Godwin looked up from his wound-cleansing. He had had a glimpse of a
gray shape scuttling across a field of crimson flame. He stared, and
saw a score of large rats eyeing him from the lower deck. He bounded
to his feet, thick gorilla toes and fingers curling with a fear that
no amount of bravery could still. The plague! The ravishing, filthy,
obscene plague! Even from a flaming ship in the midst of a waste of
waters, there might be some escape at the last moment: but from the
bite of one of these rats would come a foul death that nothing could
turn aside, not even the djinn themselves!
He canvassed the poop. No high pedestals on which a man (or a great
ape) might perch, no protective armor of any description to foil the
attack of the rats. Here he stood, alone, armed with a broadsword and
a dagger, a helmet and a golden sigil. There was but a single chance.
He might squat on the bulwarks at the very stern, for they were high
and would give him the advantage of being a little above his squealing
enemies. He leaped and balanced and squatted, and his naked iron
broadsword hung down between his bent knees as he awaited their first
move.
This was not long in coming. The poop was the only part of the ship
which was not being ravaged by fire. The rats headed for its temporary
safety. As they poured over it, a repulsive and horrible crew, snapping
and snarling at one another, their fangs yellow as amber slivers, their
hides mangy and often showing the first signs of plague, the leaders
spied Godwin roosting unhappily on the rail. They halted, considered,
twitched their whiskers, and then made for him. He was meat.
The first rank charged in and were slain eight at a blow, by the
sweeping sword. The second rank fared likewise. The rats drew back and
stared beadily at him. He could fairly hear their odious, menacing
thoughts. He waited. A gigantic rodent, half its fur gone in some
hideous battle below decks, came flying at him. The perfect reflexes
of the gorilla flicked the sword out and spitted the beast through the
guts. It hung on the sword, squirming and piping weakly, as Godwin
whipped the blade back and forth and clove the small skulls of a dozen
more.
A myriad of the grisly horde came tumbling up to the poop deck. Godwin
was now mangling and mutilating constantly, as more rats poured upon
him. Some of the devils were already feasting on their defunct cousins.
And so, for minutes that dragged like weeks, Godwin of England fought
off the rats, and waited without hope for the inevitable end, when even
his mighty muscles should grow weary and his eye become slow, and at
last they should reach him.
A close-packed group of them attacked him from the right, and some of
them even leaped upon the rail and came at him. He flailed his sword
frantically into the brown of them, sending them slithering along the
deck, knocking them into the sea, or spoiling them where they stood by
messy divisions and squashings. Then a legion came from the left, and
he leaped up to his feet and balanced precariously on the bulwarks as
he bent and swiped back and forth.
* * * * *
The closest any of them had come yet was in this moment, when three
great bullies of rats, all fat and evil and ugly, leaped upon his
swaying leathern scabbard and clung there. They might have crept up
it and bitten him before he could slay them, except for the fortunate
stab of the late Saracen fencer, which had all but severed his sword
belt. The last few strands parted now, and the sheath fell to the deck,
carrying rats and belt with it.
Something rolled out of the sheath and made a small metallic sound as
it struck the overturned brazier. Godwin risked a glance at it. It
gleamed dull yellow in the sunlight.
"By the rood, mass, book and candle!" yelled Godwin, startling the rats
so that they drew back in haste, "the ring of Solomon! So _that's_
where I put it! In the bloody scabbard! Of course, I remember.
Someplace where 'twould be always near my hand!"
Nothing, not ten thousand times as many rats, could have kept him from
that ring. He leaped from the rail, half-squatting to bring his sword
hand near the deck, and the blade was a flaming scythe in his grip. It
mowed down rats by dozens, by scores, by hundreds as they came crowding
at him. They leaped, and the point shot up and down more swiftly than
the eye could command, and they had died in mid-jump. They crouched in
at him, and the tops of their heads were torn off or jellied by the
sweeping broadsword. Then they drew back, for a rat is intelligent,
and even their hunger was not enough to force them out against that
invincible weapon without some thought on the matter.
In the few seconds' respite Godwin leaped, scooped up the ring, dived
back to his seat on the rail. The rats came forward once more. With
his left hand he locked the ring to the sigil on its chain about his
neck, and in a voice of joyous thunder he shouted, "Mihrjan! I cry up
Mihrjan!"
Spang in the midst of the rats, shod with sandals of blue-white fire
so that the gruesome beings scrambled back from his vicinity, appeared
the ten-foot form of Mihrjan the djinni, turbanned with ivory silk,
pantalooned with lustrous purple velvet, and exuding an aroma of attar
of roses.
He salaamed deeply.
"The Lord of My Life," said Mihrjan sonorously, as the rats retreated
down the poop deck, "would seem to have need of my humble services. I
am his to command!"