CHAPTER TEN
DRAGON FIRE
Submerged in red, tenebrous haze,
where suns in sanguine splendor set,
Forgotten empires linger yet,
like phantoms of forgotten days.
- The Visions of Epemitreus
'All hands on deck, with arms!' Conan's bellow, like the crack of doom, snapped his crew out of its wide-eyed trance, as the men watched the monster approach. 'Archers to the forecastle! Yakov, signal when it's in range! Milo, man the catapult, with your squad! Aim it four points off the starboard bow. Steersmen, two points to port! Sigurd, shake out the mizzen; we may have to dance this ship around like a drunken Kothian peasant. Marco, fetch my helm and corselet to the poop!'
Then men scurried to obey with a clatter of weapons, sometimes punctuated by the clang of a dropped sword or pike. Up forward, the burly boatswain and his squad grunted and sweated as they levered the ponderous throwing engine into position, and others brought the tarry missiles up from the hold.
The Red Lion heeled and swung to port to bring the monster in line with the catapult, since the engine was not pivoted and therefore had to be aimed by aiming the ship. The eyes of the monster, glaring like meteors, came closer and seemed to climb higher.
As soon as the thing came within bowshot, Yakov's squad sent a storm of arrows arching across the intervening water. Some stuck fast in the scaly hide; others glanced off the golden scales. But the monster seemed not to feel the hissing shafts. The clawed feet, on the ends of long, slender, birdlike forelegs, rising from the sides of its breast., did not twitch. The arched, swanlike neck did not writhe, nor did the snarling visage change expression. The golden mask came on, all glaring eyes and grimacing visage,, filled with bristling tusks.
Then the sun, which had been hidden behind the eastern clouds, climbed out and shone upon the scene in its full glory. And Conan gave a shout: 'That's not alive., men; 'tis a ship - a machine! Ready the catapult!'
For the sudden increase in illumination had shown Conan the truth. The 'dragon' was a galley, like that which they had overcome in mid-ocean, but with its bow built up to resemble the front of a monster. The 'wings' were two tall, narrow triangular sails, stiffened by bamboo battens like the sails of the ships of Khitai. These sails rose from a pair of masts in the waist, side by side instead of fore and aft as in most sailing vessels. Now the sails were trimmed to point straight aft, since the galley was rowing directly into the wind. Hence they contributed nothing to the ship's progress, albeit they did fortify the illusion of a winged sea monster.
A second volley of arrows rattled harmlessly against the bow of the dragon-ship. Conan saw that the 'forelegs' were a pair of grappling devices, held up by cables over the water in front of the bow. When the vessel got close enough, these twin booms would be allowed to fall, and the 'claws' would be driven into the woodwork of the Red Lion to hold her fast.
'Milo! Shoot one!'yelled Conan. The boatswain signaled to the steersmen to bring the bow a little to starboard, so that this engine would bear. With a loud thump, the catapult released. The first of the balls of tar, trailing black smoke from its wick, arched across the water, glanced from the monster's neck, and fell into the sea.
Now the galley was a mere javelin-throw away. The curved breast of the dragon opened. A pair of doors swung wide, and a boarding plank extended itself out over the water. Inside the vessel, mustered at the base of the boarding plank, stood a fantastically garbed boarding party, bristling with weapons.
The ratchet of the catapult rattled as the crew desperately heaved on the windlass to recock the weapon. Then, thump! A second smoke-trailing ball flew over the water -right into the opening where the boarding party was mustered.
There was a burst of smoke, and a lurid light illumined the interior of the vessel. The boarding party milled in confusion; a couple of men fell or were pushed off into.the sea, where the weight of their armor quickly dragged them under.
Smoke spurted from the hull of the dragon ship in a hundred places. The fire seemed to spread with preternatural speed. Faintly, Conan could hear the cries of trapped men. There was an impression of desperate efforts, half-seen through the breast-opening, to fight the fire. But soon flame spurted from the dragon's neck; then the wing-sails caught fire and blazed up...
'Amra!' screamed Sigurd. 'Another one, to port!'
Conan whirled with a sulphurous oath. A second dragon-ship was bearing down upon them from the opposite side. Since this one was travelling with the wind on her beam, her wing-sails helped the oars so that she moved much faster than the first ship had done.
'Milo!' roared Conan. 'Get that engine over to port!'
As the catapult crew struggled to lever their machine to the opposite side of the forecastle deck, the second dragon-ship quickly closed the distance. Conan swore at his own stupidity in letting the sight of the blazing first ship so rivet his attention that he had not been aware, until he heard Sigurd's bellow, of the approach of the second. 'Yakov!' he thundered. 'Hold your shot until the doors open!'
This time, however, the dragon-ship did not open the doors to its boarding party so soon. Instead, it gave out a hiss as of a thousand kettles. From its open mouth, a tongue of liquid flame shot out. It formed a blazing arch across the narrowing gulf. It struck the side and deck of the Red Lion. In an instant, drops of the burning liquid were running hither and yon about the deck. In a panic, the pirates ran back from the rail, some of them beating at smoldering spots in their clothing. The liquid gave off a dense, black smoke with an oily smell. Conan guessed at once that this was a natural oil, like that which seeped out of the ground in the deserts of Iranistan and southern Turan.
But he had no time to explain this to his men. A second hiss, and another jet of liquid flame struck the foresail, which in an instant blazed up like a torch. The catapult crew and the archers scattered, screaming, as the sail flamed over their heads and showered the deck with bits of burning sailcloth.
'Hard to starboard!' yelled Conan. 'Trim sail to run with the wind on the starboard beam!' For he saw that another flaming jet might destroy his mainsail and make the Red Lion a helpless hulk.
But it was too late. Again came the hiss and the jet, and the mainsail dissolved into a mass of leaping, thundering flame. The Red Lion, shorn of all motive power save the little triangular mizzen, slowed and wallowed. The grappling booms of the galley crashed down, driving their claws into the carack's deck. The doors opened, the plank extended, and the second boarding party rushed to the deck of the Red Lion.
These men had brown skins and slitted eyes, with knobby cheekbones and hawk noses. They wore bird-helms like those of the sorcerer on the green galley, and strange glassy armor over leathern jerkins. They carried curious weapons - swords with saw-toothed edges of crystal, hooked spears, and glassy globes held in slings. There were other weapons, which Conan could not, in the first moment, make out.
Yakov's archers should have met the boarding party with a deadly hail of arrows, but the archers had become as demoralized as the rest of the pirates. Conan roared and threatened from the poop, but still they milled and yammered witlessly in the waist. A few arrows whizzed into the boarders, but to little effect. The shafts splintered against and glanced off the fragile-looking armor of glass. A few of the crew mustered where the tongue of the boarding plank rested upon the Red Lion's rail.