Into the Thinking Kingdoms (33 page)
Read Into the Thinking Kingdoms Online
Authors: Alan Dean Foster
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #FIC009000
As for Ehomba, he could only sit in silence and wonder at the swordsman’s motivations. While he could understand the opportunistic Simna’s desire to employ every means at his disposal to try to save himself, the herdsman would have preferred it did not involve digging a deeper grave for the sole local representative of the Naumkib, who were not present to speak in their own defense.
Simna wove more and more detail into his story, one moment gazing imploringly heavenward, the next pointing a trembling arm in Ehomba’s direction. Walking up behind the herdsman, he began beating him about the head and shoulders as he spoke, belaboring the bound southerner with insults and accusations as well as solid, unrelenting blows. Beckwith watched expressionlessly while bin Grue gnawed nervously at his cigar and wondered what the swordsman was going to do for a big finish.
It came soon enough. As he returned to stand between the two heavyset guards, Simna’s voice rose to a shout, a climax of indignation and outrage. “Look at him, sitting there! Do you see any remorse written on his face? Do you see any hint, any suggestion of apologia for what he’s done? No! That’s how he always is. Stone-faced, devoid of expression, unchanging whether picking a man’s mind or taking his life. He deserves to die! I would kill him myself for what he’s done to me, but I am unarmed.” Reaching back, he gave the slightly nearer of the two guards a strong shove in the herdsman’s direction.
“Go on, get it done, execute him now! I want to see his blood run! I deserve to see it!” When the guard hesitated, Simna pushed the other one forward, shoving insistently. “Show me his head rolling on the floor.”
“Simna ibn Sind, you are a faithless and unprincipled man!” Belying the swordsman’s accusations, Ehomba’s face contorted in a rictus of anger and betrayal. “You will die a lonely and miserable death that fully reflects your worthless life!”
“Probably,” the swordsman retorted, “but not just yet.” Whereupon he bolted, quick as a cobra, in the opposite direction. Both guards turned and grabbed for him, but having been shoved several steps forward, the wily Simna had put them just out of reach.
Half-somnolent troops instantly scrambled to block the nearest exits. Others rushed to protect the Count. Startled by all the sudden activity, decorative drifting fish darted confusedly to and fro. Another dozen soldiers rushed the agile swordsman. They lowered or drew their own weapons as the frantic Simna scrabbled madly at his and Ehomba’s pile of personal belongings. His fingers wrapping around a sword hilt, he pulled it free and threw it not at the grim-faced, oncoming soldiers, but toward his companion.
“Hoy, bruther! Bring down a piece of the sky on this ungrateful place! Conjure forth the wind that rushes between the stars and blow these knaves through their precious walls! Litter the floor with their skeletons as the star wind tears the flesh from their bones!”
Slipping free of the ropes that had restrained him, which Simna’s supple fingers had astutely undone in between beating the herdsman madly about the head and body, Ehomba rose in time to catch the tumbling sword by its haft. There was only one problem with the swordsman’s bold and bloodthirsty admonitions.
It was the wrong sword.
Instead of the sharp blade fashioned of gray sky metal, in his haste and confusion Simna had snatched up the herdsman’s other sword, the one made of bone lined with serrated, triangular sharks’ teeth. A fearsome and efficacious weapon to be sure, but not one that could by any stretch of anyone’s imagination bring down so much as an errant rain cloud. It was a thing of the sea, not of the sky.
Having taken up his own sword subsequent to flinging the weapon to Ehomba, the rueful swordsman realized his mistake. “Hoy, I’m sorry, bruther.” Sword held in both hands, he was backing away from the advancing semicircle of soldiers. A sword was not of much use against pikes, but he was determined to sell his life as dearly as possible. If naught else, at least he would go down with a weapon in his hand and no shackles on his wrists and ankles. They would die like men and not like mad dogs.
“Nothing to be sorry for, friend Simna.” Ehomba held the tooth-lined sword high overhead, its sharpened tip pointed at the tense but unconcerned soldiers. “There are fish everywhere in this place, so what better weapon to fight with than one that owes its edge to the sea?”
“Kill them!” It was the curt voice of Haramos bin Grue, declaiming from behind a line of blue-coated troops. “Kill them now, before he . . . !”
Hidden on his throne, Bewaryn Beckwith could be heard responding querulously, and for the first time, with a hint of suspicion in his voice. “Before he—what, Haramos?”
It was a question Simna ibn Sind was asking silently. Nearby, Ahlitah was awake and roaring, adding to the sense of incipient chaos. Emerging from his gloom, Hunkapa Aub had straightened and was shaking the metal mesh of his netting with terrifying violence.
A blue aurora had enveloped the blade of the sea-bone sword. It was dark as the deep ocean, tinged with green, and smelled of salt. At the sight of it the advancing soldiers halted momentarily. From the dais, their liege’s voice urged them on.
“What are you waiting for?” Bewaryn Beckwith bellowed. “They are only two and you are many. Take them! Alive if possible—otherwise if not.”
One of the two thickly muscled guards who had been duped by Simna stepped forward, holding his heavy sword threateningly out in front of him. His voice was that of reason, not anger.
“This is senseless. Why disgrace yourselves by spilling blood inside the palace? You should meet your fate with dignity.” Holding his blade at the ready, he extended his other hand. “Give up your weapons.”
“Look!” one of the men behind him shouted. An uncomfortable susurration rippled through the contracting circle of soldiers.
Something was emerging from the point of the herdsman’s sword. Gray on top, white on the bottom, it swelled massively as it expanded away from the bone. It looked like a giant bicolored drop of milk oozing out of nothingness parallel to the floor. As it continued to increase in size it began to grow individual features, like a closed flower sprouting petals. And it just kept getting bigger and bigger.
The ornamental floating fish in the reception hall identified it before any of the soldiers. They vanished through open doors as if propelled by lightning and not fins, evaporating streaks of yellow and orange, red and gold. In one case they literally flew through a squad of blue-clad reinforcements hurrying to the chamber. It was as if they had not fled, but vaporized.
The gray-white mass grew fins of its own, and a great, sickle-like tail. A pair of black eyes manifested themselves. They were jet black and without visible pupils. All of these details were ignored by those in the room as they focused on a single predominant feature: the mouth.
It was enormous, capable of swallowing a person in a single swallow. Multiple rows of gleaming white, triangular teeth lined the interior of that imposing cavity. Their edges were serrated on both sides of the sharp point, like steak knives. The largest was more than three inches long. It was a peerless mouth, unlike anything else in all the undersea kingdom. When viewed from straight on, jaws and teeth combined to form a uniquely terrifying smile.
The great white shark broke free of the tip of the bone sword and drifted toward the assembled soldiers. Several broke and ran, but the rest bravely held their ground, their long pikes extended. A second gray-white teardrop shape was beginning to emerge from the weapon. If anything, it promised to be larger than its predecessor.
One of the soldiers thrust his pike at the looming predator. Extending its jaws beyond its lips, the great white ate it. Left holding a length of useless wood, the soldier sensibly threw it away, turned, and sprinted for the nearest door.
“Hold your ground!” Bewaryn Beckwith commanded from the vicinity of his throne. “Fight back! They are only fish, like the ones you see every day on the streets of the city.”
The Count of Laconda North was half right. They were only fish, but they were most assuredly not like the ones the soldiers saw every day. They were not decorative, they were not inoffensive, and they were hungry. And now there were three of them, with a fourth on the way as the fecund sword gave birth yet again.
To their credit, the soldiers responded to the appeal of their liege. They tried to encircle two of the sharks and attack with their long pikes. Several thrusts struck home, and droplets of red shark blood spilled in slow motion to the floor. But the wounds only enraged the sharks. With their great curved tails propelling them explosively through the air, they snapped at whatever happened to come within reach, be it pike, soldier, or unfortunate furniture.
One great white the soldiers probably could have contained. Two and then three forced them into a holding action. When the sixth emerged full grown from Ehomba’s sword, the reception hall dissolved into general blood and chaos.
Soldiers broke and fled, pursued by unrelenting carnivorous torpedoes. The fortunate escaped down corridors of panic while their slower, less agile comrades were actively dismembered. It was not long before limbs littered the floor and the fine furnishings and papered walls were splashed with crimson. Convoyed by a close-packed detachment of desperate soldiers, Bewaryn Beckwith, Count of Laconda North, escaped through a secret bolt-hole located behind the throne dais. Many members of his escort were not as lucky.
As for Haramos bin Grue, he attempted to flee along with the Count, only to find himself shoved roughly back into the bloody pandemonium that had enveloped the hall. As his guard kept them separated, Beckwith had just enough time to shout a passing farewell before ducking to safety.
“Not a sorcerer, Haramos? You lied to me about that. Could it be that you lied also about how my son died?”
“No, sire—believe me, I told the truth!” Despite the fact that he was unarmed save for a pair of small concealed knives, the merchant resisted the soldiers. But it was hard to fight with someone when there was a foot of sharp blade and six feet of wooden shaft between you and your opponent. Such was the advantage of the steel-tipped pike.
“That is the murderer, down there! That uncouth, uncivilized southerner. And he is no sorcerer, by his own word! Though I admit to being fooled by the sorceral devices he carries with him.”
“You are right about one thing.” Beckwith paused as he crouched to pass beneath the low overhang of the escape portal. His guard fought to keep a curious great white away from their Count. “Someone here is being fooled. I wish I had the time to sort it out.” He hurried into the concealed passageway. One by one, his soldiers tried to follow him. Many succeeded. Others lost limbs and, in a couple of cases, their heads to the rampaging shark.
Falling back, bin Grue pressed himself against the wall and began to make his way toward the nearest exit, edging steadily away from the royal dais. Before him was being played out an unparalleled spectacle of remorseless carnage. He had nearly reached the door when he made the mistake of bolting. The rapid movement caught the attention of one of the marauding great whites. When he turned, the merchant did not scream in fear but instead cursed violently. His end, therefore, was in keeping with his nature all his life, a reflection of internal toughness and perpetual ire. It made no difference to the shark, which bit him in half.
Out on the floor of the reception hall there were now eight great whites circling slowly in search of additional prey. The once grand chamber had taken on the aspect of an abattoir, with blood, guts, and body parts scattered everywhere. The last live soldier had fled.
Sloshing through the shallow lake of unwillingly vented bodily fluids, Ehomba advanced on his still imprisoned friends. Simna followed, hugging as close to his tall friend as possible without actually slipping into his clothing. He had seen how fast the floating sharks could move and had no intention of separating himself from their procreator even for an instant. Soulless black eyes tracked his movements, but the sharks did not attack. A number had settled to the floor and were feeding, gulping down whole chunks of soldier, uniform and all.
“You are a very canny man.” With a free hand the herdsman rubbed his sore face and shoulders. “As soon as the opportunity presents itself, I intend to pay you back for your canniness.”
“Hoy, bruther, I had to make it look real, didn’t I? I needed to distract them from what I was doing behind your back. Any sleight of hand needs a good diversion to be effective.” He grinned. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever pick up on what I was trying to do.”
“I admit you had me concerned at first. What finally revealed your true intentions was the degree of your pleading. I think I understand you well enough to know that you would go down fighting before you would grovel.”
“Depends on the circumstances,” the swordsman replied without hesitation. “If the need arose, I could grovel with the best of them.” He nodded in the direction of the throne. “But not because of a lie, and never in front of a fat toad like bin Grue.” His tone was harsh. “I saw him go down. He won’t be putting anybody in a cage ever again.”
Ehomba replied somberly. “Not all the methods a man perfects to protect himself work all the time. That is one thing about sharks: They cannot be reasoned with, distracted, or bribed. Stay close to me.”
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