The girls had then plugged all remaining knotholes, reinforced the tiny windows and further barricaded the massy door; and so far no further intrusions had been attempted upon their privacy. Eventually they would weaken through starvation, or if things got desperate the cabin’s door could be broken in with axes, though that would hardly be to the liking of the Dukes of Isharra. But in any case, all of this frustration and waiting about could only serve as fuel for lustful imaginations; and oh! the plans which were made for Ula and Una—and all within their hearing—while their tormentors prowled outside, black-hearted and red-eyed.
And the girls had been there, barricaded in their cabin, when the Dukes gave chase to Lathi’s ship Chrysalis and Zura’s Shroud: and with pounding hearts they had listened to the sounds of fighting: the clash of weapons, screams of crippled and dying men, and a certain bull-voice roaring which Una was almost certain had belonged to the Wanderer. And following all of this, much groaning and many low-muttered curses; and all through the night the girls had been left to themselves, to snatch what sleep they could during this brief respite, while the Dukes of Isharra counted the cost of the fighting and the wounded tended their injuries. And in their waking hours the girls had done a great deal of sobbing, for it seemed certain to them that Hero and Eldin had been overwhelmed and murdered.
“That time in Bahama,” whispered Ula tearfully to her sister in the night, when they both sat awake and trembling in the creak-timbered cabin. “We used those lads so cruelly.”
“With never a thought for their welfare should they be caught,” Una added. “Indeed, our plan required that they be caught—or at least discovered. And them branded rapists and abductors through our accusations! And getting nothing out of it at all.”
“Except us, our bodies.”
“Huh!” answered Una, bitterly, as might be imagined. “Even that was plotted, so that father wouldn’t marry us off to these vile Dukes of Isharra. But Eldin …” (and she sighed), he was … such a capable lover.”
“Hero too,” sobbed Ula quietly. “At least, I’ve always assumed he was—having no standards of reference, I mean.”
“Those two would be good by any standards, I’m sure,” Una sighed again. “And just think: we could have sailed away with them over the Southern Sea!”
“Instead of waiting here to be raped and soiled and murdered,” Ula added. “We didn’t know what we were doing until it was much too late—for all of us.”
“We could have sailed away with them,” Una repeated in a low whisper, dabbing a teardrop from the end of her pretty nose. “Well, they’ll go no more a—sailing now, poor lads. We played them for fools and were ourselves fooled—and look what it’s all come to.”
And so their tearful conversation had gone on until Una had fallen asleep. Later she had sat alert in the darkness while Ula drowsed and nodded fitfully; and so on until morning, when the Shantak had grown very still in the calm of the new day. Then the girls had heard a hubbub of seemingly concerned voices, and later they had opened up a peephole upon a scene of puzzling activity.
The Lengite fleet was apparently preparing for battle while yet at anchor, and every crewman seemed busy and full of feverish excitement. Even the lurkers about the cabin refuge aboard Shantak were called away to various tasks, and again the girls grabbed at this welcome respite from filthy jokes and horrifyingly depraved whispers, promises and threats. This activity of preparation went on through the whole of the morning without let-up and was not completed until shortly before noon, when a series of frightening events took place as harbinger to the great maelstrom yet to come.
For it was then, as the Captains and crews of the black (and one white, or at least gray) ships relaxed a little and the sniffers returned to prowl and threaten vilely through the stout planking of the cabin’s walls, that the mad moon’s proximity to the dreamlands began to make itself felt more physically, more fearsomely. Hearing cries of awe and wonder without, the girls once more employed their spyhole to see what was going on. At first they saw nothing; all looked gray and dreary as ever, and the only real change seemed to be in the weather, which was now utterly calm, with grim and motionless clouds above and eerily dissipating mists below (except in the cliff-guarded byways of primal Sarkomand itself, which seemed permanently misted); but then, seeing where Shantak’s crewmen were pointing, the eyes of the twins gazed toward the seaward horizon.
Strange shiny tubular structures stood far out at sea, towering like the legs of giants over the apparently still deeps and rushing to and fro, occasionally colliding and collapsing in torrents of spray. Waterspouts, in amazing profusion, parading like blind suicidal guardsmen across the face of the ocean! Some of these monsters towered even higher as they approach the primal city’s quays, and one even pushed its way to the mighty, ancient sea-wall itself before subsiding and melting down into the sea. For hours the display continued until, suddenly, the nodding colossi made off, rushing south in a seeming panic and disappearing over the gray horizon.
And as if to explain their panic-flight, in the space of a few more minutes a great wind began gusting that blasted the startled clouds southward in the wake of the waterspouts and screamed banshee-like through the fleet of moored ships. Several of the vessels were torn free of their moorings and driven out over the sea before their Captains could regain control—by which time the winds were dying away as quickly as they came.
Then, in the gray northern daylight, before thoughts could be expressed or even gathered: a meteor shower! Great blazing boulders that howled across the tortured sky and hissed down through holes in the clouds to fall explosively into a now surging sea. And where they fell columns of steam rose up and the waters boiled, however briefly, to mark their deep green graves. Several of these aerial fireballs struck Sarkomand, shattering ruins yet more ruinously and spraying fire everywhere; and one, in its fiery passage to earth, scorched the topsail, rigging and mast from a Leng ship. Then, once more, all was still. Except for the sea …
Beyond the massive sea-wall the ocean seemed now to rush, first west in a racing tide, then east in choppy disorder, where mighty whirlpools formed swirling tunnels into tumultuous depths. And this was the highest tide the primal city had every known; or at least the highest since the raising of the hoary sea-wall, in predawn days by hands other than Man’s. Great waves pounded against the wall, flinging spray a hundred feet and more into the air. And the rush and roar of ocean could be heard and felt more clearly, even aboard the ships of the Lengites, even though the wind blew steadily southwards once more.
And so the day grew to its close, and evening blew in with the winds from the north, and Ula and Una resigned themselves to another fearful night in the cabin aboard the creaking, rolling Shantak. Here was a very strange thing, however, and one which struck the girls as monstrously sinister. By now the Isharrans and horned ones of the Shantak’s crew must know that they had peepholes from which they could gaze out upon whatever was happening; but something must now be happening (or about to happen) which the Dukes of Isharra did not wish them to see; for blankets were brought and nailed up all around the cabin, and as the evening grew toward night so the remaining light was entirely shut out.
Then, for a further half-hour or so, all that the terrified girls knew was the quiet creep of many feet and the occasional furtive whisper. They heard, too, the unmistakable but subdued accents of the Dukes themselves, and so knew them to be aboard; and of course they suspected that this was some new and elaborate plot to snatch them from their now very fragile-seeming sanctuary.
A plot it was, most certainly, but the girls could hardly have guessed that it centered not about them (although they stood in fact at its center) but about a certain pair of questers, late of the waking world, who were on their way here right now through darkening northern skies——And who the Dukes of Isharra, their motley crew, and the entire Lengite alliance knew were coming!
CHAPTER VII
The Best Laid Plans …
; All about the deck of Shantak her crew crouched and waited, weighed down with weapons and nervous in the knowledge that they awaited the advent of three of dreamland’s most fabulous citizens—not to mention an entire grim of its leathery, most legended beasts. They hid in open holds ready to spring out at a moment’s notice, behind and atop the cabin on the deck, beneath canvas covers and in the folds of furled sails—so that with the sole exception of a lookout on the bridge, the ship looked and seemed completely deserted.
And yet the entire crew was there: humans (however degenerate), Lengites, and pseudo-aristocrat “masters”; and all of them grim-eyed in the surety of the imminent arrival of their enemies—and then that there would be a deal of blood before that trio was subdued. Some there were aboard Shantak who, having previously felt the fury of Hero and Eldin, would gladly be elsewhere; but Oorn herself, through the medium of her High Priest, had ordered the taking of the three. Moreover, they were not to be harmed, not seriously—not immediately.
No, for these ex-waking-worlders had become so pestilential—so dangerous and damaging to the schemes of the Great Old Ones, even to the Great Old Ones themselves—that they must now be handled personally. And Oorn had been given that honor, that small but significant task of removing them forever from Earth’s dreamland and so from the immemorial battle between Good and Evil.
As to how they had come to be worthy of her personal attention: they were too rapidly grown into legends. Legends were dangerous; living legends even more so. There were others like these two (these three, if Gytherik were included). There was Lord Kuranes of Serannian and King Carter of Ilek-Vad. Aye, and that damned de Marigny—his meddling son, too, and the equally troublesome Titus Crow—but none of the latter were here now. Present or otherwise, all had been responsible, in one way or another, for the suppression of the darker side of dreams.
Had not Hero and Eldin destroyed Thinistor Udd, a powerful ally of the Forces of Evil? And the centuried, mad First One who could have been such an asset to the darkside powers? Even Yibb-Tstll’s dreamland avatar—in the shape of a huge stone idol carved in His likeness—had fallen to their mischief and gone down in fragments; and who could say what other blasphemies might yet be ascribed to their devious hands if they were allowed to continue?
The Dukes of Isharra (those bungling dupes) had tried to deal with them and failed miserably; so too the Eidolon Lathi and Zura of Zura. And as for the horned ones of Leng—those alien minions of the moonbeasts who served Mnomquah and Oorn—why, they had proved less than useless! That was why Oorn Herself must now take vengeance upon them and see to it that they offend no longer. Indeed, that they exist no longer!
All of this Oorn had explained to her High Priest where he dwelled at the rim of her pit prison, and he had dutifully passed it on to dupes and worshippers alike. The questers were to be taken alive, aye—and then sacrificed to Oorn Herself; fed to her in her pit, a delicious repast to give her strength for her impending mating …
And now they came—out of curling, night-thickened mists of ocean—came from the south on great membrane wings. A triangle of stealth in the sky, with Gytherik above, riding the huge gaunt which was his personal mount, and Hero and Eldin below, where each dangled from the paws of lesser beasts. Hero was suspended beneath Sniffer and Biffer, that pair of most splendid night-gaunts, while Eldin (because of his greater bulk) had been given into the care of two somewhat sturdier if duller creatures.
Unerringly they came—over the now submerged quays, flitting bat-borne across the mighty sea-wall where the mad ocean raced mere feet from the worn and weathered rim—beneath wings trimmed for speed, and now for rapid descent as Hero pointed out Shantak where she was moored, somewhat apart from the bulk of the Lengite fleet. Down they swept, a black blur of motion in the near-darkness, a glint of steel, of slitted eye, the merest hiss of air across arcing membrane vanes.
“The females you seek are aboard Shantak,” the horned ones had informed without the slightest hesitation. “They have locked themselves tight in the cabin of the Dukes of Isharra, which they now defend for their very lives!” For which information they had been granted their lives. The grim had flown them to a mountain pass at the foot of that great range which went up to Leng’s forbidden plateau, from where they had gladly scrambled into obscurity. With luck they might return to their homeland of eternal twilight and desolation, and without luck … that was their problem. They had been only too glad to be released alive and intact, and free to use what little time remained in putting as much distance as possible between themselves and damned, doomed Sarkomand.
… Now the watchman on Shantak’s bridge—an Isharran—spied the three where they soared down silently out of darkness. A large and fearless brute of a man, he gave the alert, cried out once and once only as Eldin sprang down beside him, knocked aside his weapon, hoisted him up bodily and threw him down across the rail and into space. Then the rest of the gaunts were down and Hero and Gytherik crouched together on the deck, ears alert, listening to an almost painful silence. “He cried out,” came Eldin’s hoarse whisper from the bridge. “If others heard—”
“Where the hell is everyone?” asked Gytherik, his voice hushed in the darkness.
“They must be asleep,” answered Hero. “Land-lubbers, these Dukes. You’d not expect to find them aboard. Still …” and he paused, then shook his head. “It doesn’t smell right to me,” he said, “but no time to worry about it now. So let’s be at it, eh? The girls are in the main cabin, so—” He strode up onto the bridge beside Eldin, and together they turned to face the humped, blanket-draped bulk of the Masters’ cabin.
As Gytherik joined the pair, Eldin yanked aside a blanket and found the sturdy door. “Ula,” he hoarsely called, keeping his voice low and gently rattling the iron doorknob. “Una, it’s us—Hero and Eldin.”
Inside the cabin the girls had heard the single cry of the watchman in that moment before Eldin launched him into eternity. Now they heard the Wanderer’s gruff query and sprang to the door—where caution froze their hands even as they trembled on bolts and bars.
“Quickly, girls!” came Hero’s unmistakable voice, vibrant in its urgency. “We haven’t much time. We’re here to take you out of this.”
Yet still they hesitated, and as Eldin rattled at the doorknob a second time Ula’s fearful, breathless voice demanded: “Show your faces—at the small window in the door.”
Hearing her muffled cry, the questers pressed close to the tiny barred window and Eldin struck hot sparks to a taper taken from his pocket. In an instant the faces of the two showed a flickering yellow through grimy glass, and as Eldin snuffed out the little flame so the girls gasped their recognition and began tugging at bolts and removing heavy bars. Another moment or two and the door flew open, and female forms hurled themselves into powerful arms while Gytherik blushed with pleasure and youthful shyness in the darkness to one side.
“Hero!” the girls cried softly in unison. “And Eldin! Alive when we had feared you dead!”
Ula, peering about fearfully in the darkness, saw the gaunts where they clustered impatiently on the lower deck. She gasped and her hand flew to her mouth—
“Shh!” Hero warned. “They’re only night-gaunts—and they’re on our side.”
Now Una spotted Gytherik’s shadowy form and she pressed closer to Eldin’s massive chest. The Wanderer patted her soft shoulder and said, “This is Gytherik, and he too is a friend. He’s the master of the gaunts there.”
“But where are all the Isharrans and those horrid Lengites?” questioned Ula. “There seemed to be so many of them …
Hero’s skin seemed suddenly to prickle and he felt the shadows closing in on him. “So many of them?” he repeated the girl’s words. “Here? … When?”
“An hour ago at most,” she answered. “We heard them come aboard and thought the ship must sink with their weight, they seemed so many.” She clutched the quester tighter. “And Hero …”
“Yes?”
“We did not hear them leave!”
Hero and Eldin had time for one gnawing, agonized glance into each other’s eyes. Then—
“We did not leave!” came the scornful, ringing voice of Byharrid-Imon Isharra. “And this time we have three of you—aye, and the girls too.”
Many things happened then—happened together, with mind-dazzling, stupefying speed as the Isharran trap was sprung. Black-robed figures fell from the roof of the cabin like giant spiders, slamming shut the door and placing their backs against it even as quester steel slithered from oiled scabbards. Gytherik called out to his gaunts, his youth’s voice shivering in the night air. Holds were thrown open and squat, knife-wielding shapes poured forth. A gaunt leaped high—and fell soundlessly to the deck, its neck severed half through. The rest of the grim lifted on violently throbbing wings; torches hissed into life, blinding with their glare; and out from their numerous hiding places sprang the rest of Shantak’s crew, swords aloft to ward off swooping gaunts, all making for the bridge where already a frenzied crush surged to and fro in a mad melee.
The questers fought like madmen, hacking and slashing at all who stood before them; Gytherik too, fighting like a veteran alongside his mightier, meatier friends. Screams filled the night and blood splashed wetly in the torchlight, washing the bridge. Then the trio was inundated—borne under, Ula and Una too—by sheer weight of bodies, and vile paws and calloused hands grabbed up all five of them and rushed them to the ship’s rail.
Blazing torches were hurled aloft to ward off fluttering, disorganized gaunts; hard fists delivered final blows to panting, scratching, biting, desperately kicking forms; and five figures were tossed from ship into cold night air. Gytherik was last to go, and as he shot headfirst overboard so he called out to his gaunts. Two of them, unafraid of the noise and the affray (Sniffer and Biffer, as might be guessed), having seen the descent of the girls and their would-be rescuers, were already diving through the night. Reacting to the gaunt-master’s cry with impossible speed, they snatched his tumbling body from thin air and bore him swiftly away.