But this time he was frustrated. The mind he had overpowered was not allowed to consummate its fell purpose. As (watching through Gimmer’s eyes) he crept upon the helmsman, a sudden pain in the captive chest, a blazing weakness of the controlled limbs, halted him in his, or rather Gimmer’s, tracks. Then, as Gimmer, too, died. Hiero saw the arrow protruding from the sailor’s chest.
Again he opened his eyes to the world as seen from his own body. He felt drained of energy. “It’s no good,” he shouted to Brother Aldo over the noise of the rising rain, “They had good archers stationed about the ship in key positions. Unless I can get one of them under control, I’m licked. They must have orders to shoot down anyone who even looks suspicious. And it’s tiring me out. I can’t keep taking these people over in this rough and ready way, forcing totally unknown minds to do whatever I want. It’s drawing too much nervous energy out of my own body. I’ll try again, but it really doesn’t get easier, just the reverse.”
Actually, although he didn’t want to admit the fact, Hiero was a bit ashamed. He had been sure he could do a lot more than he was able to do in fact. He had felt that taking over a whole ship all at once would be easy. And now, in mere moments, he was half-exhausted and seemingly frustrated as well.
Captain Gimp chose this moment to try a maneuver of his own. He bawled an order, and the two big lateen sails slatted as the wheel spun and Foam Girl came up into the wind, pointing as high as she was able to. Instantly the ship’s motion changed into a steep up-and-down chop as she began to attack the waves instead of riding with them, as she had done on the previous reach. She now was heading almost due west, seeming to charge the gray clouds racing down from the northwest.
“Square-rigger’s no good at pointing,” Gimp shouted to his passengers as they clung to the heaving rail. “Maybe we can get above him.” He was seeking the protection of the wind itself, trying to move Foam Girl closer to the wind than the enemy vessel. The wind would provide an invisible barrier if the trick could be worked.
It could not. The great, lean hull of their pursuer came around beautifully in line with their stern. The square yards, tiny figures scrambling along the yardarms, lay almost fiat, and the trysails and stunsails set fore and aft between the mast now showed as they took the weight of the wind. With the help of these sails and a huge gaff spanker on the mizzenmast, the big stranger began to overtake them even more easily than before, for her hull’s length and height out of the water made far less of the steep wave action than the little Foam Girl.
“She’s really unprintably lovely,” Captain Gimp shouted in admiration. The squat sailor instinctively responded to the beauty of the other vessel’s design, even though it might mean his own destruction. He bawled another order and Foam Girl paid off, back on her old course to the southeast, with the wind in her quarter. At least this way she did not have to fight the seas as well, but could ride them. Behind her, close enough to see her black hull lift and the white bow wave, the pursuer came back too. She was less than half a mile away. A white figurehead, looking like a woman’s body, glistened with wetness.
Can you do anything? the Metz asked Brother Aldo, once again mind-to-mind.
I am seeking what large water creatures are found here, was the old man’s answer. So far, I have found nothing. But I sense motion not far away. However, it is uncertain, and I need a little time. Can you reach one of the archers you spoke of, or are you too tired? Any delay will help.
“I thought so!” Gimp shouted. His one-eyed mate had come and whispered something to him before slinking back to his control of the lower deck.
“Bald Roke is the man we have to deal with,” the captain continued. “We can’t be taken alive. His crew are cannibals and worse.” Luchare wondered to herself how you got “worse” but said nothing. “That ship’s The Ravished Bride, and she’s manned by men, and other things, worse than any afloat. Bald Roke would skin his own sister alive for two coppers and a belly laugh. A good sailor, though, rot his dirty bowels, and that ship’s a bloody marvel.”
Hiero only half-heard him. Once again he was seeking the unguarded minds of the enemy. He passed two non-human minds, one a Howler’s, the other something new to him, and then found what he was seeking. In a lower crosstree crouched an archer armed with a crossbow, his gaze sweeping the deck as he watched for any sign of mutiny or other dangerous behavior. Hiero did not seek his name or anything else. With the utmost of mental strength he had left, he simply went after the man’s own nerve endings, using the captive forebrain like a pair of pliers. The archer screamed in horror as his weapon rose to aim at the Bride’s helmsman despite his passionate attempt to force it down.
Once again, Hiero failed, though not by much. The bow went off and the quarrel sped on its way to bury itself in human flesh. But not the helmsman’s. Instead, the bolt drove into the brain of a man standing nearby. At the same time, the archer himself died as three arrows and a thrown spear struck him in turn. Hiero clearly saw the captain of the enemy, who gave the order, through the archer’s fading sight, even as the man pitched from his lofty seat into the heaving sea. Tall, gaunt to emaciation, dressed in fantastic orange velvet, covered with jewels, his brown skull gleaming in the half-light, Bald Roke was a strange and repellent figure. His thin, clean-shaven face was disfigured by a scar running across it at the bridge of his nose, a crooked weal marking some past scuffle. Hiero felt him staring even as the priest withdrew from the dying body of his unwilling ally. Something else he saw too. Around the enemy leader’s neck was a heavy chain of familiar bluish metal, and from it hung a massive, square pendant of the same, almost a shallow box. This was the source of the other’s protection, the priest knew, a mechanical mind shield. He felt even wearier as he opened his own eyes again. Was there no weapon he could command against the hidden skills of the Unclean adepts?
But he was, mercifully, given no time to waste on self-pity.
“In the name of Blessed Saint Francis the Ecologist, they come!” Brother Aldo shouted. “Behold the children of the great waters!”
As he spoke, Captain Gimp ordered Foam Girl again into the wind and simultaneously had the sails lowered. They came down with a crash, and ail ran to the starboard rail to gaze at the new arrivals.
Protruding from the water between the two vessels, for The Ravished Bride now also came up into the wind and brailed her sails also, were two great heads. For a moment Hiero did not realize what he was seeing, and then he gasped, for they were birds, although of monstrous size. The sleek, giant bodies were almost invisible under the tossing waters, but each was at least two-thirds the length of the Foam Girl herself. The beautiful heads and thick necks were not, apparently, feathered, but almost scaled and a lovely, soft green. The titanic beaks were straight, rounded javelins, each at least twelve feet long. The great, bright eyes darted nervously about from one ship to the other, but the enormous invisible paddles kept the two avian monsters in place, responsive to the old Elevener’s will.
“I won’t have them attack if we can scare the other ship off,” Brother Aido said to the priest. “Even the Lowan are not invulnerable, and that ship is full of weapons,”
For a moment the two vessels hung, bowsprits to the wind, while the crews simply stared at one another and the birds, each seeming to wait for the other to take some action. Then a human voice, speaking batwah, rose above the wind and carried easily over the two hundred feet of foaming water.