Part 5 (1/2)
'Amra!' screamed Sigurd. 'Another one, to port!'
Conan whirled with a sulphurous oath. A second dragon-s.h.i.+p was bearing down upon them from the opposite side. Since this one was travelling with the wind on her beam, her wing-sails helped the oars so that she moved much faster than the first s.h.i.+p had done.
'Milo!' roared Conan. 'Get that engine over to port!'
As the catapult crew struggled to lever their machine to the opposite side of the forecastle deck, the second dragon-s.h.i.+p quickly closed the distance. Conan swore at his own stupidity in letting the sight of the blazing first s.h.i.+p so rivet his attention that he had not been aware, until he heard Sigurd's bellow, of the approach of the second. 'Yakov!' he thundered. 'Hold your shot until the doors open!'
This time, however, the dragon-s.h.i.+p did not open the doors to its boarding party so soon. Instead, it gave out a hiss as of a thousand kettles. From its open mouth, a tongue of liquid flame shot out. It formed a blazing arch across the narrowing gulf. It struck the side and deck of the Red Lion. In an instant, drops of the burning liquid were running hither and yon about the deck. In a panic, the pirates ran back from the rail, some of them beating at smoldering spots in their clothing. The liquid gave off a dense, black smoke with an oily smell. Conan guessed at once that this was a natural oil, like that which seeped out of the ground in the deserts of Iranistan and southern Turan.
But he had no time to explain this to his men. A second hiss, and another jet of liquid flame struck the foresail, which in an instant blazed up like a torch. The catapult crew and the archers scattered, screaming, as the sail flamed over their heads and showered the deck with bits of burning sailcloth.
'Hard to starboard!' yelled Conan. 'Trim sail to run with the wind on the starboard beam!' For he saw that another flaming jet might destroy his mainsail and make the Red Lion a helpless hulk.
But it was too late. Again came the hiss and the jet, and the mainsail dissolved into a ma.s.s of leaping, thundering flame. The Red Lion, shorn of all motive power save the little triangular mizzen, slowed and wallowed. The grappling booms of the galley crashed down, driving their claws into the carack's deck. The doors opened, the plank extended, and the second boarding party rushed to the deck of the Red Lion.
These men had brown skins and slitted eyes, with k.n.o.bby cheekbones and hawk noses. They wore bird-helms like those of the sorcerer on the green galley, and strange gla.s.sy armor over leathern jerkins. They carried curious weapons - swords with saw-toothed edges of crystal, hooked spears, and gla.s.sy globes held in slings. There were other weapons, which Conan could not, in the first moment, make out.
Yakov's archers should have met the boarding party with a deadly hail of arrows, but the archers had become as demoralized as the rest of the pirates. Conan roared and threatened from the p.o.o.p, but still they milled and yammered witlessly in the waist. A few arrows whizzed into the boarders, but to little effect. The shafts splintered against and glanced off the fragile-looking armor of gla.s.s. A few of the crew mustered where the tongue of the boarding plank rested upon the Red Lion's rail.
Conan leaped down the ladder from the p.o.o.p deck, his great broadsword in hand, to add his weight to the defenders. The men of the boarding party, he now saw, bore curious equipment: tubes that ran from their nostrils, inside the gla.s.s helmets, to containers on their backs. It must, he surmised, be breathing equipment of some sort. But why?
The answer came just as he reached the main deck. The foremost of the attackers paused to whirl slings and shower his men with gla.s.s globes, each about the size of an apple. The globes burst with a musical tinkle and shattered into thousands of s.h.i.+ning shards. Where each globe struck, a billowing cloud of pale vapor arose.
More and more'of the globes smashed and tinkled; as fast as the wind blew away the vapor, more of the uncanny missiles renewed it. And Conan saw his men, milling about in the waist, sag and slump to the deck, unconscious. Down they went, man after man, until only a few still stood erect. The deck looked like a shambles, save that the fallen men lay peacefully and apparently unhurt, as if sleeping, Then the boarding party swarmed down from the plank to the smoke-obscured deck, on which fragments of burning sail and rope still showered. With a challenging roar, Conan drove in amongst them, his broadsword weaving a s.h.i.+mmering web of steel around him. The crystalline armor splintered as the heavy blade struck it, shearing through gla.s.s, leather, flesh, and bone. Limbs were lopped off; howling cries of pain came m.u.f.fled through the gla.s.sy helmets.
Conan hacked his way through the loose ranks of the first boarders, leaving three foes rec.u.mbent on the deck behind him. But others dropped down from the boarding plank to ring him round and return to the attack. He hacked his way through to the rail where, with his back protected, he won a moment's respite.
On the far side of the deck he saw Sigurd trading mighty blows with two a.s.sailants. Two more had already fallen at his feet. Then, although he did not seem to have been struck, the Northman dropped his scimitar and folded up on the deck, as had all the rest of the crew.
There was a sweetish smell in Conan's nostrils, and the world swam before his eyes. The attackers had given back before him, to form a semicircle hemming him against the rail. For three heartbeats, the Cimmerian faced his a.s.sailants, his gray-bearded lips bared in a silent snarl. Then, over the heads of the foremost attackers, several of the gla.s.s globes flew through the air, to smash on the deck at his feet.
Conan did not wait for the vapor to rise and drag him down. With a hoa.r.s.e, gasping roar, he hurled himself against the semicircle. His broadsword, wielded in both rough, scarred hands, whirled about his head like the vane of a windmill. Cras.h.!.+ Cras.h.!.+ Two of the Antillians fell before his blade with heads or ribs crushed in. And then Conan was through the press and out in the open again.
He knew he could not fight the entire hostile crew single-handed. Though he might account for a few more, sooner or later they would surround him and cut him down. Already the fatigue of his years was weighting his limbs and slowing his movements. His breath came in gasps. The smoke and the whiff of the pallid vapor he had inhaled made him cough. Every one of his crew was now down - a few slain by the enemy's weird weapons, but the great majority felled by the vapor.
Another man might have been paralyzed by the problem of what to do next. The s.h.i.+p was plainly lost. Her deck swarmed with the boarders from the dragon s.h.i.+p. Her sails and rigging had vanished in flame and smoke; at that instant her fore yard, its sail consumed, crashed to the forecastle deck as the ropes upholding it burned through. A score of minor fires smouldered here and there about the deck, where pieces of burning saii, rope, or spar had ignited them. The first dragon-s.h.i.+p, which had been set ablaze, had vanished except for a floating patch of wreckage.
Conan saw that he could do his men no good by letting himself be slain or captured. If, on the other hand, he could escape, perhaps a chance would offer itself later . ..
The decisiveness of Conan's barbarian heritage decided his next actions without his consciously having to think about them or to weigh alternatives. With a final burst of strength, he bounded up the ladder to the p.o.o.p deck. Of the two steersmen at the quarter rudders, one had disappeared; the other lay dead, while over the body stood one of the boarders with a b.l.o.o.d.y saw-edged blade in his hand. Conan rushed him and shattered the crystal blade with a single chop. A mighty thrust with both long arms sent the point of the broadsword crunching through the other's gla.s.s-plated mail s.h.i.+rt and through the man's body. Down went the man.
Then Conan dropped his b.l.o.o.d.y broadsword, doffed his horned helmet, and hurled it far out into the water. No use leaving any arms for the foe to salvage! He bent and tore from the head of the dead boarder the bird-shaped gla.s.s helmet and the breathing apparatus that went with it. As more Antillians stamped up the ladder to the p.o.o.p deck, Conan ”settled the apparatus about his own head and shoulders.
The enemies rushed upon him with cries of rage. He caught up his sword just in time to parry the thrust of a wavy-headed spear, and a mighty slash smashed the helmet of the pikeman and the skull beneath it. Before any others could close with him, the Cimmerian sprang to the rail and dove into the heaving, blue waters. Carried down by the weight of his chain mail, he sank like a stone.
The morning sun, now high in the heavens, had burned off the last remains of the morning mist; the clouds dwindled and fled before its hot golden rays. Two by two, the boarders picked up the rec.u.mbent forms of the unconscious crewmen of the Red Lion and carried them over the boarding plank into the dragon-s.h.i.+p. Others busied themselves with putting out the many small fires, beating them with cloaks and dousing them with buckets of sea water drawn up by ropes.
At length, leaving a small prize crew aboard, the men of the dragon-s.h.i.+p returned to their own vessel. With a rattle of gear, the boarding plank withdrew; the grappling arms rose from the deck; the doors in the dragon's breast closed. The dragon s.h.i.+p backed water with oars and sails and maneuvered to bring her stern near the bow of the Red Lion. Presently, with a creaking of ropes to trim her sails to the following wind, the dragon s.h.i.+p forged ahead in the direction whence she had come, towing the Red Lion behind her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
TERRORS OF THE SEA.
Bedight with tentacle and fang, The monsters on the Lion sprang .
. . - The Voyage of Amra
Conan struck the water with a mighty splash. Green waves closed over his head. Weighted by the chain mail that clothed his body to mid-thigh and by the ma.s.sive broadsword in his fist, he sank like a stone.
The sea was cold; the morning sun had not been up long enough for its warmth to penetrate far below the surface. The bracing tang of cold salt water on Conan's limbs was not unwelcome. Salt stung his cuts and bruises, and the icy shock sent new vigor surging through his aching muscles.
He fell slowly through a world of pale jade green. As the hull of the Red Lion rose above him, he could discern the barnacles on her keel. Looking up, the old warrior saw two hulls above him - oval planets in a sky of s.h.i.+mmering, greenish silver. A weird sight...
His first impulse on hitting the water had been to strike out with his arms and swim. Then it came to him that the breathing apparatus in the crystal helm was designed, in some incomprehensible fas.h.i.+on, to enable him to breathe under water. Furthermore, he could see the sea bottom not far beneath his booted heels. At this point, close to the isles of Antillia, the ocean bottom sloped gently upward. Instead of falling into an ebony abyss of lightless gloom, he would descend only a few fathoms and then could walk to sh.o.r.e. So, controlling his instinct to swim, he permitted himself to sink to the bottom, treading water just enough to keep himself right side up.
Breathing was another matter. The helm came down to fit in saddle fas.h.i.+on over chest and back. Two gla.s.s tubes curved away over either shoulder to a tanldike affair on his back between his shoulders. The first tube entered the front of the helm on a level with his nostrils; the second, on a level with his mouth. A little experimenting showed that the wearer of the helmet was expected to wrap his lips around the lower tube, press his nostrils into the aperture of the upper, and then breathe in through the nostril tube and out through the other. When he exhaled, a column of silvery, s.h.i.+ning bubbles rose from the apparatus with a gurgling sound. This unusual method of breathing took a little practice, but Conan got used to it by the time he landed softly, in a sprawling position, on the sea bottom. The bottom was covered with fine, soft sand, which rose in little clouds as he scrambled into an upright position. Around him, the water was clouded with puffs and swirls of slowly settling particles.
Conan found that his vision through the crystal helm was good, except that beyond a few yards the water clouded and confused his gaze. Although there was enough light clearly to make out his nearby surroundings, the more distant hillocks of sand were drowned in a deep emerald gloom.
He oriented himself easily enough, since to follow the rising slope of the sea bottom he knew would lead him to sh.o.r.e. So he set off in that direction, laboriously plodding through the soft sand, lurching from side to side because his armor and the breathing apparatus made him top- heavy. Despite the weight of his mail, boots, and sword, his body felt peculiarly light. It was gripped with an even pressure, which exerted itself against his entire body surface. This made breathing a wearying effort. But, disregarding the difficulties of moving, he forged along with grotesquely slow strides., which lifted him clear of the ocean floor with every step.
Curious growths flourished on the sea bottom. He pushed through an enchanted forest of weird plants, whose long, silky fronds undulated like glistening, multicolored ribbons. Small, brightly colored fish darted about him like fantastic birds, flas.h.i.+ng golden and purple and emerald and crimson and azure. Towers of pink and white coral rose about him, cloven and branching like petrified trees.
Pa.s.sing through the coral growths, Conan emerged into an area of tumbled, upward-sloping rocks, which lay this way and that and leaned against one another like the ruins of some primeval city of giants. Cl.u.s.ters of sea creatures clung to them. Some were flower-like or star-shaped or covered with spines. Some had jointed legs and eyes on stalks; others thrust out branching, feathery appendages.
Pulling himself up from level to level among the tumbled boulders, Conan silently cursed as something sharp gashed one of his fingers. In time, he emerged on a level plateau and stood for a moment, resting.
The sun must be higher now,, or else he had risen to a level quite near the surface, for the deep emerald of the depths had given way to a lucent chartreuse. By this clearer luminance he could make out another upward slope, which must extend almost to the surface. In this slope gaped the dark mouth of a sea cave.
Eyeing the cave warily, Conan decided to give it a wide berth. His experience with caves on dry land had often proved them to be tenanted - and tenanted by creatures formidable to man. He was sure that things other than the bright, harmless little fishes dwelt in these liquid depths. As he skirted the mouth of the cave, his eye caught a surge of motion in the darkness within. A spot of dim luminosity, as big as a serving platter, appeared, then another beside it. And something came sliding toward him across the sea bottom. It was like a s.h.i.+p's cable - or rather, like a tree trunk, covered with black, smooth, oily-looking bark, which had somehow been given flexibility and animation. The near end tapered to a slender whiplash, while toward the cave the tentacle thickened to the diameter of an old tree.
As the member writhed toward Conan, squirming and looping and rising from the sea bottom, he saw that its flat underside bore a double row of suckers, from little ones no bigger around than his thumb at the tapering end to others the size of horses's hooves further in. The thin end of the tentacle lifted from the sea bottom and tentatively touched Conan's boot, as if feeling this curious creature to see if it was edible.
'Crom!' gasped Conan, recognizing the tentacle as that of a creature of the kraken kind. He sprang backward, ripping his sword from the scabbard.
On dry land, such a leap would have taken him several feet back from where he stood, but things were different beneath the sea. Conan found himself floundering above the surface of the sand, turning end over end. Water leaked into his gla.s.sy helmet and gurgled in his ears as he revolved. With his free hand, he beat at the water to right himself.
The tentacle drew back. Then, like a striking serpent, it lunged up and out and coiled around his thigh.