David Drake - Balefires

"What's it worth?" he questioned eagerly.

"Damn little," I said. "Let's get out of here."

We padded across the smooth floor to the others who had managed to pry up a grating with their spears.

"Well, let's see it," Antiopas demanded. I dropped the little stone in his palm.

"By Castor!" he swore, "a glass octopus."

"Hell of a thing for a temple," somebody muttered."Do you s'pose it belongs here?"

"Take another look at the pool," I said, "or these eye designs all over. Eight arms and a cat slitted eye; that's what they worshipped, all right."

"And that explains what this pool was for," the captain added.

Leon blinked and looked shocked. He'd been a Highlander raised and I don't think he much cared to be in an octopus pool, even after the beasts were long gone. Well, I wasn't too happy about it, either.

"Captain!" one of the men called. "There's noises down here."

We all gathered around the drain, uneasily aware that we had to climb a ten-foot wall to leave.

"Just water sloshing down there," Hylas said. "It's what you'd expect under a drain."

"A long way down," Antiopas said thoughtfully.

There was a flicker of yellow in the depths.

"Zeus Father and Savior!" cried Antiopas, leaping back as we all did.

Then, while the rest of us stood in trembling panic, his face cleared and he began to laugh, pointing at the top of the dome.

"The reflection," I gasped in sudden understanding."It wasn't an eye, it was just a reflection of the skylight in the water."

No one was quite sure what happened then because we all were looking up when Hylas screamed and pitched through the opening. There was a splash, or perhaps that had come before; when I instinctively peered over the edge there was nothing below but a roil of bubbles.

We lifted each other out in tense silence, all but Leon, that is, who babbled to himself of what he had seen at the corner of his eye. He screamed during the night and my own dreams were bloody and mare-wracked until a gray dawn awoke me.

The captain was waiting when I opened my eyes. "Sleep well?" he asked.

I winced. "And yourself?"

He turned his palms up."It was bad enough when I only dreamed of drowning. Though it looks as if that too may come today."

I glanced at the sky. It marched solidly with black cumuli though the wind was still for the nonce.

"We'll not set out today," I said.

"Really? You're bosun now, you know, and I'll take your word for it-but theDominator seems to be making ready."

I nodded."The Admiral wants some sea room," I guessed."Remember, we've no proper harbor here and the fiver can't be beached. He'll try to keep her bow to the storm with the oars and take no chance of her being pounded to pieces against the shore. Though for my own part, I'd worry more that the wallowing slut's keel would split and spill me in the middle of it."

A messenger bore out my prediction within the hour and theDominator put out alone. The storm refused to break, however, and she rode a half-mile out on a smooth sea while the sultry heat grew more and more oppressive. The water was so calm that Antiopas and I, sitting in the bows of theFlyer, could see the channel in the sea bottom as a straight dark streak in the green.

"Where do you suppose it leads?" he asked.

"Where does a mountain lead?" I replied with a shrug.

Antiopas persisted. "This end leads to the pier," he said. "At least that far; the other end…"

He was voicing thoughts that had occurred to me also. "The drains," I said. "I suppose they have to lead somewhere."

Neither of us spoke for a while. When I did, I deliberately avoided what both of us were thinking of.

"Pity the baggars below decks on her," I said, thumbing toward the penteres.

"Pity the all of us, damned to this voyage," Antiopas replied and fumbled in his pouch."Do you suppose there is any value to this?"he continued, bringing out the octopus figure.

I took a closer look at the little idol, hefting it in my hand. "Just glass," I answered. "Not very pretty, the Gods know. Besides, I don't much like the idea of carrying other people's Gods around. Why don't we just drop it over the side and be done?"

"Images of Gods," Antiopas corrected me. "A stone is not the God but the symbol of the God."

Then why go to temples if the Gods aren't there? I thought but said nothing and watched the play of light within the figurine. The glass was so smooth that it slipped in my grasp and a tiny drop of blood formed where one of the arms pricked me.

"Castor!"Antiopas swore, "TheDominator 's moving; she's heading in. Now what under heaven for?"

I looked up from the idol. The surface had been roiled by the fiver's oars and there was another patch of foam far beyond her, almost on the horizon from where we sat though much nearer the penteres. I rose and pointed to it without speaking.

Antiopas stood too, and his face had gone white. One part of my mind remembered the little brown men telling us how these seas could rise in minutes, horizon to horizon, and sweep everything beneath them. Still I felt no fear, neither of that nor of what I knew in truth was approaching. The idol burned in my palm.

All along the shore men were staring in confusion at theDominator, whose battle-gong was clanging. As we watched, the sea darkened in front of the penteres and there was another splash of foam.

"That's no wave-" Antiopas began and broke off in horror to stare at the figurine in my hand. "Herakles who purged the world," he whispered, "be with us now."

Some started to run then but I think only the two of us realized what was coming. The crew of theService was readying the catapult on her forecastle. Although the Admiral must have realized by then that theDominator was not the quarry, the great fiver continued to cut through the sea pursuing now instead of fleeing.

The third time it arose it was half the distance between the shore and the swiftly approachingDominator. The sacklike body squirmed-Gods, it was huge!-to bring one slit-pupiled eye around to glare at us. Then it dived with another spurt of foam.

Someone had fired theService' s catapult before joining the rout. The bolt glanced off the waves, probably useless even if better aimed. Men were streaming away from the shore, their shouts drowning the thunder of the penteres' drummer hammering out the strokes as the bronze prow boiled through the glassy sea. There were only two men on her deck now, the helmsman and the Admiral himself. Even as I watched the helmsman dived overboard and the Admiral took the wheel. Probably the crew had no idea of what was happening; their only view was through the oarslots and ventilator gratings.

"Run, you fool!" someone shouted in my ear and it was Antiopas, my captain. But I could not move for it was not yet time, though the God was as fire in my hand.

"The bench," I whispered, "I should be on the bench."

"Run!"

An arm snaked over the side and wrapped about the rail. TheFlyer shuddered as she slid off the beach and continued to slant into the water toward the great weight that was dragging her down. I stared into the water as the ship lurched again and two more arms rippled up, two arms and a chalk-white beak larger than I was.

Antiopas screamed and slashed with his sword, not at the tentacle that curled toward him but the God in my hand. Then our bow heaved up and disintegrated, hurling us shoreward, as theDominator 's oak and gold and great bronze ram smashed through theFlyer and ground what was beneath her into the mud of the bottom forever.

We buried our dead-and there were many, for the penteres had crumpled to the mast step-beneath an honest mound with none of the decaying marble to defile them. The gold we gave to the sea, may it lie there forever. Yet still there is that which rots unburied in my mind, and my dreams are ill dreams for a sailor.