THE IRON SERPENT

THE IRON SERPENT, by H R Laurence

 

‘You’ve fought bravely, fellow,’ said the corsair chief. A string of shrivelled human ears dangled from his neck and the shaft of his bloody hatchet was studded with polished white teeth. ‘But the day is ours; no cause for making it longer now. Cast down your sword.’

Heodric breathed deep. The smell of blood and salt was mingling on the breeze, and the merchant-ship Flute-Girl was rising and falling with his chest. The gulls swept and cried about her like gawkers taking bets upon the outcome of the fight. There could be no doubt as to what that would be now; the red-sailed galley of the corsairs was drawing slowly alongside the Flute-Girl and the archers aboard were stringing their bows. Perhaps the gulls wagered on how long he would last.

‘The day’s not done,’ he said, his voice loud and light, and swung his kite-shaped shield to cover his side from the archers. ‘I think the setting will be redder yet.’

He stood at the very prow of the merchant ship, his shield beaten to shreds, the sword in his hand bent halfway to a ploughshare. It had not been so roughly used in vain; the deck here was narrow, and the bodies of the men who had ventured forward to meet him were now bloody wreckage, strewn upon the cedar planks. A dozen more hung warily back about their chief. They narrowed their eyes as they saw Heodric shift his guard, but they did not move.

Seafarers that they were, they wore only scant armour, and only a handful had shields. In place of such prosaic protections they had adorned themselves with gory trophies and dark streaks of war-paint; charms of feather and skin were pinned to their hauberks, sigils painted upon their shields, small bones and mummified fingers woven into their beards. It was a sight to chill the blood of any peaceful mariner. Heodric ignored it. He had seen worse.

‘Cast down your sword,’ the chief said again. ‘We’ll be merciful.’

None of the Flute-Girl’s crew now lived save Heodric, who had been paid to guard them. Some slumped arrow-pierced at their rowing benches, others sprawled upon the deck where boarders’ blades had found them. Heodric had seen the corsairs cut the throats of the wounded; could see the unconcealed hatred in the eyes of the men whose comrades he had slain. There would be no mercy from them, save perhaps a swift death. He preferred to find that fighting.

With his eyes on the chief Heodric lowered the tip of his misshapen blade to the deck and braced it there, and pressed his boot against it, and lent with the whole weight of his muscular bulk until he had forced it half-straight again. A low murmur went up from the corsairs. Heodric grinned at them. Seasoned fighters would have rushed him at once. For all their ruthlessness, these raiders were unused to finding hard prey amongst their quarry.

The Captain shouldn’t have skimped on his guards, he thought. Two more good shieldmen and the Flute-Girl might have held off her ravagers when they sought to board. Heodric had needed passage urgently, for powerful men in the northern cities had good cause to want him dead, and so the low pay and free meals the Captain offered had been only a bonus to ease his journey south. But  his fellow guards had been amateurs, too used to the softer trade routes of the fortified northern seas – cheap men seeking cheap pay, and the crew had paid heavily.

So it went. Heodric realised that he was grinning still; he laughed, and shifted the blade in his hand. Probably he would die here. He would make them remember him.

‘Come a little closer, my boys,’ he said. His face was handsome beneath the gore which splattered it; the setting sun caught at his golden hair, and his blue eyes shone with blood-triumph. In the dying light he was beautiful, and a-gleam with danger, and every inch the barbarian that he was. ‘Come a little closer, and take the sword if you want it.’

The chief smiled, and shook his head slow. He was a big man, with a flowing jet-black beard, and a shaven pate, and a body like a boulder. He held it well. Alone of the raiders, Heodric might have paused to fight the chief man-to-man – but that prospect seemed unlikely now; the archers still aboard the corsair ship had a clear shot, and arrows nocked. If Heodric moved the shield now he would die, and if he ventured from the prow he would find a dozen blades ready to flank him, with only one arm to ward them off.

The sky darkened as cloud swept across the low sun; the breeze was brisk, and the cries of the gulls like warnings. The sails of the ships began to flutter. The raiders glanced at one another, and for the first time Heodric saw a flicker of irritation crease the face of the chief. The weather was turning. Every moment the raiders spent locked in this standoff was a moment they were not looting the Flute-Girl of her cargo; another moment that they risked the open sea instead of the safer coastline.

They knew this. None wanted to be the first to close with him, but in another moment one of them would chance it, and the second or third would most likely take his head. The boldest were inching forward already, swords held low, eyes wary. Heodric watched, and tried to reckon which of them would dare it first. A big youth in a bronze helm licked his lips; a wiry veteran with flayed skin stretched across his buckler shifted his weight.

Heodric risked a swift glance at the corsair ship. There were two archers waiting patiently at the prow; he could see no other souls aboard. The oars still moved, but none of the oarsmen had risen to aid their comrades. The galley, he thought, was rowed by slaves.

Then an arrow hissed through his reverie, and struck his shield and stuck there. Heodric’s eyes darted instinctively to the impact and with a cry the wiry buckler-man sprang at him, blade level. Heodric brought his crooked sword up just in time and parried the blow, and swung his wrecked shield against the bare head of his stumbling assailant.

It cracked. Another arrow tore the air; it missed in the flurry of movement as he had wagered it might, and as the stunned corsair went crashing to the deck and his comrades started forward Heodric leapt to meet them.

Or so they thought. As the tall swordsman sprang from the deck the corsairs recoiled, and then Heodric’s sandalled feet found the narrow gunwhale, and with an agility which belied his size he dashed upon it – past the reeling swordsmen, past his dead and slain comrades, racing to where a single straining line held the ships together, embedded in Flute-Girl‘s flank by a grapnel.

With a curse the corsair chief sprang after him, realising his purpose. Heodric leapt again, shield and all, and his foot caught the line deft as an acrobat. For a moment he was balanced perfectly between the two ships upon the tight grappling-rope, running above the churning surface of the sea.

It so nearly worked – so nearly that he saw it unfold in his minds’ eye as if it happened. He would reach the corsair ship and slice the line; slay the startled archers while their impotent comrades cursed; urge the galley slaves to row for their lives and leave their furious masters stranded aboard the stricken Flute-Girl.

But he was a moment too slow, burdened by the kite-shaped shield of his people, and as his foot was poised to gain the galley the chief flung his hatchet from the other ship. It whistled as it tore the air, flying hard and vicious, and the shield which had slowed Heodric saved his life now. He felt the slam of the impact and felt his foot miss its mark in the same instant – and then the smashing cold of the sea and sudden, awful darkness. The light was above and receding swiftly; his sword was gone and his shield was dragging him down. Heodric tore at the wrist-straps, wrenched it free and let it go.

The light was gone. He thrashed, and turned about, and kicked his sandals off. He was no swimmer and already he was lost beneath the waves; already his lungs were strained and he fought not to gulp for unreachable breath. Some deep part of him knew that he was panicking; the rest of him was simply lost, and frightened.

Then an arrow breached the sea above him, and lost its momentum, and sank lazily past him, iron tip hauling the shaft towards the depths. Suddenly the world was oriented again; he clawed at what he now knew to be up, and felt himself rise, and –

Hard slamming pain across his head and back. Heodric reeled in the water, half-stunned, his mouth forced open and filling with water. Again he was a frightened animal, until his flailing arm struck wood. He had come up beneath the corsair galley and swum frantically into its keel, almost braining himself with the impact. Heodric caught at it, and pulled himself along the barnacled flank of the galley, and rose beneath the oars which spread like the legs of a spider above him.

‘- the damn dog!’ a man cried above. ‘Keep your eyes skinned; if he comes up I want him skewered.’

Heodric gasped a lungsworth of air and sank beneath the choppy waves as one of the archers leaned over the rail of the boat. He held there as long as he dared, a clinging limpet his handhold, and then surfaced again. More curses above, the chief’s voice, and another, low and conciliatory –

‘- he drowned, I tell you! That shield of his dragged him straight down, I’d wager my mother on it -‘

‘Your mother isn’t worth a coin-toss! Eyes skinned, the lot of you. I want his yellow scalp nailed to my mast.’

All that he could see of Flute-Girl was her sail, fluttering in the rising wind over the high side of the corsair galley and drawing closer as the raiders hauled her in. With a soft crunch the ships came together and shuddered, and Heodric clung tight to the galley’s flank. In the far distance he could see the coastline, a thin streak on the dimming horizon. But he was no swimmer. He would not make it so far.

Another motion above as a seafarer lent out to look for him, and again he ducked beneath the waves. This time he was hasty, and lost his handhold, and had to scrabble frantically to regain it.

‘Move your worthless hide!’ the chief roared above, bawling at some unfortunate crewmember. ‘You think we have hands to spare for lazing now?’

Heodric allowed himself a brief smile of satisfaction, for clearly he had cost the raiders dear enough to sour their victory. But quickly his thoughts turned rueful; paid passage upon a merchantman had seemed a fine way to escape his debts and demons in the cities of the north, but here he was sunk in the southern sea, with enemies above and the vast ocean beneath.

A worksong began to echo above as the corsairs turned their attention to looting the captive merchantman. It was a trite sailor’s ditty of seabirds and merwomen; the corsairs in their aweful finery must have looked absurd singing it as they hauled bales of silk and amphorae of oil from their prize. But there was some urgency in their voices; the wind was rising, and the sails above were fluttering, the white sheet of the Flute-Girl and the red one of the corsairs. Heodric shuddered. The water was not warm, and the waves were growing taller. They pressed him against the ship, and threatened to pluck him from it. Heodric held grimly on; by the time he heard the chief above calling his men to cast off he felt as though he had been wrestling an ogre.

Fat drops of rain began to spatter into the waves about him as the oarmaster’s drum struck up. It was dusk now, and the seas were high; he thought he had a good chance of making it to Flute-Girl unseen once they set her adrift, there to try and ride out the rough weather alone. Landlubber though he was, he’d sooner take his chances aboard an abandoned ship than one full of enemies. Half-swimming, and half climbing, he was halfway around the galley when smoke filled his nostrils, and he looked up to see flames licking at Flute-Girl‘s white sail. Heodric cursed, and the oars above him dipped and caught at the waves.

The galley moved with a jolt, and his grip was torn away; he flailed frantically, all thought of caution lost. He was caught between oars and ship; the blades slashed into the waves beside him and the shafts above thrummed like some diabolical machine, like a moving cage that encompassed and threatened to crush him. He couldn’t reach them, and when he tried to catch at the hull again the limpets cut his clutching hand. The galley was outpacing him. Heodric gasped, and swam fast as he could, and as the ship tore past him he saw a trailing line beside the rudder skipping across the waves.

With a desperate lunge he caught it, and the strain shot through his arms as the line went taut and he was hauled behind the racing galley. Spluttering, he rolled onto his back and fought to keep his face above water. Behind him Flute-Girl was blazing despite the rain. The chief must have sacrificed an amphora-full of oil to torch her, and Heodric wondered for a moment if that was on his account.

But he had little time to dwell on it. The drenching waves were battering him; if he was to live he had to get back to the galley. With grim strength he began to haul himself along the rope hand-over-hand, disappearing at every other moment beneath the churning surface. The weather was worsening by the minute; it was plain he couldn’t hang on for long. A burst of effort brought him alongside the rudder, which creaked and groaned as the steersman above sought to keep the vessel on track, and hauled himself halfway out of the sea.

Utterly exhausted, Heodric made the rope fast about him. He hesitated a moment before letting it take his weight – but his hands were frozen and his strength gone; he had no choice. In the far distance he saw an orange spark flicker and disappear; the burning Flute-Girl had slipped to her last resting, and he was alone. And so he hung there as night fell and the sea rose, and the waves lapped at his legs like hungry dogs eager to pull him into their midst.

Maybe, he thought, he could last out the night here. Doubtless the corsairs had a base somewhere upon the coast from which their fast galley could strike when a vulnerable merchantman was spied. It would not take them so very long to make the shore with the wind behind them. If the storm held off a little longer…

A flash of lightening answered him, and the thunder which roared on its heels was clearly audible even above the crash of waves and oars. Heodric would have laughed if he had breath. Of course, it would not be so easy.

He looked up and flexed his aching arms. The rope he hung from was made fast somewhere above; it must have been hung to clear some obstruction in the rudder, and forgotten in the excitement of the boarding. He thought he could make the galley. But as for the score of raiders aboard it…

A wave crashed behind him. Heodric could not have said why it caught his ear, save perhaps that it came just as the storm seemed to have lulled a moment. He turned just as another flash of lightening illumed the dark sky, and saw it clear as day.

There was a vast black shape lurking just beneath the rough surface of the water, sleek and sharp as an arrowhead, as wide as the galley and easily twice its length. Heodric’s gasp caught in his throat, and then the vision was gone and there was nothing but the crash of the waves. He craned his neck to see the creature; a wave plastered him against the hull of the galley and he lost his grip and almost tumbled into the surf before he could catch the rope anew.

Something broke the water, not far from the vessel. He turned and saw it – a thin dark stalk, lifted above the surface of the sea, with a bulbous bulge at its tip. It parted, and something gleamed red within, and Heodric realised that he was looking at the eye of something monstrous.

Whether it saw him or no he could not say; without a shadow of a doubt it was gazing on the galley. Then it blinked into darkness, and sank beneath the surf. Heodric stared at the place it had been, but he could see no trace of the beast – and he was suddenly very conscious that it might be beneath him even now.

‘To hell with the sea,’ he thought, and hauled with all his strength upon the line. Up he went. The rope slithered and burned beneath his hands, and he gained the gunwhale and pulled himself over.

The steersman span about as Heodric came crashing over the rail and sprawling onto the deck. The corsair still wore a dark streak of warpaint smeared across his eyes, though it was now half gone in the rain. The curse stuck in his mouth as he saw Heodric’s golden hair and recognised the tall barbarian who had slain so many of his comrades.

Heodric kicked out from where he lay, doubling the steersman over his belly and driving the breath from his lungs before he could cry out. He caught at the tiller to pull himself to his feet, and as the corsair stumbled upright Heodric grabbed and pulled him close. The steersman clutched at him, cold fingers tangling and tearing at his beard, his cries lost in the wind. Heodric groped blindly for the man’s belt and found the hilt of the knife he had known would be there. He wrenched the blade free and slammed it home and twisted it, and ripped it away, and pushed the dying man over the rail.

His breath coming hard, Heodric turned. The deck of the galley was cluttered with the Flute-Girl‘s looted cargo. Beyond tightly-lashed stacks of amphorae, the deck narrowed to a walkway between rowing benches, and widened about the mast, where a handful of corsairs  wrestled with ropes and rigging. The sail above was torn, flying madly in the wind, and though the men were clearly shouting Heodric could not hear a word they spoke. But he could hear the drum of the oarmaster, who stood tall and fearsome before him, his back to the tiller, oblivious to the deadly conflict which had just played out behind him.

More men stalked the walkways, or clustered beneath a rigged oilskin at the bow. It would be only a moment before they saw him, and so he went scurrying across the wet deck, and dove behind the nearest pyramid of loot. The ship lurched as a wave caught it, and crewmen cried out in alarm as they realised the steersman was gone. Heavy feet rushed past, and cries came from the stern.

‘Corvus fell!’

‘Man overboard!’

More shouts, more rushing feet. Heodric moved with them, slipping unseen between the piled loot, and as they past he rushed crouched into the midships. He slid silently onto the first of the rowers’ benches.

A trio of startled slaves jolted upright as Heodric sat beside them, the fetters which bound them to their oar rattling. Heodric pressed a finger to his lips, and showed them the knife. The men’s eyes widened further, but they made no sound. They had seen nothing of the fight on Flute-Girl, perhaps even thought him a corsair – though clearly a mad one, with a killer’s glee in his blue eyes and blood upon his blade.

‘Quiet now, lads,’ said Heodric. He heard the faint rhythm of the oarmaster’s drum behind, and took the oar, and added his strength to theirs. One by one, the galley-slaves looked away. This, they realised, was no business of theirs.

A corsair stalked above, whip in hand. He did not expect to see an extra man at the rowing-bench, and so he simply didn’t. Heodric kept his head low until the man was gone. Another followed, hurling curses at crew and slave alike – it was the chief, the last of his earlier calm lost to the storm. With some unease, he realised that the man was frightened.

How much worse would it be, Heodric wondered, if the chief knew that something huge was following them.

 

            ***

 

The storm wore on with the sodden inevitability of the night; soon rain lashed hail-hard upon the seamen and the galley reeled upon waves twice her height, oars beating frantically, decks half-swamped. Heodric forgot concealment; he hauled at the oar until his hands bled, obeying the frantic and terror-laced cries of the corsairs above with the sure knowledge that he was rowing for his life. The wind was a harpy at his ears; the rain blinded his eyes. The oarmaster hauled his drum amidships and hammered like a mad ironsmith, and the rhythm of the drum and the hard shaft of the oar were his whole existence, driving to dream any thought of sun or land or absence of pain in his arms…

At last he blinked and found that the rain had slackened, and that the howl of the wind was more distant now, and the waves less ferocious. A gasp went up from the rowing benches, an agonised prayer of gratitude to a score of different gods. The rhythm of the oars faltered; the beat of the drum ceased. Heodric let the oar slip from numb hands. He was so soaked that he felt himself half-water, so dog-tired that he might have slept there.

Sleep and you’re dead! he told himself. He was still in the very midst of his foe. Two men came conferring down the gangway, and Heodric lowered his head and strained to hear over the hubbub of relief.

‘I tell you,’ the chief hissed. ‘Something has dogged our wake through all this storm, and something more than wind has drawn us in…’

‘Ironlair!’ said the other, a low note of terror in his voice. The chief hushed him.

‘Have the men stay ready,’ he said . ‘There may be more than waves to fear.’

They passed on out of earshot. So the chief had a sense after all that they were followed. Heodric turned to the scrawny men at the rowing bench, worn to shadows by years of slave-labour. They regarded him with wary eyes.

‘Ironlair?’ he asked.

‘Some pirate legend,’ said the older of the men, after a moment. ‘A rock haunted by dead sailors, who lure the undrowned living to wreck.’

‘We called it the Serpent’s Rock,’ murmured one of the others. ‘A great sea-snake was held to drive ships upon it.’

‘Seatooth, in my tongue,’ said the third, a north-westerner by his accent. ‘It rises above the waves when lightening strikes.’

Fresh thunder silenced them. The corsair with whom the chief had conferred came along the deck; a tall bony man with a withered human hand strung pendant-like about his neck.

‘This lull won’t last,’ he said to another of the crew. ‘Give the oars a tot before it redoubles.’

The man began to haul a barrel along the rowing deck, doling out mouthfuls of grog to the oarsmen with a ladle. He grew nearer; there was no chance that Heodric could go unseen.

Well. It would be good to taste rum before he died.

The corsair bent mechanically, and Heodric filled his mouth with the burning spirit, and as  the eyes of the corsair went wide with astonishment he caught the hand the bore the the ladle and yanked, hauling the man from the deck and into the rowing benches. The seafarer’s head struck the thick oar, and Heodric stamped down on his neck as he rose.

‘Take his blade, free yourselves!’ he said to the rowers staring wide-eyed at the corpse at their feet. ‘The gods love the bold.’

He sprang to the deck. Another corsair had heard the yelp of the first; the same burly youth he had noticed on the deck of the Flute-Girl. The boy’s eyes bulged, and he swung high; Heodric caught his wrist as it descended, but he was weary, and his fingers half-frozen, and he misjudged his own blow. The knife-blade caught a charm of bone and leather that the boy wore about his neck; it bit home wide of the mark, and the boy gave a loud cry as the knife scored his chest. Heodric thrust again; the cry became a gulp of disbelief, and then nothing. But the damage was done.

A dozen men had turned at the sound, the chief among them, and with the wind whipping at his golden hair Heodric rushed for him. There was no time to hesitate, no time for cunning ploys. Somewhere in the back of his mind lurked the mad thought that he might overpower the chief, and with him for a hostage barter to be put ashore somewhere – but at the forefront was nothing but fierce instinct.

The big man was quick, though, and the hatchet in his hand fast. Heodric’s leap became a dive as the blade passed a finger-width from his belly. He rolled and came upright. The gambit had failed; in another moment the whole crew would be upon him.

‘You devil!’ the chief roared. ‘The gods only saved you from drowning that I might have your skull!’

Then came a crack of thunder loud as a war-drum, and with it a great sheet of lightening lit the sky, and in its harsh glare a vast and jagged wall of stone was suddenly visible before them, jutting from the sea like a single broken tooth waiting to champ down on the galley.

All thought of fighting was gone; corsair and galley slave cried out alike, and warriors sprang into the rowing benches to aid their chattels. Heodric and the chief alone remained on deck. For a moment they hesitated, primal fury urging each of them to close with the other and finish the business. But their eyes were torn from one another when thunder sounded again.

Lightening struck shimmering reflection from a huge glistening body, which had risen snake-like from the waves behind them. It was arrow-shaped and sharp, rigid as an armoured man and long as three galleys, and atop its great head the red stalk-eye burned, gazing with ancient, incomprehensible intelligence at the straining ship trapped between between rock and monster.

Ironlair, thought Heodric. A fitting place for a serpent of iron.

Down the arrow-head lunged. Saltwater swamped the galley. The serpent had dived alongside them; as they foundered it dipped swiftly beneath the boat.

Heodric plunged his knife into the deck; the chief’s axe quivered there a moment later, and the two clung to their weapons like climbers upon a rockface as the galley was lifted bodily from the waves and flung vertically into the air. Ill-secured mariners flew to their doom; booty upon the deck went to the waves; a screaming row of slaves tore past Heodric’s eyes as their bench broke loose. He saw the huge rock rushing up, and knew with strange calm that in the next moment he would be dashed to a thousand pieces upon it.

But it was not to be. For in the dark surface a vast cavemouth loomed like a gaping gullet, and like a raw scrap the galley tumbled into it.

 

***

 

A distant shaft of light told Heodric that dawn had come while he was unconscious, though the place where he lay was gloomy. His battered body was afire with pain; it ached in protest as he forced himself to sit. He pushed it to the back of his mind, for above him stood the chief, and half-a-dozen of his crew.

‘The boy you killed was my nephew,’ said the chief. ‘You and I shall have to account for that, at some later time. But now I am short of men, and you’ve proven yourself bold. Lend us your strength; our differences can wait for shore. My name is Garrus.’

Heodric looked up at him. The chief stood bold and tall, but the corsairs about him were a ragged handful, their warpaint washed away and their trophies lost to the sea. Heodric did not trust the chief, but he saw little appetite for subterfuge here.

‘Mine is Heodric,’ he said. ‘You have my oath.’

They clasped hands, wrist-to-wrist, and that was their compact. Garrus hauled Heodric to his feet, and for the first time he looked about him.

They stood on a rock shelf, and in a shallow pool below them remnants of the galley lay like a carcass half-devoured. Eight of the corsairs survived beside the chief, and a dozen bedraggled slaves, who were already at work salvaging wood for a raft. It must have been they who hauled him from the wreck. Beside the galley were spars and shafts of rotten wood, twists of sailcloth, ample proof of many other stricken vessels. Above was nothing but a great arch of black rock.

‘Where is the cave we came through?’ he asked.

‘It closed,’ said the bony man with the hand-pendant. Heodric’s face must have showed his scepticism; the old seafarer spat, and cursed him for a disbelieving dog, and said ‘Closed like a mouth! We are swallowed.’

‘Enough, Ralto,’ said Garrus. ‘True enough that the rock closed; but this is no mouth, and we are no morsels.’

He pointed with his hatchet towards the light. In the far gloom a narrow rocky path rose from the cove, winding up and disappearing behind a shoulder of rock.

‘There’s our path,’ he said. ‘We’ve caught our breath long enough. Let us see what this rock holds for us.’

They gave him a sword, and leaving two of the lightly wounded crewmen to oversee the slaves they struck out scrambling along the wet slick path. Soon the galley was out of their sight, and they saw the source of the light – a jagged crack in the domed rock above. The path flattened into a gentle slope towards it. With glad cries they pressed upwards. Heodric smelt salt and heard waves, and the cries of seabirds. The sky was blinding white, and as they made their way up the path it seemed to grow in bright intensity, even as the calls of the birds became louder and shriller.

One strutted into view at the cavern-mouth above, huge as an albatross and black as a raven. It walked with a weird gait, as though tottering upon stiff legs, and its wings were held aloft with strange rigidity – and then Heodric saw a gleam of steel, and a glint of red, and without a sound the huge bird launched itself from its perch and into the cave towards them.

The ungainliness was gone in a moment; it swept down like a sleek arrowhead. No feathers covered it, and nor did its rigid wings flap, but at the terminus of each a blade span discus-fast with a panther-purr noise. At the centre of its strange body a single eye gleamed scarlet. Garrus gave a cry of warning to the leading man, who brought up his spear to ward off the diving bird. A whirring blade shattered the weapon, and then passed through the corsair’s eyes to lift his upper skull from the head beneath.

Heodric swung his sword up and the hellish bird swept out of its dive a half-foot above his stroke, flecks of blood and matter raining on the cursing corsairs. It arced the rough dome of the cavern. Two of the corsairs had started back down the path towards the safety of the caves below, and the thing cut them off like a dog herding sheep. One man saved himself by flinging himself onto the hard rocks; his fellow hesitated, and the bird spun onto its side so that its uncanny blades caught him in neck and groin and split him lengthways.

The husked corpse parted and through the gory shower came the bladebird, flying up the slope towards them. Heodric pushed a panicking man aside and went rushing to meet it – reckless of safety he leapt to meet the thing, and for half a moment he had the advantage of height and speed.

He did not squander it. His blow landed, and the baleful red eye burst beneath it. The flying body caught him under the ribs and drove the breath from him. He fell before the blades to either side could close to catch him, landing hard on slippery rock. The blinded bird struck the cavern-roof and its weapons struck sparks there and shattered, and yet it did not relinquish its grip upon the shattered stubs. It dropped, lurching drunkenly, and then Garrus’s flung hatchet found it and brought it down.

The corsairs fell upon it furiously. In moments the body was sundered into a thousand fragments; when Heodric, wincing at a cracked rib, came to gaze down at the corpse it was a mess of steaming acid-green blood and dark tangled guts. He probed the mess like an augur with the tip of his blade. Metal scraped metal.

‘Ironlair,’ he said. ‘Iron birds and iron serpents.’

He felt a prickle of fear run through his comrades as they saw the truth of what he said. All save one of them. With a grunt the chief retrieved his hatchet.

‘And yet they die,’ he said.

They emerged from the cave into a gully of black rock, sheer and slippery with seaweed beneath the bright sky. Gulls flew crying above, and far below they could hear waves breaking on rocks. They must be near the pinnacle of the rock on which they had foundered, high above the sea, and the corsairs murmured with misgiving at the seaweed.

‘This grows underwater,’ said Garrus, for Heodric’s benefit.  ‘Caves may flood, but at this height –’

He broke off, and pointed with his hatchet. At the far end of the gully was a dark opening: for the world an archway carved by man. Above and beyond, a tall spar of rock pierced the sky like a tower.

‘Gulls need nests,’ he said. ‘That high-point must stay above the waves. And it seems someone has fashioned a way up.’

Down the narrow, slippery way they went, scanning the sky above for more of the blade-birds. But none troubled them. At the archway they paused again. There was light within – the dim crimson glow of radium-lamps, such as lit ancient temples in the great cities.

‘This place is habited,’ Heodric said.

‘A fool could have told you that,’ said Garrus, and snorted at Heodric’s raised eyebrow. ‘You landlubber! This place was beneath teeming waters a day ago, and yet we’ve not seen a single stranded fish.’

Heodric realised his meaning. ‘Someone has gathered them.’

Garrus’ grin was wolfish. ‘Someone hungry.’

‘This cave is unnatural,’ said Ralto, his voice thin with misgiving. ‘Smooth walls, no mark of tool nor mason – something sorcerous has worked it.’

‘I never heard of sorcerer without treasures,’ said Garrus.

‘Nor of one who took thieving lightly,’ murmured Ralto.

Heodric grunted.

‘I killed a sorcerer, once,’ he said. ‘They die like men.’

‘The big foreigner has guts,’ Garrus sneered at his crew. ‘Are the rest of you cowards?’

If the faces of the four remaining men were any guide, the answer was yes. But none would say it. They shifted sullenly, and shook their heads one after another.

‘That’s it, my boys!’ cried Garrus, and as they made their way inside he exhorted them with tales of the wealth which would soon be theirs – heaps of gold and piles of silk and flaxen-haired dancing-girls draped by the dozen across both. Doubtless it was the sort of talk that went well with pirates readying themselves aboard a swift galley. But soon there was no light but the dim and steady gleam of the radium-lamps above, globes of strange-fashioned glass encased in iron fixtures, within which red smokeless heatless fire burned unceasingly. Garrus fell silent as the passage began to slope downwards, and paused his steady pace. His small following clustered about.

‘The isle may sink soon,’ said Ralto, all-but pleading. ‘If we’re below ground…’

A woman’s voice answered, and from only a few feet behind them. ‘It will be hours yet.’

With shocked curses they spun about, and brought up their weapons as they saw her.She was tall, and flame-coloured hair fell about her shoulders, and her blue dress was of fine silk. For a moment, Heodric took her for some haughty sea-witch. A moment later he saw that her skirts were badly torn, and stained with seawater, and that she carried a basket full of silver fish. She looked coolly at the thicket of blades before her.

‘You needn’t fear, anyhow,’ she said. ‘This passage seals itself against water. Have you a ship? Did you sail here?’

‘We were wrecked,’ said Heodric, when it became clear that none of the other astonished men would answer her. ‘We seek the master of this island.’

She nodded, and lowered her eyes before her disappointment showed. When she spoke again her voice had dulled.

‘You should turn back,’ she said. ‘There is nothing here for you.’

‘I see a good haul of fish,’ said Garrus. ‘And pretty company to share them with.’

‘Go, she said, ignoring his leer. ‘You have little time.’

She pushed past them. Radium-light gleamed on her red hair, and on the silver scales and lifeless eyes of the fish. It was clear she hadn’t the faintest fear that they would harm her – or that they could. Heodric wondered what she knew. Garrus laughed, a little uneasily.

‘Forgive the jest,’ he said. ‘Guide us, and we’ll take you from this place if you wish it.’

‘Why would she wish it?’ a man called from the darkness beyond. His voice was high, and lilting, and carefree, and had a touch of madness in it. ‘You need no guide, fellows. Come and join us!’

‘You have squandered your chance,’ the woman said, her voice full of weary pity, and walked into the passageway to follow the voice, the fish-basket braced against her hip. She seemed to have no doubt that the men would follow, and after a moment – a long moment, full of wild glances and choked-back misgivings – they proved her right. There seemed nowhere else to go.

 

***

 

The passage led into a long high hall where the radium-lamps were larger, burning bright in their cage-like fixtures upon the walls. It was furnished with the leavings of shipwrecks; ship-spar furniture, curtains of silk and sailcloth alike, sacks of meal, amphorae of wine and oil. Mismatched pots and pans were stacked about a ship’s stove in one corner; opposite, a bronze statue of a naked athlete loomed, his rippling muscles discoloured by seawater. Beneath was a velvet couch, balanced atop cargo crates in lieu of its missing legs, and from this a man was rising.

Though he was a few years older than Heodric he had the fluffy down beard of a lad half his age, and his short stature added to the strange impression of an impish boy, who now came cavorting towards them chuckling like a fool. It was only when he drew close that they saw how weathered his face was. He wore an absurd patchwork gown of different fabrics, many of them very fine, all of them mismatched in colour and pattern. Heodric had the sense of a man who had once been a popinjay, trapped for years without a mirror.

‘Guests!’ he laughed. It was the same high half-mad voice they had heard before. ‘Fresjé! Wine for our guests!’

Fresjé had set her basket down in the makeshift kitchen.

‘The fish need salting,’ she said, her voice hollow. The short man flapped his hands impatiently.

‘The fish can wait,’ he said. ‘Our guests –’

‘It’s early in the day for wine,’ said Garrus. ‘We have work ahead of us.’

He cast appraising eyes about the room. There were valuable things amongst the trash – glimmering jewels at the neck of a marble bust, coins gleaming through a cracked box. Good pickings for a pirate, Heodric thought. And too easily taken to trust. He tightened his grip upon his borrowed sword as the short man beamed.

‘I am King here,’ he said. ‘But you may call me Vellious.’

The corsairs grinned at one another, greed displacing their fear. This madman would be easy prey.

‘Your majesty,’ said Garrus. He didn’t bother concealing his chuckle. ‘It’s my pleasure.’

‘The raft will be half-built by now,’ Ralto said, barely bothering to lower his voice. ‘Take the coin, and the girl if you want her, and waste no more time.’

‘My dear fellow,’ said Vellious. He cackled, and patted Garrus’s thick arm, and seemed utterly unconcerned that armed men stood in his home and openly discussed robbing him. ‘You cannot leave. The Iron Serpent will not suffer it.’

Heodric remembered the awful arrow-shaped beast; its glowing eye, the ruin it brought upon the ship. So, judging by the silence, did the others.

‘What do you know of the Serpent?’ he asked.

‘Why, as much as anyone!’ Vellious said. He laughed at their questioning faces. ‘Surely you know that this island was built by a demigod? Born of mortal man and storm goddess in ages long-forgotten, it was he who communed with storms to charge his sorcery with lightening. It was he who built these marvellous rooms; he who lifts the island at will above and below the sea; he who fashioned the three-eyed automata, and the swordbirds, and the Iron Serpent which roams the waters whenever storm clouds muster.

‘But the Serpent was the greatest of his creations; almost half-god itself. It rebelled against its maker, and heeds not his commands, and keeps him prisoned upon this island – sinking any ship which might effect his rescue, and drowning any stranded sailor who seeks to leave upon a well-made raft – this fellow mentioned a raft, but if you have men in the cavern you should bring them out swiftly. The swordbirds patrol the rocks, and slay trespassers, and beyond this tower I cannot always control them.’

He paused, and saw their expressions, and sighed.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You have not seen the Half-God. Come. I will show Him to you.’

 

***

 

He led them up a long spiralling stair; their breath was coming hard by the time they reached the summit. A curtain was drawn across the door there and daylight shone beyond. Vellious led them through it into a great domed room, where light flooded through a wall of thick crystal. Heodric could see a grey blur of waves and sky through its half-opaque surface. This must be the high-point they had seen earlier, he realised; not an outcrop but a tower carved from the rock of the island with fiendish skill.

But he did not look for long, for there were closer miracles at hand. At the centre of the tower room was a great gibbet-frame, and crucified against it was the body of a man – naked, lean and freakishly long. Standing he would have been as tall as Heodric, and half as tall again. Grey was his skin, and so shrivelled upon his bones that Heodric was reminded of sand-mummies from a desert tomb. He wondered if a corpse buried in salt might look like this one.

But it was no corpse. Slowly, agonisingly, unbelievably, the thin half-collapsed chest rose and fell with breath. Tumbling steel wires and tubes encircled and penetrated his body in a dozen places. His face was encompassed in an iron mask. His gibbet was made of strange shimmering glass, and he was not nailed or bound there but seemingly fused to it, wasted grey skin bleeding into the translucent surface of the frame.

 

Copper-coloured shafts descended from the vaulted silver ceiling above, articulated to bend and flex like arms. Sharp needles tipped them and pierced the grey man’s neck and darted in and out of his torso, etching strange eldritch sigils upon his flesh. No blood issued; the runes faded from view as though the grey skin were thick liquid.

Garrus muttered a curse, and Ralto a blasphemy. Naked horror showed in the eyes of the other men. But Heodric kept his gaze level.

‘I saw something like this in a temple of Tur, two years past,’ he said. ‘It is sorcery of ancient priests.’

He turned to Vellious, suddenly mistrusting the absurd little man.

‘Are you sorcerer yourself?’ he asked. Vellious shook his head.

‘When I was first wrecked here, this was the dwelling place of a wizard,’ he said. ‘Wrecked himself, many years earlier, and then caretaker to the Half-God. I myself was a lowly magician, capable of little more than cunning tricks to amuse lords and ladies of the court. But the wizard taught me, and when he died I became Priest-King in his stead.’

He reached to touch the shrivelled grey hand of the Half-God, tender as a lover. Garrus shifted uneasily, and looked about.

‘Some of this will be valuable,’ he murmured. ‘Priests and necromancers will pay for this.’

Against the near wall a heap of scrap-iron lay, testament to some long-passed and forgotten process of repair, and before the living corpse was a pedestal of black iron, with a strangely-wrought helm set upon it. Fine strings of metal bound the headpiece to the foot of the gibbet. Heodric looked darkly upon it for a moment. He had seen such a device before.

‘We should have wine!’ said Vellious, brightly. ‘I’ll call Fresjé to serve us. We –’

He swallowed his next word, for the borrowed sword was hovering at his throat.

‘What do you think he feeds to his god?’ Heodric said. He stepped forward, forcing Vellious back towards the window. ‘Where do you think the stranded go? This is a place of sacrifice, Garrus. He means to kill us.’

The corsair chief glared down at Vellious. The small man smiled up at him, entirely fearless.

‘There were a score of us when we were first shipwrecked,’ he said, his tone dreamy and nostalgic. ‘Half the master’s court. The wizard fed us to the Half-God one by one, eking us out like rations for a year. He saved me for last, thinking me no threat, and valuing the small help I could give him. But I had watched him work.’ His grin was suddenly savage. ‘The Half-God fed long upon him after I turned the tables; it sucked the magick out like marrow from bone. He lasted a great while, but I gave him no chance to break free.’

Seemingly oblivious to the blade at his neck, he turned to gaze through the crystal window.

‘The serpent brings me a wreck, once or twice a year. I live happily enough from the pickings. A twelvemonth past it brought me Fresjé – and half-a-dozen others, who went to the god, her husband among them.’

‘Kill him,’ said Fresjé. She had emerged from behind the curtain at the foot of the stairs. In her hand there was a sharp fish-knife. ‘Kill him now, before he calls his servants.’

‘She’s dreamt of cutting my throat all year,’ said Vellious, mildly. ‘But she knows it will be fruitless. Kill me and the automata will turn on you at once, regardless of whether I call.’

He pointed upwards, and their eyes followed his finger. A dozen of the black blade-birds hung from the vaulted ceiling like roosting bats. The corsairs cursed, and drew their weapons.

‘He lies!’ Fresjé cried. ‘Kill him, barbarian, be done with it!’

Her voice was high and hysteric; the voice of someone who no longer cared whether they lived or perished. Heodric lowered his blade a half-inch.

‘You think yourself a king here?’ he asked. ‘You are slave to a corpse! The Iron Serpent is not the Half-God’s captor, but yours – it keeps you here to feed Him, for he would perish without you. Do not be fooled any longer! Join us, and be free – teach us how to kill the thing.’

For a moment Vellious’ steady gaze seemed unsettled; a flicker of uncertainty crossed his face. Then he giggled like a child.

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said. ‘Maybe you are right. But no matter. I was not a King on shore, and I didn’t have a fine lady to fetch for me, nor the means to make bullies like you grovel before me. I like my lot; I’ll stay fooled, if fooled I am.’

Heodric drove the sword home.

A pincer like a crab’s claw caught it, almost jarring the weapon from his hand. He turned in shock, to see a great shovel-shaped head gazing down at him. What he had taken to be a pile of discarded scrap had silently unfolded itself into a skeletal beast of black iron, twice his own height. Its joints were cunningly fashioned hinges, and its hands great snapping claws, and its shovel-head was featureless save for three scarlet eyes.

Garrus swore an oath, and struck a fruitless blow at the thing with his hatchet. It rebounded from the iron arm as Vellious called; at once the swordbirds stirred from their slumber and dropped from their perches to swoop down upon the corsairs. The huge automaton released the sword and Heodric struck low for its hamstrings. It had none, and the bent blade bounced from steel. A pincer-claw closed upon him, pinioning his arms in a vice-like grip.

Vellious shouted again, and swordbirds paused their assault – hovering unnaturally in the air as if borne aloft by their whirring talon-blades. Garrus and his men were cut off from the door by the hellish creatures. Fresjé sank slowly to her knees.

‘That was foolish,’ said Vellious. ‘We might have spent a pleasant few days as fellow castaways! I would have welcomed some new conversation.’

‘I’ll talk to your head, once I’ve taken it,’ Garrus snarled. Heodric sputtered as the automaton squeezed him, lifting him to his tiptoes. Vellious stepped daintily towards the black pedestal.

‘You would have learned soon enough, I suppose,’ he said. ‘The god hungers. It has been many months since the last storm, and his power fades without sustenance. I half-feared that I would have to feed him Fresjé.’

She spat, and he laughed.

‘Look how she thanks me!’ he said. ‘The fine lady may be scornful in company, but she was eager enough for the bargain when I first offered it.’

He turned his attention back to the newcomers.

‘I cannot let you linger here,’ he said. ‘I will have to have the automaton break your legs, and lock you in the dark caverns below, and feed you gruel, and offer you one at a time to the god. The next months, I fear, will be unpleasant. Would any of you like to volunteer now, and spare yourselves the torment?’

Ralto broke for the door. Almost contemptuously, one of the swordbirds dived to intercept him. The blades bit home; with a horrid cry the old corsair was dragged halfway across the room, blood guttering from the wound torn in his side. Garrus roared in fury and started forward, and the swordbirds rose hovering before him, blades a-spin. Ralto slid to a halt at the foot of the black pedestal. He moaned, softly. His side was a gaping bleeding chasm.

‘Hush,’ said Vellious. ‘Your death is not in vain.’

He took the iron helm from the pedestal and knelt, and gently set it upon Ralto’s head. The seafarer thrashed as though it were molten lead, and Heodric flinched as he felt the atmosphere of the room crackle with eldritch energy.

Ralto screamed. His eyes rolled in his head; he twitched and drooled and shrivelled like a leaf set aflame. Above, the body of the half-god began to pulse with his drained vitality. Already the withered skin seem suppler and its tone less pallid. Vellious rose from his victim, and strode across the floor to Fresjé.

‘As for you, my dear, I shall have to discipline you,’ he said. ‘I thought you had learned –’

The fish-knife flashed in her hand, and drove clean through his. He howled as she ripped it free, and the automaton’s grip upon Heodric loosened a fraction as it heard its master cry out. He wrenched an arm free and gouged his thumb into the thing’s topmost eye. Its claw snapped open; Heodric sprang clear. Fresh cries and blows sounded as Garrus and his men started forward against the swordbirds. With a snarl Vellious caught Fresjé’s wrist, and as her knife went clattering across the floor he struck her with his bleeding hand.

‘The barbarian!’ he roared. The automaton was recovering itself. Heodric had only a moment, and too many foes to slay. He snatched up Fresjé’s knife and threw it at source of them all – the huge body of the Half-God.

The blade glanced from bare skin as though it were armour. The automaton’s claw closed upon Heodric and this time it lifted him clean from the floor, its remaining eyes burning with fury. He twisted desperately to escape its grip. Up into the air it lifted him, crushing all the while. Below he could see Garrus was hemmed in by the swordbirds, his hatchet tracing a frantic pattern in the air as he held them off. The last of his crew lay dead and dismembered about him.

‘You see!’ cried Vellious, clutching his wounded hand. ‘The Half-God cannot be slain!’

Upon the floor Ralto moaned. His eyes were white and unseeing, and his hand was twitching like a claw, and Heodric saw that the large hand of the gibbeted god was twitching likewise. A last, desperate gambit occurred.

‘Garrus!’ he croaked. ‘Your man is in pain.’

For a moment, he feared that the corsair had not understood him, for Garrus fell back across the floor, striking at the darting blades of the birds. The automaton drew back its free arm almost lazily, as though considering how best to crush Heodric’s life from him.

Then Garrus’s hatchet flew hard and fast past it, and Ralto shuddered as the weapon buried itself in his chest. So too did the Half-God above him. It jerked upon the gibbet-frame, and scrivening needles fell loose from its skin, and its chest crumpled as though struck.

The automaton’s grip failed; releasing Heodric, it lurched backwards. Vellious screamed aloud. Above him, two of the blade-birds collided in mid-air and rent each other to fragments. Blood trickled from Ralto’s dead open mouth. It flowed likewise from beneath the mask of the half-god.

Heodric snatched up his sword. A bladebird lurched at him like a drunk, at half the speed it had moved a moment ago. He struck hard enough to part its body in two. A rattling gasp like the accumulated breath of centuries left the body of the Half-God. The automaton fell backwards towards the gibbet, and sparks flew as it tangled in the web of steel wires above. A bird struck the crystal window at speed; a thousand fragments went tumbling to the sea as it shattered. Suddenly the noise of waves and the smell of salt filled the room.

‘What have you done,’ Vellious asked. His voice was a tremor. His thin hands shook. He took a step towards the huge corpse, and fell to his knees. ‘What have you –’

Fresjé took a swordbird’s broken talon and drove it into the magician’s eye with a surgeon’s precision. He screamed, and thrashed, and she held him by his long hair and forced the iron claw deep into the socket, until he was still and her steady hands were soaked in blood. She must have dreamed of striking such a blow for a very long time.

The wires gave way and the frame of the automaton collapsed onto the holy gibbet. It collapsed beneath the weight, and the shrivelled body and its huge steel servant fell together to the floor, twined together in a horrid parody of an embrace.

Then it was still. Heodric breathed deep, and sat. Garrus pulled his hatchet free of Ralto’s corpse, and looked sombrely down at the bodies of his comrades as Fresjé stared at her own bloody hands.

A long moment passed like that. At first, the noise below was indistinguishable from the sound of waves. But it grew, a harsh grinding urgent noise of long-buried machines, deep underground and yearning for death. The island quivered, and then jolted. Broken birds and shattered machines clattered as it subsided a full foot. Shards of glass scraped.

‘The island,’ said Fresjé. Her voice was small. ‘Without the Half-God to sustain it –’

Heodric laughed, weary.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘What a fool I am. This has all been too easy.’

Fresjé’s cry saved his life, for the hatchet-stroke would have taken his head had he not turned at the sound. As it was, the blow struck his shoulder and the hatchet stuck there. He caught automatically at the shaft with his other hand. The studded teeth there bit into his fingers.

‘What madness is this?’ Fresjé cried. She tried to stay Garrus’s arm. He pushed her effortlessly to the ground and calmly yanked the hatchet free. Agony lanced through Heodric’s back and arm. It stabbed deep into him; he cried out, and his fingers clawed weekly at nothing, and he fell to the hard floor. Hot blood warmed his back. Garrus stood straddling him.

‘I hate to break an oath,’ the chief said. ‘But I hate an unpaid debt still more. Because of you we had to linger at the merchant ship – because of you we were caught in the storm. You owe me a galley’s worth of deaths. I won’t leave that score unsettled before I take my chances with the sea.’

Heodric could not quarrel with that. Blood pooling about him, back afire with pain and arm useless – he could not quarrel with anything. He laughed.

‘Strike well, Garrus,’ he said. ‘You bastard.’

The big corsair smiled down at him.

‘Aye, Heodric,’ he said. ‘I shall.’

‘Look!’ cried Fresjé.

The hatchet paused in mid-stroke. In the grey sea a single, gigantic wave had risen from the calm waters and came rushing upon the Ironlair. Garrus stared, mesmerised. They could see it now – the huge black arrow-shaped head jutting from the waves, the single eye fixed upon them. Its speed was extraordinary. Its bulk was huge. It would smash them all to nothing.

Closer and closer the Iron Serpent came. Garrus lowered his hatchet. Any vengeance now was plainly petty; in moments they would all be dead. A smile ghosted at the chief’s lips.

‘To hell with it,’ he said. ‘What better way to die?’

Fresjé caught Heodric beneath the arms and began to drag him away as Garrus walked to the far wall. It brought all of the pain back, and Heodric cried out and begged her to stop. She ignored him, and they were almost at the stairwell when Garrus began running.

His cry was great. He leapt with all of his strength, and swung up his hatchet as he did, and as he flew to meet the surging head of the Iron Serpent Heodric could well have believed him a demigod, sent to slay a fearsome monster.

He did not see the blow land. He felt the impact as the serpent’s body struck the tower; it lifted him clean from the ground and bundled him into Fresjé and sent them both tumbling into the stairwell. He heard stone and iron sheer together, felt the rock-hewn structure shudder all about him. For the briefest moment the scarlet eye of the serpent rolled against the collapsing arch at the head of the stairs, and red light flooded through the dark space. Then it was gone, and there was nothing but falling dust and shards of stone raining upon him.

He was on his feet, he realised to his surprise. He had landed on them – or else shock and instinct had brought him up. The stairs below swayed, unsteady as a storm-rocked ship. The tower had not fallen after all. Perhaps Garrus’s last blow had somehow thrown the serpent’s stroke – perhaps, unwittingly, the corsair had been their salvation.

He tried to step, and would have fallen had Fresjé not thrust herself beneath his arm and put her whole strength into propping him. The agony returned, sharp and thrusting, worse than any of the pain of the past day. He must have cried out again, for she turned her dusty and tear-streaked face to him and said ‘Walk, damn you! The island sinks – your raft –’

Heodric had forgotten it. Down the stairs they went, stumbling, each step sending fresh searing jolts into his wounded shoulder. But he bore it, for he could feel the cold lethargy of death hovering at the edge of the pain. Gods let me not die here, he thought. Let me make it to the open air, at least. Let me –

He fell as they reached the foot of the stairs, aiming for a step that wasn’t there and pitching onto his face instead, bearing Fresjé down with him. Cursing, frantic, she rolled from him. Heodric could feel blood on his face. Now my nose is broken, too, he thought, and tried to laugh. I’ll die ugly.

‘Up!’ she cried, pulling at his good arm. He obeyed, and somehow rose, and once again found himself leaning upon her as they began their way through the passages. But now he was sluggish, and the radium lamps above were flickering and dim. Several had blinked out already. Those which remained cast sickly light the colour of drying blood.

The world swam in that gory dimness. His feet moved, one before the other, as they had when he trudged as a child behind the rolling ox-wagons of his migrating people. He heard his mother murmur encouragements to him, and realised that she was carrying him, or that he was leaning upon her – and then daylight broke into the dream, and he blinked down at Fresjé as she laboured gasping to manoeuvre him into the salty fresh air beyond the passages.

They stood in the archway at the end of the black gully into which he and Garrus had first emerged. Across the expense of rock and seaweed he could see the cavern which led down to the wreck of the galley, where the oarslaves laboured at their raft.

‘My sword,’ he said.

‘You need no sword,’ Fresjé said, her cajoling tone failing to keep the fear from her voice. ‘We need the raft – we cannot be far now!’

He shook his head, too weak to argue. He had no sword, and there were still men of Garrus’s crew guarding the raft. He had forgotten them, and he had no hope of fighting them.

But that was a distant concern. Two steps onto the slippery rocks of the gully and he fell again, and this time knew that he would not rise. Fresjé knelt. She spoke. He could not hear her.

I should tell her where the raft is, he thought. She will surely drown if I don’t.

And then the island sank. One moment the rocks were beneath him, and he had a vague sense of falling, of noise and tumult, and cold water, and pain – pain beyond enduring! When it became too much he closed his eyes and let it take him.

 

***

 

It was everywhere when he woke, and it was awful. He moaned. The sun was setting above, and oars thrummed in water about him.

‘Hush,’ said Fresjé. The evening light was in her red hair, and her face was drawn with shock, but she spoke soft. ‘Hush. We are saved. The gods were kind.’

A scrawny man swung into view behind her. A blade shimmered his hand and Heodric winced before he recognised it – the dagger of the corsair he had slain at the rowing bench.

‘The gods love the bold,’ said the man, and laughed. His accent was of the north-west. ‘Hold on, fellow! By day we’ll be ashore.’

He told Heodric how he and the other oarslaves had slain their guards, and carried the raft to the surface of the island even as it sank beneath the Serpent’s onslaught. He told how they had borne out the turmoil –  and found Heodric and Fresjé amongst it, floating half-drowned upon strange flotsam.

Heodric heard it all faintly as the dozen-or-so former slaves worked their oars. He could see homeless gulls soaring overhead. He gazed on them a long while as the raft followed them landwards.

To hell with the sea, he thought, and slept.

 

________________________________________

H. R. Laurence grew up in North Yorkshire, and now works in the film industry in London. His weird fiction and sword & sorcery has appeared or is upcoming in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Aphotic Realm, Broadswords and Blasters, and Old Moon Quarterly.