Collected Short Fiction, page 370
Theseus touched the gleaming gold-and-silver inlay that covered the hilt of the Falling Star.
“Not so long as I am your elected captain, Gamecock,” he said soberly. “I joined your ship, a year ago, because the pirates are the only men in the world who defy the magic and the fleets of Crete. Even the great Pharaoh flatters Minos, and sends him gifts of silver and black slaves and apes.”
Cyron looked up at the taller, clean-shaven Achean, with a look of uneasy admiration.
“I know you have done mighty deeds, Captain Firebrand,” he said, “for the stories follow you. I know that you have destroyed savage animals, and slain outlaws and tyrants, and fought the men of far lands.
But aren’t your deeds great enough to rest upon? Must you make war against the wizards, and earn the anger of the very gods?”
The red head of Theseus nodded slowly, and his face was very grave. “I must,” he said. “For always I have fought the enemies of men. And the greatest enemy is not the man-hunting animals, nor outlaws, nor barbarian tribes. It is not lurking in the wilderness, but it rules in the heart of the greatest city!”
His hard fingers drew the steel half out of its scabbard. “The greatest enemy is magic, Gamecock. It is the wizardry of Crete that enslaves the world. Even in the tents of the desert, men cower in fear before a talisman that bears the double ax of Minos.” His tense face had turned a little white. “All nations send a tribute of boys and girls to be trained for the cruel games at Knossos. Even my own Attica is subject to Minos—my own father, at Athens, must kneel to the Cretan resident, and send gifts to the Dark One.”
His breath made a sharp angry sound. “The wizardry of Knossos is a dark serpent that coils about the spirits of men,” he said bitterly. “The cruel sea-power of Minos is enforced with fear of the Dark One.”
The sword flashed clear of the scabbard. “Well, Gamecock—Minos and the Dark One must be destroyed!”
CYRON clutched the bronzed sword arm, desperately. “Hush, captain!” he gasped apprehensively. “That is blasphemy—and the ears and the horns of the Dark One are long!” He caught his breath. “You misunderstand us, Captain Firebrand. It is true that we are pirates, true that piracy is against the law of Minos. But, until you joined us, we had preyed only upon the shipping of Egypt and Tiryns and suchlike rivals of Crete—so that the captains of Minos winked at us.”
“But now,” Theseus reminded him, “I am your elected captain.”
“And a good one—if you would forget this madness of a one-man war against the wizardry of Crete,” Cyron yielded. “This bronze beak you built upon the galley has already sunk a dozen ships for us.” Grimly, Theseus shook his head. “I invented the ram to destroy the power of Minos,” he said slowly. “But, alone, it isn’t enough. Great Ekoros, they say, and even the palace of Knossos itself, have no defensive walls. But that Cretan priest boasted to me—before I cut his lying throat—that the power of Minos is guarded by three walls.
“First there is the fleet, that they call the wooden wall. And then, the priest said, there is a giant of living brass, named Talos—he is the second wall.”
Cyron plucked uncomfortably at his beard. “I have heard of Talos,” he agreed apprehensively. “He is twice the height of a man, and so fleet of foot that he runs around all Crete in a day. He crushes his enemies in his arms, and roasts them against the hot metal of his body. I shall never touch that isle of evil!”
“Unless the Cretans take you there, to feed their Dark One!” Theseus grinned at him. “Then there is another barrier about the power of Minos, that is called the third wall.” He stared at the far black sails. “The ram will break the wooden wall, perhaps. But there are still two more to pass.”
Cyron pulled the purple cloak defensively about him. “All the walls of Crete,” he declared, “are better left alone!”
“We shall see.” Theseus smiled again, and a tanned thumb tried his sword. “You had better find your spurs, Gamecock. The Cretans are turning to meet us!”
THESEUS WALKED aft, giving orders and grinning encouragement to the archers climbing to the foredeck, the boarding party waiting with their grapnels in the waist, the slingers on the cabin, the one-eyed cook, Vorkos, coughing over his pots of boiling sulphur. He felt the sharp unease that chilled them all, like a freezing wind.
“Ready, men!” he shouted. “Are you afraid of an old man’s muttering? There is a magic in hot blood and good bronze that is stronger than all the wizardry of Minos. Our beak would sink the galley of Admiral Phaistro himself.” He flourished his sword in a glittering circle. “And the Falling Star has an enchantment stronger than the Dark One. It was hammered from metal that fell from heaven. You have seen it sever blades of bronze. If you fear the wizards, you are already conquered. If you don’t, their power can’t touch you! Now, will you follow me?”
He waited, concealing his anxiety.
“Aye, Captain Firebrand!” The shout rang from half a hundred throats. “We will follow you!”
But he. heard the doubt, the dread, that lingered in it. He knew that these pirates, boldest men as they were of a dozen northern coasts, still shared Cyron’s awe of the wizardry of Crete. They would follow—but not all the way.
It came to Theseus that he stood all alone against the gods of Crete. And even in his own heart was a small, cold fear. For he had met magicians, and he knew that they possessed undeniable powers.
He was glad when the ships came into fighting range. Singing a bold song, the sailors quickly lowered the square red sheet, unshipped the mast. The first flight of arrows flashed out from the Cretan archers, and fell short in the water.
The Mycenean cursed, and his black whip cracked, and red sweat ran down the backs of the slaves in their pit. Theseus called brief orders to Gothung, the tall blond steersman. And the pirate galley swept in toward the Cretans.
The Cretan officers followed conventional tactics. They raced down upon the quarters of the pirate. Then, at the last moment, their slaves shipped the exposed banks of oars.
The object of the maneuver was to bring the ships together in a glancing collision, shearing off unshipped oars and crushing the enemy’s rowers with their shattering ends, and then grapple for boarding.
But Theseus snapped quick orders to the Mycenean slave driver and the gigantic Northman at the steering oars. The pirate swept aside from the path of the racing Cretans, and came about in a swift, puzzling curve.
The two Cretans, briefly helpless with oars shipped, crashed together. Before their slaves, screaming to the whips, could thrust them apart, the pirate drove with flashing oars against the side of the nearest. The bronze ram ripped through the planking, below the waterline.
THE CRETAN archers loosed a storm of arrows. Slung stones hummed, burning sulphur made a suffocating reek. A gang of Cretan marines flung grapnel hooks, then crouched waiting with their nets and tridents to swarm aboard.
But their roof of shields protected the pirates on the narrow bow. Axes severed the grapnel lines, and straining slaves backed the galley.
The bronze beak retreated, and water poured into the Cretan galley. It listed sluggishly, a wave poured over the heavy prow, and it went down with chained slaves shrieking at the oars. Armor-laden men struggled briefly in the foaming sea.
The other Cretan, meantime, had dipped her oars again. Before the pirate could move forward once more, the two long galleys veered together. Theseus shouted an order for the slaves on the exposed side to draw in their oars.
The hulls crashed. Grapnels caught and ropes whipped tight. Bows twanged and slung stones drummed on shields. Smoke of sulphur and cordage and human flesh made a choking stench.
“Board them!” shouted Theseus. “Sixty shekels of silver to the first man over the rail!”
“Aye, Captain Firebrand!”
Cyron, the dark-bearded Dorian, clutching sword and shield, leaped to the low rail of the pirate. For an instant he stood there, his voice lifted in a battle cry. Then abruptly the cry was cut short. lie stood petrified.
Upon the lofty after cabin of the Cretan, there had suddenly appeared a swarthy Minoan priest, wrapped in a long black sacerdotal robe. Above the uproar of the battle, his voice lifted in a wailing chant.
At first he used the secret priestly tongue, while his thin hands lifted a silver vessel that was shaped like a bull’s head, and poured its foaming red contents into the sea. Then he changed to the common Cretan language, that Theseus had learned long ago from the traders who came to Athens.
“O great Minos,” he wailed, “whose years are twenty generations, who is god of all the world! O great Cybele, mother of Earth and Minos and Men, whose dwelling is the most beauteous Ariadne! O great Dark One, whose name may not be uttered, who art bull and man and god! O great gods of Knossos, destroy these vermin who molest your faithful slaves!
“Bright sword of Minos, strike!”
The black priest held high the red-dripping vessel. And down from the silver horns leaped a blade of blue fire. Thunder crashed deafeningly. And Cyron, sword and shield slipping from his limp hands, dropped loose-limbed back to the pirate’s deck.
II.
THE WHOLE BATTLE had halted, to await the climax of the black priest’s invocation. That strange bolt broke a breathless hush, and then Theseus heard the triumphant shout of the Cretans. He heard the groan of anguish and terror that ran among the pirates, saw them falter before the swift massing of the Cretan marines. He caught his breath, and lifted the bright steel sword.
“Follow me!” he shouted. “Follow the Falling Star—and stop the cowardly wizardry of Minos!”
He flung aside his heavy 8-shaped shield, too heavy for swift action. Bronze body stripped to the loins, he raced across the narrow deck. A hissing arrow brushed his hair, and a stone stung his arm. The bright sword deflected another arrow, and he leaped from the deck.
His feet spurned the rail. He leaped again from the roof of shields that covered a squad of crouching lancers, and stood upon the high cabin’s roof. His naked sword menaced the black Minoan priest, and his voice pealed out: “Where now is the magic of Minos?”
He watched savage el at ton turn to terror in the smoky eyes of the priest. He saw the dark flash of cunning in them, and glimpsed thin hands pressing quickly on the eyes of the bull’s-head vessel.
His sword flashed. He heard a crackling sound, and saw a flash of blue, and caught a stinging odor. But the red-dripping silver vessel pitched out of dying hands into the sea. Severed clean, the priest’s head followed it.
“Come!” shouted Theseus. “Follow the Falling Star!”
He leaped down from the cabin, in the rear of the Cretan boarders. His steel parried an arrow, and cleft the archer’s throat. He snatched a bull-hide shield from a dying lancer, and his sword slipped hilt-deep through another.
“Come on!” his deep voice pealed. “For the priest of the Dark One is dead!”
Under the eye of the limping Tirynthian cook, four men hurled a pot of blazing sulphur from a net. It spread blue choking flame. The Cretans stumbled back, some of them shrieking in agony. And the pirates swarmed after them, drove them against the busy sword of Theseus.
The galley was taken—but briefly, for the unquenchable sulphur flames swiftly recaptured it. The pirates retreated from the asphyxiating blaze, with such weapons and other loot as they could snatch. Theseus ordered the galley rammed, to end the screaming agony of the chained slaves, and then turned to pursue the yellow-sailed trader.
Now, after the battle was ended, he had a sudden sick awareness of the small margin by which death had passed him by. His arm was bleeding where the stone had stung him, and he found a long red mark across his ribs, where some point had thrust.
And the Falling Star trembled in his hands, as he had time to recall the strange bolt that had struck down Cyron. Uneasily he remembered the rumors that Minos ruled the lightning. His own dread of the wizardry of Knossos was not all conquered.
“Poor old Gamecock!” he whispered. “Perhaps you were right. Perhaps a man cannot defy the gods.”
He dropped on his knees beside the bearded Dorian. He saw the tiny smoke that lifted from a smoldering spot on the stiff splendor of Cyron’s beaded cloak; traced the long red burn, branching like a tree, that scarred the pirate’s sword arm.
“The warlocks have a power,” he muttered. “But you will be avenged, Gamecock.” His lean jaw was hard. “Because I’m going on until I die—or until the gods of Crete have fallen!”
“Stay, Captain Firebrand!” Cyron gulped a long breath and opened his eyes. He sat up weakly on the deck, and his trembling fingers clutched desperately at the arm of Theseus. But Theseus was staring at his eyes. They were filmed and distended with horror.
“Forget your mad ambition, Captain Firebrand!” begged the choked dry voice of Cyron. “For I have felt the magic of Minos, and now I know the power of the Dark One—and it is a terrible power!”
“I know that it is terrible,” Theseus told him gravely. “That is the reason that it must be destroyed.” He grinned, and lifted Cyron to his feet. “You’re a tough one, Gamecock! I thought you were dead.”
“Almost,” whispered the pirate, “I wish I were!”
The trader was a broad ship, deeply burdened, with but seven oars on the side to aid her huge square sail. The pirate, with red sail set again and oars dipping briskly, swiftly overhauled her.
A flight of arrows winged toward the pirate. But the trader carried no more than a score of freemen, to handle arms and sail. When Theseus promised to set them all alive upon the nearest land, her captain surrendered.
“A strange name you have made, Captain Firebrand!” commented Cyron. “There was never another pirate in these waters whose word would take a ship!”
“It isn’t men I hate,” Theseus told him. “It is the warlocks and gods of evil. We will set the captain and his men ashore on the headland, and leave them food and arms.”
“A strange pirate, indeed!” Cyron grunted.
As the yellow sail had indicated, the trader belonged to the merchant fleet of Amur the Hittite, whose house had become great under the protection of Minos. Her captain was a hawk-nosed, sallow-cheeked nephew of Amur himself. It seemed to Theseus that he had accepted capture with a curious and almost alarming indifference.
The trader proved a rich prize. It was laden with gold and tin from the mines on the far northern rivers, and amber and hides and furs. In a narrow pen on the foredeck were three huge wild bulls from the plains of Thessaly. And lying fettered in the cabins were twelve strong youths and twelve tall, graceful girls, all blond-haired people of the north.
Besides the slave girls, there was another woman found unfettered in the Hittite captain’s cabin—such a woman as none of the pirates had ever seen. Her skin was the color of gold, her dark smoldering eyes almond-shaped and queerly slanted.
She was dragged out upon the deck with the rest, to await her lot in the partition of the loot. As the pirate smiths drew her hands behind her and riveted slave fetters to her slim yellow wrists, she stood tall almost as a man, looking past her captors with a proud contempt.
“She’s a queen!” whispered Cyron. “There was never such a woman!”
He joined the eager pirates that ringed her, staring with an unfeigned admiration. Pillared elaborately upon her proud head, her hair was black and lustrous. Her golden throat and her arms gleamed with jewels of green jade. A torn gown of sheer crimson silk hid few curves of her tall yellow body.
When the one-eyed Tirynthian, who was also the cook, had done hammering the last rivet, he pushed her roughly. She fell, and her bare yellow knees were bruised on the deck. But she uttered no cry of pain, and in spite of the fetters she came back to her feet with a sinuous grace. Her long burning eyes came slowly to one-eyed Vorkos.
“You are now the masters!” She spoke the Cretan tongue, with a limpid singsong accent. “But I am Tai Leng, a princess of far Cathay. I have a talisman of vision, and now I see the angry hand of Minos hanging like a black cloud over you.”
Her smoldering eyes swept over the pirate crew, and her proud, yellow shoulders made a little careless shrug. “Before the sun is set,” warned her silken tones, “the greatest of you will be a prisoner in the power of Crete.”
The one-eyed Tirynthian retreated uneasily, muttering that she was a sorceress and ought therefore to be burned alive. But Cyron hastily objected that no woman so beautiful should be wasted, even so, and the division of the spoil went on.
This partition was made by a method the pirates had devised. White shells were counted out to each man, according to his rank and valor. Then the metal ingots, the slaves, and the other lots of plunder, were auctioned off for shells.
The golden woman went high. Got hung, the blond steersman, organized a group of men to make a collective bid. Cyron offered all his share of shells, a heavy golden belt, and a fine silver bracelet. Finally, adding his precious purple cloak, he bought her.
While the auction was still in progress on the trader, Theseus took the Hittite captain and his men aboard the pirate, and set them safely on the headland as he had promised. Still he was puzzled about the captain. His beady eyes had watched the division of his cargo with apparent unconcern. And they flickered now and then, Theseus had noticed, ever so briefly toward the southwest.
Southwest was the direction of Knossos.
WHEN THESEUS went back aboard the prize, he found Cyron standing on the foredeck, staring anxiously in the same direction. The bearded pirate turned with a start.
“Captain Firebrand!” His voice was hoarse. “It is time for us to go. For I have spoken with the yellow girl I bought. And she laughed at me and promised me that tonight will end her captivity. The magic of Minos will rescue her, she says.”
His voice dropped apprehensively. “The wizards of Knossos, the yellow girl says, have seen all that has happened. Minos will send a fleet, she says. Through the power of the Dark One, he will make a fair wind to speed the fleet. And he can even make a storm, she told me, to drive us back into the teeth of danger!” Shuddering, Cyron looked fearfully into the southwest.
