Conan Of The Isles

CHAPTER TEN DRAGON FIRE

'All hands on deck, with arms!' Conan's bellow, like the crack of doom, snapped his crew out of its wide-eyed trance, as the men watched the monster approach. 'Archers to the forecastle! Yakov, signal when it's in range! Milo, man the catapult, with your squad! Aim it four points off the starboard bow. Steersmen, two points to port! Sigurd, shake out the mizzen; we may have to dance this ship around like a drunken Kothian peasant. Marco, fetch my helm and corselet to the poop!'

Then men scurried to obey with a clatter of weapons, sometimes punctuated by the clang of a dropped sword or pike. Up forward, the burly boatswain and his squad grunted and sweated as they levered the ponderous throwing engine into position, and others brought the tarry missiles up from the hold.

The Red Lion heeled and swung to port to bring the monster in line with the catapult, since the engine was not pivoted and therefore had to be aimed by aiming the ship. The eyes of the monster, glaring like meteors, came closer and seemed to climb higher.

As soon as the thing came within bowshot, Yakov's squad sent a storm of arrows arching across the intervening water. Some stuck fast in the scaly hide; others glanced off the golden scales. But the monster seemed not to feel the hissing shafts. The clawed feet, on the ends of long, slender, birdlike forelegs, rising from the sides of its breast., did not twitch. The arched, swanlike neck did not writhe, nor did the snarling visage change expression. The golden mask came on, all glaring eyes and grimacing visage,, filled with bristling tusks.

Then the sun, which had been hidden behind the eastern clouds, climbed out and shone upon the scene in its full glory. And Conan gave a shout: 'That's not alive., men; 'tis a ship - a machine! Ready the catapult!'

For the sudden increase in illumination had shown Conan the truth. The 'dragon' was a galley, like that which they had overcome in mid-ocean, but with its bow built up to resemble the front of a monster. The 'wings' were two tall, narrow triangular sails, stiffened by bamboo battens like the sails of the ships of Khitai. These sails rose from a pair of masts in the waist, side by side instead of fore and aft as in most sailing vessels. Now the sails were trimmed to point straight aft, since the galley was rowing directly into the wind. Hence they contributed nothing to the ship's progress, albeit they did fortify the illusion of a winged sea monster.

A second volley of arrows rattled harmlessly against the bow of the dragon-ship. Conan saw that the 'forelegs' were a pair of grappling devices, held up by cables over the water in front of the bow. When the vessel got close enough, these twin booms would be allowed to fall, and the 'claws' would be driven into the woodwork of the Red Lion to hold her fast.

'Milo! Shoot one!'yelled Conan. The boatswain signaled to the steersmen to bring the bow a little to starboard, so that this engine would bear. With a loud thump, the catapult released. The first of the balls of tar, trailing black smoke from its wick, arched across the water, glanced from the monster's neck, and fell into the sea.

Now the galley was a mere javelin-throw away. The curved breast of the dragon opened. A pair of doors swung wide, and a boarding plank extended itself out over the water. Inside the vessel, mustered at the base of the boarding plank, stood a fantastically garbed boarding party, bristling with weapons.

The ratchet of the catapult rattled as the crew desperately heaved on the windlass to recock the weapon. Then, thump! A second smoke-trailing ball flew over the water -right into the opening where the boarding party was mustered.

There was a burst of smoke, and a lurid light illumined the interior of the vessel. The boarding party milled in confusion; a couple of men fell or were pushed off into.the sea, where the weight of their armor quickly dragged them under.

Smoke spurted from the hull of the dragon ship in a hundred places. The fire seemed to spread with preternatural speed. Faintly, Conan could hear the cries of trapped men. There was an impression of desperate efforts, half-seen through the breast-opening, to fight the fire. But soon flame spurted from the dragon's neck; then the wing-sails caught fire and blazed up...

'Amra!' screamed Sigurd. 'Another one, to port!'

Conan whirled with a sulphurous oath. A second dragon-ship was bearing down upon them from the opposite side. Since this one was travelling with the wind on her beam, her wing-sails helped the oars so that she moved much faster than the first ship had done.

'Milo!' roared Conan. 'Get that engine over to port!'

As the catapult crew struggled to lever their machine to the opposite side of the forecastle deck, the second dragon-ship quickly closed the distance. Conan swore at his own stupidity in letting the sight of the blazing first ship so rivet his attention that he had not been aware, until he heard Sigurd's bellow, of the approach of the second. 'Yakov!' he thundered. 'Hold your shot until the doors open!'

This time, however, the dragon-ship did not open the doors to its boarding party so soon. Instead, it gave out a hiss as of a thousand kettles. From its open mouth, a tongue of liquid flame shot out. It formed a blazing arch across the narrowing gulf. It struck the side and deck of the Red Lion. In an instant, drops of the burning liquid were running hither and yon about the deck. In a panic, the pirates ran back from the rail, some of them beating at smoldering spots in their clothing. The liquid gave off a dense, black smoke with an oily smell. Conan guessed at once that this was a natural oil, like that which seeped out of the ground in the deserts of Iranistan and southern Turan.

But he had no time to explain this to his men. A second hiss, and another jet of liquid flame struck the foresail, which in an instant blazed up like a torch. The catapult crew and the archers scattered, screaming, as the sail flamed over their heads and showered the deck with bits of burning sailcloth.

'Hard to starboard!' yelled Conan. 'Trim sail to run with the wind on the starboard beam!' For he saw that another flaming jet might destroy his mainsail and make the Red Lion a helpless hulk.

But it was too late. Again came the hiss and the jet, and the mainsail dissolved into a mass of leaping, thundering flame. The Red Lion, shorn of all motive power save the little triangular mizzen, slowed and wallowed. The grappling booms of the galley crashed down, driving their claws into the carack's deck. The doors opened, the plank extended, and the second boarding party rushed to the deck of the Red Lion.

These men had brown skins and slitted eyes, with knobby cheekbones and hawk noses. They wore bird-helms like those of the sorcerer on the green galley, and strange glassy armor over leathern jerkins. They carried curious weapons - swords with saw-toothed edges of crystal, hooked spears, and glassy globes held in slings. There were other weapons, which Conan could not, in the first moment, make out.

Yakov's archers should have met the boarding party with a deadly hail of arrows, but the archers had become as demoralized as the rest of the pirates. Conan roared and threatened from the poop, but still they milled and yammered witlessly in the waist. A few arrows whizzed into the boarders, but to little effect. The shafts splintered against and glanced off the fragile-looking armor of glass. A few of the crew mustered where the tongue of the boarding plank rested upon the Red Lion's rail.

Conan leaped down the ladder from the poop deck, his great broadsword in hand, to add his weight to the defenders. The men of the boarding party, he now saw, bore curious equipment: tubes that ran from their nostrils, inside the glass helmets, to containers on their backs. It must, he surmised, be breathing equipment of some sort. But why?

The answer came just as he reached the main deck. The foremost of the attackers paused to whirl slings and shower his men with glass globes, each about the size of an apple. The globes burst with a musical tinkle and shattered into thousands of shining shards. Where each globe struck, a billowing cloud of pale vapor arose.

More and more'of the globes smashed and tinkled; as fast as the wind blew away the vapor, more of the uncanny missiles renewed it. And Conan saw his men, milling about in the waist, sag and slump to the deck, unconscious. Down they went, man after man, until only a few still stood erect. The deck looked like a shambles, save that the fallen men lay peacefully and apparently unhurt, as if sleeping,

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.