Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms) (31 page)

At any rate, the second thing that happened was all of us suddenly refused move about in water any shallower than navel-deep. The third thing, which happened to me, was when a girl I knew from the athletic fields swam up to me and bolder than brass stood up and asked me if I wanted to race to the other side. The difficulty I experienced then, which came back to me on that mucky river bank leagues and leagues beyond Orissa was a mighty desire to look down and a neck that was paralyzed and wouldn’t let me.

I’m sure I must have flushed and I’m sure Janela noticed. But all she said was, “You owe me a flagon of wine, Amalric, for smoothing the way.”

I made some reply and she walked away to join the other women who were emerging from the water and were recovering their clothes. Janela, moving with the grace of a forest nymph, began dressing.

My neck became unparalyzed.

Janela Greycloak was... is... as lovely and well formed a woman as I’d ever seen. I rapidly turned away, now completely flustered as I realized my approval of Janela, beautiful in the dying rays of the sun, was all too obvious.

As I turned, I heard a low laugh. It was feminine. Very bad. Worse, I didn’t think it was Janela chortling.

I went to relieve one of the sentries and recover my composure. After some minutes though, I too found it funny. I guess in some ways none of us become complete adults and surely that eternal dance between men and women is more likely to turn us into fools and striplings than anything.

The crewmen were coming out of the river, as clean as it was possible to get. There were only three men still sporting in the water. Suddenly there were only two. I thought for an instant one of them had dived underwater, but then a contorted face surfaced, mouth gaping in a soundless scream and blood gouted, turning the water black.

I shouted a warning and others were crying out as well and the two in the water were struggling back toward shore. One shrieked and was gone and then his body spun to the surface, ripped asunder. Now there was but one man and he was only a few feet from land. It was Ceram, Kele’s chief mate. We were running toward him, hoping to help, shouting, and then he stumbled out of the water, gasping for breath. We’d seen nothing so far and had no clue as to what had taken two of us.

Ceram was a good fifteen feet from the river when we saw the assassin. It was a monstrous crocodile that later I guessed would have been almost twenty feet long. Most people think these lizards of death are slow, supine, stupid, since the most they’re likely to see, unless they’re terribly unlucky, is a log-like scaly length and a pair of eyes or perhaps a smaller one out of the water sleeping in the sand.

I knew better. I’d seen one leap from the water fully five feet into the air, grab a gazelle that had just been coming to drink on the riverbank and disappear in an instant.

This beast moved even more quickly. It burst out of the brown water like a striking snake, gray-green with age, standing almost to a man’s waist, hurtled across the beach and was on Ceram, its massive jaws gaping. It smashed into him and the blow most likely killed the sailor, but the reptile had the poor man locked in its jaws and was twisting, turning, almost tearing him in two as a terrier shakes a rat.

It should have turned and raced back into the water with its prey but instead it dropped Ceram’s body and roared at us, a strange hissing roar.

Now our wits returned and we looked frantically for weapons. Otavi was the only one among us who’d been thinking and he stepped forward. But instead of his ax he’d seized a spear and cast it with all his strength deep into the monster’s head, behind his jaws. It screamed, but its scream wasn’t that high whistling keen of agony a crocodile should make but something else, almost like a man.

None of us could move and the crocodile put one forepaw on the spear’s haft and jerked back, pulling it free. Blood poured on the sand and the animal now turned for the river. But Otavi was blocking his escape, ax raised, and Mithraik crouched beside him, spear butt buried in the ground ready to take the charge and then Janela darted in from the side, sent another spear into the animal’s side and spun away. I seized a javelin from one of the men and hurled it true. It struck the beast between one of his scales and plunged deep.

Again the crocodile screamed and then it ran, but not for the safety of the water but away, into the scrub brush that covered the hummock. As it raced into shelter, bowstrings twanged and four shafts buried themselves in his back and again the monster cried out, rolling in pain and then was gone. Men started after it but Quatervals was shouting “stop, the bastard’ll be turnin back to ambush.”

Another scream and another and brush thrashed as if a great wind was blowing... and then there was silence.

Otavi started forward and I stopped him. “No. We wait a full turning of the glass.”

And so we did and then we went after the crocodile, following the wide trail it had crushed with its weight. We found a corpse no more than twenty feet from where the crocodile had vanished.

But it was the corpse of a man.

For a moment the world was chaos, roiling about all of us. Some of us swore, some gasped, some just paled. Then reality, such as it was, returned. I went forward, sword ready, Janela and Quatervals beside me.

The corpse lay face-down and was naked except for wristlets, anklets and something about its neck. There was no sign of violence. I toed it over. It was a man, clean shaven, close-cropped hair, with a face that was tattooed in blue from forehead to chin.

“A changeling,” Kele said. “I’ve heard, but never seen.”

“Is it?” I wondered. “Look.”

I pointed at the body. There was not a mark of violence on it and the face was quite peaceful, as if the man had died in his sleep.

“I’ve always heard that were-creatures, when taken, would show the wounds they’d taken in their other forms.”

Janela knelt beside the body. “That’s the story I too heard,” she said absently. “But I’ve never seen such a beast and no one I’ve ever trusted ever admitted to seeing one either. But look.”

The wristlets, bracelets and what I now saw was a leathern gorget were all of crocodile hide.

“T’ hell with wounds,” Pip said. “I ain’t believin’ that monsker just happened by where this bastard just happened t’ go an’ lie down an’ die.”

“No. Of course not,” Janela said. “But it is most curious.” She might have been a lycee instructor, sitting in her chambers discussing a strangely-marked butterfly a student had brought in.

“We can discuss natural origins later,” I said. “We’re boarding ship and heading upriver right now.”

But it was too late.

It was coming on twilight when we returned to the beach. We’d moored close inshore and used only six boats to land, leaving four men as anchor watches on the ships. The boats were beached near the water’s edge. It was no more than a hundred yards, if that, out to our ships. But between us and them now floated a dozen or more ominous shapes. More crocodiles, some almost as large as the one that had attacked us.

“It’ll take two trips t’ get us back t’ the ships,” Kele said. “An’ that’ll be packin’ th’ boats to the gunnels. C’n we do that ’fore it’s dark?”

“We’d better,” Chons said. “What’s to stop any of those bastards from just tippin’ the boats o’er an’ then taking their pick once we’re drownin’?”

“You’re right,” Janela said. “We’re safer here on the beach for the night. I can set up wards that should keep them away tonight and prepare a great spell to guard us in the morrow.”

There were mutters of dismay. All of us felt the only safety in this harsh land lay aboard our ships. But Kele and Janela were right. At least we hadn’t gone ashore as total numbwits. All of us had brought weapons and some of us even had some iron rations in belt pouches.

Our companions on the ships had seen some of what had happened and Kele hand-signaled the rest of the story and our intentions. She told them to maintain a full watch and keep torches burning, although none of us thought the crocodiles could manage to board our ships, not even the
Ibis
with its relatively low freeboard. At Janela’s suggestion she also signaled
no one
was to be permitted aboard after dark, not even if it appeared to be Kele herself.

“I’m probably overreacting,” Janela said, “but if you can accept shape-changing, why wouldn’t it be as simple for someone to appear as you or me as a four-legged river monster?”

Unlikely, but it paid to be cautious.

We set to work, dividing into parties and going inland and cutting brush and the few scraggly trees for our fires. I feared we’d run out of light before morning but Janela said that at least was not a worry. She took supplies from her purse and found a length of wood. She took out two mirrors and held them opposite each other with the wood in the center, reflections echoing. Then she said a spell and ordered Pip to cut the wood into fragments with his dagger.

She separated each splinter from the other and said another spell and my eyes hurt as the splinters twisted and grew and there was a long line of wood, each length exactly the same as the next. She said the spell twice more and we had wood enough to burn a city.

We made four fires fifty feet apart, just where the brush began and as far from the water as we could get. We buried the torn body of Ceram and said what prayers we knew for the other two seamen, hoping that would be enough to keep their spirits from wandering this horrible country as ghosts for eternity.

None of us were sleepy and few hungry. Quatervals forced a section of jerked beef on me and I gnawed it, tasting nothing. He told me quietly he knew the crocodiles had to be changelings, native sorcerers who’d traded their souls for the ability to become their totems for he’d never heard of a crocodile killing and killing again. They’d take their prey, vanish into the depths to let it ripen and rot, feed and then, when the satiation wore off in days or weeks, look for another victim.

I took Mithraik aside and thanked him for standing so steadfast when that first crocodile came ashore. He looked at me queerly, nodded thanks and said, “But I’m not for the death here, sir. Not that kind, anyhap.” I thought that an odd phrasing but said nothing.

Janela was readying herself for another spell. She drew me aside. “I don’t know if this will work since I have no idea what laws these men or beasts or whatever the hells they are, are subject to. But at least saying some words will make the others feel better.”

“What about the morning?” I wanted to know. “Could we have the same problems at daybreak trying to get back to the ships?”

“No. That I can guarantee. I can cast a spell using the goodness of the sun to carry my words and devices that nothing on any earth could withstand.”

I sighed, relieved and then Janela had to spoil it by saying, with a wry smile, “or at least the man who taught me that spell believed.

“We shall see, we shall see.”

Now it was very dark and very quiet. The only lights were those on the shipboard lanterns and from our great fires, at least until you stepped a foot or so beyond the pool of light they made.

Then you could see, across the water, the luminescence of the eyes.

Waiting and watching.

Janela used a length of string to form a fence, burnt some dried twigs she said came from a thornbush, added some incense that she said had been made from dried cactus flowers and a spell she’d written on a bit of parchment.

I saw a shimmer between us and the river... then nothing.

We settled down to wait.

Around midnight I heard a roar from the blackness, as if one of the crocodiles had attempted to slink ashore and had been driven back. Archers sent arrows whispering after the sound but I feared we hit nothing. It looked as if Janela’s spell was holding firm.

It lasted until the early hours. In spite of myself I was feeling drowsy and then we heard splashing.

There came a shout from Towra, who was taking charge of the part of the perimeter facing the river — “They’re coming!” and we were on our feet.

The first creature struck out of blackness and it was as if he rushed into an invisible net, caught, struggling, ripping, trying to come at us. Beside him came another and I thought they were working together, tearing in unison, and there were others striking all along the sorcerous barrier. I thought the spell might be weakening and then shafts hummed out. A few struck hard into the unarmored sides of the monsters but all too many bounced off the thick hide of the beasts’ backs. One howled that human scream as an arrow buried itself nearly to its hilt in an eye and rolled away, snapping and tearing in agony.

Spears pinned others to the sand and then I saw what must have been the greatest of them all rushing our barricade. I would swear on any god’s altar the brute was half again the size of the one we’d killed but that cannot be. It came on and I thought the wards were breaking, going down. The crocodile bellowed in expectant triumph just as I grabbed a burning chunk of wood from a fire and pitched it, full into the beast’s gaping jaws.

The beast screamed and screamed again, flopping like a beached fish or perhaps a whale, sending other, smaller monsters spinning. Now as they writhed their soft underbellies were exposed and my fighters had good aim and the arrow storm struck full, spears driving hard behind them. Sand and water flurried and there were howls and then we were standing, panting, holding weapons and there was nothing but the night, the flare of the fires and the hum of the mosquitoes. Some time, perhaps a lifetime later, the sun rose.