The Dragon-Child

by B. V. Larson

  The ship’s sails no longer luffed and snapped with unnatural winds. Instead, the winds seemed to swirl around the ship in a circular fashion, pushing it nowhere and everywhere at once.

  “Devil!” shouted Bolo, holding aloft his cutlass of dark, rusty iron. “Come down and face an honest man’s blade.”

  An odd laugh floated down from above them. Gruum thought it might be Therian’s throat that had made the laugh, but he could not be sure. The swirling winds of the spirits that circled the ship masked and warped the sound of it.

  “Crossbows,” growled Bolo. “Shoot him down.”

  Soon, three men stood on the deck and wound back their winches with grim purpose. Gruum thought them brave indeed to stand in the face of sorcery. Perhaps they’d grown accustomed to it over the last week. Perhaps they believed the wind spirits were frightening but harmless. Gruum himself was not so sure.

  When attention strayed from him, he tried to slide a hand to a dirk he had tucked into his tunic. But the men who still held him tightened their grips. Realizing their mistake, they bound his hands behind his back.

  “Captain, I beseech you one more time,” said Gruum urgently.

  Bolo’s eyes turned to him. Gruum saw there, that despite all his outward appearance of firm command, the Captain was afraid. He did not know what steps he should take.

  “He’s a King,” Gruum hissed.

  “That pale devil?”

  “Yes. Imagine the ransom!”

  Bolo stared back, more uncertain than ever. But then the crossbows were ready. “He mocks me on my own ship’s deck. He has cursed this vessel and all who sail upon her. His spirits shred the sails further with each day we travel toward the ends of the Earth. I must get him off my ship.”

  Bolo waved to the three crewmen with crossbows. They snapped bolts up into the rigging. For a moment, there was no reaction, then a body sailed down out of the night above. It thumped down on the deck, like a slab of meat dropped by a butcher.

  The men gathered around the corpse. A crossbow bolt sprouted from the man’s back.

  “I know that headscarf,” said one of them. They rolled the man over, so his face could be seen. The cabin boy held up a lantern.

  “It’s Abaras. We shot Abaras.”

  “No,” said Bolo, kneeling and closing the eyes with his fingers. “The corpse is cold. It has been dead, perhaps for hours. Look at the sunken face. The sorcerer has consumed him.”

  Bolo straightened again. His face was full of cold fury. Every glittering eye watched him closely.

  “I will not have this devil on my ship for one minute more,” he said. He placed the tip of his cutlass at the cabin boy’s throat. “You helped this monster up into the rigging. You are a traitor, and Abaras’ blood is on your head. You are the sorcerer’s creature.”

  The cabin boy’s eyes were impossibly wide. By the light of the flickering lantern he held, and the strange, eldritch light coming from the wind spirits that floated above, everyone watched the tip of Bolo’s sword.

  A second resounding thump struck the deck boards. This time, however, the man who fell landed on his feet. Everyone heard the jingling of the man’s chainmail shirt. He stepped forward into the circle of yellow light. Therian’s face was recognized by everyone, but tonight it held a new vigor and intensity of aspect. In each hand a sword flashed. Therian held his blades low, but ready. He approached the group slowly, watchfully.

  “Do not slay the boy on my account,” he said softly.

  Bolo kept the tip of his cutlass on the cabin boy’s throat. “You must leave my ship. You and this monkey of a man who serves you,” he said, indicating Gruum with a crooked finger.

  “Wait another dozen hours,” said Therian calmly. “We should reach our port by then.”

  Bolo looked down at the dead, slack face of Abaras. His lips pulled away from his face. “Why? Will that be time enough for you to slay us all?”

  “If need be,” said Therian. The shining blades of his twin swords twitched upward. The crewmen who circled around regripped their weapons in response.

  Bolo made his decision then. Gruum could see it in his eyes. So could everyone aboard the Innsmouth. He raised his cutlass and smashed it down upon the cabin boy’s upturned face. The boy’s angled teeth were broken, his face bled freely. He fell to his knees, choking. Quickly, the lad slumped on the deck.

  Bolo then turned his attention back to Gruum. “Throw the sorcerer’s monkey overboard. You may join him, devil-king, or you may die on my decks.”

  “You have chosen an unwise path,” said Therian in a cold voice.

  Gruum saw little of the fight that followed. Blades flashed and flickered. Men growled and screamed. Therian backed to the rails and held Succor high to catch the weapons that slashed out to taste his flesh. He kept Seeker in a low grip, and snaked it outward with blinding speed when the body of a sailor came within reach. It dipped into the thigh of a man who shuffled close. The man had been quaking with fear and snarling all at the same time. The snarling turned to howls of agony. Another man with a boathook sought to catch Therian with the tip of his weapon. Instead, his weapon was caught by the flashing curves of Succor. He was dragged close and Seeker stabbed between his ribs.

  But there were too many, and their rage and their weight of numbers pressed Therian back. Gruum did not see the finish of the battle. An oaf of a man fell back, arms pin wheeling, eyes protruding in shock. The oaf’s slashed-open face fountained blood onto the deck. He stumbled into Gruum and knocked him overboard.

  In an instant, Gruum’s world turned dark, cold and quiet.

  -5-

  Gruum, his hands bound, kicked to the surface, but the weight of his clothes pulled him down. He was a man of the earth, and not a good swimmer. He began to tire and sink. His head slipped under the waves and he felt himself going deeper. After struggling for perhaps a minute, a moment of peace reached his mind. It was not a bad way to go, he had the time to reflect, for a man who had lived life by his wits and his blade. Most men such as he were destined to die in a cooling puddle of their own blood.

  Then a shape loomed near, a shadow he felt as much as saw. His heart grew cold in fear, despite the nearness of death. Was he to be devoured in his final moments, denied a peaceable end after all? A worse thought came to him, as the shape seemed vaguely like that of a man. Was it Karn? Had Karn somehow followed the ship all this way? Surely, not even a deathless shade could have swum so far, so fast. The unnatural winds the spirits had blown upon the sails had driven the Innsmouth with great speed. No man could swim so fast. Not even a dead man, Gruum would wager.

  The shape grabbed him with an impossible grip. Iron hands encircled his wrists like shackles and ripped loose his bonds, nearly snapping his finger bones with the force of the motion. The shadow left him then and he swam after it with what strength he could muster.

  Gruum knew the touch of his master. In possession of a fresh soul, Therian was almost as frightening as Karn had been. Gruum kicked and stroked with numb limbs. He rose quickly toward the distant surface. He gasped desperately for air when he reached the open night again. Waves rolled over his head and choked him. He dared not utter anything other than gasps as he drank in sweet air. He rubbed at his swollen wrists in between a hundred gasps and coughs. Saltwater burned his throat. Soon, his mind and his body were functioning fully and he marveled at his own survival.

  Gruum finally noted that Therian floated beside him. Together, they gazed after the retreating stern of the Innsmouth. The Hyborean King didn’t breathe harshly or shout with rage after the ship. His master’s rage was there, Gruum could feel it, but it was a cold thing.

  “Milord?” Gruum said above the winds and the slapping sounds of the open sea. “You came back for me?”

  Therian made no response. He glowered after the escaping ship. The hanging stern lanterns formed gleaming, yellow-orange points wrapped in the hulking shadow of the vessel itself. Distantly, as if in a dream, the sounds of cheering and celebrati
on could be heard floating back to them on the sea breezes.

  “They hold festival,” said Therian in a quiet, dangerous voice. Gruum found his master’s mood disturbing. He half-expected Therian to summon a great spell of vengeance. Perhaps the ship would burst into wrathful sorcerous flame and sag down into the depths.

  “Could you have taken the ship? Instead of coming after me, I mean?” asked Gruum, curious now as to how valuable he had become to his lord. He found it hard to believe his life had been valued more highly than the ship, and even more incredibly, his master’s dignity. Therian had been tossed overboard by a throng of stinking ship-rats, and that had to wound the King’s pride.

  Therian glanced at him in the darkness. “Probably not. I was disarmed.”

  Gruum was alarmed. “Seeker and Succor have been lost? The blades of kings have slipped into the depths?”

  “No, I lost my swords on the ship. I saw your saber go down into the sea, however. In fact, when I fell over the rails, I had to choose between climbing back onto the deck, saving you, or saving the saber.”

  Gruum made a sputtering sound. “Milord, I thank you—“

  “Don’t,” interrupted his master. “You were saved by the fact I was unprepared to face an armed crew without a weapon. That, and the fact that your flesh sank much more slowly than did your steel.”

  “Ah, of course,” Gruum said, feeling strangely relieved. His master had made no sudden changes in demeanor. The logic of Therian’s actions was cold and clear, as usual. Gruum understood that saving his life had probably been the third most important item on Therian’s list of possible actions, but it had been the most achievable goal.

  Gruum thought to ask what they would do next, but held his tongue. They were lost as sea on the blackest of nights. The moon had set hours earlier and dawn was hours still away. Only the stars hung overhead to light their world. At any moment, a sea creature might well up and devour them for supper. At least the seawater wasn’t deadly cold, but neither was it comfortable. They’d long ago left the numbing cold of the northern seas behind. Soon however, their muscles would tire.

  A thousand questions ran through Gruum’s mind, but he sensed his master had a plan. He waited quietly for the moment and worked to tread water as economically as he was able.

  Therian let three strange, guttural syllables tumble from his lips. Gruum wanted to clap his hands over his pained ears, but before he could do it, the words had been spoken. The words soon floated off into the night air, but they remained in the mind. They rolled around in Gruum’s head, like a bard’s song that could not be banished from one’s thoughts. Fortunately, they were not followed with more words, Gruum noted with relief. The spell, whatever it was, must have been a simple one.

  Gruum waited, tensely, wondering what would happen. After a minute or so, a glimmer of light came to his eyes, from somewhere down within the infinite depths beneath them. Looking down, he thought to see the distant bottom, or perhaps it was only the dark shapes of vast slumbering monsters that existed a league beneath his churning feet.

  Fear gripped Gruum’s heart with fresh intensity. Long experience in the presence of sorcery allowed him to keep himself under control, however. He did not whimper or cry out. The light became an unnatural bluish in color and the nimbus of it soon outlined the long features of his master, who he could now see still wore his iron helmet and his shirt of chainmail. Gruum marveled at this, as any normal man would have been sucked down into the depths by the weight of the armor.

  The light had formed a blue globe which Therian now cupped in his hands. He handled it as would a man nursing a tiny tongue of flame into a blaze. This flame was unnatural, however, and burned about a foot beneath the surface of the water itself, but without causing bubbles or heat. Without thinking about it, Gruum let himself drift several feet further away from his master and the shimmering blue globe.

  Looking down into the sea, Gruum found he could see a great distance by the cold, growing light of the globe. He imagined he could make out a few details of the bottom itself, far below. A dark shape moved here and there. One of the shapes, even as he watched, seemed to take notice of the globe. It swam nearer, rising swiftly as a great bird might soar upward with a gust of wind.

  “Master, I—” said Gruum, eyeing the approaching sea creature with alarm.

  “Shhh,” said Therian, in a hushed voice. “You make a terrible fisherman. Do you still have your dagger?”

  Gruum nodded and pulled his leaf-bladed weapon from his belt, careful to keep a firm grip. It was the only weapon he had left.

  Therian gestured impatiently. Gruum handed the dagger to Therian. He already suspected the way of things to come.

  The creature paused, circled once, and then dashed in. It had been attracted by the light as a wolf might be drawn to the bleating of a hobbled lamb. Therian played the part of the lamb until the final instant, when his hands drew apart and the will-o-wisp of watery flame vanished. Cast into sudden and total darkness, Gruum could only imagine the splashing struggle that came to his ears and which blasted cold shocks of water into his face. Therian hissed and howled—the sea-creature thrashed and twisted. Soon, it was done and the black waves smoothed out again.

  “Milord?”

  A deep, self-satisfied sigh rolled out from his master’s lips. Gruum knew relief, but he also had to shudder slightly at the unnatural sounds coming his sated lord. They were not entirely human, those sounds. It was more akin to listening to a great predator while it did its natural work in the pitch-black of night.

  “Quiet,” said Therian, his words thick in his mouth. “Don’t speak for now, lest your voice become tiresome to me.”

  Gruum blinked his eyes and his heart sped up in his chest at this suggestion. It would have been far easier, he realized quietly, for his master to slaughter the useless servant that floated so near, than to spend the time and effort it required to summon creatures up from the deeps.

  After a time, in the darkness, foul words were uttered. They grated on Gruum’s mind so much that he ducked his head beneath the waves, hoping to escape the sound of them. His gambit didn’t work, as he could still hear the Dragon Speech through the seawater as clearly as if Therian had whispered each syllable into his ear. Whatever spell Therian cast, Gruum was sure it was a powerful one.

  When the chanting was done, nothing seemed to happen immediately. Gruum paddled at the water, feeling the cold more in the blackness. He felt so cold and alone he considered asking his master to light the blue globe of sorcery again, but he did not quite dare to speak yet.

  More long moments passed before a single bubble—a very large bubble the size of a horse head—came up between them from the sea and popped. A noisome gas issued from the bubble, causing Gruum to cough and retch.

  It then seemed to Gruum that the very sea beneath his body roiled. The water lurched about as if they swam in a huge goblet while an impossibly huge hand tipped the goblet and set the wine within to sloshing.

  “Get ready,” said Therian thickly, speaking for the first time in several minutes.

  “For what?” asked Gruum, suspecting an army of new, stinking bubbles. The truth, when it dawned upon him, was so much stranger that his mind could scarcely grasp it.

  Suddenly, a great object struck his feet and heaved him upward out of the water. He was dashed onto the surface of it. The only cause he could imagine was that the parent of the sea creature they had lured to the surface had risen up to swallow them in vengeance. So broad was the back of this dark monster which rose up beneath them he was lifted completely up out of the sea and began to slip away over the side. Instinctively he threw himself flat on his stomach on the monster’s back, he clutched at whatever his groping hands could find. His fists closed on something large and round and jagged, perhaps the great horn of the beast.

  “Master, we can’t defeat such a monster!” cried Gruum, clinging to the horn and almost reduced to blubbering.

  “What are you babbling about, m
an?” Therian asked. Then his master laughed at him, and Gruum felt hot shame. He was again the ignorant barbarian in the presence of the learned. How he been made the fool this time?

  “Stand up, man,” Therian told him with a mixture of annoyance and amusement in his voice. He reached down and jerked Gruum to his feet as a father might lift up a toddler by his nightshirt.

  Gruum stood unsteadily on the surface, which he noted was fairly even. “What manner of beast have you summoned, milord? Is this one at your service?”

  Therian snorted. With a flourish he produced another blue globe of light, which he hung upon the horn that Gruum had so recently clung to.

  Gruum’s jaw sagged down in amazement as he realized the rounded thing he had clung to, assuming it to be the great horn of some fantastic beast, was in truth the broken mast of a ship. Indeed, he gazed around and realized he stood upon the deck of a lost vessel, sunken eons ago to the bottom of the sea and now raised from the depths to do Therian’s bidding.

  There were no sails, nor was there a rudder. There were holes in the ships gunwales, but the seawater stayed outside the vessel, as if afraid to enter. Therian stood tall at the prow of the ship with his arms outstretched. The derelict swung around to face away from the wind, to face in the direction the pirate ship had vanished over the horizon.

  “My blade!” said Gruum, scrambling over the deck. In the prow, stuck down deeply into the rotted timbers, was his saber. It had sunk to the bottom and stuck here in the ancient deck boards. Gruum could scarcely believe the providence.

  “What are the odd, milord?” he asked.

  “The odds of what?”

  “My retrieval of this blade.”

  Therian shrugged. “Quite high, I should think. There were many ships down there. We floated over the site of an ancient sea battle. I chose to call upon the one that bore your blade stuck in its back. It seemed an expedient way of rearming us.”

  Gruum looked at his master with wide eyes. Sorcerers were indeed difficult to get used to.