Into the Void s-2 Page 4

  Dana and Miggins shifted their oars drastically, and the longboat maneuvered in response. This time, Teldin could feel the turn, an uncomfortable disorientation originating in his inner ears. The rapid wheeling of the stars didn't help, nor did the fact that the wasp was now above the longboat… and that Teldin was looking down onto its deck. He took another cleansing breath and concentrated on readying the crossbow for another shot.

  "There he is," Dana yelled, "on the port rail. Get him!"

  Teldin saw the man she meant, a tall figure with shoulder-length black hair. As the wasp swept by overhead, he snapped the crossbow to his shoulder. That same cool stillness came over his mind again as he brought the weapon to bear. For an instant, his gaze locked with that of the pirate captain. The man had eyes the gray of a winter sea. Teldin pulled the trigger.

  The quarrel flew true… but at the last moment the captain flung himself backward. Razor-sharp steel grazed the man's cheek, then the missile buried itself deep in the wasp's port rail. In his peripheral vision, Teldin saw a flash of swift movement….

  And Miggins cried out. The longboat lurched and rolled, taking the wasp out of sight beneath the hull.

  Miggins sprawled against the gunwale, clutching at his right shoulder, while his oar waved wildly. Crimson spread across his jerkin from where the shaft of an arrow protruded from his flesh. The longboat lurched again.

  Reacting instinctively, Teldin dropped the crossbow and scrambled over the thwarts toward the oarsman. Miggins was trying to sit up, but seemed unable to find the strength. Teldin reached out to help him, but stopped. How badly was the boy injured? Would moving him make it worse?

  The young gnome looked up at him with pain-glazed eyes. "It hurts, Teldin," he said dully. He tried once more to sit up, moving his oar as he did so. Again the longboat lurched, pitching Teldin against the gunwale.

  "Take his oar," Dana shouted.

  Once more, Teldin felt anger spark within him. "He's wounded," he roared at her.

  "He'll be dead if you don't do it," assured Horvath, "and so will we." The calm tone of the older gnome's voice was unchanged.

  A sharp rebuttal sprang to Teldin's lips, but then the anger within him died. The gnomes were right. As carefully as he could, he moved Miggins from the thwart-the youth was almost as light as a child in his arms-and took his place. He grasped the oar and felt it slippery with Miggins' sweat. "What do I do?" he asked.

  "Unless I tell you otherwise, watch what Dana does," Horvath said, "and do just the opposite. She moves her oar up, you move yours down. She moves hers forward…"

  "I move mine astern. I understand. I'll try."

  "That's all we can ask. Dana, half roll. If we want to avoid the wasp, we've got to see it."

  The woman snorted. Maybe she didn't agree with Horvath, Teldin thought, or maybe she just enjoyed snorting. Either way, she lowered her oar. Teldin raised his, trying to match the angle exactly. The stars swung, and the pirate ship came back into sight. It was astern again, but its heading matched that of the longboat, and it was much closer, a massive, asymmetrical shape with its missing legs and damaged wings looming in Teldin's field of vision. A cold fist seemed to squeeze his heart as he realized how fast the ship was closing. "Ramming!" he cried. To his own ears, his voice sounded like a croak, as though somebody were choking him.

  "I know," Horvath replied. "We have to wait for the right moment. Teldin, when I say, bring your oar astern. Hard, do you understand me?"

  "I understand." Where was that calmness he'd felt only a minute ago, Teldin wondered. There was certainly no sign of it now.

  "Ready…" Horvath's voice sounded detached, disinterested. "And… now."

  Teldin threw his weight on the oar. Beside him on the thwart, Dana did the same. The longboat turned sharply just in time. Silently-and the huge shape's movement was all the more terrifying for that-the wasp soared by to port, so close that Teldin felt he could almost touch one of its tattered wings.

  As the vessel passed, his sense of balance swung and pitched the way the stars had done only moments before. His stomach lurched with vertigo, and he clung to his oar to counteract a sudden, terrifying sensation of falling. It was over in a moment as the universe seemed to right itself, almost fast enough that Teldin could believe he'd imagined the whole thing, but Horvath was shaking his head in discomfort; he'd obviously felt something too.

  "Gravity effect," the gnome muttered. "We passed through their gravity field. That was close. Now, center oars."

  Teldin responded instantly but kept his eye on the wasp. There was movement on the deck, but nobody was pointing a weapon at them. In fan, the pirate crew didn't seem to be watching the longboat at all….

  "Ship ho!" Dana screamed hoarsely. Her head was tipped back, eyes on something directly overhead. Teldin followed her gaze. There was another shape against the stars, another ship, this one with lines as smooth and streamlined as the wasp's were angular. Its hull was long and slender, tapering at the stern to a sharp point set with a vertical spanker sail. Its bow was rounded, reinforced by a metal ram. Metal lobes extended from the hull just aft of the ram, each with a circular port at its end, which reminded Teldin uncomfortably of an eye. Just aft of the lobes, vertical structures were visible on the hull, looking very much like the gill slits of some impossibly huge shark.

  The new ship was several hundred yards away, too distant for Teldin to make out any details of its crew, though he could see movement on deck. The vessel's blunt bow was pointed directly at the pirate wasp, and it was under speed.

  The wasp's crew had obviously spotted the approaching vessel as well. The pirate ship's torn wings shifted, and its bow began to bear off. Without warning, fire blossomed on the wasp's deck, a silent concussion of orange flame. The vessel shuddered but continued to turn away from its new enemy. As the wasp began to accelerate, Teldin saw that the fire was spreading, devouring the wing roots.

  "The ship's dead," Dana hooted. In a transport of excitement, she clasped Teldin's shoulder as she would a comrade's. "They'll never control that fire," she cheered.

  Teldin was silent, his eyes on the new ship, drawing ever nearer. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," his grandfather had always told him, but was that true? Had it ever been true?

  Dana fell silent and withdrew her hand from his shoulder. After a moment she asked quietly, "What do we do, Horvath?"

  "We can't outrun that hammership," he said calmly. "I say we remember our wounded." He lifted his hands from the arms of the throne and clenched them into fists as though to relieve tension in his forearms. He brushed a light beading of sweat off his brow and looked at the approaching vessel-for the first time with his natural eyes, rather than the arcane senses provided by the minor helm. "Oars in, if you please," he requested. "And prepare to greet our rescuers."

  Teldin watched as Dana quickly unseated the oarlock and brought her oar inboard, then tried to copy her actions. It wasn't nearly as easy as it looked. The oar's length made it clumsy, and he was hindered both by inexperience and his worry about jostling Miggins. By the time he had his oar safely shipped, the approaching vessel-the "hammership" as Horvath called it-was within a spear cast of the longboat and drawing smoothly closer. For the first time he could see the ship's crew: human, as far as he could tell. As if that was any kind of guarantee; the pirate wasp had been manned by humans, too…. At least they weren't neogi.

  The long, blunt hull of the hammership drew alongside the longboat and eased to a stop with less than fifty feet separating the two vessels. For an instant Teldin's vision swam with vertigo, then the universe settled down once more.

  Half a dozen of the hammership's crew were lining the near rail. They weren't wearing armor, and their weapons were limited to belt daggers or clasp-knives, but they had the same unmistakable air about them that Teldin remembered from the veterans he'd met in the war. There was nothing about their actions, or even their justifiable scrutiny of the longboat, that could be considered hostile. Still he reco
gnized an unmistakable sense of readiness-whether to deal violence or receive it, he wasn't sure.

  Something snaked across the intervening distance. Instinctively Teldin grabbed it-a rope.

  "Cleat it off," a voice ordered from the hammership. Teldin had no trouble picking out the man who'd spoken. Holding on to the other end of the rope, he was easily a head taller than anyone else at the rail. His shoulders were broad and his chest deep and muscular. His hair-curly and dose-cropped to his head-was pale enough at this distance to appear gray, but his face seemed to be that of a man not much older than Teldin himself. There was something about the man that spoke of command. "Well, cleat it off." The powerful voice boomed across space again.

  Horvath gently took the rope from Teldin's hand, passed a bight around the midships thwart, and tied it off. "Tell him to bring it in," he told Teldin quietly. "Humans are more comfortable dealing with humans."

  Teldin nodded. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, "Bring us in."

  The big man stepped back as three other crew members took the rope and threw their weight against it. Teldin nodded to himself. The pale-haired man had the aura of command. Was he the captain?

  The longboat moved closer and bumped against the hammership's hull. The smaller vessel floated at the same point on the hammership as it might were both ships floating in water. Teldin nodded to himself; this seemed to confirm his deductions about a "gravity plane." The larger vessel's rail was a good four feet higher than the longboat's gunwale-no difficulty for Teldin, but a significant obstacle for the gnomes.

  The barrel-chested man must have recognized the same difficulty. He swung his legs over the hammership's rail and dropped lightly into the longboat. His face split in a lopsided grin as he asked Teldin, "Give you a hand with the crew?"

  There was a flurry of movement beside Teldin. He glanced over toward Dana… and saw the gnome training a cocked and armed crossbow on the large man. When did she bring that out? he asked himself. When I was shipping the oar? "Dana…" Horvath began.

  "No," Dana cut him off, "we have to know." She settled her finger more firmly on the trigger and aimed the weapon at the center of the man's chest. "What do you want?"

  The man's asymmetrical grin didn't falter. When he spoke, it was directly to Teldin. "Spirited, isn't she?" The big man's eyes didn't shift, but his hand lashed out with the speed of a striking snake. He batted the crossbow aside-the bolt thudded harmlessly into the hammership's hull as Dana pulled the trigger much too late-then gave the weapon a twist and wrenched it almost contemptuously from the woman's grasp. He glanced casually at the weapon in his hand-"Gnomish design, right?" he speculated-and handed it to Teldin. "Do they do this often?" he asked.

  It was Horvath who answered. "There will be no more trouble," he said quietly. He gestured at the motionless Saliman and Miggins. "We have wounded."

  The man nodded, but his grin remained. "That's right," he said, feigning wonder. "Almost half your crew injured. Grievous losses for taking out a wasp ship." He nudged Teldin with a rock-hard elbow. "Remind me to take gnomes more seriously in the future."

  Two more of the hammership's crew clambered down into the longboat, easily passing the injured gnomes up to their fellows above. In response to a surprisingly cordial gesture of invitation from the large man, Horvath climbed onto the gunwale and extended his arms up, to be hoisted aboard the larger vessel. Dana hesitated for a moment to glare at the man who'd so easily disarmed her, then did the same. The others from the hammership swung themselves back aboard their ship, leaving Teldin alone with the big man.

  For the first time, Teldin had time to really look the fellow over. He was a large man, at least a hand's breadth over six feet tall, with shoulders to match. Lines seamed his face around his eyes, making it difficult for Teldin to judge his age, and a scar, bone-white against weather-tanned skin, angled up from his right eyebrow into his curly blond hair. The large man extended a big-knuckled hand toward Teldin. "I'm Aelfred Silverhorn, of Toril." His voice was deep but not harsh, with a trace of an unfamiliar accent. "And you are?"

  Teldin grasped the large warrior's wrist. "Teldin Moore of Krynn."

  Aelfred's grip was firm. "Well met, Teldin Moore," he said. "Now, what do we do with the boat?"

  "Bring it aboard?"

  Aelfred shook his head. "No space."

  Teldin frowned. At the speed the Unquenchable had taken off, it didn't seem likely it would be back soon… if it even survived. "Cut it loose, then."

  "As you say." Aelfred put a boot onto the gunwale, reached up for the hammership's rail… then stepped down again. "After you," he said with a half-bow.

  Teldin hesitated, not quite sure how to take the larger man's politeness. He shrugged. If I'm supposed to be captain, I'll be captain, he told himself. He stepped onto the longboat's gunwale, grabbed the rail above him, and swung himself over onto the hammership's deck. Saliman and Miggins were nowhere to be seen-presumably they'd been taken belowdecks and were being tended to-but Dana and Horvath were beside him. The two gnomes stood with their backs to the rail, looking with some trepidation at their new hosts. Most of the crewmen had returned to their task, but several still stood around, watching the gnomes with interest.

  Aelfred, too, swung over the rail, tossing the rope to another crewman. Teldin tried to ignore the fact that their only possible escape from the hammership was now drifting away into the darkness of space, and he asked, "What's the name of your ship?"

  The big man chuckled deep in his throat. "My ship? Oh, I'm not the captain. Lort-" he called to another crewman "-why don't you bring the captain on deck? Our guest would like to meet him."

  Lort, a whip-thin boy of perhaps twenty summers but already showing the hard edge of a mercenary, grinned and vanished down a companionway.

  "We spotted a gnomish dreadnought making high speed, with two wasps hard after it," Aelfred continued to Teldin. "It was too far away for us to get into the action. Your ship?"

  Teldin was silent for a moment. The caution he'd learned over the last few weeks began to reassert itself. "In a manner of speaking," he temporized.

  Aelfred didn't question him on it. The large man was watching the companionway where Lort had disappeared belowdecks. "You're interested in the captain?" he asked, a strange tone to his voice. "Teldin, meet my commanding officer."

  A figure emerged from the companionway. It was almost as tall as Aelfred, but there the similarity ended. The captain's skin, mottled and purple, glistened, and the short tentacles that made up its lower face moved sinuously. Large white eyes with no visible pupils regarded Teldin icily. The figure was clad in a silken, midnight-purple robe, clasped high at the neck and long enough to brush the deck. A brooch of amethyst set in burnished silver was at the creature's throat.

  Aelfred laid a calloused hand on Teldin's shoulder. "Welcome aboard," he said flatly.

  Chapter Three

  Teldin took an involuntary step backward and felt the ship's rail press against his spine. Nowhere to run, his fear told him. He was flanked to left and right by members of the hammer-ship's crew. Nothing was actively hostile in their manner, but there was certainly nothing welcoming either. The harsh sunlight of space glinted off knives and daggers and illuminated hard and scar-etched faces.

  Ahead of him, the captain-the monster-drew closer. You're dead. Dead, dead… The words hammered in the back of Teldin's brain. Images from childhood stories and horror tales flashed through his mind. He saw his own death, his head held immobile while writhing tentacles peeled away his skull like the shell of a hard-boiled egg. He felt his legs tense of their own volition, ready to heave him backward over the gunwale. Better the long, dizzying fall into nothingness than that ultimate obscenity….

  You have nothing to fear.

  The voice was quiet, but as clear as the tone of a flute, completely unaccented. Teldin looked around wildly for the one who'd spoken. No one had moved: neither Dana nor Horvath, nor the crew of the monster's vessel. His gaze sn
apped back to the tentacled creature.

  It raised a three-fingered hand, and Teldin flinched. The rail slammed into the small of his back, and for a moment his balance wavered. The firm hand of a crewman grasped his shoulder then, not painfully or threateningly, merely to steady him.

  The clear voice sounded again, I repeat, you have nothing to fear. This time the voice was accompanied by an almost subliminal tingle within Teldin's skull, a momentary feeling of coolness a finger's breadth behind his left eyebrow. He stared at the monster. Although there was no change in its expression-if a thing with tentacles instead of a face could be said to have an expression-its gaze no longer looked threatening or even intense, merely curious.

  What is your name? This time Teldin was sure of what he'd only just begun to suspect. The "voice" was sounding directly in his mind.

  With a supreme effort, he forced control on his body, slowing and deepening his breathing, releasing the tension in his chest. "Teldin," he whispered. "Teldin Moore."

  Teldin Moore, the mental voice repeated. I welcome you aboard the good ship Probe, Teldin. Tentacles moved in an intricate and graceful pattern-a gesture of greeting? My name is "Estriss."

  It took Teldin a moment-and the startled reaction of the two gnomes beside him-to realize that the creature had spoken the last word aloud. Its voice was sharp and thin, a hissing sound more like the warning cry of a lizard or snake than the speech of a warm-blooded creature. But, of course, it's probably nor warm-blooded, he thought with a shudder. "Estriss," he repeated.

  Correct. The cool words formed inside his head once more. Translated into your language, the name means "Thought Taker.'

  "Thought… Taker?"

  That is how my own people know me. Teldin felt a touch of something that could be humor-albeit cold and detached- in the monster's statement. It is not as bad as it sounds. I am a philosopher, a student of the universe. I learn from others, borrow from their wisdom and learning. Thus 'Thought Taker' Estriss. Do you understand?