She shrugged. "Let's take one of the ships," she said. "I suppose it shouldn't matter to me, being as I am now-"
She gestured toward the amulet now hanging outside Corylus' tunic.
"-but those hills are bleak, not fit for anything but tamarisk and bergamot. And besides, you'll need to eat. There'll be food and water on the ships."
"I can't-" Corylus began, then stopped himself. I don't need to push the ship down into the water; it flies. But- Correcting himself aloud, he said, "Mistress, I'm not a magician; I can't make the ship move. Though we can take the food and water, or some of it. Maybe I can make a cart."
In a bemused tone the sprite said, "You are such a silly, cousin."
She turned to the creature and chirruped like a hen on her eggs. It-he-didn't reply in a fashion Corylus could see, but the sprite beamed and stroked the golden fur of his throat. He writhed toward her, even more like a serpent than before.
"Which ship shall we take?" she asked Corylus.
"We'll take a look at them before we decide," he said. "Ah, can you make it down the slope by yourself?"
The sprite ran her fingers through his hair in the same affectionate fashion as she had just petted the creature. Without answering, she started down the escarpment facing forward, as though she were descending a staircase. Corylus felt his eyes narrow; then he smiled. Of course the soles of her feet would be able to cling to crevices too tiny for his eye to see.
The furry creature watched him. Corylus thought about asking if it too could get to the beach unaided, then simply turned around and started down himself. He'd been called silly quite a number of times since he met the sprite, and he was beginning to wonder if she wasn't correct.
His body no longer hurt the way it had immediately after the fight with the Cyclops, but he had taken enough of a pounding to leave anybody groggy. Maybe that was an excuse for being slow to understand what was happening.
The cliff was limestone, steep but corroded by salt and storms. There were plenty of hand- and footholds, though Corylus had to test each one before he put his full weight on it. He simply kept going down until his hobnailed sandal clashed on the beach.
He looked up. The creature was peering over the edge at him. When it saw that he had reached the ground, it leaped like a squirrel.
Corylus flattened against the escarpment reflexively. His first thought had been to try to catch the creature, but keeping out of the way was a better idea.
Its narrow feet sprayed shingle. It bounced up as part of the same motion, spun in the air, and landed again: lightly this time, and facing Corylus.
It's laughing. I'm sure it's laughing.
Whether the creature was or not, Coryla certainly laughed merrily. "You males," she said affectionately. "Always posturing to each other."
She turned and walked toward the nearer ship. She was still giggling.
Instead of following the sprite and her companion, Corylus walked to the man in armor with his skull crushed. He had been killed very recently, but the fierce sun was already beginning to rot the blood and other leaking fluids.
The fellow's sword was still in its scabbard. Corylus drew it. The blade was made of the same fiery metal as the armor. It was slim, slightly curved, and a little longer than the infantry sword he was used to. He'd practiced with the horsemen's longer weapons, though.
It wouldn't be his first choice, but it was the only thing available here. Maybe he would have a chance to replace it with steel before he found himself in a real fight. He squatted to unfasten the sword belt. Instead of a buckle it had an unfamiliar latch that opened when he turned it.
"You should take orichalc armor for yourself too," the sprite said as she wandered back from the ship she had been looking at.
"Orichalc?" Corylus said, pinging the breastplate with his fingernail. "This?"
The orichalc he knew about was a copper alloy which could be polished to look like gold. Whatever this metal was, it certainly wasn't that.
"Yes, orichalc," she said, rocking what was left of the corpse's head back and forth with a toe. She giggled again and added, "You'll have to take the helmet from the other Minos, I guess, won't you?"
"Yes," said Corylus. The body armor had the same kind of catches as the belt; he began to turn them. He wasn't squeamish, but he didn't care to strip bodies quite so thoroughly dead.
The furry creature had prowled the deck of the nearer ship, then disappeared through a hatch into what must have been a very small hold. When it reappeared, it dropped to the beach and walked to the other ship.
It walked in a hunched posture. Its arms were long enough that it could have put them down without stooping further, but instead it kept them close to its chest.
Like a praying mantis, Corylus thought. Not a snake.
He grinned, remembering the sprite's comment about posturing. She was a perceptive little thing.
Corylus belted on the sword, but he carried the armor in his left hand as he walked to the second corpse; the second Minos, the sprite had called him. "What do you mean by Minos, mistress?" he said. "Are they a tribe?"
"They claim to be a different tribe from the commoners," Coryla said without particular interest. She continued to stand beside the corpse whose armor he'd taken. "They're probably lying, though. You humans always lie to make yourselves look bigger than you are, don't you?"
"Some men do," Corylus said. Getting angry because a comment had some truth in it would be childish and, well, silly.
He set down the armor and squatted by the figure whose chest had been flattened. The helmet seemed undamaged, though. The screen covering the face blurred the corpse's features.
"Well, anyway, the Minoi rule Atlantis," Coryla said. "They're magicians. When they're born, they get a tattoo on their foreheads. Not that you'd have been able to tell with this one."
She toed the corpse again. Her sense of humor was a lot like that of a veteran soldier, a fact that Corylus found oddly comforting in this place.
A single catch released the faceplate. Corylus lifted it up on the hinge to remove the helmet. He stopped and looked over his shoulder at the sprite.
"Mistress," he said. "This was a woman."
"The armor adjusts," she said. "It will fit you, even if you're not a magician yourself."
I suppose that's all that really matters, Corylus thought. He lifted the helmet off, supporting the dead woman's shoulders with his free hand; then he lowered her with as much care as he could. He wondered about burying her, but there were at least twenty bodies, some of them mangled beyond certainty that they were human.
Treat them like the German dead after a battle, he decided. Unless you're going to camp on the field, let the wolves and crows take care of the job.
The creature leaped thirty feet from the deck of the second ship back to the upper railing of vessel near to Corylus and the sprite. It squatted there, watching them. The shape of its face gave it a look of bright interest, but there was no real way a human could read the expressions of something so utterly inhuman.
"We can go, I suppose," Corylus said as he straightened. "That is, if you're ready."
He held helmet and corselet in his left hand. They weren't unmanageably heavy, and he preferred to keep one hand free.
Instead of answering, the sprite walked past him toward the ship. The creature watched her, moving only his head, and that just enough to follow her approach.
"Aren't you going to put the armor on?" she said. She didn't look back toward him. "It won't protect you if you're not wearing it."
It didn't help the Minoi who were wearing it before, Corylus thought, but of course there might be dangers besides the chance of being clubbed by a giant whose strength was all out of proportion to its considerable size.