Poul Anderson - The Dancer from Atlantis

Dagonas sped to the doorway, “Get out,” he panted. “We can hold them a while. Get her down to the ship.”

Uldin spat. “Go with them, Cretan,” he said. “The lot of you. You’ll need what strength you have. I’ll keep the corridor.”

Erissa of the white lock, upbearing the girl who followed along like a sleepwalker, said, “That’s much to ask.”

The Athenians stood hesitant, mustering their nerve to attack. They must have heard rumors. Yes, Reid knew: for the sake of what Reftiu remain, she who danced with the bulls and is even now a vessel of Power cannot be let fall back into the hands of their lord.

They were no cowards. In a minute they’d advance.

Uldin spat again. “A Hun and a dozen waddling charioteers: Good odds.” His gaze came to rest on the woman. “I could wish to die on a steppe where cornflowers bloom, in sunlight, a horse beneath me,” he said. “But you kept your side of our, bargain. Farewell.”

He had taken a shield. Now he planted himself in the middle of the hall, saber aloft. “What’re you waiting for?” he called, and added a volley of obscene taunts.

Erissa plucked Reid’s tunic. “Come,” she said.

That departure shocked the Athenians into, motion. They advanced four abreast. Those behind the front rank wielded spears. Uldin let them get near. Abruptly he squatted, shield over his head, and smote at a leg where flesh showed between greave and kilt. The man clattered down, yammering. Uldin had already whirled and wounded another. Blades clashed on his defense. He sprang from his crouch, straight at a third man, who fell against his neighbor. They tumbled, and Uldin’s sword went snick-snick. A spear pierced him. He didn’t seem to notice. Forcing his way into the mass of them, he cut right and left. They piled on him at last, but nonetheless they needed a goodly while to end the battle, and no survivor among them was ever quite hale again.

The galley stood out to sea. It had a number of refugees aboard, those on whom Reid’s party had chanced. There’d been no time to look around for more, though. The hue and cry were out. A patrol found them near the docks, and it became a running fight—hit, take a blow, grope onward in the dark—until they got to their boat. At that point they made a stand and kept the Achaeans busy until reinforcements had been ferried from the ship and a hopelessly out-numbered enemy was ground into meat. Reid was too numb to regret that. And it was necessary, he realized, if the Knossians were to be rowed to safety.

Once in open water they could rest. No other vessel was left afloat near the sea king’s home. Exhausted, they lay to.

Wind was slowly rising afresh. By morning it would whip the fires in the city to a conflagration whose traces would remain when the ruins were dug up more than three thousand years hence. The next days would see many storms as the troubled atmosphere cleaned itself. But the ship could ride unattended till dawn. Reid would be the lookout. He wasn’t going to get to sleep anyway, he knew.

He stood in the bows on the upper deck, where he and Erissa had been that morning. (Only that morning? Less than a single turn of the planet?) Aft, the dim forms of crew and fugitives stirred, mumbled, uneasily asleep. The hull rocked under always heavier, noisier blows. The wind whittered hot from the south. It still carried needles of volcanic ash—tossed back and forth between Greece and Egypt till finally they came to rest—but smelled less evil than before.

Shielded by a strung scrap of sailcloth, a candle burned. Young Erissa lay on a straw pallet. Her older self had put clothes on her. She looked upward, but he couldn’t tell if she really saw. Her features were slumbrous. The woman knelt over her, hair and cloak tossing in the gusts. and crooned, “Rest, rest, rest. All is well, my darling. We’ll care for you. We love you.”

“Duncan,” said the half parted lips, which had been like flower petals but were puffed and broken from the blow of a fist.

“Here is Duncan?’ The woman beckoned. Reid could but obey. How deny Erissa the creation of that which would keep her alive through the years to come?

Strange, though, to hear her tell of days and nights which had never been and would never be. Maybe it was best this way. Nothing real could be so beautiful.

Dagonas must not know the truth, and wouldn’t. Erissa would speak little about it. He’d assume that tonight she had merely been struck, and earlier on Atlantis she and the god called Duncan.

The first light of dawn sneaked through scudding ash-clouds. Erissa left peace upon the girl’s slumbering countenance, rose, and said out of her own haggardness: “We’re not free yet.”

“What?” He blinked. His lids felt sandy as the wind. His being creaked with weariness.

“She and Dagonas have to go off in our boat, you know,” the woman said. “Otherwise Theseus might still find and use her. After that, we’ve paid our ransom.” She pointed. “Look.”

His gaze followed her arm, past the steeps of Crete on the horizon, across the sea which roiled black, west to that corner of the world whence the Achaean galleys came striding. At their head was a giant which could only be the work of Oleg.

The Russian had built the closest possible copy of a Byzantine capital ship in his own century. Twice as long and thrice as high as Reid’s, it, had two lateen-rigged masts; but today, with the wind foul, it went on a hundred double-banked oars. Its beak tore the waves as if they were enemy hulls. Decked fore and aft, it bore equally outsize catapults. Amidships a pair of booms extended, great boulders suspended at their ends for dropping on hostile crews. Shields were hung on frames at the waist, where the gun-wale dropped low,, to protect the rowers. Above those benches swarmed warriors.

“Alert!” Reid yelled. “Wake, wake!”

His folk dragged themselves from sleep. Dagonas alone seemed to have kept vitality. He bounded to Reid and the Erissas. “What’ll we do?” he cried. “They’re fresh, those dogs. They can raise sail if they choose. We’ll never outrun them. And when we’re caught—” He stared down at the girl and groaned.

“We head for the big vessel,” Reid told him. “Its captain is my friend, who won’t knowingly fight against us. I hope.”

The woman bit her lip. “You youngsters—Well, we must see. Stay close by her, Dagonas.”

She drew Reid aside. “Something will go wrong,” she said bleakly.

“I’m afraid so,” he agreed. “But we’ve no choice, have we? And ... remember our hope. That time travelers, hovering somewhere about, will notice a ship that doesn’t belong in this age and come for a closer inspection. Well, here we have two. His is even more out of place than ours. We must get together with him.”

He cast a glance upward but saw only clouds, gray, brown, and black, piling southward into lightning-shot masses that betokened a new storm. Of course, futurian observers might well have some device for invisibility.

“If we’re not rescued—” he began, and faltered.

“Then we make our way together.” Both their gazes strayed to the couple in the bows, the sleeping, smiling girl and the boy who crouched before her. “Or we die,” Erissa finished. “But those two will live. In the long run, I’ve been lucky. I pray that you have been too.”

The oars ground into motion. It was necessary to intercept the dromon before a lesser galley cut this one off. The Achaeans were widely strewn, in no particular formation—the idea of a real navy would not occur for centuries, now that the only one in the world was gone—but they were bound to notice the peculiar vessel and its obviously Minoan markings. Closing in, they would see that the people aboard were Keftiu, fair game.