Brian Stableford - Asgard's Heart

I had asked why, if unfamiliarity to our enemies was the chief criterion determining her decision, she had not elected to provide us with a void to cross and a ship like Leopard Shark in which to navigate it. She had replied that an analogue of stressed space would in her estimation be far easier for our enemies to come to terms with, and the shell of a starship too easy for them to crack. It was, she told me, far safer to be in a realm of uncertain magic, where the enemy could not readily estimate what deceptive power they might assume, or what power we in our turn might have to use against them.

“But we do not know that ourselves!” I had protested.

“That,” she had replied with finality, “may be our greatest advantage.”

I did not think that I had settled well into the identity of a man of magic. Some men might have taken comfort from the suspicion that unknown forces lay latent within them, holding the potential for a miraculous rescue even in the direst of circumstances, but it was not a possibility in which I could invest much trust. I would have preferred to know just what I was, and what I could do, and to be confident that my resources would be adequate to the task in hand. Alas, even men of flesh and blood rarely know such things, and it is a lucky man indeed who has the pleasure of certainty in regard to the last of those matters.

The next encounter began with a disturbance in the water, which was not so evident on the surface of the sea but which began to exert a marked influence upon the course of the vessel, dragging us off our bearing and away to starboard. I watched the oars as they began to fight against the drag, those to port relaxing while those to starboard tried to work increasingly hard.

“Look!” said Myrlin, pointing away to starboard.

There, far away from the boat, we could see a swirling motion in the water beginning, and rapidly increasing. What had caught us was the outer edge of a great whirlpool that was endeavouring to suck us into a clockwise spiral. It was immediately clear that whatever force was working in the water was more powerful than the oars, because our course was indeed curving away along the arc of a great circle.

Myrlin grappled with the helm, holding it hard over in an attempt to steer us to port, and the prow of the ship began to come about. Instead of taking us away from the current, though, he simply succeeded in exposing a greater target to the rushing water, which began to sweep us sideways.

Myrlin spun the wheel, trying to turn the ship back again in order that the oars could gain some purchase, but the force of the surge was now so great that he could not bring the vessel around. The oars were flailing now, as impotent as they had been when the weed prevented their dipping beneath the surface.

Once again, I felt quite impotent. The weapons with which I had been provided were quite useless in dealing with this kind of attack. I looked back at the female form in which the Nine had remade themselves, and saw that she was chanting, trying to raise some kind of magical force to oppose the one sent to suck us down.

In response to her invocation a great wind blew up, which tried with all its might to carry us in the opposite direction to the drag of the maelstrom. The automata on the lower deck were busy with our great square sail, changing its attitude to catch the full force of the wind while Myrlin threw the wheel the other way, trying to pull our stern round to face the direction of the drag.

The opposition of wind and water churned up the surface of the sea in mighty waves, and turbid spray was everywhere, lashing fiercely at our faces.

I clung to the rail desperately, with my bow and arrows held tight beneath my foot, lest they should be lost. The ship had been tossed about by the wind and the waves before, but that was nothing by comparison with the effects of the present contest of the elements. The sky had grown dark, and the clouds which obscured it were almost black. As though with an outburst of sudden rage those clouds began to pour black rain upon us, cold and stinging. The raindrops mixed with hailstones the size of bullets.

The shape of the whirlpool, which had presented itself quite clearly a few minutes before, was now lost in the tumult, and we seemed to be in the grip of chaos itself, lurching and listing without any apparent pattern.

My stomach felt as if it was turning over, and I had to go down on one knee to crouch beneath the level of the rail, trying to hide my face from the scourging of the storm. I could not tell what Myrlin was trying to do, nor what advantage was being gained in the fight between our wizardry and theirs—all that I could do was wait, and hope that if the ship capsized, I would have the strength to swim in a sea made mad by the vortex in the water and the assaults of the air.

I heard a cry from Myrlin which I took to be a cry of triumph, and thought that the ship must at last have found itself able to respond to the helm, but immediately it was followed by another cry, shot through with anguish, and knew that the enemy had found new reserves.

I forced my head up, to look out into the dark mists, and immediately saw what my giant companion had seen.

All around us, rising to the surface of the water, were the coils of some immense serpent, racing round and around. It was as though the whirlpool had suddenly come to life—Charybdis suddenly transformed into Scylla. It no longer mattered which way the ship was headed, or how it caught the wind, because there was not the slightest doubt that we were surrounded by the coils of the monster. For the moment, I could see no head at all, but merely the scaly loops lying about us, two or three times wound around, and I wondered whether the creature might have seized its own tail to seal itself into a confining ring of flesh. The scales might have shone brightly had there been light enough to make them glisten, but in the grey half-light they were dull and brown, speckled here and there with clumps of dark green tendrils which may only have been some kind of weed anchored to the body of the beast.

I snatched the bow from beneath my foot, feeling a surge of perverse elation on account of the fact that here was something I could do—here was an enemy at which I could strike in my own fashion.

I fitted an arrow to the bow, and without rising from my kneeling position I fired at the mass closest to the starboard side. I saw the arrow fly true despite the winds which buffeted it in flight, and it buried itself in the flesh of the monster… but the sea-serpent made not the slightest reaction. I could see the white feathers that fletched the arrow, but no red blood, nor any other sign of hurt.

I sent forth a second arrow without delay, and hit the same serpentine coil a few yards further on, but with no more obvious result, and I cursed, seeing that the coils were drawing tighter now around the ship, which was imprisoned in an area of water no more than a hundred metres in diameter.

Then came the head, rearing up out of the spume no more than a dozen metres from the flank of the vessel, just aft of the mast. It was as though it had tried to toss us up, as a bull tosses a luckless matador, and had only just failed.

The enormous head was only a little like a snake’s: it had the fangs of a snake and eyes which were entirely ophidian, but it had a crest behind its head much more elaborate than a cobra’s hood, and its snout was ridged to give it a less rounded profile. It was a veritable dragon’s head, with rows of swords-point teeth behind the greater fangs. Its slit-pupilled eyes, golden yellow about the dark lens, caught me immediately with their stare, and the crest swelled to present the appearance of a fan-like array of webbed horns.

It paused for just a second in the air, the head becoming steady as the eyes fixed upon their target, and I knew that it was poised to strike.