It seemed that she also recognized Blade. Her eyes widened, and for a moment it looked as though she would raise the spear and hurl it at him. Then with a graceful twist and dive she leaped from the creature's back into the sea. A bolt plunged through the bubbles in her wake, and Blade stiffened, wondering if she had been hit. Then his ax came down again. With a crackling, slithering noise, the last scales holding the yulon's neck together parted and the severed neck slid over the side, following the body down. Only the head was left aboard Mistress.
The collapse of their strongest attack seemed to take the spirit out of the Fishmen. They drew back almost out of archery range and swam aimlessly around Mistress, just below the surface. Only the woman remained close in, swimming slowly and gracefully, as if daring the sailors to hit her. Occasionally she would turn on her back and mockingly display her superb breasts. Blade hoped she would break off this dangerous game before one of his shipmates got lucky. He himself could no more have shot at her than he could have shot at Svera.
Eventually the woman got tired of her game. With another graceful flip she upended and went arrowing away into the depths. The other Fishmen followed her. There was a final flurry of water as the drivers of the yulon-drawn chariot put their team in motion. Then the seas spread calm and empty around Mistress. For the first time in hours, her crew could sit down in peace, breathe in comfort, and relax.
Blade was still too keyed up to sit down. The fight and the tantalizing glimpse of the woman had left him weary but still excited, frustrated, and curious. He strode up and down the main deck like a caged animal, swinging his eyes around the horizon.
Gainful had now burned almost to the water's edge. There was nothing left of her but a smoldering hulk heaving to the swell. As Blade watched, she dipped still lower. Then a hiss and a cloud of steam rolled across the water. By the time the steam had rolled away, there was no sign of Gainful except a patch of dirty water pocked with wreckage and bubbles.
Now a breeze sprang up. Mistress's sails began to swell out, and the water began to chuckle and gurgle at her bow as she gained way. Slowly her crew came back to life, as the breeze dried the sweat and blood on their skins. They began to move about, cleaning up their ship and counting the losses among their shipmates. Out of a crew of forty men, five were dead, three were dying, and eleven more or less wounded or battered. The only ones who seemed to have any strength left were Captain Foyn, the bosun, and Blade himself. But gradually these three were able to put some of their own energy into the crew.
Two hours after the last merman had vanished into the crystal seas, Blade and Foyn were standing on the forecastle again. Mistress was running before a freshening breeze, heading east for Cities, which now lay only some eighty miles beyond the horizon. But Foyn's face was grim. Grim, that is, for a sailor on his way home. Not grim for a captain who has just lost part of his crew and nearly lost his ship.
What made Foyn particularly grim was not the attack itself as much as the unexpected form of it.
«It's long been thought that the yulons were beyond taming. But the Fishmen seem to have managed it, and without our hearing a single word of it until now. They must have been saving up this surprise for a really big attack. They could have sent hundreds of those monsters and thousands of their warriors into the western seas.» He hesitated, then swallowed. «Perhaps even against the Cities themselves, the Goddess defend us!» He licked weather-beaten lips, then turned to Blade.
«Don't mention any of this to Svera, will you? I don't think she'd pass it on to her friends. But it would frighten her, and I don't want her frightened.»
Blade wished he could believe that. But it was obvious from his tone of voice that Captain Foyn did not entirely trust his daughter. Love her, no doubt, but trust her? It was equally obvious that the voyage to the Sea Cities of Talgar wasn't solving any of the mysteries of this dimension. In fact, it seemed to be adding to them very fast.
Chapter FIVE
Before noon they came up with a convoy of two more merchant vessels and three fishing boats. One of the merchant vessels had also beaten off an attack by trained yulons of the Fishmen. All had seen the burning and sinking hulks of other ships and boats. It was obvious that Captain Foyn was right. An immense force of Fishmen was at large in the seas to the west of Talgar, taking a dreadful toll of the Cities' ships and sailors.
Mistress sailed on. Her crew went about their duties armed to the teeth. The lookouts were doubled, and extra weapons piled ready at hand. All six ships clapped on as much sail as they could carry in the freshening wind. The convoy rolled forward as the sea rose in whitecaps, sails taut and rigging thrumming in the wind.
Svera came up to Blade as he stood by the railing amidships and slid her arm through his. Her face was pale and her wide eyes were for once completely blank of expression. Blade could feel her trembling slightly. He pulled her gently against him and murmured in her ear, «Don't worry, Svera. We'll be in port by nightfall. I don't think the Fishmen will attack when we're moving this fast, anyway.»
He felt her nod. Then she said in a small voice, «But what made them do this? What have we done to make them attack us like this? It must have been terrible.»
Fortunately the wind whipped Svera's words away unheard by any of the sailors. Blade knew what they would have said to her for remarks like that, after losing so many shipmates to the Fishmen. Even he wasn't sure anymore whether war to the death wasn't the only choice the Sea Cities had. Certainly the Fishmen hadn't shown themselves very peace-minded.
Six ships driving eastward in convoy must indeed have been too formidable a target for the Fishmen. Certainly no one aboard the ships saw any signs of the Fishmen or their tame monsters that afternoon. The wind held steady. As the setting sun spread gold and orange across the sea to the west, the lookouts called down, «Cities, ho!» Aboard Mistress the cheers were deafening-but no louder than the cheers aboard the other five ships. Blade could hear those clearly over the sounds of the wind and the sea.
Three hours later, Mistress and her companions were dropping anchor in the lee of the Merchant's City. This time the sounds that rose from the ships' decks were sighs of relief.
Boats promptly swarmed out from the piers and docks of the City. Some of them carried armed and armored fighting men; others carried only the curious. From the questions and answers that flew back and forth, Blade began to realize the scale of the merpeople's attack on the Sea Cities.
There were six of the Cities, each nearly a mile on a side and all anchored in shallow water in the lee of the southern tip of the island of Talgar. All but a few of the quarter-million people lived aboard the Six Cities, for the Talgarans were ill at ease on land. Only enough free Talgarans to supervise the slave gangs in the forests and mines lived on the island itself.
Of the Six Cities, the Fishmen had attacked three. They had of course been beaten off before they had pushed more than a few hundred yards inland. But for that distance they had killed and burned and destroyed everything and everybody they could. Over a thousand people lay dead or dying in the Cities tonight, in return for barely two hundred of the enemy.
Equally surprising, if less destructive, was the attack on the island itself. The Fishmen had actually dared to come out of the water and attack the camps, slaying the guards and releasing more than half the slaves. The mines and logging camps would be paralyzed until these slaves were recaptured or replaced. That would be a long grim task, but a necessary one. Without the food and timber from the Island, the Sea Cities could neither feed their people nor repair and replace their ships.