Swordsmen of Gor

Chapter Forty-One WE ARE PURSUED; THIS IS NOTED BY TWO MARINERS

This was the beginning of our third day at sea.

Two mariners were at the starboard rail, amidships, leaning out, looking back.

I joined them, noticed nothing, and then looked out, across the water, squarely abeam.

The sea was calm. Tor-tu-Gor was low behind us, on the horizon, in our wake. It was a winter sky, though we had not yet come to the Ninth Passage Hand, following which is the winter solstice. Toward the tenth Ahn, the Gorean noon, after we had emerged from the Alexandra earlier, in the morning, some three days ago, at, say, the fifth Ahn, the ship had changed course, radically. I gathered that Aëtius had reconsidered the sky, or that someone to whom he might report had done so. About the sixteenth Ahn, the storm was well to the north. This could be seen from the darkness over the water. Had we kept the former course we would have been in the vicinity of the storm, if not embroiled within it. To be sure it might have been no more than a robust squall. Perhaps, in its passing, it would have lasted for little more than a quarter of an Ahn. Perhaps a galley might have weathered it, without even sheeting itself with canvas. Still, it is hard to know about such things. One does not know what the sky portends, only that it portends. I myself, particularly with an untried ship, would not have challenged it. And so, too, had ruled whoever might be the master of the ship of Tersites. To be sure, many storms cover the sea for hundreds of square pasangs and one can no more avoid them than the sea herself. Too, some storms last several days. One strives to weather such storms, and sometimes one must flee before them. In a galley one would normally take down the mast and yard, that they not be lost in the wind, or, if necessary, rig the smallest of her sails, the storm sail, get the storm astern and run before her, as might a tabuk attempting to elude a pursuing larl. I had confirmed with the helmsman the following morning that we had returned to our former course. It would take us south of Cos, north of Tyros.

As noted, this was the morning of our third day at sea.

“It is falling behind,” said one of the mariners.

“It has been with us since the Alexandra,” said the other.

“It weakens,” said the first.

“It is foundering,” said the second.

“It is drowning,” said the first.

How odd, I thought, that a sea sleen would be with us from the Alexandra.

Perhaps they frequented these waters. Still we were far from shore, and the sea sleen, as other forms of predatory sea life, tends to range the fishing banks, so to speak, shallower waters closer to shore where sea plants can get sunlight, these plants then forming the basis of a rich marine ecology.

But we were now far from shore.

Too, sea sleen commonly swam in packs. They were seldom alone.

“How could a sea sleen drown?” I asked.

“That beast is mad,” said the first fellow.

“That is not a sea sleen,” said the second mariner, turning about. “That is a land animal. See the width of the head, the jaws.”

The sea sleen is an unusual animal, presumably related somehow to the varieties of land sleen. Its body is much narrower, and the head is narrow and knifelike. The six powerful appendages attached to that long, narrow body are flippered, not clawed. It is not fully clear whether the sea sleen is a marine adaptation of the sleen or a similar but independently evolved animal. Its body is snakelike, and it approaches its prey silently, gliding, usually from the rear right or left, and propels itself, when making its strike, by the sudden lashing of its tail. It is the fastest creature in the sea. Its greatest moment of danger is at its birth, for the mother’s casting of the offspring and blood into the water stimulates the investigation of predators, in particular that of the nine-gilled Gorean shark. At such times several male sea sleen will ring the mother and infant, protecting them. The narrow snout of the sea sleen, driven into the shark at great speed, can destroy the capacity of gills to extract oxygen from the water, and crush cartilage. The razorlike teeth aligned in two rows within the narrow, triangular jaws, too, some eighteen inches in length, can seize, shake, and tear the head from many varieties of shark. The mother, within the ring, has only a few Ehn within which she must bring the infant to the surface, for its first breath.

“It is not a sea sleen?” I said.

“No,” said the first mariner.

“It is exhausted,” said the other.

“It is an amazing beast,” said the first mariner. “It has been with us since the Alexandra. It swims all night, in the darkness, following us, somehow keeping up with us, and we with a fair wind. It must have incredible strength.”

“Which now fails,” said the other.

“As it must,” said the first.

“And so it dies,” said the other.

“It has followed the ship?” I said.

“Yes, Commander,” said the first of the two mariners.

“But why, why?” I asked.

“It is mad,” said the first.

“In any event, it drowns,” said the second mariner. “We must now be about our duties.”

“Ho!” I cried, suddenly, frightened, to the officer of the watch, and climbed the steps past the helm deck, to the stern castle.

“Commander?” he said.

“The glass,” I said to him, with urgency. “Give me your glass!”

He removed the sling from his shoulder, to which was attached the case which holstered the glass of the Builders.

At the high rail of the stern castle I saw, now far behind, the small motion in the water, now scarcely visible, even with the glass, in the swelling waves, which marked the point beyond which our mysterious companion could not proceed, that point which marked for it the end of a journey it could not complete.

I cast aside my sword and scabbard.

“Stop, Commander! Do not!” I heard the officer of the watch cry out, and then I saw the flash of the mighty rudder to my right, and entered the cold waters of gleaming Thassa.