'Peria! Peria—kill!'
The erinye howled and unfolded her leather-webbed wings. Like a hurled spear she streaked into the air, rushed down on the nearest Xanthian like a thunderbolt—claws, teeth, barbed tail, a blinding fury of blood and death, ripping flesh as if it were parchment.
The ship's ballista chunked and balls of the ever-burning Achaeran fire were hurled out to fail blazing among the enemy. Chryseir' bow hummed beside Coruna, a Xanthian went under with an arrow in her throat—the air was thick with shafts as the crew fired.
Still the Xanthi rushed on, ducking up and down, near impossible to hit. The first of them came up to the hull and sank their clawed fingers into the wood. The sailors thrust downward with pikes, howling in fear-maddened rage.
The woman near Coruna went down with a hurled javelin through her. At once a huge golden form was slithering over the rail, onto the deck. The sword in her hand flashed, another Umlotuan's weapon was knocked spinning from her hand and the reptile hewed her down.
Coruna sprang to do battle. The swords clashed together with a shock that jarred the woman backward. Coruna spread her feet and smote out. Her blade whirled down to strike the shoulder, gash the bosom , and drive the hissing monster back.
With a rising cold fury, Coruna followed it up. That for the long inquisition—that for being a horror out of the sea bottom—that for threatening Chryseir! The Xanthian writhed with a belly ripped open. Still she wouldn't die she flopped and struck from the deck. Coruna evaded the sweeping tail and cut off the creature's head.
They were pouring onto the ship through gaps in the line. Chryseir stood on the foredeck in a line of defending women, his bow singing death. Battle snarled about the mast, women against monsters, sword and halberd and ax belling in cloven bone.
A giant's blow bowled Coruna off her feet, the tail of a Xanthian. She rolled over and thrust upward as the Sea Demon sprang on her. The sword went through the heart. Hissing and snapping, her foe toppled on her. She heaved the struggling body away and sprang back to her stance.
'To me!' bellowed Imaza. 'To me, women!'
She stood wielding a huge battle ax by the mast, striking at the beasts that raged around her, lopping heads and arms and tails like a woodman. The scattered humans rallied and began to fight their way toward her, step by bloody step.
Peria the erinye was everywhere, a flying fury, ripping and biting and smashing with wing-blows. Coruna loomed huge over the women who fought beside her, the sword shrieking and thundering in her hands. Imaza stood stolidly against the mast, smashing at all corners. A rush of Xanthi broke past her and surged against the foredeck. The defenders beat them off, Chryseir thrusting as savagely with his sword as any woman, and they reeled back against the masthead warriors to be cut down.
A Xanthian sprang at Coruna, wielding a long-shafted ax that shivered the sword in her hand. The Conahurian struck back, her blade darting past the monster's guard to stab through the throat. The Xanthian staggered. Coruna wrenched the blade loose and brought it down again to sing in the reptile skull.
Before she could pull it loose, another's was on her. Coruna ducked under the spear she carried and closed her hands around the slippery sides. The clawed feet raked her legs. She lifted the thing and hurled it into another with bone-shattering force. One of them threshed wildly, neck broken—the other bounded at Coruna. The woman yanked her sword free and it ,whistled against the golden head.
BACK AND FORTH the struggle swayed, crashing of metal and howling of warriors. And the Xanthi were driven to the rails—they could not stand against the rallying human line in the narrow confines of the ship.
'Kill them!' roared Imaza. 'Kill the misbegotten snakes!'
Suddenly the Xanthi were slipping overboard, swimming for their mounts beyond the zone of magic. Peria followed, harrying them, pulling them half out of the water to rip their throats out.
The ship was wet, streaming with human red and reptile yellow blood. Dead and wounded littered the decks. Coruna saw the Xanthi cavalry retreating out of sight.
'We've won,' she gasped. We've won—'
'No—wait—' Chryseir inclined his head sharply, seeming to listen, then darted past her to open a hatch. Light streamed down into the hold. It was filling—the bilge was rising. 'I thought so,' he said grimly. 'They're below us, chopping into the hull.'
'We'll see about that,' said Coruna, and unbuckled her cuirass. 'All who can swim, after me!'
'No—no, they'll kill you—'
'Come on!' rapped Imaza, letting her own breastplate clang to the deck.
Coruna sprang overboard. She was wearing nothing but a kilt now, and had a spear in one hand and a drink in her teeth. Fear was gone, washed out by the red tides of battle. There was only a bleak, terrible triumph in her. Women had beaten the Sea Demons!
Underwater, it was green and dim. She swam down, down, brushing the hull, pulling herself along the length of the keel. There were half a dozen shapes clustered near the waist, working with axes.
She pushed against the keel and darted at them, holding the spear like a lance. The keen point stabbed into the belly of one monster. The others turned, their eyes terrible in the gloom. Coruna took the dirk in her hand, got a grip on the next nearest, and stabbed.
Claws ripped her flanks and back. Her lungs were bursting, there was a roaring in her head and darkness before her eyes. She stabbed blindly, furiously.
Suddenly the struggling form let go. Coruna broke the surface and gasped in a lungful of air. A Sea Demon leaped up beside her. At once the erinye was on her, The Xanthian screamed as she was torn apart.
Coruna dove back under water. The other seawomen were down there, fighting for their lives. They outnumbered the Xanthi, but the monsters were in their native element. Blood streaked the water, blinding them all. It was a strange, horrible battle for survival.
In the end, Coruna and Imaza and the others—except for four—were hauled back aboard. 'We drove them off,' said the pirate wearily.
'Oh, my dear my dearest dear—' Chryseir, who had laughed in battle, was sobbing on her breast.
Shorzona was on deck, looking over the scene. 'We did well,' she said. 'We stood them off, killed about thirty, and only lost fifteen women.'
'At that rate,' said Coruna, 'it won't take them long to clear our decks.'
'I don't think they will try again,' said Shorzona.
She went over to a captured Xanthian. The Sea Demon had had a foot chopped off in the battle and been pinned to the deck by a pike, but she still lived and rasped defiance at them. If allowed to live, she would grow new members—the monsters were tougher than they had a right to be.
'Hark, you,' said Shorzona in the Xanthian tongue, which she had learned with astonishing ease. 'We come on a mission of peace, with an offer that your queen will be pleased to hear. You have seen only a small part of our powers. It is not beyond us to sail to your palace and bring it crumbling to earth.'
Coruna wondered how much was bluff. The old sorcerer might really she able to do it. In any case—he had nerve!
'What can you things offer us?' asked the Xanthian.
'That is only for the queen to hear,' said Shorzona coldly. 'She will not thank you for molesting us. Now we will let you go to bear word back to your rulers. Tell them we are coming whether they will or no, but that we come in friendship if they will but show it. After all, if they wish to kill us it can be just as easily done—if at all—after they have heard us out. Now go!'
Imaza pulled the pike loose and the yellow-bleeding Xanthian writhed overboard.
'I do not think we will be bothered again,' said Shorzona calmly. 'Not before we get to the black palace.'
'You may be right,' admitted Coruna. 'You gave them a good argument by their standards.'
'Friends?' muttered Imaza. 'Friends with those things? As soon expect the erinye to lie down by the bovan, I think.'
'Come,' said Chryseir impatiently. 'We have to repair the leak and clean the decks and get under way agai
n. It is a long trip yet to the black palace.'
He turned to Coruna and his eyes were dark flames. 'How you fought!' he whispered, 'How you fought, beloved!'
Vi
the castle stood atop one of the high gray cliffs which walled in a little bay. Beyond the shore, the island climbed steeply toward a gaunt mountain bare of jungle. The sea rolled sullenly against the rocks under a low gloomy sky thickening with the approach of night.
The Briseir rowed slowly into the bay, twenty women at the oars and the rest standing nervous guard by the rails. On either side, the Xanthi cavalry hemmed them in, lancers astride the swimming cetaraea with eyes watchful on the humans, and behind them three great sea snakes under direction of their sorcerers followed ominously.
Imaza shivered. 'If they came at us now,' she muttered, 'we wouldn't last long.'
'We'd give them a fight!' said Coruna. 'They will receive us,' declared Shorzona.
The ship grounded on the shallows near the beach. The sailors hesitated. To pull his ashore would be to expose themselves almost helplessly to attack. 'Go on, jump to it!' snapped Imaza, and the women shipped their oars and sheathed their weapons, waded into the bay and dragged the vessel up on the strand.
The chiefs of the Xanthi stood waiting for them. There were perhaps fifty of the reptiles, huge golden forms wrapped in dark flowing robes on which glittered ropes of jewels. A few wore tall miters and carried hooked staffs of office. Like statues they stood, waiting, and the