Deyv said, "Feersh should be up there by now organizing the humans and khratikl. We must've killed half of their beasts, though, and I doubt that the slaves will fight well."
"That's right," Hoozisst said, great contempt in his voice. "Slaves don't make good warriors. Not unless they're fighting against their masters."
A high harsh voice reached them. They looked up to glimpse a narrow bony face with a gray topknot of hair. The Emerald, an egg-sized stone, dangled from a cord around her neck. The face shot away, and the khratikl by it also disappeared. A moment later, the trap door slid out to cover almost the entire opening. A thick dark fluid began flowing down the steps. It had an acrid odor.
The Yawtl said, "She's going to smoke us out!"
20
THEY raced down the corridor in the direction where Vana and the animals had gone. Just as they got to the steps leading up to the fore cabin, ten khratikl raced around the corner ahead of them. Evidently, these had flown down to and through the windows in the bottom and sides of the hull, hoping to surprise the invaders. The bodies of six khratikl lay at the foot of the steps, their wounds showing that the dog and the cat had disposed of most of them. The trap door was also almost closed, leaving a narrow space, and the same kind of fluid was being poured down the steps. Deyv looked behind him. Shadowy figures were moving toward them. The khratikl were going to try to kill as many of their enemy as possible before the smoke drove them back out the way they'd come.
Deyv shouted a warning to the others, and he charged the beasts at the corner. They flung themselves at him, but his sword cut them or his torch, thrust into their faces, burned them. Screaming, leathery wings flapping, they ran off. He didn't pursue them; he didn't want to waste his time. The Yawtl had driven off the five behind them, but the things leaped around within the edge of the light from the sphere. When
Hoozisst charged them, they retreated. When he back-stepped to the stairs, they followed him.
"Vana must have gotten out this way," Deyv said.
Had she broken through to the deck? Or was she dead? And Jum and Aejip, too?
Now the khratikl he'd chased away were back, looking around the comer.
Sloosh said, "I hope they don't set the fluid on fire while I'm on the steps."
He clumped up the stairs, turned around, lowered his upper torso until it extended straight out, and then began pushing upward with his rear. His legs slowly straightened; the trap door began to rise. From above came frightened yells. Deyv hastened to aid him, while the Yawtl remained below to keep the khratikl away.
Reaching through the widening gap with his sword, Deyv slashed or stabbed at the humans. They merely defended themselves, leaping back to avoid being wounded on their legs and making sure that they didn't come too close. They thrust spears at him from three sides. One man willing to take a chance could probably have run him through.
But the trap door started to open. Had the slaves been standing on it so their weight would keep it closed, they would have fallen off. Suddenly, the Archkerri raised his upper body, his massive arms reaching to each side and pushing up. The door fell over with a bang, and Sloosh reached down and picked up his club from the step where he'd put it.
The Yawtl turned from the khratikl and ran up the steps, dropping the sphere as he did so. He reached for his tomahawk in his belt with his left hand, and he threw it so that its edge sank in under the chin of a spear wielder. Deyv had a momentary thought that this fellow was indeed talented. Right hand or left, it made no difference to him. He was adept with both.
The three remaining male slaves fled screaming from the cabin, jumping over the bodies of two dead men near the doorway. They knocked over two females who'd been standing behind them, holding torches. If they'd had sense enough, the slaves would have set the fluid blazing while the invaders were standing on the steps. But then they were slaves and unaccustomed to doing things without orders from their masters.
The two women, abandoning their torches, got up and dashed out of the cabin. Deyv picked up a brand and threw it down the stairwell. The stuff caught fire quickly, effectually barring the khratikl from pursuing them. But they would go out of the hull openings and fly up to the deck.
The Yawtl shrieked, "The sphere! The sphere! You fool, you'll burn it up!"
"It's stone," Deyv said. "Forget your greed, Yawtl. Dead men don't have possessions."
Hoozisst gave him a nasty look. He picked up a tall ceramic vase filled with the fluid and heaved it down the steps. Deyv threw another after it. They broke on the steps, and suddenly the cabin was filled with smoke, flames leaping up through the opening, heating their skins.
The Yawtl heaved a vase through the open door onto the deck, where it shattered about seven feet away.
He cast a torch upon the spreading pool, and it flamed. Deyv ran out then, hoping that if any slaves were waiting beside the doorway to spear him, they'd be shaken by the fire. There were none; they weren't even in sight.
Sloosh followed him, bearing a vase in one arm. The Yawtl, coughing, came after him, also carrying a vase. In one hand he held the other torch.
By the light of the fire, Deyv saw Vana. She was hacking away with a sword at the central cables.
Where had she gotten it, from one of the slaves she'd killed when she'd escaped from the cabin? But why was she severing the mooring cables? He ran toward her, shouting. She stopped; then, seeing it was he, she resumed her cutting. A moment later, both were busy defending themselves against a swarm of the winged beasts. Most of these, Deyv presumed, were those who'd attacked him belowdecks.
Jum and Aejip joined them, leaping out from somewhere and taking the khratikl from behind. The cat was like a spring, bouncing up and down, to and fro, raking the khratikl, biting down on their necks or breaking their backs with blows of her paws. Several times, in their efforts to avoid her, the beasts flew within range of the swords, and they were cut in half or run through.
The four or five khratikl left unscathed flew away and settled down for a moment on the railing, far from the immediate danger. Or so they thought. Jum and Aejip followed them, and they leaped screaming off the tharakorm. Deyv tried to whistle his pets back to him, but he was out of breath. They came trotting back anyway.
Vana, panting, said, "I sent Jum and Aejip ahead of me, and while they were keeping the slaves busy, I got out. I thought I'd cut the mooring lines to scare them and that they'd leave the cabin to stop me. But they didn't."
"The slaves had their orders, and they followed them, regardless of changes in the situation." Deyv paused to draw in some much-needed air. At that moment, flames burst through the central cabin, and with much yelling and shrieking, people poured out of it. The blaze showed Sloosh standing by a window through which he'd thrown the vase and after which he'd cast a torch. In the van was the tall skinny figure of Feersh. She must have been standing in the doorway, ready to be the first to leave the tharakorm when the fluid poured down the steps was set afire. There she went, knocked down by the slaves and khratikl in their panic.
Now the aft cabin suddenly glowed, and flames were leaping out the windows. Revealed in their light was the Yawtl, standing by the window through which he had heaved his vase of fluid. Men and women, among whom must be the witch's children, tumbled out the doorway. The last to fall through was a man, burning.
Vana turned and brought the edge of her blade down against the cables. They parted with a loud snap, the ends whipping by her face with such force that they would have ripped it off if they'd struck it.