As if on cue Barrel called out, "Dohojar, to me! We are attacked!" The shout went unheard by most of the men on board, for they were already rushing forward to help Blinky. But the Changa heard it well enough and immediately came to his friend's aid on the run.
For Dohojar, one look at the scene before him was sufficient. "Very bad!" he cried aloud, even as he began to conjure the most potent spell he had at his command.
"That's not the half of it, lad!" Barrel answered as he desperately sought some way to bring harm to the insubstantial figure. "The blaster just isn't there!" he added by way of advising his shipmate what they were up against.
Just then Habber, first lieutenant to the sailing master, burst into the cabin with a sword in one hand and an axe in the other. In his rush he bumped into Dohojar and caromed off the Changa's back, nearly knocking both of them down in the process. "Uff! Shit!" he cried, catching himself and trying to stand on guard against whatever attacker was at hand.
The spell he had been trying to work was spoiled in the collision, so Dohojar changed tactics instantaneously, forgetting the loss because there was no help for it. "Quick, Habber-Lieutenant," he said as he pointed toward the far corner of the ill-lighted cabin. "Throw your axe where the shadows are thick there!" The confused sailor complied even though it was an order that seemed to make no sense. Habber cocked his arm and sent the weapon spinning across the short space in one quick motion.
A sharp gasp of pain came from the place, and then a shout of rage. The figure of the false pilot disappeared from the center of the cabin, and the man was suddenly visible crouching in the corner of the place. One of Gravestone's long arms could be seen through a tear in his baggy-sleeved robe, the place where Habber's axe had sliced cloth and cut flesh in its flight. The gaunt face of Gravestone was awful to behold as he stood hunched and shaking with rage in the low-ceilinged space. "I'll play with you no longer!" he screeched.
Barrel tried to get an attack in then, moving toward Gravestone with his cutlass held before him. Again Habber brought trouble by being too precipitous. He rushed the enemy at the same time, a movement that caused him and the burly sailing master to collide briefly. That was all the advantage Gravestone needed. He brought a sound from down deep in his narrow chest and allowed its abomination to clamber up his throat and gush from his mouth. The terrible sound was wrapped in the vilest of evil and had fell power. As the word was spewed forth, the air thickened, and dark streaks of energy leaped and coalesced. Habber toppled soundlessly, stone dead, while both Barrel and Dohojar were thrown back as if struck by a great hand.
"Now, maggots, you are mine!" Gravestone stepped deliberately toward the two stunned men with gleeful triumph plainly evident on his ancient face. The visage he showed now was his actual one — very old and totally evil. It was filled with demoniacal emotion, the joy of anticipating what was to come. Suddenly his expression changed to surprise.
"Not so easy, old pole of wickedness!" Dohojar exclaimed as he saw the darts of energy he had summoned up strike home, burning the leathery skin of the evil mage's face where they touched. With greater fury than before, Gravestone spun and reached for the Changa, his fingers like talons. Extremities that looked like tentacles shot from those clawed hands and wrapped in a deadly embrace around Dohojar's neck. His agonized writhing was proof enough of their effect, even without the hissing of his flesh where the tentacles' acidic secretion ate away the skin and seared deeper still.
"Godsdamn you!" screamed his friend as he witnessed the horror of whatever magic Gravestone was employing to slay the Changa. "This will stop you!" Barrel struck a blow with his cutlass that did not miss, catching Gravestone full across one of his upper arms. Yet something prevented it from having real effect. While the tall man seemed to be shaken by the attack, and he loosed his terrible tentacles from Dohojar, the weapon's sharp edge had somehow failed to sever the man's arm from his body as it should have.
Gravestone moved back quickly, still crouching, and now shaking his right arm as he glared balefully at his foes, but he bore no apparent wound from the cutlass. "You can't be unhurt...." the burly seaman said in consternation.
"Oh, but I can be," Gravestone said as he locked his feral eyes full upon those of Barrel. The thick, ropy growth that had sprung from his fingers had disappeared when the cutlass struck his arm, but now Gravestone's long digits were themselves writhing like adders. "Drop that sword." Gravestone commanded icily.
Barrel's face relaxed, and as that happened, his grip on the heavy cutlass began to loosen. Then, with an ear splitting war cry, the burly seaman had the weapon firmly again and held straight forth as he lunged to bury its point in the tall man's heart. "I'll drop you!"
The move failed to catch Gravestone by surprise, however. Instead, his narrow body seemed to twist aside as would a serpent's, and as Barrel extended himself in completion of the useless thrust, the man's fingers thrust out and into Barrel's body. No longer snaky in the least. Gravestone's digits were now as stiff as steel bars and tipped with razor-sharp nails that had sprouted long, tearing barbs.
The finger-knives sunk home, the hands following, until they clasped what they sought. Then Gravestone reversed his motion and heaved backward. Barrel, his side torn and gushing blood, fell to the gory deck, lifeless. The useless cutlass clattered down beside him, and the tall man laughed a rolling paean of evil triumph.
That was too quick, too easy." Gravestone said then, turning to where Dohojar lay semi-conscious, one hand feebly trying to wipe away the fiery pain where tentacles and acid had made a ruin of his neck and lower jaw. "Does it hurt?" he asked solicitously as he bent closer to the Changa in order to watch the effects of the pain from a better vantage point. Dohojar tried to say something, but Gravestone reached forth and with a single finger welded the dark lips together, leaving what looked like a frightful red scar where Dohojar's mouth had been.
"No, no, little maggot," Gravestone crooned softly. "I'll have no more puny spells from you to pain me. Instead, we will play a game, you and I. If you hold up well, then you win! And as your reward, I'll finish you myself rather than giving you to Krung. Come now, let's begin!"
* * *
Later, when he came upon the deck, he found the netherfiend, the beast he had called Krung, happily crouched in the center of a pile of corpses, plucking delicacies from first one, then another of the bodies. When the thing saw Gravestone, it clutched one of the corpses and then stood, holding the form as if it were a doll. "I have eaten well, master. Thank you for such sport."
"That's nice, Krung. I too have had amusement and am quite satisfied." As he spoke, the evil man held a long, thin bundle in his left arm, almost as if he were mimicking the fiend with the dead body it held as a prize.
Gravestone gestured, and the netherfiend hurried toward the tall spell-binder. "Shall I make fire to burn the ship?" it asked.
Gravestone shook his head. "No, let's leave a mystery for them, Krung. Dispose of the corpses here however you like. Just don't leave them to be found. I am going now. You may return to your own plane when you've done your work." With that, Gravestone the priest-wizard turned and went to a place where he could lower one of the ship's little boats, then make his way to shore.