THE SHIP OF ISHTAR: Sci-Fi Classic. Abraham Merritt

      7 SLAVE OF THE SHIP

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      SWIFT was his answer. He heard far away a bellowing roar as of countless combers battering against a rock-ribbed coast. Louder it grew.

      With a thunder of vast waters the outward wall of his room disappeared. Where wall had been was the crest of an enormous leaping wave. The wave curled down over Kenton, lifted him up, rolled him far under it; shot him at last, gasping for breath up and up through it.

      He was afloat again upon the turquoise sea!

      The ship was close. Close! Its scimitared bow was striking down by his head; was flying past him. A golden chain hung from it, skittering over the crests. Kenton clutched at it — missed it.

      Back he fell. Swift raced the shining side of the ship past him. Again he threw himself high. There was another chain; a black one spattering over the wave tips and hanging from the stem.

      He gripped it. The sea tore at his thighs, his legs, his feet. Grimly he held fast. Hand over hand, cautiously, he drew himself up. Now he was just below the rail. Slowly he raised his head to peer over.

      Long arms swept down upon him; long hands gripped his shoulders, lifted him, hurled him down upon the deck, pinned him there. A thong was drawn round his ankles, his arms were pinioned to his sides.

      He looked into the face of the frog-mouthed beater of the serpent drum. And over one of the drummer’s enormous shoulders stared the white face of Klaneth. He heard his voice:

      “Carry him in, Gigi.”

      He felt himself lifted by the drummer as easily as though he had been a babe; and cradled in the huge hands he was carried through the black cabin’s door.

      The drummer set Kenton on his feet, regarding him with curious, half-amused eyes. Agate eyes of the red-bearded warrior and pale eyes of Klaneth dwelt upon him as curiously.

      Kenton took stock of the three. First the black priest — massive, elephant thewed; flesh pallid and dead as though the blood flowed through veins too deeply imbedded to reveal the creep of its slow tide; the face of Nero remodelled from cold clay by numbed hands.

      Then Gigi — the drummer. His froglike face with the pointed ears; his stunted and bowed legs; his giant’s body above the hips; the gigantic shoulders whence swung the long and sinewy and apish arms whose strength Kenton had felt; the slit of a mouth in whose corners a malicious humor dwelt. Something of old earth gods about him; a touch of Pan.

      Red beard — a Persian out of that time when Persia’s hordes were to the world what later the Roman legions were to be. Or so Kenton judged him by his tunic of linked light mail, the silken-sheathed legs, the high buskins and the curved daggers and the scimitar in his jewelled belt. And human as Kenton himself. About him was none of the charnel flavor of Klaneth nor the grotesqueness of Gigi. The full red lips beneath the carefully trimmed beard were sensual, life loving; the body was burly and muscular; the face whiter than Kenton’s own. But it was sullen and stamped deep with a half-resigned, half-desperate boredom that even his lively and frank curiosity about Kenton lightened little.

      In front of him was a wide slab of bloodstone. Six priests knelt upon it, worshipping something that stood within a niche just above the slab. What it was he could not tell — except that it breathed out evil. A little larger than a man, the thing within the niche was black and formless as though made of curdling shadows. It quivered, pulsated — as though the shadows that were its substance thickened constantly about it, passed within it and were replaced swiftly by others.

      Dark was that cabin, the walls somber as dull black marble. Other shadows clung to the dark walls and clustered in the corners; shadows that seemed only to await command to deepen into substance.

      Unholy shadows — like those that clothed the thing within the niche.

      Beyond, as in the cabin of Sharane, was another chamber, and crowding at the door between were a dozen or more of the black-robed, white-faced priests.

      “Go to your places,” Klaneth turned to them, breaking the silence. They slipped away. The black priest closed the door upon them. He touched the nearest of the kneeling priests with his foot.

      “Our Lord Nergal has had enough of worship,” he said. “See — he has swallowed your prayers!”

      Kenton looked at the thing within the niche. It was no longer misty, shadowed. It stood out, clear cut. Its body was that of a man and its face was that same awesome visage of evil into which he had seen the black priest’s turn on that first adventure of his upon the ship.

      The face of Nergal — Lord of the Dead!

      What had been the curdled, quivering shades enveloping the statue?

      He felt the eyes of Klaneth searching him, covertly. A trick! A trick to frighten him. He met the black priest’s gaze squarely; smiled.

      The Persian laughed.

      “Hai, Klaneth,” he said. “There was a bolt that fell short. Mayhap this stranger has seen such things before. Mayhap he is a sorcerer himself and can do better things. Change your play, Klaneth.”

      He yawned and seated himself upon a low settle. The black priest’s face grew grimmer.

      “Best be silent, Zubran,” he said. “Else it may be that Nergal will change his play for you in a way to banish forever your disbelief.”

      “Disbelief?” echoed the Persian. “Oh, Nergal is real enough. It is not disbelief that irks me. It is the eternal monotony. Can you do nothing new, Klaneth? Can Nergal do nothing new? Change his play for me, eh? By Ahriman — that is just what I wish he would do, if he can.”

      He yawned again, ostentatiously. The black priest growled; turned to the six worshippers.

      “Go,” he ordered, “and send Zachel to me.”

      They filed through the outer door. The black priest dropped upon another settle, studying Kenton; the drummer squatted, also watching him; the Persian muttered to himself, playing with his dagger hilts. The door opened and into the cabin stepped a priest who held in one hand a long whip whose snaky lash, metal topped, was curled many times around his forearm. He bowed before Klaneth.

      Kenton recognized him. When he had lain on the deck close to the mast he had seen this man sitting on a high platform at the foot of that mast. Overseer of the galley slaves, the oarsmen, was Zachel, and that long lash was measured to flick the furtherest of them if they lagged.

      “Is this he whom you saw upon the deck some sleeps ago?” asked Klaneth. “He who lay there and, you say, vanished when the drab of Ishtar yonder bent over to touch him?”

      “He is the same, master,” answered the overseer, coming close to Kenton and scanning him.

      “Where went he then?” asked Klaneth, more to himself than to the other. “To Sharane’s cabin? But if so, why did she drive him out, her cats clawing him? And whence came that sword she waved and bade him come retake? I know that sword —”

      “He did not go into her cabin at that time, master,” interrupted Zachel. “I saw her seek for him. She went back to her place alone. He had vanished.”

      “And his driving forth,” mused Klaneth, “that was two sleeps ago. And the ship has sailed far since then. We saw him struggling in the waves far behind us. Yet here he is upon the ship again — and with his wounds still fresh, still