The Valkisian drew the bar, and Carse burst in.
“Carry the wench up to the steersman’s platform,” he panted. “I’ll cut your way.”
He snatched up the sword of Rhiannon and went out again with Boghaz behind him, bearing Ywain in his arms.
The ladder was only a short two paces from the door. The bowmen had come down to fight and there was no one up on the platform but the frightened Sark sailor who clung to the tiller bar. Carse, swinging the great sword, cleared the way and held the ladder foot while Boghaz climbed up and set Ywain on her feet where all could see her.
“Look you!” he bellowed. “We have Ywain!”
He did not need to tell them. The sight of her, bound and gagged in the hands of a slave, was like a blow to the soldiers and like a magic potion to the rebels. Two mingled sounds went up, a groan and a cheer.
Someone found Scyld’s body and dragged it out on deck. Doubly leaderless now, the Sarks lost heart. The tide of battle turned then and the slaves took their advantage in both hands.
The sword of Rhiannon led them. It slashed the halliards that brought the dragon flag of Sark plunging down from the masthead. And under its blade the last Sark soldier died.
There was an abrupt cessation of sound and movement. The black galley drifted with the freshening wind. The sun was low on the horizon. Carse climbed wearily to the steersman’s platform.
Ywain, still fast in Boghaz’s grip, followed him, eyes full of hell-fire.
Carse went to the forward edge of the platform and stood leaning on the sword. The slaves, exhausted with fighting and drunk with victory, gathered on the deck below like a ring of panting wolves.
Jaxart came out from searching the cabins. He shook his dripping blade up at Ywain and shouted, “A fine lover she kept in her cabin! The spawn of Caer Dhu, the stinking Serpent!”
There was an instant reaction from the slaves. They were tense and bristling again at that name, afraid even in their numbers. Carse made his voice heard with difficulty.
“The thing is dead. Jaxart—will you cleanse the ship?”
Jaxart paused before he turned to obey. “How did you know it was dead?”
Carse said, “I killed it.”
The men stared up at him as though he were something more than human. The awed muttering went around—“He slew the Serpent!”
With another man Jaxart returned to the cabin and brought the body out. No word was spoken. A wide lane was cleared to the lee rail and the black, shrouded thing was carried along it, faceless, formless, hidden in its robe and cowl, symbol even in death of infinite evil.
Again Carse fought down that cold repellent fear and the touch of strange anger. He forced himself to watch.
The splash it made as it fell was shockingly loud in the stillness. Ripples spread in little lines of fire and died away.
Then men began to talk again. They began to shout up to Ywain, taunting her. Someone yelled for her blood and there would have been a stampede up the ladder but that Carse threatened them with his long blade.
“No! She’s our hostage and worth her weight in gold.” He did not specify how but he knew the argument would satisfy them for a while. And much as he hated Ywain he somehow did not want to see her torn to pieces by this pack of wild beasts.
He steered their thoughts to another subject.
“We have to have a leader now. Whom will you choose?”
There was only one answer to that. They roared his name until it deafened him, and Carse felt a savage pleasure at the sound of it. After days of torment it was good to know he was a man again, even in an alien world.
When he could make himself heard he said, “All right. Now listen well. The Sarks will kill us by slow death for what we’ve done—if they catch us. So here’s my plan. We’ll join the free rovers, the Sea-Kings who lair at Khondor!”
To the last man they agreed and the name Khondor rang up into the sunset sky.
The Khonds among the slaves were like wild men. One of them stripped a length of yellow cloth from the tunic of a dead soldier, fashioned a banner out of it and ran it up in place of the dragon flag of Sark.
At Carse’s request, Jaxart took over the handling of the galley and Boghaz carried Ywain down again and locked her in the cabin.
The men dispersed, eager to be rid of their shackles, eager to loot the bodies of clothes and weapons and to dip into the wine casks. Only Naram and Shallah remained, looking up at Carse in the afterglow.
“Do you disagree?” he asked them.
Shallah’s eyes glowed with the same eery light that he had seen in them before.
“You are a stranger,” she said softly. “Stranger to us, stranger to our world. And I say again that I can sense a black shadow in you that makes me afraid, for you will cast it wherever you go.”
She turned from him then and Naram said, “We go homeward now.”
The two Swimmers poised for a moment on the rail. They were free now, free of their chains, and their bodies ached with the joy of it, stretching upward, supple, sure. Then they vanished overside.
After a moment Carse saw them again, rolling and plunging like dolphins, racing each other, calling to each other in their soft clear voices as they made the waves foam flame.
Deimos was already high. The afterglow was gone and Phobos came up swiftly out of the east. The sea turned glowing silver. The Swimmers went away toward the west, trailing their wakes of fire, a tracery of sparkling light that grew fainter and vanished altogether.
The black galley stood on for Khondor, her taut sails dark against the sky. And Carse remained as he was, standing on the platform, holding the sword of Rhiannon between his hands.
X. The Sea Kings
Carse was leaning on the rail, watching the sea, when the Sky Folk came. Time and distance had dropped behind the galley. Carse had rested. He wore a clean kilt, he was washed and shaven, his wounds were healing. He had regained his ornaments and the hilt of the long sword gleamed above his left shoulder.
Boghaz was beside him. Boghaz was always beside him. He pointed now to the western sky and said, “Look there.”
Carse saw what he took to be a flight of birds in the distance. But they grew rapidly larger and presently he realized that they were men, or half-men, like the slave with the broken wings.
They were not slaves and their wings stretched wide, flashing in the sun. Their slim bodies, completely naked, gleamed like ivory. They were incredibly beautiful, arrowing down out of the blue.
They had a kinship with the Swimmers. The Swimmers were the perfect children of the sea and these were brother to wind and cloud and the clean immensity of the sky. It was as though some master hand had shaped them both out of separate elements, moulding them in strength and grace that was freed from all the earth-bound clumsiness of men, dreams made into joyous flesh.
Jaxart, who was at the helm, called down to them, “Scouts from Khondor!”
Carse mounted to the platform. The men gathered on the deck to watch as the four Sky Folk came down in a soaring rush.
Carse glanced forward to the sheer of the prow. Lorn, the winged slave, had taken to brooding there by himself, speaking to no one. Now he stood erect and one of the four went to him.
The others came to rest on the platform, folding their bright wings with a whispering rustle.
They greeted Jaxart by name, looking curiously at the long black galley and the hard-bitten mongrel crew that sailed her and, above all, at Carse. There was something in their searching gaze that reminded the Earthman uncomfortably of Shallah.
“Our chief,” Jaxart told them. “A barbarian from the back door of Mars but a man of his hands and no fool, either. The Swimmers will have told the tale, how he took the ship and Ywain of Sark together.”