David Drake - Out of the waters

The victim turned belly up like a dead fish, then dived toward the river. The pair of Servitors clung to the bow. The Minos was flung out with his screaming retainers. His orichalc armor caught light from a thousand angles. He smashed into the facade of the Temple of Saturn and slipped down broken.

The ship that had attacked rose into the air, its sails beating strongly. Hedia looked at it sharply. An armored Minos controlled the flame weapon in the bow instead of guiding the ship as had been the case every previous time she had seen the Atlanteans flying. What on Earth is that animal in the stern?

Lann came out of the enclosure behind Hedia, putting his knuckles to the pavement and swinging down the steps like a man on double crutches. He nuzzled her hand and made a deep moaning sound.

People nearby had begun to notice them, though the only one who seemed really frightened was a little girl who grabbed her mother's tunic and babbled in a high-pitched Eastern language. A naked woman and a huge ape must seem minor in comparison with flying ships battling in the sky.

"Make way for the noble Consul, Gaius Alphenus Saxa!" shouted a deep voice coming from behind.

Hedia spun around. She hadn't been thinking about her husband, but of course he would come here. Saxa wasn't what anyone would call a man of action, but he was dutiful to a fault. As consul-for another few days before his brief appointment ended-he would immediately have rushed to the site of the great wonder taking place on the Field of Mars. Household servants followed him, but his lictors led the entourage, adding official status to their husky presence.

The storm that filled the horizon rippled with nearly constant lightning, but the thunder was muted by the distance. Clouds seemed to strain at the bubble of clear air the way surf rolls against a cliff; but again like the cliff, the bubble cast them back.

Even the powerful voice of Saxa's chief lictor seemed thin against the background of crowd, storm, and the battle in the sky, but his men had opened their ceremonial bundles. Saxa's servants were carrying the loose rods and axes, but each lictor had kept out a rod which he used freely to open a path through the crowd for the consul.

The man who walked as the point of the advance, swinging his rod with both hands, saw Lann. He shouted, "Watch it there! Axes! Axes!"

"My lord husband!" Hedia said, stepping toward the procession and waving her right arm in the air. She wasn't sure that Saxa could see her through the press of his escort, and she was nearly certain that none of the lictors would recognize her in her current state. "Saxa, my heart!"

"That's her ladyship!" cried Callistus, forcing his way out through the lictors. Though soft, he was a tall man and more alert than Hedia would ordinarily have given him credit for. "Your ladyship-"

He paused to stare at her. Without a further word, he whipped off his ornate toga and settled it over her shoulders.

Lann growled and surged toward the steward. Callistus shrieked and fell back. Some of the lictors had retrieved their axes; they sprang forward. There was nothing symbolic about the axe blades now.

Hedia threw her arms around the ape-man's head and covered him. "He's a friend!" she shouted over her shoulder. Then-because in fairness to the lictors, they had every reason to be concerned for the consul's safety-she said, "Lann! No! These are my friends! Sit down and be good!"

"Dear heart?" Saxa said, forcing his way with some effort through his entourage. "What's happening here? You know, don't you? Tell me what I should do."

By Hercules, husband, how could I possibly know! Hedia flared; but that was exhaustion and frustration reacting, and the emotion-it wasn't thought, not really-didn't reach her lips.

The lictors had drawn back, allowing Callistus to get to his feet again. The ape-man unwrapped his head from folds of the toga, looking puzzled. His anger at the steward had passed, and he didn't seem to regard the men with axes as a danger. His only concern had been what he perceived as a threat to Hedia.

Stroking Lann's shoulder, she glanced up at the sky. The ship whose Minos was in the bow had climbed and was circling the other vessel. That second ship tried to keep its bow and the weapon there toward its pursuer, but it wallowed uncomfortably. There were at least a hundred people standing on its deck, a crowd that would have sunk a vessel of its size on the water and was threatening to do the same for this flying one.

Hedia did know why the Atlanteans were appearing over Carce. That was so obvious that she was embarrassed to remember her flash of unspoken anger at being asked the question.

She had watched the ape-man loose Typhon on Atlantis. The Minoi who could flee before the monster were of course doing so.

And she knew what Saxa must do. Unfortunately she didn't think that would be enough to save Carce, though.

"Husband!" she said. Her voice was crisp and her back straight. Nothing in Hedia's manner suggested that there was anything unusual in her presence or costume. "The ships full of people are Atlanteans trying to leave their island before it sinks. They'll destroy Carce to make a place for themselves-you saw in the theater what their weapons do, the way they spew fire."

The sky ripped as one ship sent a cone of flame across the other, lighting the sails and touching the passengers packed on the forward deck. People shrieked and threw themselves over the railing, their clothing afire.

Their clothing burned, and also their flesh: the smell of meat cooking was unmistakable. The Emperor had lighted the Circus for a beast hunt one night with the households of four plotters, dipped in tar and hung from poles before being ignited. The screams had sounded the same that time.

Perhaps because the passengers in the bow jumped away from the jet of fire, the ship reared like a horse, then plunged into the ground stern first, It landed on a line of clothiers' booths toward the river. The hull shattered, killing those still aboard as well as spectators.

"But why are they fighting?" Saxa said. He rubbed his lips with his left hand as if trying to muffle the admission of his ignorance.

"I don't know and it doesn't matter," Hedia said. "You have to summon troops with artillery."

Did the garrison of Carce have ballistas and catapults? The Watch certainly didn't, but the Praetorians might have some. Some.

"We have to be ready to fight the Minoi when they stop fighting one another."

Another ship was pressing through the portal. For a moment the scene reminded Hedia of a bubble on the surface of swamp, swollen about the stem of a reed. The defending vessel was climbing again.

"My dear!" Saxa said in obvious surprise. "I have no authority to do that. The Watch comes under the authority of the Emperor's prefect, and as for the Praetorians-my heart, you know they wouldn't take orders from a senator. Any senator, but I'm afraid they would find me less impressive than most of my colleagues."

"But we have to fight them!" Hedia said, weak-kneed with horror that her husband had just corrected her on a question of political practicality. Of course the Praetorian Guard wouldn't take the orders of a senator. The Praetorians existed largely to keep the senators themselves in check. "Husband, look at the flames they shoot! If a hundred ships start lighting fires across the city, we'll all burn. Everything will burn!"

The people nearest Hedia were listening to the argument with frightened incomprehension. The words didn't mean anything to them, but anger and fear were obvious in Hedia's voice. Even a slave freshly dragged from the interior of Spain could understand what that meant.

Lann looked, perhaps for the first time, at the portal which seemingly balanced on the point of the granite obelisk. He hooted softly, then bared his teeth and boomed a challenge. Hedia had heard before: in the forest immediately after her escape from the Servitors, when the ape-man confronted the lizard which was about to leap on her; and toward the Minoi pursuing them in the passage back to Carce, before he loosed Typhon.