David Drake - Out of the waters

We'll know soon enough.

The vultures edged closer. "Watch yourself," the gryphon muttered. With the words he stooped on his lower opponent. His fore claws were extended, and his eagle beak opened. His challenge could have pierced stone.

The vulture twisted with unexpected agility, spreading its talons to meet the attack. Its rider held his seat; his legs were locked at the ankles beneath his mount's neck.

When the gryphon dived, the second vulture plunged down from the left. Alphena turned to meet it, slashing with her sword instead of trying to thrust. Her blade met the Atlantean's with a shock that numbed her arm and scattered ropes of blue fire through the starry firmament.

The Minos fell backward out of the saddle, but his mount collided with the gryphon. Alphena lost her sword. She grabbed at the gryphon's neck with her right hand, but her arm had no feeling and her fingers, as lifeless as a statue's, slid over the feathers.

The gryphon snapped, catching one of the vulture's necks with a beak big enough to shear a bull's haunch. The violent movement flung Alphena off.

The first vulture had circled, gaining altitude; now it slanted toward her. The Minos leaned over his mount's neck, his sword poised to strike as he drove past. Given the way a similar sword had resisted her own lost blade, he would probably cut her in half.

The gryphon screamed and dived again on the circling vulture. Locked together, the giants tumbled away in a confused melee that Alphena couldn't have sorted out even if she had leisure to try.

You will fall forever, the gryphon said. Well, this wasn't his fault, but Alphena didn't really blame herself either. Sometimes you lose. It was as simple as that.

She couldn't see either the gryphon or the vultures. The stars glittered and shifted as she fell. The window in darkness which had been their destination had faded again to a glow.

The same thing might have happened if I'd gotten there. How could I have fought an army of these Minoi?

The blur of light coalesced again. Alphena saw the seashore village and the man with braided hair. He held his smoking pipe in his left hand, but with his right he reached out and gripped her wrist.

Smiling minusculely, he drew Alphena toward him.

David Drake

Out of the Waters-ARC

Alphena awakened and sneezed violently. Her eyes stung and the light was dim. She thought, Was I dreaming? Then, Where am I?

She was lying on a reed mat on the floor of the underground room where she had glimpsed the man with braided hair. He sat cross-legged, watching her over the bowl of his pipe. He drew a lungful of the smoke up the reed stem, then blew it out through his nostrils. Smiling faintly, he lowered the pipe.

He's a magician. He has to be a magician to bring me here!

"Who are you?" Alphena asked. She rolled her feet under her but didn't try to get up. She wore the tunic she had donned before joining Anna in the garden, and the scabbard still hung from her sword belt. The weapon itself was missing, just as it should have been if what she remembered about the fight with the Minoi was true.

The man leaned forward, stretching the index and middle fingers of his right hand out toward her. Her reaction was to flinch, but she forced herself to hold still. If he was my enemy, he'd have left me to drift forever as the gryphon warned would happen…

Alphena couldn't guess how old the man was. Older than her father, certainly; but he gave her the feeling that she was sitting beside an ancient oak. His fingers were like lengths of tree root.

He touched her left ear, her right ear, and finally her lips. "I am Uktena," he said, smiling again. "I have seen you before, little one, but I do not know who you are."

She licked her lips. "I'm Alphena," she said. "Ah, daughter of Gaius Saxa. But I came here-that is, I was going to Poseidonis to save my mother from the Atlanteans. Do you know who the Atlanteans are?"

Stated baldly like that, Alphena realized how foolish her plan had been. It hadn't been a plan at all; but she'd had to do something!

"I know one Atlantean," Uktena said. His smile suddenly had something terrifying in it. "But I would venture that in any case no enemy of yours would be a friend of mine. Come, I will show you our village… and perhaps we also will see the Atlantean."

Uktena knocked the dottle from the pipe into his palm, then scattered it on the bare ground at the edge of his sunken chamber; some of the embers were still glowing. He slipped the reed stem under his waist band and rose smoothly without using his hands. Alphena knew the effort it required to do that when seated cross-legged, but she didn't have the impression that her host was showing off: he was just extremely fit for a man of any age.

"Master Uktena?" she said. "Are you a magician?"

He weighed her with a glance. "Say rather that I remember some things that the spirits have taught me," he said after a moment. "As they will teach any man, who asks them in the right way. My fellows call me a shaman, but-"

His smile was very slight, and there was again the hint of a tiger beyond the calm expression.

"-I would prefer you call me Uktena, little one."

A pine sapling leaned against the opening in the chamber's roof. The bark had been stripped and the thickset branches trimmed, but stubs projected alternately to right and left. Uktena climbed it, using the stubs as rungs for his big toes. At the top he tossed aside the mat covering the opening and looked back to Alphena.

"Do you need help?" he asked.

Alphena couldn't decide whether he was mocking her or being polite. "No, but the ladder won't hold us both," she said, thought it probbably would have. She rose to her feet rather less gracefully than her host.

Uktena swung out of the opening. Alphena followed, moving briskly but thankful that she wore hob-nailed military sandals whose thick soles gave her solid purchase. Her big toes weren't up to supporting her full weight on such short stubs.

The field nearest the chamber had been planted with some kind of big-leafed grass. Two women had been cultivating it with clam-shell hoes, but their voices had stilled when Uktena came out of the ground.

They remained upright with respectful expressions for a brief instant when Alphena appeared also. The women cried out; one dropped to her knees, the other turned to run. What looked like a cloak of bark cloth over her shoulders turned out to be a sling holding a sleeping infant.

"Sanga, why do you run from my friend?" Uktena said. "Fear me if you like, but Alphena will not harm you."

Sanga took two strides more, but she slowed and turned to face them. The kneeling woman opened her eyes and said, "But master-she did not go into the kiva with you. Is she a demon, or did you form her from clay by your power?"

"Uktena caught me when I was falling from a far place," Alphena said, stepping forward. "I am in his debt for my life. I will not harm anyone whom he regards as a friend."

The words formed in her mind as she spoke, replacing those she already had on the tip of her tongue. She wouldn't lie; but there might be advantages for both her and her host if these peasants chose to believe she was a demon held in check only by Uktena's benevolence toward them.

He laughed, but he didn't amplify her statement. "Come, little one," he said. "I'm sure my colleagues will want to meet you."

Women and children were appearing from the fields and the semi-circle of huts; a few men carrying bows came out of the woods. Three older men-the trio which had come to dinner with Sempronius Tardus the night Hedia disappeared-stood before the dwellings. They watched Uktena the way jackals eye a lion.

A dune separated the grain field from sight of the shore until Alphena and her host were near the village proper. She looked past the edge of the sand and almost shouted in surprise.