THE MAGIC LABYRINTH by Philip Jose Farmer

Joe! Joe would protect him! Joe would do more than that. He would kill the Norseman.

Gasping, sputtering, Sam’s head broke through into the air. Ahead was a boat filled with people. The torches showed their faces clearly. All were looking at him.

Behind came the splashing of a swimmer.

Sam turned around. Erik was only a few feet from him.

Sam yelled again, and once more he dived. If he could come up on the other side of that boat, if he could get aboard it before…

A hand closed around his ankle.

Sam turned and fought, but the Norseman was bigger and far stronger. Sam was helpless, he would be drowned out of sight of the others, and Erik could claim that he had just been trying to save the poor mad devil.

An arm came from behind him and hooked around his neck. Sam struggled like a fish caught in a net, but he knew that he was done for. After all this time, after all these narrow escapes, to die like this…

He awoke in the deck of the longboat, coughing and choking. Water gushed from his mouth and nose. Two strong warm arms held him.

He looked up. Erik Bloodaxe was still holding him.

“Don’t kill me!” Sam said.

Erik was naked and wet. The water on his body glistened in the torchlight. It also fell upon a white object connected to a cord around Erik’s neck.

It was the spiral bone of a hornfish, the symbol worn by members of the Church of the Second Chance.

37

TWO MEN HAD COME TO THE SAME CONCLUSION.

They’d had enough of this senseless bloodshed. Now they’d do something they would have done if each hadn’t been so sure that the other was on the other boat. But, during the long struggle, neither had seen the other. The other had never been on the boat or had wisely left it before the battle or had been blown to bits or into the water.

Each believed that if he died, the great project was doomed to failure, though each visualized the failure differently.

They saw an opportunity to escape now. In the heat and confusion of the combat, no one would notice their desertion. Or, if anyone did, he’d not be able to do anything about it. They would leap into The River and swim to shore and continue their long long journey. Neither had his grail, one being locked up in the sunken Rex and the other inside a locked storage room of the Not For Hire. They would steal free grails from the Virolanders and go on up The River in a sailboat.

One man had doffed his armor and dropped his weapon on the deck and had grasped the railing to vault over it when the other spoke behind him. The first man whirled, stooping, and picked up his cutlass. Though he hadn’t heard the voice of the other for forty years, he instantly recognized it.

When he slowly turned around, though, he did not recognize the face and body he identified/with the voice.

The man who’d come from the hatchway behind him spoke in a language which, now, only two on this boat could understand. His tone was harsh.

“Yes, it’s I, though much changed.”

The man by the railing said, “Why did you do it? Why?”

“You would never understand why,” the man in the doorway said. “You’re evil. So were the others, even…”

‘”Were!” the man by the railing said.

“Yes. Were.”

“They’re all dead then. I’d suspected as much.”

He glanced at the helmet and cutlass on the deck. It was too bad that he hadn’t been halted before he discarded them. His enemy had an advantage now. The man by the railing also knew that if he tried to leap over the railing or flip backward over it, the other was swift and skilled enough to skewer him with his weapon by throwing it.

“So,” he said, “you plan on killing me, too. You’ve reached bottom; you’re lost forever.”

“I had to kill the Operator,” the first man said emotionlessly.

“I couldn’t even think of doing such evil,” the man by the railing said.