The Crystal Seas

Chapter SEVEN

Blade shortly found out that it wasn't.

Being a hero meant a number of things. It meant that he was promptly relieved of his post as armsmaster to Captain Foyn. He was given the best and most intensive training in Talgaran fighting methods, especially of underwater fighting.

It meant that he was assigned to the Conciliar Guard, the force of picked and trusted soldiers who guarded the Council of Autocrats at home and represented it in war. Its nominal chief was the Autocrat for War, a sour-faced man named Stipors, who was a fanatical advocate of war to the death against the Fishmen. Blade didn't much care for being under the eyes of such a man.

Meanwhile, plans for the great attack were going forward at full speed. Talgar was going to hurl against the Fishmen a good ten thousand men, half of them equipped with breathing gear, riding in nearly two hundred ships and boats. They would in fact be hurling against the Fishmen nearly every ship and man not needed for the defense of Talgar. If the whole force was lost-

But no one considered that possibility, at least no one who dared to open his mouth on the subject. The ships were re-rigged and repainted and stocked with arms and weapons. The crews and the raiding parties were picked, then drilled and trained within an inch of their lives. Weapons were piled up in the arsenals-tridents, bows, spears, swords, incendiary bombs, waterborne poisons, water-ignited chemicals. And chest after chest of breathing gear.

The breathing gear fascinated Blade more than anything else. It was not the comparatively clumsy gear of Home Dimension. Rather, it was a simple mask, with a pad impregnated with some chemical, that fitted over a wearer's mouth and nose. Breathing through that pad, a man could breathe in «the Life Principle» (oxygen, no doubt) from the water as easily as he could breathe it in from the air.

Even to the tough-minded Talgarans, this seemed almost like magic. Blade constantly heard whispers that the learned men of the Empire of Nurn had access to black and otherwise-forgotten arts that no honest man would use.

Blade didn't doubt that. It sounded as though the Empire had kept some remnants of the superior science of a vanished civilization in this dimension. Part of that science was obviously the secret of easily extracting oxygen from seawater. Home Dimension scientists knew this was theoretically possible, but Blade had heard of nothing practical done along those lines. Certainly nothing as breathtakingly efficient as the breathing masks from Nurn. One pad would keep a man deep in the sea breathing easily for as much as twelve hours. When the first pad ran out, one simply surfaced or found an anchored bubble and changed pads. The pads were expensive, but the attacking force would have at least fifty of them stocked for each of its five thousand underwater fighting men.

By temperament, Blade was a fighting man, a man of action. So he rapidly learned the underwater fighting techniques and the use of the breathing masks. Within two weeks his instructors were saying that he was handling his weapons and gear like a born Talgaran.

Unfortunately the delight in learning a new fighting skill didn't keep Blade completely occupied. He was painfully aware of the limits on what he could do.

For one thing, he couldn't lift a finger to get the Conciliators out of trouble. And they were still in trouble. Autocrat Krodrus himself made that perfectly clear in a brief talk with Blade.

«Passions run high in a city at war,» said the little man. «Even if the Conciliators had done nothing whatever and this was known to all, it would still be wise to keep them confined for a time. That way they will be safe until the attack is launched and people have other things to occupy their minds. And it will look as though they have been punished.»

«But they don't deserve any punishment, do they?»

The Autocrat shrugged. «It is not known. What is known is that some of our patrols were not where they should have been when the Fishmen launched their great attack. Stipors is certain that the Conciliators had something to do with this.»

«That's outrageous.»

«How can you be sure, Blade? Do you really know any of the Conciliators except Svera? She would not do such a thing, I admit. But I wish I could be sure about the others. And Stipors has much influence on the Council of Autocrats. Whatever I thought would make little difference. The Conciliators will be held and they will be questioned.»

«Torture?» Blade's mouth was dry.

Krodrus shrugged. «It is permitted by Laws of the Sea Cities laid down long before you or I were born, Blade. Do not spend useless effort trying to fight what cannot be fought. You will do more for yourself and for the Sea Cities by using all your skill and strength against the Fishmen.»

That was the other problem Blade faced. Everybody in Talgar seemed completely certain that the great attack was the best possible response to the Fishmen. Even such comparatively intelligent men as Krodrus seemed to take it for granted.

Blade's experience of war led him to doubt very much that the great attack would do much. Like the Spanish Armada, the fleet was too big, too clumsy, too slow, too large a target. It might very well meet the same fate as the Armada, leaving the Sea Cities defenseless.

But protesting would be useless. Worse, it might land him in fatal difficulties. He would do no good being thrown off the Conciliar Guard, still less good getting thrown in prison with the Conciliators. Perhaps he could find some other way of bringing these people to their senses.

But he still hadn't found one a month later, when the great fleet sailed to the attack.

Two hundred ships underway at once crammed the channel south of Talgar Island almost solid. A man could almost walk from the beach on the Island to the nearest reef on the other side of the channel across the decks of ships and boats.

This led to accidents. One large ship ran in too close to the reef and ripped out her bottom on the coral heads. But in the mild weather there was plenty of time to take off her crew and cargo. This accident bothered a few men, but most called it bad seamanship and some called it a luck sacrifice to the Silver Goddess.

Farther down the channel a fishing boat ran across the bows of the transport and was rammed and sunk. Again her crew managed to escape, but this time not all of them were picked up. Four men were missing, and none of the bodies was found. That made for some discontented muttering. Some men said that the Silver Goddess was getting greedy. A few openly called the second accident a bad omen. These men were flogged for spreading alarm, at Stipors' orders.

The whole fleet got clear of the channel without any further accidents and clapped on sail for the voyage to Fishman waters. These lay on the other side of four hundred miles of shallow seas. Although there were only a few well-charted patches of reefs in those four hundred miles, the water was nowhere more than five hundred feet deep. In fact, it was sometimes shallow enough that Blade could see the sand and coral on the bottom more than three hundred feet below. At those times it seemed that the whole enormous fleet was just a fleet of toy ships, pushed by a child across a glass tabletop.

Once in open water, the fleet moved into its cruising formation. The larger ships were massed in the center, with faster, lighter craft thrown out on either side and in a scouting line ten miles ahead. The scout ships each carried a contingent of the best divers of Talgar, ready to strike at any attractive Fishman targets they found. Nobody seemed concerned that the fleet itself made an incredibly juicy target for the Fishmen.

The first day and the first night passed without incident. The seas rolled blue-green under the fleet, giving no signs that any race such as the Fishmen even existed. Blade began to wonder if the optimists might not be right in saying that the fleet would strike the Fishmen with terror. The optimists themselves were loudly sure of it. The fleet sailed on, and the second night fell with tropical swiftness over the sea. From the deck of the Council flagship, nothing could be seen except hundreds of gently moving lights — green, red, gold, and blue-as the sailors lit the night lanterns aboard the other ships.

Suddenly a terrifying orange glare lit up the sea far out on the port wing of the fleet. It swelled, silhouetting a dozen other ships, showing the victim already gushing flame from bow to stern. Then an explosion rumbled across the waves. The ship's masts and deck planking shot rocketlike into the sky and came down in trails of fire. The ship's hull fell apart, and she vanished with a terrible hiss and a cloud of steam.

Once again the sailors of Talgar showed their discipline. The ships nearest the place where the victim had gone down started edging in toward the main body of the fleet.

Stern lamp signals from the flagship sent them hastily back into position. A dozen small boats dropped back to comb the area of the sinking. Blade saw one of them pass, her sweeps pounding out a fierce rhythm, her decks blazing with lanterns. Their light gleamed on the weapons of the soldiers lining her decks and the divers perched on her stern, ready to go over the side. Then she was out of sight astern.

The boats found nothing except floating charred timbers. The sunken ship-the Golden Worm-had gone down like a stone. So had the 120 men aboard her.

When word of that got around the fleet, there was open fear and doubt even on the faces of some of the optimists. For three hundred years the Fishmen and Talgarans had let each other alone at night. There were too many risks in fighting under the midnight sea. Now the Fishmen seemed willing and able to run those risks. And they had a weapon that could consume a large ship in minutes and send her down to the bottom before anyone aboard could escape. That also was new and frightening.

A Guard officer named Nezdorn frankly admitted to Blade that he was frightened. «I don't know how the Fishmen did this. I've seen our own firepots go off aboard a ship, by accident. If the Fishmen have something like that and can hit our ships with them-well, that might explain it.»

Blade nodded. «The firepots are made in Nurn, aren't they?»

«Yes. They're another of the things the wizards of Nurn can do and we can't. Why?»

«Just curious. The Fishmen might have-«Blade broke off with a good imitation of a coughing spell. It occurred to him that he had been close to expressing a particularly odd heresy. Fortunately Nezdorn didn't ask him to finish his sentence. But Blade couldn't get the thought out of his mind, even if he could keep it out of his mouth. Could the Empire of Nurn be playing a double game? It was a fascinating and horrible thought. Blade was also certain it would not be a very popular one, either among the Talgarans or among the Fishmen.

The fleet sailed on through the darkness. Just before dawn the orange flames gushed up again, this time on the starboard wing. Another ship gone in minutes, another hundred men swallowed up by the crystal seas. This time it took more than signaling to get the fleet back in order. At least two ships had to be boarded and their captains arrested.

The two disobedient captains were hanged from the yardarms of their own ships later that day, while the fleet drifted, watching the spectacle. Stipors was obviously determined to have discipline and order in the fleet, whatever the cost. It was hard to tell whether his gruesome demonstration succeeded or not. Certainly the fleet kept good order all that day and during the following night. But the Fishmen didn't launch any more attacks, either. One scout boat far out on the starboard end of the scouting line reported seeing one of the yulon-drawn chariots and driving it off with stones from a catapult. But that was all.

If the absence of the enemy helped keep the fleet in order, it didn't help the mood of the sailors and soldiers aboard. Even the wildest optimists couldn't help wondering if the Fishmen had really abandoned the struggle, or were just lying in wait. After all, it made good sense for them to let the fleet sail as far from its home waters as possible. Then they could more easily strike with their full strength-and destroy the fleet more easily. Mentioning this idea out loud in so many words was of course discouraged. But that didn't keep it from being the major topic of conversation whenever a few men got together in private.

«They're out there somewhere,» said Nezdorn. He waved one large hand toward the dark sea as they both stood the midwatch aboard the flagship. «They've got their eyes on us every minute. We're not going to get much farther without a battle.»

But incredibly, the fleet did. The sun rose over a calm, empty sea. Not a breath of wind was stirring. Every ship in the fleet sat in the water as though she had been glued in place. Occasionally there would be a shout as a school of fish or one of the great shark-like trinzan fishes broke the surface. But no sign of the Fishmen.

Stipors hoisted the signal for a council of war aboard the flagship. The flags dropped limply from the signal halyards as scurrying small boats brought over admirals and generals from the various lesser flagships. Stipors and his subordinates vanished behind the great bronze-hinged doors of the flagship's aft cabin. The fleet drifted aimlessly, the lookouts scanning the water for any signs of the enemy.

Half the men on board each ship were on deck by order, and most of the rest stayed on deck by choice. It was stiflingly hot below decks, and everyone felt (although no one admitted) the fear of being trapped below decks.

Blade lifted his helmet and used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat collecting on his forehead. If the fleet stayed here much longer, the heat and the fear were going to snap the men's nerves.

He looked over the side, deep down into the crystal water. Here it was even clearer than usual. The bottom was clearly visible, even the ripples passing through the purple and red masses of weeds that blotched the white or silvery sand. At least if the Fishmen attacked, they would find it hard to attack by surprise.

More weary hours passed. Blade began to wonder if the council of war and the fleet would both sit until every man aboard sweated away or died of strain and boredom.

Eventually the Guard commander came aft and called the men around him.

«Brothers,» he said. «The council of war has chosen to strike. A thousand picked underwater fighters will be loaded aboard the light vessels. These will proceed with their sweeps to the nearest area of Fishman settlements. They will destroy those settlements, utterly and without mercy, avenging our dead, asserting the supremacy and honor of the Sea Cities of Talgar.»

Blade suspected that the cheers which followed were more from relief than from any positive enthusiasm for the idea.