Asgard's Heart (31 page)

I heard a cry from Myrlin which I took to
be a cry of triumph, and thought that the ship must at last have found itself
able to respond to the helm, but immediately it was followed by another cry,
shot through with anguish, and knew that the enemy had found new reserves.

I forced my head up, to look out into the
dark mists, and immediately saw what my giant companion had seen.

All around us, rising to the surface of the
water, were the coils of some immense serpent, racing round and around. It was
as though the whirlpool had suddenly come to life—Charybdis suddenly
transformed into Scylla. It no longer mattered which way the ship was headed,
or how it caught the wind, because there was not the slightest doubt that we were
surrounded by the coils of the monster. For the moment, I could see no head at
all, but merely the scaly loops lying about us, two or three times wound
around, and I wondered whether the creature might have seized its own tail to
seal itself into a confining ring of flesh. The scales might have shone
brightly had there been light enough to make them glisten, but in the grey
half-light they were dull and brown, speckled here and there with clumps of
dark green tendrils which may only have been some kind of weed anchored to the
body of the beast.

I snatched the bow from beneath my foot,
feeling a surge of perverse elation on account of the fact that here was
something I could do—here was an enemy at which I could strike in my own
fashion.

I fitted an arrow to the bow, and without
rising from my kneeling position I fired at the mass closest to the starboard
side. I saw the arrow fly true despite the winds which buffeted it in flight,
and it buried itself in the flesh of the monster . . . but the sea-serpent
made not the slightest reaction. I could see the white feathers that fletched
the arrow, but no red blood, nor any other sign of hurt.

I sent forth a second arrow without delay,
and hit the same serpentine coil a few yards further on, but with no more obvious
result, and I cursed, seeing that the coils were drawing tighter now around the
ship, which was imprisoned in an area of water no more than a hundred metres in
diameter.

Then came the head, rearing up out of the
spume no more than a dozen metres from the flank of the vessel, just aft of the
mast. It was as though it had tried to toss us up, as a bull tosses a luckless
matador, and had only just failed.

The enormous head was only a little like a
snake's: it had the fangs of a snake and eyes which were entirely ophidian, but
it had a crest behind its head much more elaborate than a cobra's hood, and its
snout was ridged to give it a less rounded profile. It was a veritable dragon's
head, with rows of swords-point teeth behind the greater fangs. Its slit-pupilled
eyes, golden yellow about the dark lens, caught me immediately with their
stare, and the crest swelled to present the appearance of a fan-like array of
webbed horns.

It paused for just a second in the air, the
head becoming steady as the eyes fixed upon their target, and I knew that it
was poised to strike.

I had a third arrow ready, and fired at the
open mouth as it gaped. A black forked tongue flickered out, and the arrow
caught it, embedding itself just behind the junction. There was no doubt that
the monster felt this blow because the head flinched, sucking the tongue back
between the fangs, arrow and all. For a single fleeting moment I clung to the
hope that I might have struck a mortal blow, but then the mouth gaped again,
the great curved fangs standing stark and white, and the head struck at me with
lightning speed.

Had I not been crouched beneath the rail I
must have been caught and killed, but my reflexive reaction was to duck, and I
felt the two great fangs strike at the carved parapet to either side of me,
splintering the wood, but impotent to hurt my body.

As I sprawled on the timbers I looked up
into the left eye of the monster, which was incredibly huge at this intimate
range, although it was only as big as a man's whole head. I sensed such
venomous hatred there as to make my blood run cold.

When the head drew back again I knew that I
had a few seconds to spare in which to launch another arrow, and while I
notched it to the string I determined to aim at that evil eye, to rob the monster
of part of its sight, perhaps even to penetrate its brain.

As the head poised itself in mid-air, ready
for the second strike, I managed to get myself into a firing position, and
loosed my arrow. It sped in company with at least one other, but the monster
swayed very slightly, and both bolts glanced off the armoured scales behind the
brow, apparently causing no harm at all. The coils of its astonishing body
were coming so tightly about the boat now that the lurching and heeling had
stopped, and the wind which tried to catch our sail had likewise dwindled away,
so that everything seemed uncannily steady as the head struck out again.

I tried to roll to one side, but the head
was simply too big to be avoided in that way. Fortunately, it was not the
gleaming fang that struck me, but rather the horny ridge above the root of the
fang, which caught my shoulder and knocked me away from the protecting rail.
The bow shivered in my hand, and split as I rammed its end into the timber of
the deck. I let it go, and tried desperately to regain my balance.

Another arrow, which must have been fired
by the goddess, pursued the monstrous head as it reared backwards for another
strike, and embedded its point in the black lip between the fangs, but the
leviathan cared nothing at all for such a wound, and I knew that this time it
would not miss me when it struck again.

I struggled desperately with my sword,
trying to haul it from its scabbard, but the scabbard was trapped beneath me
where I had fallen, and I could not get the weapon out.

I stared the monster full in the face as
the head paused for an instant, quite still in the clouded air while that
baleful eye measured the strike.

Then Myrlin stepped in front of me, his
great hammer held in his right hand, and as the vile head thrust itself forward
yet again he hurled the hammer with all his might. It flew, more like a
thunderbolt than a missile, to meet the serpent's head mid-way. I could not
judge the precise point of impact, but I know that the hammer sailed into the
open mouth, to catch the upper palate nearer to the throat than the lip.

With Myrlin's heroic strength behind it,
the thrown hammer was much more powerful than the sea-serpent's thrusting head,
and the impact snatched the head backwards with such violence that I felt sure
the cervical vertebrae must have been broken. The monster was hurled
backwards, tumbling back over its own circling coils,

crashing into the surface of the water.

Myrlin cried out in exultation, and my own
voice began to join in, but our anticipation of victory was premature. The
great coils were still about the ship, so close on every side that they had
almost caught it fast, and when the head disappeared those coils went mad,
closing upon the vessel with such a convulsion that they caught it by the bow
and the stern, and turned it upright from end to end.

Out of the water rose what I first thought
was a second head, but was in fact a great crested tail, which struck at the
thrown-up ship with all the violence it could muster.

The mast broke like matchwood, and all the
timbers of the hull and the middle deck cracked and splintered. I saw the
gorgon's head, severed from its place atop the prow, hurtle through the air to
disappear impotently beneath the storm- tossed waves. I heard the goddess
scream, and remembered what she had said about the ship being no less a part of
her than the armour-clad flesh which she had put on. In that scream, I was
certain, I heard the sound of her death.

But it mattered no longer to me whether the
ship was seaworthy or not, for I could not help but part company with it,
hurled tumbling through the air to come down, not in the turbulent water, but
upon the flesh of the monster itself, near to where my first and second arrows
had struck.

For one sensible moment I clung with all my
might to a handhold found among the scales, as though I might seize the beast
and ride him to his lair in the ocean depths, but then I was snatched beneath
the waves, and hit the water with such violence that all the breath was knocked
out of me.

As I struggled desperately to remain
conscious I tried with all my might to gasp for air—but there was no air to be
had, and all I could take in was foul and icy water, which seemed to carry a
tide of noxious poison into the very heart of my being. I was still on the
surface of the strange cold sea, and my red armour seemed to have no weight at
all, but something was dragging at me from below, trying to suck me down into
the depths. I grabbed at a spar that was close by in the water, but it was by
no means large enough to serve as a raft.

Still winded and desperate for air I looked
wildly about, and saw a much larger piece of wreckage bearing down upon me from
the crest of a wave. Clinging to it with evident desperation was Myrlin's huge
black-armoured body, and had I been able I would have yelled with joy to see
that he was still alive. I stretched out my hand, trying to catch hold of the
edge of the makeshift raft, but the roiling of the waters carried me away. I
still could not cry out to beg for help, but I saw Myrlin lift his head and was
sure that he must catch sight of me, and save me from the force that was trying
to pull me under.

His eyes met mine, and for a moment there
was a flicker of recognition, but the instant did not last. It was as though
some kind of magical fire flared inside his head, so that his eyes were
suddenly lighted from within, burning like angry beacons, and his body was
seized by horrid convulsions which were determined to shake him apart.

He would surely have reached out to save
me, if he could—but he could not, because the demons had him, and were
destroying him even while he clung to the wreckage that had given him momentary
hope of salvation.

I felt that the demons had me, too, because
I was pulled down by invisible hands, deep into the awful waters, which closed
above my head. I knew then that the breath of life for which I fought so hard
would never come.

The last thought I had before consciousness
left me was that I had discovered what it felt like to drown.

23

The moment our lights picked out the shape of the
other vehicle Clio brought us smoothly to a halt. Susarma Lear was sitting in
the driver's seat, but she wasn't pretending to drive. Urania, with Clio on her
lap, was sitting between the two of us.

"Better get up to the turret," I
said to the colonel. "We may need the guns."

Susarma moved back, and moments later her
place was taken by Myrlin. There had been no sign of movement near the other
truck, which was facing a blank wall. Its lights were reflected back from the
wall to produce a halo effect around it. Its doors seemed to be sealed.