Starke pulled back.
"Falga!"
"In death, all men are equals." He took his time with it. He was in no
hurry. Dead bodies under-sea are never in a hurry. They sort of bump
and drift and bide their time. "The dead serve those who give them a
semblance of life. Tomorrow we march against Crom Dhu."
"You're crazy! Crom Dhu is _your_ home! It's the place of Beudag and
Faolan--"
"And--" interrupted the hanging corpse, quietly, "Conan? Eh?" He
laughed. A crystal dribble of bubbles ran up from the slack mouth.
"Especially Conan. Conan who sank us at Falga...."
Starke moved swiftly. Nobody stopped him. He had the corpse's short
blade in an instant. Geil's chest made a cold, silent sheathe for it.
The blade went like a fork through butter.
Coldly, without noticing this, Geil's voice spoke out:
"Stab me, cut me. You can't kill me any deader. Make sections of me.
Play butcher. A flank, a hand, a heart! And while you're at it, I'll
tell you the plan."
Snarling, Starke seized the blade out again. With blind violence he
gave sharp blow after blow at the body, cursing bitterly, and the body
took each blow, rocking in the red tide a little, and said with a
matter-of-fact tone:
"We'll march out of the sea to Crom Dhu's gates. Romna and the others,
looking down, recognizing us, will have the gates thrown wide to
welcome us." The head tilted lazily, the lips peeled wide and folded
down languidly over the words. "Think of the elation, Conan! The moment
when Bron and Mannt and Aesur and I and yourself, yes, even yourself,
Conan, return to Crom Dhu!"
* * * * *
Starke saw it, vividly. Saw it like a tapestry woven for him. He stood
back, gasping for breath, his nostrils flaring, seeing what his blade
had done to Geil's body, and seeing the great stone gates of Crom Dhu
crashing open. The deliberation. The happiness, the elation to Faolan
and Romna to see old friends returned. Old Rovers, long thought dead.
Alive again, come to help! It made a picture!
With great deliberation, Starke struck flat across before him.
Geil's head, severed from its lazy body, began, with infinite
tiredness, to float toward the ceiling. As it traveled upward, now
facing, now bobbling the back of its skull toward Starke, it finished
its nightmare speaking:
"And then, once inside the gates, what then, Conan? Can you guess? Can
you guess what we'll do, Conan?"
Starke stared at nothingness, the sword trembling in his fist. From far
away he heard Geil's voice:
"--we will kill Faolan in his hall. He will die with surprised lips.
Romna's harp will lie in his disemboweled stomach. His heart with its
last pulsings will sound the strings. And as for Beudag--"
Starke tried to push the thoughts away, raging and helpless. Geil's
body was no longer anything to look at. He had done all he could to
it. Starke's face was bleached white and scraped down to the insane
bone of it, "You'd kill your own people!"
Geil's separated head lingered at the ceiling, light-fish illuminating
its ghastly features. "Our people? But we have no people! We're another
race now. The dead. We do the biddings of the sea-shepherds."
Starke looked out into the hall, then he looked at the circular wall.
"Okay," he said, without tone in his voice. "Come out. Where ever
you're hiding and using this voice-throwing act. Come on out and talk
straight."
In answer, an entire section of ebon stones fell back on silent
hingework. Starke saw a long slender black marble table. Six people sat
behind it in carven midnight thrones.
They were all men. Naked except for film-like garments about their
loins. They looked at Starke with no particular hatred or curiosity.
One of them cradled a harp. It was the shepherd who'd drawn Starke
through the gate. Amusedly, his webbed fingers lay on the strings, now
and then bringing out a clear sound from one of the two hundred strands.
The shepherd stopped Starke's rush forward with a cry of that harp!
The blade in his hand was red hot. He dropped it.
The shepherd put a head on the story. "And then? And then we will march
Rann's dead warriors all the way to Falga. There, Rann's people, seeing
the warriors, will be overjoyed, hysterical to find their friends and
relatives returned. They, too, will fling wide Falga's defenses. And
death will walk in, disguised as resurrection."
Starke nodded, slowly, wiping his hand across his cheek. "Back on Earth
we call that psychology. _Good_ psychology. But will it fool Rann?"
"Rann will be with her ships at Crom Dhu. While she's gone, the
innocent population will let in their lost warriors gladly." The
shepherd had amused green eyes. He looked like a youth of some
seventeen years. Deceptively young. If Starke guessed right, the youth
was nearer to two centuries old. That's how you lived and looked when
you were under the Red Sea. Something about the emanations of it kept
part of you young.
Starke lidded his yellow hawks' eyes thoughtfully. "You've got all
aces. You'll win. But what's Crom Dhu to you? Why not just Rann? She's
one of you, you hate her more than you do the Rovers. Her ancestors
came up on land, you never got over hating them for that--"
The shepherd shrugged. "Toward Crom Dhu we have little actual hatred.
Except that they are by nature land-men, even if they do rove by boat,
and pillagers. One day they might try their luck on the sunken devices
of this city."
Starke put a hand out. "We're fighting Rann, too. Don't forget, we're
on your side!"
"Whereas we are on no one's," retorted the green-haired youth, "Except
our own. Welcome to the army which will attack Crom Dhu."
"Me! By the gods, over my dead body!"
"That," said the youth, amusedly, "is what we intend. We've worked many
years, you see, to perfect the plan. We're not much good out on land.
We needed bodies that could do the work for us. So, every time Faolan
lost a ship or Rann lost a ship, we were there, with our golden hounds,
waiting. Collecting. Saving. Waiting until we had enough of each side's
warriors. They'll do the fighting for us. Oh, not for long, of course.
The Source energy will give them a semblance of life, a momentary
electrical ability of walk and combat, but once out of water they'll
last only half an hour. But that should be time enough once the gates
of Crom Dhu and Falga are open."
* * * * *
Starke said, "Rann will find some way around you. Get her first. Attack
Crom Dhu the following day."
The youth deliberated. "You're stalling. But there's sense in it. Rann
is most important. We'll get Falga first, then. You'll have a bit of
time in which to raise false hopes."
Starke began to get sick again. The room swam.
Very quietly, very easily, Rann came into his mind again. He felt her
glide in like the merest touch of a sea fern weaving in a tide pool.
He closed his mind down, but not before she snatched at a shred of
thought. Her aquamarine eyes reflected desire and inquiry.
"Hugh Starke, you're with the sea people?"
Her voice was soft. He shook his head.
"Tell me, Hugh Starke. How are you plotting against Falga?"
He said nothing. He thought nothing. He shut his eyes.