L. Camp - Conan Of The Isles

Then the boarding party swarmed down from the plank to the smoke-obscured deck, on which fragments of burning sail and rope still showered. With a challenging roar, Conan drove in amongst them, his broadsword weaving a shimmering web of steel around him. The crystalline armor splintered as the heavy blade struck it, shearing through glass, leather, flesh, and bone. Limbs were lopped off; howling cries of pain came muffled through the glassy helmets.

Conan hacked his way through the loose ranks of the first boarders, leaving three foes recumbent on the deck behind him. But others dropped down from the boarding plank to ring him round and return to the attack. He hacked his way through to the rail where, with his back protected, he won a moment's respite.

On the far side of the deck he saw Sigurd trading mighty blows with two assailants. Two more had already fallen at his feet. Then, although he did not seem to have been struck, the Northman dropped his scimitar and folded up on the deck, as had all the rest of the crew.

There was a sweetish smell in Conan's nostrils, and the world swam before his eyes. The attackers had given back before him, to form a semicircle hemming him against the rail. For three heartbeats, the Cimmerian faced his assailants, his gray-bearded lips bared in a silent snarl. Then, over the heads of the foremost attackers, several of the glass globes flew through the air, to smash on the deck at his feet.

Conan did not wait for the vapor to rise and drag him down. With a hoarse, gasping roar, he hurled himself against the semicircle. His broadsword, wielded in both rough, scarred hands, whirled about his head like the vane of a windmill. Crash! Crash! Two of the Antillians fell before his blade with heads or ribs crushed in. And then Conan was through the press and out in the open again.

He knew he could not fight the entire hostile crew single-handed. Though he might account for a few more, sooner or later they would surround him and cut him down. Already the fatigue of his years was weighting his limbs and slowing his movements. His breath came in gasps. The smoke and the whiff of the pallid vapor he had inhaled made him cough. Every one of his crew was now down - a few slain by the enemy's weird weapons, but the great majority felled by the vapor.

Another man might have been paralyzed by the problem of what to do next. The ship was plainly lost. Her deck swarmed with the boarders from the dragon ship. Her sails and rigging had vanished in flame and smoke; at that instant her fore yard, its sail consumed, crashed to the forecastle deck as the ropes upholding it burned through. A score of minor fires smouldered here and there about the deck, where pieces of burning saii, rope, or spar had ignited them. The first dragon-ship, which had been set ablaze, had vanished except for a floating patch of wreckage.

Conan saw that he could do his men no good by letting himself be slain or captured. If, on the other hand, he could escape, perhaps a chance would offer itself later . ..

The decisiveness of Conan's barbarian heritage decided his next actions without his consciously having to think about them or to weigh alternatives. With a final burst of strength, he bounded up the ladder to the poop deck. Of the two steersmen at the quarter rudders, one had disappeared; the other lay dead, while over the body stood one of the boarders with a bloody saw-edged blade in his hand. Conan rushed him and shattered the crystal blade with a single chop. A mighty thrust with both long arms sent the point of the broadsword crunching through the other's glass-plated mail shirt and through the man's body. Down went the man.

Then Conan dropped his bloody broadsword, doffed his horned helmet, and hurled it far out into the water. No use leaving any arms for the foe to salvage! He bent and tore from the head of the dead boarder the bird-shaped glass helmet and the breathing apparatus that went with it. As more Antillians stamped up the ladder to the poop deck, Conan "settled the apparatus about his own head and shoulders.

The enemies rushed upon him with cries of rage. He caught up his sword just in time to parry the thrust of a wavy-headed spear, and a mighty slash smashed the helmet of the pikeman and the skull beneath it. Before any others could close with him, the Cimmerian sprang to the rail and dove into the heaving, blue waters. Carried down by the weight of his chain mail, he sank like a stone.

The morning sun, now high in the heavens, had burned off the last remains of the morning mist; the clouds dwindled and fled before its hot golden rays. Two by two, the boarders picked up the recumbent forms of the unconscious crewmen of the Red Lion and carried them over the boarding plank into the dragon-ship. Others busied themselves with putting out the many small fires, beating them with cloaks and dousing them with buckets of sea water drawn up by ropes.

At length, leaving a small prize crew aboard, the men of the dragon-ship returned to their own vessel. With a rattle of gear, the boarding plank withdrew; the grappling arms rose from the deck; the doors in the dragon's breast closed. The dragon ship backed water with oars and sails and maneuvered to bring her stern near the bow of the Red Lion. Presently, with a creaking of ropes to trim her sails to the following wind, the dragon ship forged ahead in the direction whence she had come, towing the Red Lion behind her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TERRORS OF THE SEA

Bedight with tentacle and fang,

The monsters on the Lion sprang .

. . - The Voyage of Amra

Conan struck the water with a mighty splash. Green waves closed over his head. Weighted by the chain mail that clothed his body to mid-thigh and by the massive broadsword in his fist, he sank like a stone.

The sea was cold; the morning sun had not been up long enough for its warmth to penetrate far below the surface. The bracing tang of cold salt water on Conan's limbs was not unwelcome. Salt stung his cuts and bruises, and the icy shock sent new vigor surging through his aching muscles.

He fell slowly through a world of pale jade green. As the hull of the Red Lion rose above him, he could discern the barnacles on her keel. Looking up, the old warrior saw two hulls above him - oval planets in a sky of shimmering, greenish silver. A weird sight...

His first impulse on hitting the water had been to strike out with his arms and swim. Then it came to him that the breathing apparatus in the crystal helm was designed, in some incomprehensible fashion, to enable him to breathe under water. Furthermore, he could see the sea bottom not far beneath his booted heels. At this point, close to the isles of Antillia, the ocean bottom sloped gently upward. Instead of falling into an ebony abyss of lightless gloom, he would descend only a few fathoms and then could walk to shore. So, controlling his instinct to swim, he permitted himself to sink to the bottom, treading water just enough to keep himself right side up.

Breathing was another matter. The helm came down to fit in saddle fashion over chest and back. Two glass tubes curved away over either shoulder to a tanldike affair on his back between his shoulders. The first tube entered the front of the helm on a level with his nostrils; the second, on a level with his mouth. A little experimenting showed that the wearer of the helmet was expected to wrap his lips around the lower tube, press his nostrils into the aperture of the upper, and then breathe in through the nostril tube and out through the other. When he exhaled, a column of silvery, shining bubbles rose from the apparatus with a gurgling sound. This unusual method of breathing took a little practice, but Conan got used to it by the time he landed softly, in a sprawling position, on the sea bottom. The bottom was covered with fine, soft sand, which rose in little clouds as he scrambled into an upright position. Around him, the water was clouded with puffs and swirls of slowly settling particles.