The ship’s crew secured their sweeps and were making sail when Demetrios, his anger and frustration and even his sickness temporarily purged from him by the unquestionable beauty over which they were moving, rushed to the waist to hang over the rail. Fascinated by the marine ^panorama, he failed to notice the huge, dark shape just below the keel. Suddenly, a gigantic head broke the surface, immediately below him, and it seemed to his startled gaze that all the world had become a dark red gaping maw edged with huge conical white teeth.
Shrieking with terror, Demetrios thrust himself upward from off the rail with such force that he lost his footing and came down with a painful thump of soft bottom on hard deckboards.
From his seat, he screamed to the twenty black spearmen who were his bodyguards, “Kill it! Kill it! Do you hear us? We command you to kill the horrid, nasty thing! Kill it, now! At once!”
Two of the tall, slender men fitted short, broad-bladed darts to throwing sticks. One kicked off his slick-soled gilt sandals and climbed a few feet up the standing rigging. The other, who had been beside Lord Sergios on the small bridge, grasped a taut line and leaped onto the rail. But neither could spot a target; the monster had apparently departed as quickly and noiselessly as it had come.
Then, a long bowshot distant, a veritable forest of towering, black, triangular fins, broke water and bore along on the same course as the ship.
“Sea serpents!” whimpered Demetrios. “They’ll sink the ship and eat us!”
Endeavoring to not show his disgust, Titos shook his grizzled head, saying, “Beggin’ the High-Lord’s pardon, but them be grampuses, sorta half-porpoise an’ half-whale. The lords of these isles hold converse with them creatures and, ’tis said they do his biddin’. I doubt me not that so many could go far toward the sinkin’ of my ship, but…”
Before he could say more, the starboard side of the ship was struck twice, in rapid succession—a one-two that shook every line, beam, and timber of the vessel and rattled the teeth in men’s heads. The aft spearman lost his footing on the polished rail and, stubbornly refusing to drop his spearstick and dart, hung by onlv his grip on the line, his sandaled feet frantically scrabbling for purchase on the smooth surfaces of the strakes.
Ere any could leap to the dangling man’s assistance, a shadowy shape appeared beneath him. Again a head such as had frightened Demetrios rose above the water and a gaping mouth opened. While the spearman screamed, his legs and pelvis disappeared into that mouth and thick, two-inch teeth sank into the dark flesh . . . and then the fingers were gone from the line. Horrified, the crew and passengers could not but watch through the terrible clarity of the water as two streamlined black-and-white shapes, each above thirty feet long, worried the thrashing man apart, releasing a pink cloud of diluted blood. Voraciously, the monsters cleaned up the scraps, leaving but little to be picked at by the gleaming little fish.
On the heels of the gruesome episode, the ashy-faced High-Lord fled to his cabin, leaving the deck to the crew, the nineteen sober and silent bodyguards, and Lord Ser-gios. During the couple of hours it took them to sail within sight of the main island, Kehnooryos Knossos, Titos and Lord Sergios lounged on the minuscule bridge and chatted. Every so often, whenever the array of six-foot fins changed directions, Titos shouted the change of course to the steersman. Between those times, however, he was’able to ascertain that “Admiral” Sergios’ intelligence was farjjreater than his foppish exterior promised, although his hands gave proof that he was no true seaman; nonetheless, he proved to know quite a bit of theoretical navigation.
Just before they entered the harbor mouth, a grampus sped past them and disappeared into the murky water of the harbor.
“Going to report to his master,” remarked Titos. Sergios nodded. “Many might call it sorcery, but I have heard that those who dwelt on the mainland, prior to the Punishment of God, domesticated all manner of unusual creatures—porpoises and seals among them.”