” he said, “or even look at what we wanted to give him is that he was contemplating Soenda. He said it’s his favorite cow and if he spends enough time with her, being close and all,” Quatervals went on, “he’ll completely absorb all of her cowness.”
“Cowness?” I said, incredulously.
“Cowness is what he said.”
When the laughter died away again, Pip scratched thoughtfully. “Thank Te-Date we di’n’t ask what their lovelife mus’ be like. Damned strange it’d be, callin’ on a man, wantin’ th’ hand of his heifer. Guess we’d best keep a lookout for seein’ some half-man, half-moo li’l critters.”
That led the conversation, such as it was, into predicted depths of bawdiness. I withdrew, being too much of a gentleman to indulge in such questionable conversation.
Cowness, indeed.
* * * *
That evening Janela chanced sending a bit of her spirit back the way we came to spy on Cligus.
She’d asked my assistance in the event she was discovered. The method she used differed from the one my sister and Gamelan the great Evocator had devised. She sat crosslegged on the bare deck in the middle of a concentric circle with an eye scribed in it. Four braziers formed a square around her and sent smoke coiling around her like a snake. When she’d completed the spell I could actually feel her spirit leave her body. She appeared no different but I was sitting next to a husk.
Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms) Page 23