"Ears for Nerthus!" he shouted. He leaped across to the other ship's deck to meet the rush of its commander.
The Minos was poised for another stride, thinking that his enemy would wait for his charge, but without hesitation he slashed overhand at the base of Corylus' neck. Corylus met the edge with his makeshift buckler. The shock numbed his left hand to the wrist and dented the orichalc, but the helmet's curve deflected the blade to the side.
Corylus thrust. His blade was slightly curved and longer than the cut-and-thrust sword was used to, but principles were the same. The point slipped in beneath the Minos' chin. When the point pierced the back of his skull, the tip lifted off his helmet with a clang.
The ships hit the ground together, throwing Corylus up in an unexpected backflip. He lost both sword and helmet, but his knees had been flexed for the thrust and the hull timbers breaking had absorbed the worst of the shock.
Corylus hit the deck again on all fours, then bounded to his feet. I couldn't have done that once in a thousand tries if I'd been training, he thought.
The whole world seemed to be shouting. Some of the Atlanteans may have been alive, but they were no danger to Carce now.
The two ships coming through the portal and the scores behind them, though. They would be enough.
Corylus looked up. As he did so, the ape wrenched the metal ball from its socket on top of the obelisk. The portal wavered, and an Atlantean screamed in terror.
The ape gripped the obelisk with both legs and smashed the ball down on the wedge-shaped granite point with the strength of his arms and upper body. The metal deformed with a hollow boom.
The portal shrank. The storm rushed from all sides as the bubble of clear heaven reduced. Lightning and thunder overwhelmed the sound of the crowd.
The ape swung again, ripping the ball open. The portal vanished like mist in the sun. The bows of the ships on the way into this world tumbled downward, their hulls sheared more neatly than a saw could have done.
The ape stood on the peak of the obelisk, shrieking a challenge to the sky. The thunderbolt that struck him was blinding in its intensity.
The ape froze where it was for a moment, its fur blazing. Then it tumbled, and rain from the breaking storm hissed on the flames.
David Drake
Out of the Waters-ARC
EPILOGUE
Hedia watched Lann fall as stiffly as a burning statue. The lightning must have frozen his muscles. She had seen antelope shot through the head in the arena stiffen that way. There is no chance he can be alive.
Then, He saved me.
She felt nothing for a moment. She was floating in a prickly white fog.
Her vision cleared. "You, Lenatus!" she said; her voice clear, her enunciation perfect. "You and your men clear my way to the sundial!"
She'd thought the trainer might hesitate. Instead he instantly bellowed, "Come on, squad! Batons only until I tell you different!"
Leading the newly-freed servants, Lenatus pushed through the line of lictors who had taken the place of honor in front of the consul. From the way they moved, each man wore a sword under his tunic despite the fact that it would be certain crucifixion to be caught with military arms within the sacred boundaries of Carce.
Hedia followed, holding the borrowed toga over her shoulders with both hands. It was a stupid garment, clumsy and ugly and stupid. She'd like to burn alive the man who decreed it for formal wear!
She knew she was being irrational. She didn't care. She had never cared what other people thought of her behavior.
Lenatus and his bullies formed a wedge that shoved through the crowd. Lann might have been a trifle quicker about it, but he hadn't been clearing a path for a noble lady. Instead of just knocking down spectators who hadn't gotten out of the way, the men in front of Hedia were hurling them to one side or another so that she wouldn't trip over their groaning bodies.
Rain had begun to hammer down by the time they reached the obelisk. One of the men-a bulky Galatian well over six feet tall, named Minimus by a former owner with a sense of humor-shouted at something on the pavement. He jumped back, drawing his sword.
He's alive!
"Put that away or you'll be crowbait!" Lenatus bellowed. "It's dead, don't you see?"
"Let me through," said Hedia. Her voice was clear, her enunciation perfect. She floated in a white stinging cloud.
"Your ladyship?" Lenatus said in concern. His hand was under his tunic also.
"He's dead, you say, so there's no problem, is there?" Hedia said. She brushed past and squatted beside Lann. Beside Lann's body.
Despite the rain, the ape-man's fur was still smoldering. The smell was terrible. She brushed his cheek with her fingertips and felt crisp tendrils break off beneath them.
He was as stiff bronze, though the body was still warm. Brains were leaking from his crushed skull, but he must have died from the thunderbolt. The fall had flattened his head in line with his heavy brow ridges. The poor dear had never had the high forehead of a philosopher, of course.
He couldn't have felt a thing. No pain, nothing. Triumph and then oblivion. Quite a good way to go, and certainly he was now in a better afterlife than that which awaited the noble Hedia…
"Dear heart?" a voice said.
Hedia looked over her shoulder. Lenatus had formed his squad in a circle around her and the body of the ape-man. They had allowed Saxa through, but the lictors were on the other side.
She got to her feet, swaying with exhaustion-mental and physical both. She didn't know how long she had been kneeling on the marble pavement, but the borrowed toga was soaked.
"My husband, I'm glad you've joined me," Hedia said calmly. "I'll ask you to put a guard over Lann here. Master Lenatus and his men will do.
She flexed her knees to pat the big body for a last time, then thought the better of it and simply gestured.
She said, "Please have him cremated as soon as the rain permits. A formal funeral will not be necessary, but I request that you have his ashes interred in the family tomb."
"Him?" Saxa said in obvious puzzlement. "The monkey, you mean?"
Hedia's mind went buzzing white again. After a moment she said, "If you choose to name your savior a monkey, yes."
Then, like a whiplash, "See to it!"
"Yes, my dear," Saxa said quietly. "At once. Ah-I'll go back to the Altar and, ah, leave you and your pet…"
He turned.
Hedia caught him by the shoulder and embraced him clumsily. "No, my dear master," she said. "We will go to the Portico of Agrippa, you and I, where you will take charge of the crisis until someone else arrives-the Urban Prefect or the one of the Praetorian commanders, I suppose. And I see our daughter coming toward us. She appears to need help also."
She pointed to Lenatus, then toward the ape-man's body. The old soldier nodded in understanding. Soldiers got a lot of experience with hasty cremations; he would take care of it.
Goodbye, my friend Lann.
Varus sat on the steps of the public facility north of the sundial, letting the rain beat on him and trying not to think. The Emperor Augustus had built a larger pyre with marble appointments a little farther out on the Flaminian Way, close to where he erected his huge family mausoleum, so this one got little business in recent years.
Today the whole district stank of charred human flesh. Varus didn't know whether there were interrupted funerals on the platforms of volcanic tuff behind him, the fires quenched by the downpour; or if corpses scattered when Atlantean ships burned and crashed were responsible for the odor.