But it was the mink who was speaking. "We will not let you," it said again, "for yours is a mission of death. And your wisdom fades, Arunis, if you doubt the curse in store for you aboard the Great Ship."
For the first time, and merely for an instant, Arunis looked uncertain. Then he spread his arms and laughed.
"Ramachni Fremken! Rat-wizard of the Sunken Kingdom! Have you come all this way to fight me? Go back to your world, little trickster, and be spared! Alifros is mine!"
Ramachni answered with a soft, single word: "Hegnos."
And Druffle was transformed. He leaped to his feet and drew a cavernous breath, like a man pulled from the depths of the sea. Then his eyes found Arunis and swelled with hate. His hand flashed to his cutlass.
And there it stayed. Arunis raised his own hand and Druffle froze, rigid as ice, the blade half drawn from its sheath.
"Yes," said Ramachni, "I have freed his mind from your charms. And Mr. Druffle has nursed his hatred of you through months of magical slavery. He will plunge that blade into your heart the moment you tire of that holding spell."
Arunis shrugged. "Why should I tire?" And with one hand he pushed Druffle overboard.
In the unnatural stillness Druffle fell like a log. But he did not float like one, although by strange good fortune his face was the last part of him submerged. Men shouted: "Save him! Dive, somebody!" But not a sailor moved.
Hercуl thrust Ramachni into Thasha's hands and leaped to the rail. But someone beat him to the jump. Neeps was over the side, dropping first onto a cannon jutting from its gunport, then dangling from its stock. He was still over forty feet above the tabletop-flat sea when he let go. Pazel thought he had never looked so small.
He struck the water some twenty feet from Druffle, vanished for a terrible moment, then surfaced again, swimming toward the motionless smuggler. Pazel gasped with relief. Soon Neeps' arm was around Druffle's neck. Fiffengurt tossed a life preserver, and put four men on the line to haul them aboard.
Arunis did not waste a glance on Neeps or Druffle. He pulled at one oar, turning the lifeboat in a circle until the stern with the Volpek war-shield faced the Chathrand. Then he leaned over the black cloth, and with a sharp tug pulled it aside. The men of the Chathrand gasped. Not a few turned away in revulsion.
The boat was half full of body parts. Feet, fingers, whole hands. Gore-covered ribs, bloated heads. The gulls screamed: clearly this was what had drawn them, and created the terrible stench.
"Those are Volpek faces," whispered Thasha.
The dead flesh lay piled on a second cloth, spread on the floor of the boat. Arunis bent low over the stinking mass, mumbling to himself. Then he drew up the four corners of the cloth and tied them together, like some hideous picnic bundle.
"Take them!" he shrieked.
The water-weird rose, spinning like a miniature cyclone, and lifted the mass. For a moment the weight appeared too much for the creature-it was only wind and rain, after all-but then it gathered itself and gave a mighty heave. The bundle spun upward along the Chathrand's flank. Men ducked; the bundle just cleared the rail, and with a last rush of speed burst horribly against the mainmast.
Scraps of dead men fell all about them. Pazel had never dreamed of a sight so foul. But what would it accomplish? The crew was disgusted, nothing more.
Ramachni knew, though. "Into the sea! Into the sea!" he cried. "Toss it all overboard, quickly, instantly!"
Leaping to the deck, he bit into a severed hand, and with a snap of his body flung it over the rail. Hercуl joined in at once. Thasha and the tarboys, revolted as they were, did the same. But the sailors hesitated. Were they taking orders from a weasel now?
"Do as he says, f'Rin's sake!" howled Fiffengurt, diving into the gory task. A few men followed his lead. But the Volpeks' remains were everywhere-snagged in the rigging, dangling from block and chain and cleat, kicked under tarps and equipment.
Sea-rotted flesh is ugly, but what came next was loathsome beyond words. The heads and limbs and digits began to grow, and melt, and squirm with life. Men dropped what they held, screaming. Body parts flopped about the deck like fish. Then all at once they were men. Not normal men, but full-sized Volpek corpses, bloodless and pale.
"Fleshancs!" cried Lady Oggosk. "He's turned his own dead warriors into fleshancs! Ay Midrala, we're doomed!"
The first monster to gain its feet rose just in front of Mr. Swellows. The bosun did not even try to run. He looked truly petrified with fear, and the fleshanc reached out rather slowly and crushed his throat with one hand. In ghastly silence, white shapes tumbled one after another from Swellows' open shirt, to bounce like walnuts on the deck: ixchel skulls, slipping from his broken necklace.
When Swellows' lifeless body followed with a thump, four hundred sailors fled for their lives. How many fleshancs there were none could say-perhaps thirty, perhaps twice that number-but the fear they produced was overwhelming. Sailors leaped for hatches; one threw himself into the waves. Even Drellarek's warriors looked terrified.
"Stand and fight!" bellowed Rose, hefting a boarding axe. But most of his officers had already fled, and more fleshancs had sprung to life in the rigging and were climbing down. Uskins ran to the back of the quarterdeck and crouched behind the flag locker, as if he hoped no one would notice him there. Fiffengurt stood his ground, but one swing of a Volpek fist sent him sprawling.
Then Hercуl and Drellarek charged. The battle was joined in earnest, and the two warriors fought side by side, thrusting and hacking with all their might. A number of Drellarek's men rallied at his call, and some of the fiercest sailors with them. But the fleshancs were incredibly strong. A blow from their hand was like the cuff of a bear, and their grip could shatter bone and iron.
Far below in the lifeboat, Arunis stood perfectly still.
Pazel and Admiral Isiq were hauling desperately at the lifeline; the men assigned to it had let Neeps and Druffle plunge back into the sea. Chadfallow drew off the fleshancs nearest them, laying at the creatures with a heavy chain. Ramachni seemed to be everywhere at once. With mink speed he leaped from rail to rigging to monster's face, tearing out their eyes with his little claws. And when other fleshancs closed for the kill on a fallen man, Ramachni gave an earsplitting cry and gestured with one paw, and the monster flew across the deck as if struck by a cannonball. But after each such spell Ramachni looked weaker, and soon he was gasping for breath.
A few feet from Pazel, Thasha was fighting as never before. Soldiers were down, sailors down: even as she looked another was stomped lifeless beneath a fleshanc's heel. It was clear the monsters felt no pain whatsoever, and they did not bleed. You could stab them and accomplish nothing. You could even (as she managed with one particularly lucky swing) cut off an arm, and still the fleshanc would not stop. It merely seized its severed limb and used it like a club.
Her dogs fared better than she. Old they were, but battle had restored the berserk vigor of their youth. Slavering, they leaped and battered and ripped at the fleshancs, dismembering any hand that sought them. But Thasha knew their strength could not last.
The victims mounted. Those still fighting stumbled over the corpses of their friends. She saw Ramachni falter in a leap, his forepaws slippery with blood.
On her right a man gave a hideous scream: a fleshanc was crushing him against the sharp edge of a provisions crate. Leaving her own foe, Thasha hurled herself against the creature. The sailor lurched away, but Thasha fell, and the fleshanc landed atop her.