When Meiiva returned to him, the galley was straight upwind and Vanimen wrinkling his nose. “Phew!” he said. “Can you smell? She reeks of dirt, sweat, aye, of misery. What devilment does she bear?”
She squinted. “I see a number who wear metal, and I see weapons,” she replied. “But who are those in rags, huddled amidships?”
That became clear when the distance between had shortened. Men, women, children, dark-skinned, heavy-featured, were chained at wrists and ankles. They stood, sat, slumped, shuddered with cold, sought what tiny comfort was in each other’s nearness, beneath the pikes of lighter-complexioned guards. Unease gripped Vanimen. “I think I know,” he told Meiiva. “Slaves.”
“What?” She had never met the human word.
“Slaves. People taken captive, sold and bought and forced to toil, like the beasts you’ve watched drawing plow and cart. I’ve heard of the practice from men I’ve talked with. No doubt yonder vessel is returning from a raid on southerly foreigners.” Vanimen spat to leeward, wishing he could do it oppositely.
Meiiva winced. “Is that true?”
“Aye.”
“And yet the Maker of Stars favors their breed above all else in this world?”
“I cannot understand, either... Hoy, they’re hailing us.”
No real speech could cross the barriers of wind and language. A lean man, smooth-shaven, in corselet and wildly plumed helmet, peered until Vanimen’s skin crawled. At last, however, the galley fell off and the Liri king gusted a breath of relief.
By now the island loomed dead ahead, with nasty surges at its foot. His whole attention was required to maneuver the hulk into the safety of the channel. Right rudder! Heave the yard about! Pole out the starboard clew! Feel violence go through timbersdid the keel grate on something?-suddenly she finds calm, but that means loss of steerage way—
Incredibly, the ship came to rest.
Vanimen stared back and forth. They were in a strip of water which merely chopped. Shores rose on either hand like walls. The stonn hooted, but save for sparse, vicious raindrops was blocked off; air felt less raw here than outside. The mainland was wooded behind a strip of beach. Trees and ruggedness half hid a cluster of buildings on the island. No people or dogs were in sight. Nor was other bottom, whose presence he had awaited and planned against.
He turned his mer-senses upon the water itself, and found its saltiness was thinned. A bit further north, a river must flow from the continent into the sea. No doubt the estuary contained a harbor, which he guessed was fair-sized; pieces of trash and globs of tar bobbed in his view. That would be where humans docked. The confonnation of land hid it from him, and him from it.
He felt certain the blow would end before nightfall. Then the quest could continue. Meanwhile- He sagged back against the taffrail. Meanwhile, here was peace. Let there be sleep. The need for it took him like a billow.
Meiiva screamed.
Vanimen slammed awake. Around a cliff came the galley. Her oars churned a stonn of their own. She was upon the hulk ere the menfolk below were out of the hatches. Their king had an instant to remember that he captained a ship whereon a man he murdered had cursed him.
Grapnels bit fast. A boarding bridge thunked down. Over it, armed and armored, boiled the Venetians. They had sent their merchandise to the hold and were after more.
When they suddenly noticed the strangeness of these victims, web feet, hues of hair, eldritch features, several of them recoiled. They cried out, crossed themselves, made as if to stampede back. Tougher ones bellowed, swung swords on high, urged the attack onward. Their chief whipped a crucifix from about his neck and raised it next to his own blade. That gave courage. The prey were naked, nearly all unarmed, mostly female or small.
Under bawled commands, the raiders deployed, fonned a line, advanced to box Vanimen’s followers in the stern. Weapons, helms, mail-no mere strength could stand before that. Nor did merfolk know aught of war. Those on deck retreated in horror; those who had not emerged ducked back down into the hold.
Swimmers came to the surface and raged around. “Don’t!” the king shouted as they sought to climb the rope ladder. “It’s death or worse!”
Easy would be to join them and escape. He saw the first passengers jump from deck. But, leaped through him, but what of those who were trapped below? Already the enemy surrounded the hatches.
He himself would embrace oncoming spearheads before he went into fetters, a market, the dust and dung, whippings and longings that would be his existence as a slave. Or he might be made a show. . . once when ashore he had seen a bear, weeping pus around the ring in its nose, dancing without hope at the end of a chain while onlookers laughed. . . . Did those who trusted him not have a right to the selfsame choice?
And they bore too much of Liri; the sea-wives loose in the water were too few to keep the tribe alive.
He was their king.
“Forward!” he roared. Planks thundered beneath his charge.
His trident lay in a cabin, but he had his thews. A pike thrust at him. He caught the shaft, wrenched it free, whirled the butt around, dashed a brain from the skull. Clubbing, stabbing, kicking, trampling, bellowing, he waded in among the foe. A man got behind him and lifted an ax to cleave his spine. Meiiva arrived, knife in her grasp, hauled back the fellow’s chin and laid his throat open. Mermen who had been deckhands rallied, joined those twain, cast their might and deep-seated vitality against whetted steel. They cleared a space around one of the hatches. Vanimen called to the mermaids. They and their children poured forth, to the rails and overboard. For them, his little band stood off the humans.
On the castle of the galley, crossbowmen took aim.
The merfolk might well have won that battle-had war been in their tradition. They had no training, though, no skill at the slaughter of people they had never met before. Vanimen should not have bidden the swimme,rs stay. He realized that after the iron closed back in on him, and cried out for their help; but they heard him not through the din, and merely moved about, bewildered. Some took crossbow quarrels in their bodies, as the shooters noticed them.
Two or three on board died likewise. The Venetians there recovered formation, counterattacked, made a melee that smeare the deck with blood. Most of those they slew were females and young on the way out, but they got every merman on the hulk save for Vanimen.
Dimly, he felt himself pierced and slashed. Somehow-Meiiva beside him, striking out like an angry cat-he forced a path. Together they reached the side and sprang.
Salt water took him as once his mother had. He sank into cool green depths, his friends swanned close, none but their dead were left behind, he had saved them from slavery, his task was done and now he could rest. . . .
No. The blood streamed out of him, dark to see, bitter to taste. Those were great wounds; he must go ashore where they could be properly stanched, or else join the slain. Likewise others, he saw through tides of murk. Female after female, child after child, had suffered hurt.
“Come,” he did or did not tell them.
They reached the mainland, coughed their lungs clear, and crept from their sea.
No doubt the Venetians too were shaken by the encounter. They kept to galley and hulk for an hour or more. Meanwhile, in their sight, the fugitives cared as best might be for the injured, with moss, cobwebs, woven grass that bound a gash tight.
Once more their lack of soldierliness betrayed that folk. They should have swum off as soon as treatment was done, despite certain loss of the most badly lacerated. Vanimen would have made them do so. But he lay half in a swoon and there was no proper second in command. The rest crouched where they were, frightened, desultorily talking, never agreeing to a single action.