he could pull it loose, another was on him. Corun ducked under the spear he carried and closed his hands around the slippery sides. The clawed feet raked his legs. He lifted the thing and hurled it into another with bone-shattering force. One of them threshed wildly, neck broken—the other bounded at Corun. The man yanked his sword free and it whistled against the golden head.
* * * *
Back and forth the struggle swayed, crashing of metal and howling of warriors. And the Xanthi were driven to the rails—they could not stand against the rallying human line in the narrow confines of the ship.
“Kill them!” roared Imazu. “Kill the misbegotten snakes!”
Suddenly the Xanthi were slipping overboard, swimming for their mounts beyond the zone of magic. Perias followed, harrying them, pulling them half out of the water to rip their throats out.
The ship was wet, streaming with human red and reptile yellow blood. Dead and wounded littered the decks. Corun saw the Xanthi cavalry retreating out of sight.
“We’ve won,” he gasped. We’ve won—”
“No—wait—” Chryseis inclined her head sharply, seeming to listen, then darted past him to open a hatch. Light streamed down into the hold. It was filling—the bilge was rising. “I thought so,” she said grimly. “They’re below us, chopping into the hull.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Corun, and unbuckled his cuirass. “All who can swim, after me!”
“No—no, they’ll kill you—”
“Come on!” rapped Imazu, letting his own breastplate clang to the deck.
Corun sprang overboard. He was wearing nothing but a kilt now and had a spear in one hand and a dirk in his teeth. Fear was gone, washed out by the red tides of battle. There was only a bleak, terrible triumph in him. Men had beaten the Sea Demons!
Underwater, it was green and dim. He swam down, down, brushing the hull, pulling himself along the length of the keel. There were half a dozen shapes clustered near the waist, working with axes.
He pushed against the keel and darted at them, holding the spear like a lance. The keen point stabbed into the belly of one monster. The others turned, their eyes terrible in the gloom. Corun took the dirk in his hand, got a grip on the next nearest, and stabbed.
Claws ripped his flanks and back. His lungs were bursting, there was a roaring in his head and darkness before his eyes. He stabbed blindly, furiously.
Suddenly the struggling form let go. Corun broke the surface and gasped in a lungful of air. A Sea Demon leaped up beside him. At once the erinye was on him, The Xanthian screamed as he was torn apart.
Corun dove back under water. The other seamen were down there, fighting for their lives. They outnumbered the Xanthi, but the monsters were in their native element. Blood streaked the water, blinding them all. It was a strange, horrible battle for survival.
In the end, Corun and Imazu and the others—except for four—were hauled back aboard. “We drove them off,” said the pirate wearily.
“Oh, my dear my dearest dear—” Chryseis, who had laughed in battle, was sobbing on his breast.
Shorzon was on deck, looking over the scene. “We did well,” he said. “We stood them off, killed about thirty, and only lost fifteen men.”
“At that rate,” said Corun, “it won’t take them long to clear our decks.”
“I don’t think they will try again,” said Shorzon.
He went over to a captured Xanthian. The Sea Demon had had a foot chopped off in the battle and been pinned to the deck by a pike, but he still lived and rasped defiance at them. If allowed to live, he would grow new members—the monsters were tougher than they had a right to be.
“Hark, you,” said Shorzon in the Xanthian tongue, which he had learned with astonishing ease. “We come on a mission of peace, with an offer that your king will be pleased to hear. You have seen only a small part of our powers. It is not beyond us to sail to your palace and bring it crumbling to earth.”
Corun wondered how much was bluff. The old sorcerer might really be able to do it. In any case—he had nerve!
“What can you things offer us?” asked the Xanthian.
“That is only for the king to hear,” said Shorzon coldly. “He will not thank you for molesting us. Now we will let you go to bear word back to your rulers. Tell them we are coming whether they will or no, but that we come in friendship if they will but show it. After all, if they wish to kill us it can be just as easily done—if at all—after they have heard us out. Now go!”
Imazu pulled the pike loose and the yellow-bleeding Xanthian writhed overboard.
“I do not think we will be bothered again,” said Shorzon calmly. “Not before we get to the black palace.”
“You may be right,” admitted Corun. “You gave them a good argument by their standards.”
“Friends?” muttered Imazu. “Friends with those things? As soon expect the erinye to lie down by the bovan, I think.”
“Come,” said Chryseis impatiently. “We have to repair the leak and clean the decks and get under way again. It is a long trip yet to the black palace.”
She turned to Corun and her eyes were dark flames. “How you fought!” she whispered, “How you fought, beloved!”
VI
The castle stood atop one of the high gray cliffs which walled in a little bay. Beyond the shore, the island climbed steeply toward a gaunt mountain bare of jungle. The sea rolled sullenly against the rocks under a low gloomy sky thickening with the approach of night.
The Briseia rowed slowly into the bay, twenty men at the oars and the rest standing nervous guard by the rails. On either side, the Xanthi cavalry hemmed them in, lancers astride the swimming cetaraea with eyes watchful on the humans, and behind them three great sea snakes under direction of their sorcerers followed ominously.
Imazu shivered. “If they came at us now,” he muttered, “we wouldn’t last long.”
“We’d give them a fight!” said Corun.
“They will receive us,” declared Shorzon.
The ship grounded on the shallows near the beach. The sailors hesitated. To pull her ashore would be to expose themselves almost helplessly to attack. “Go on, jump to it!” snapped Imazu, and the men shipped their oars and sheathed their weapons, waded into the bay and dragged the vessel up on the strand.
The chiefs of the Xanthi stood waiting for them. There were perhaps fifty of the reptiles, huge golden forms wrapped in dark flowing robes on which glittered ropes of jewels. A few wore tall miters and carried hooked staffs of office. Like statues they stood, waiting, and the sailors shivered.
Shorzon, Chryseis, Corun, and Imam walked up toward them with all the slow dignity they could summon. The Conahurian’s eyes sought the huge wrinkled form of Tsathu, king of the Xanthi. The monster’s gaze brightened
