David Drake - Out of the waters

The sails beat only fitfully, like the breaths of an animal in its death throes. Corylus looked back on their course, his face as blank as he would have kept it if he were on the wrong side of the Rhine and the bushes around him were rustling. He didn't see the giant eel, but by now it couldn't be far behind.

"There's an island," the sprite called from the bow. "To the west, see?"

A finger of stone thrust up from the horizon, casting its long shadow toward them against the glowing red water. Only a thumbnail edge of the sun was still visible.

"Yes!" Corylus said with a rush of relief. He moved to her side, calling, "Master, steer to that island, if you please. Ah, will you, will we, be able to rise to the top?"

It was another nearly vertical pillar, at least as tall as the first one, and again there was no beach at the base. The ship's keel was some twenty feet above the wave tops; not nearly high enough to land on the island, and probably not safe from the eel if it caught up with them either.

The Ancient chuckled but said nothing. Corylus felt the ship turn slightly. It moved like a piece of driftwood which had been in the water so long that it could barely float.

Corylus had tied his helmet to the base of the mast, using a cord clipped from the netting which held the bread. He slipped it on, though he didn't close the face guard yet. He lifted his sword and let it fall back, just making sure that it was free in the scabbard.

"Are you afraid of what's on this island?" the sprite said. "Nothing lives here. Nothing for longer than you can imagine."

Corylus lifted his chin in understanding. "I'm glad to hear that," he said.

And he was. But they were going to land anyway, even if it meant battling wolfmen until he or all of them were dead. There was at least a chance with that, but an eel several hundred feet long was an adversary as hopeless as an avalanche was.

If we can land, that is.

The ship suddenly plunged at a steep angle. Corylus grabbed the railing, certain that the Ancient had lost control of the vessel. The sprite gave him a mocking smile, standing arms-akimbo on the deck. The antics of the hull didn't affect her any more than a branch feared to be shaken off a swaying tree-trunk.

They heeled as the ship curved upward. The sails slammed convulsively, once and again. The vessel lurched like a horse on its last strength. Corylus, looking over the bow, could see land beneath him but the stern with the Ancient was a hundred feet back: much lower and over the sea.

The keel ground on the lip of the tor. The bow tilted down and they scraped to final safety. Only the curved sternpost stuck out over air and the clashing waters.

The sun had dimmed to a bloody smear on the horizon. The ship toppled onto its starboard side. Corylus jumped to the ground, clumsy because he hadn't been expecting what had happened.

I expected to crash into the side of the pillar, drop into the sea, and drown. If the eel didn't get me first.

The moon was low but already so bright that it cast black shadows now that the sun had set. Corylus surveyed the top of the pillar where they rested. It was circular, about a hundred yards in diameter, and as flat as a drill field. In the middle was a tumble of rocks which must have been brought there: nothing else marred the sandstone surface.

The sprite stepped away from the tilted vessel with far more grace than Corylus had managed. Reassured that she was right about the island being untenanted, he walked to the cliff edge and looked down. The helmet felt awkward, so he took it off and held it in his left hand.

The sea around this spine of rock glowed. At first Corylus thought it was only froth from waves hitting the hard stone, but as he watched, he realized that the water was covered with luminescent seaweed. Eddies formed whorls which curled several hundred yards out from the base. He had a feeling that they formed a pattern, but it was beyond him what it might be.

The great eel rose from the shimmering foam, its jaws open. The monster was silent save for the roar of contact as the huge body slid up along the stone flank of the island. Corylus shouted and drew his sword.

The eel lifted halfway up the sheer rock face. It wriggled for a moment as the sinuous body lashed the water for purchase, then hurled itself another thirty feet upward.

That was all. Still twenty feet short of the top, the jaws clopped shut. The eel arched downward and struck the water sideways with a cataclysmic splash. It dived for a moment, then rose to curl sunwise around the rock with another flick of its tail.

Corylus stepped back from the edge, sheathing his sword. He looked critically at the ship and said, "If we could drag the stern in a little so that it wasn't visible from below, maybe the eel wouldn't be so agitated."

The great body hit the rock again and again slid back. Corylus wasn't watching, but the splash as the eel returned to the ocean didn't seem as loud. He presumed-he hoped-that it meant that the creature was tiring and hadn't risen as high on its second attempt.

The sprite shrugged. "I don't think anything you can do would make the eel less angry," she said. "Why? Do you suppose it can reach the top of this rock?"

Corylus laughed-at himself, really. "I hope it can't," he said. "And I'm pretty sure that we can't move the ship until daylight regardless, so it doesn't matter. Except that it's one more thing for me to fret about, which I'm good at doing."

The Ancient was prowling among the rocks, dropping occasionally to all fours. Is he searching for bugs? But that couldn't be, because neither he nor Coryla ate.

The Ancient squatted and turned his face toward the rising moon. He howled with bleak misery.

The sound chilled Corylus, though he wasn't disturbed by the splash and slapping waves as the eel tried again to mount the rock. He half-drew but released his sword as he ran to the rocks in the center of the island; the sprite was beside him.

The Ancient cried out again. He remained oblivious of his companions when they reached him. Corylus looked at the ground to see if there was a material cause for the misery-a scorpion, some sort of trap that gripped even the being of an ancient ghost.

The rocks had once had squared edges, though Corylus had to bend close to be sure of that after the long ages they had weathered. He couldn't tell what the structure had been. There weren't enough blocks to construct a dwelling, but a pillar or an altar could have been constructed from what was present. There might have been more originally.

He reached down to turn a block over to see whether its protected underside was ornamented. Coryla stopped him with a hand and pursed lips.

Oh, of course!

Corylus backed away cautiously, then bowed low to the Ancient before turning to the ship. He hadn't eaten-hadn't wanted to eat-while it looked as though they would have to land on the waves at sunset. The rolls weren't appealing, but he was very hungry; and anyway, he had to eat to live.

The Ancient wailed again. Corylus could only guess, but he would bet his life on that guess: the magician's golden-furred race had raised the structure from which the present ruins had crumbled.

He tried to imagine what it would be like to stand in the Forum after the surrounding buildings had fallen and goats browsed among the scattered blocks. He couldn't really feel that, but he could come close enough to shiver at the thought.

Before he clambered aboard the ship, he looked down into the sea again. The eel was some distance out in the weed, but it drew a serpentine curve toward the rock when Corylus reappeared. Its leap was half-hearted, though; scarcely more than lifting its wedge-shaped head from the sea.

A fragment of verse returned to him, from a manuscript Varus had found in the library of the Raecius family which had links to Gades and Spain more generally, going back before the Second Punic War. The document was very old and had been written on leather rather than parchment; it seemed to be a geographical description written in archaic Greek.