It seemed that the black birds had been trying to stop us from compounding our sins. That was all I could get their admonitory squawks to add to. "Sorry, guys," I murmured. A sin or two looked necessary for the greater welfare.
I did not want to see that quiet, fog-bound sea again. Eighteen years was long enough. The others felt the same.
I could see just one way to get out of it. Kill the sorcerer in red. Another murder.
What was one more death on my soul? I asked myself. Not a pennyweight.
The last black bird hurled itself into the pentagram.
The sorcerer was covered with blood, reddening its clothing even more. Pain had destroyed the delicacy of its face. And yet a tiny smile began to stretch its lips again.
I drew to my ear and let an arrow fly.
The others had the same idea at the same instant. The Trolledyngjan hurled his ax. Priest and Barley flung themselves against the waning Power of the pentagram. Colgrave drew his blade and followed at a more casual pace. The Trolledyngjan whipped out a dagger and joined him.
My arrow and the Trolledyngjan's ax did not survive the smashing fist of a lightning bolt. Both weapons touched the creature in red, but only lightly.
The last bird became another serpent of night and slithered off to wherever they went when they devolved.
The spells protecting the sorcerer gnawed at Priest and Barley. They screamed like souls in torment.
And kept on.
They were Colgrave's favorite hounds, those two. Because nothing stopped them.
They had been the two most dreaded-in-fighters on the western seas.
A continual low moan emanated from the Trolledyngjan. Colgrave made no sound at all. He just leaned ahead like a man striding into a gale, his eye fixed on the sorcerer's throat.
Priest and Barley went down. They writhed the way the birds had. But they kept trying to get to the creature in red. Barley's blade struck sparks from the stone beside the wizard's ankle.
Its smile grew larger. It thought it was winning.
I sped three arrows as fast as I could.
The first did no good at all. The second pinked him lightly. It distracted him for an instant.
His attackers surged at him, threatening to bury him.
I sent my third arrow beneath Colgrave's upraised arm. It buried itself in the creature's heart.
The Old Man's blade fell. It sliced the flesh away from one side of that delicate face.
The thing slowly stood. A mournful wail came from between its motionless lips. The sound rose in pitch and grew louder and louder. I dropped my bow and clapped my hands over my ears.
That did not help. The sound battered me till I ached.
The Trolledyngjan was down with Priest and Barley. I did not expect them to rise ever again.
The creature in red touched Colgrave. My captain started to drop too.
He fell slowly, like a mighty kingdom crumbling.
"Go, Bowman," he told me in a voice that was hardly a whisper, yet which I heard through the sorcerer's wail. "Take Dragon back to sea. Save the men."
"Captain!" I seized his arm and tried to drag him away. The thing in red touched him. The touch anchored the Old Man.
"Get the hell out of here!" he growled. "I'll handle him."
"But...."
"That's an order, Bowman."
He was my Captain. These were my comrades. My friends.
"Will you get the hell gone?"
He used the old Colgrave's voice. It was strong. Compelling. I could defy it then no more than ever before. I seized my bow and fled.
XV
The others had needed little urging to make a run for it. Mica and the Kid were the only ones hanging around when I hit the mansion's door. Not counting the owner and half an army of citizens headed our way.
It was your basic mob. A ravening killer monster made up of harmless shopkeepers. An organism without fear because it knew its components were replaceable.
Mica screeched, "Come on, Bow-man! You going to wait till they tie you to a burning stake?"
I was not as numb as I looked. I was looking for the thousand-eyed monster's brain cells. I had eight good arrows left.
But Mica was right. The mob did not have a brain. Random fragments had begun vandalizing the grounds.
I took off round the side of the house.
As we loped along, the Kid asked, "What happened down there? Where's Barley and Priest and the Trolledyngjan and the Old Man?"
"Down there. All gone but the Old Man and the sorcerer. The thing is all chopped up, but it's still alive." "You left him there?" "He made me, Kid. You ever win an argument with Colgrave?" He just grinned.
"Hold up for a second, Bowman," Mica panted. We were in the street now and drawing some startled looks. "What happens when they go?"
"What?"
"Colgrave runs us. What do we do without him? And that wizard called us back. What happens when he dies? To his spells?"
"Oh. Man. I don't know." I was no expert on wizardry. Some sorceries devolved with the death of the sorcerer, and some did not. I could not tell him what he wanted to know.
There were shouts behind us. I wheeled. Part of the mob was after us.
"Let's take them," the Kid said.
There were about twenty of them. For a Dragon sailor, protected by the Bowman, the odds did not look bad.
The earth started quivering like a bear in restless slumber. The timbers of nearby buildings creaked.
Our pursuers stopped, looked back.
We could see the steep tiled roofs of the mansion. Cracks lightninged across them. They began sagging, as if some huge invisible hand were pressing downward....
The cracks leaked a black fog that looked first cousin to the one that dogged Vengeful D. The breeze did nothing to disperse it.
"Let's hike," I said. "While they're distracted. Maybe we can catch the others."
I was afraid Toke and Tor would sail without us.
Could anger be an absolute? The cloud over the mansion said it could be. I felt it from a quarter mile away.
That shadow was a being. It echoed the feeling I had been given by the creature in red. I now understood our ambiguous reactions to the sorcerer. He or she had no meaning if the thing were not human at all.
It was not alone. A second being held it in a deathgrip. That being radiated an absoluteness too, an utter refusal to yield to any other will.
"Colgrave," I whispered.
Colgrave had been a man, of that there was no doubt. But he had been larger than life and animated by a determination so unswerving that it had made him a demigod.
"Children of evil," Mica muttered.
We resumed walking toward the waterfront. No one interfered. We were forgotten.
The Torian Hill shook like a volcano about to give birth.
"What?" I asked.
"We are all children of evil," Mica said.
"What're you talking about?" He was off on some sideways line of thought, saying the obvious and not meaning what he was saying. "Keep stepping. I don't think the Old Man will win this one."
"He already has, Bowman. He's forced that thing to take its natural form. Look. It's fading. It can't stay here that way."
He was right. The thing was evaporating the way a cloud of steam does.
So was the thing created by the will of my Captain.
In minutes they were gone.
There were tears in my eyes. Mine. The Bowman's. And I was the deadliest, coldest, most remorseless killer ever to sail the western seas, excepting only the man for whom my tears fell.