The Old One now again faced the raft. It scarcely moved in the water. It seemed to be watching us.
“It is not pleased,” said a man. “You have angered it,” said another.
My heart pounded. I thought not then of our comrades of the day before, those slain by the monster in the water. I thought then rather of the beast, the foe, and the bunt. I feared then only that it might forsake the fray.
But I needed not fear, for it was the Old One with whom we dealt.
“Ah, Old One,” crooned T’Zshal, softly across the water, “we meet again.”
I wondered that he had said this.
“Protect the lamps.” said T’Zshal, softly, to us. “Cover them when the water is high.”
If the lamps were lost, and the torches unlit, I did not think it likely we would return to the salt dock.
I saw the water near the tail of the Old One begin to stir. It was moving its tail back and forth. Then it slipped beneath the surface.
“Hold to the salt tubs,” said T’Zshal.
We felt the great body of the Old One twist under the heavy beams of the raft.
Then the raft lifted, to an almost forty-five degree angle as the monster humped beneath it, thrusting it upward. Men slipped, some fell, but none entered the water. Four times the Old One tried to turn the raft. Before we had left the salt docks we had filled the salt tubs with salt. He could not turn the raft. We retained the light on the poles. The Old One circled away and again lay out from us in the water, some fifty to sixty feet distant, seeming to watch.
Then he again slipped from sight. We did not see him for more than a quarter of an Ahn.
Then, suddenly, at the port side, aft, he erupted from the water a dozen feet away and fell back, spattering torrents of water over the raft.
“Cover the torches,” cried T’Zshal. “Protect the lamps!” The lamp at the aft, port corner of the raft, drenched, was extinguished. Men covered the torches with their bodies. The Old One had again disappeared.
“Perhaps he is gone now.” said one of the men.
“Perhaps.” said T’Zshal. The men laughed.
“Aiiii!” cried a man. The Old One rose, twisting, near him, near the forequarter on the port side. He leaped back. The Old One turned, its vast sicklelike tail snapping across the beams. It caught the man’s leg between itself and the salt tub, breaking the leg, turning it suddenly oddly inward below the knee. But it had not been the man, we surmised, that the Old One had wanted. The tail, like a twig, had struck loose the lamp pole, hurling it, spinning, flaming oil spilling, yards away into the circle of darkness outside the ring of lamplight, on the dark, briny water.
“Bring the lamps to the center of the raft,” said T’Zshal. “Stand within the frame of the salt tubs.”
Bits of oil burned briefly on the water scattered from the struck lamp. Then they went out.
I saw the man whose leg was broken. He clung to the side of the salt tub, the salt on the side of his cheek, his arms and chest. He made no sound.
“You were clumsy,” said T’Zshal.
The Old One circled the raft four times, sometimes stopping, seeming, to regard us.
“If you want us, you must come for us,” said T’Zshal, calling across the water.
“Come, little one. Come to T’Zshal. He waits for you.”
I saw the water begin to move about the tail of the Old One. The pits of its eyes seemed to rest even with the water.
“Beware,” I said to T’Zshal.
“He’s coming!” cried one of the men.
The long, vast body hurtled through the water, tail switching. Almost at the edge of the raft the great body lifted in the water, turning to its side, jaws dropping open, lunging, falling, biting, onto the beams, thrashing. T’Zshal thrust the long lance, almost bead-on, toward the monster, and it cut, slicing, a long wound, a yard in length, along its side. The teeth caught the wide cloth of the trouser, turning T’Zshal, spinning him, tearing away cloth to the hip.
T’Zshal struck again with the lance, driving it into the tail of the monster as it twisted off the raft.
“Light a torch. Lift it high,” said T’Zshal.
He held the lance ready. On the left leg of T’Zshal, where the cloth had been torn away, I could see, white and wide, jagged, descending, a long, irregular scar. It almost encircled the leg and ranged from a half of an inch to two inches in width.
“We are old friends, Old One,” called T’Zshal, across the water. “Come, call again.”
I had not seen the scar before. I then had no doubt that at some time in the past, T’Zshal and the Old One had become acquainted.
“Come, Old One,” whispered T’Zshal. “Come, Old One.” He held the lance ready.
T’Zshal, and the Old One, as he had said, were old friends. I wondered how many men of T’Zshal had been killed by the Old One. I suspected it was not few.
In the lamplight, on tile raft, on the dark water, among us, waiting, he held the lance ready.
We did not speak.
None of us suspected it. It came by surprise, from the back, from beneath the surface, then without warning men screaming wood splintering amongst us seeing it striking me others too tumbling gone then men crying out arms in the water one lamp only tiny alive in that blackness.
“Light torches,” I cried. From the lamp torches were lit. We saw the Old One emerge from the water, rising up, more than a dozen feet of that great, mighty body rearing upward, Water streaming from it, in its jaws the body of T’Zshal.
I leaped from the raft, striking the surface of the water. I reached the side of the Old One before I realized fully the possibilities of my action. The teeth of the Old One, like that of the long-bodied sharks of Gor, and related marine species, as well as similarly evolved forms of Earth, bend rearward; each bite anchors the bitten material, which can be dislodged conveniently only in the direction of the throat. In short, the Old One could not easily release its quarry. Further, the reflex instinct of the beast would be to hold, not to release the quarry. Even for the Old One, in the black, almost barren waters, food would be scarce. In such an environment one would expect the holding instinct would be as near to inflexible as such an instinct could be. I seized the lateral fin on the right side of the beast. It dove, and rubbed itself, twisting, in the salt at the bottom of the pit. I did not release my hold. I thrust my hand toward the jaws. They were open, clenched on the body of T’Zshal.
I could not reach into the jaws. Then the beast swept upward and I, clinging to the fin, erupted with it, eyes and nostrils stung with salt, half blinded, more than ten feet into the air. I was aware of torches across the water on the raft, men crying out, then the fish, I clinging to it, fell into the water, thrashing.
As the fish fell back into the water it rolled, lifting me into the air. I shook my head and released the fin, lunging for the jaws which were held open by T’Zshal’s body. My arm entered the jaws. The fish rolled. I lost my grip. I seized T’Zshal’s body. Again I reached my arm into the jaws, grasping. I got my hand on the hilt of the dagger. The fish leaped again from the water and I had the dagger free, plunging it, ripping, into the gill tissue below its jaw, one of the salt-adaptations of marine life in the pit. I did not know the number of its hearts or their location. These vary in Gorean sharks. Too, the heart is deep within the body. I did not think I could reach it with the blade at my disposal. But the gill tissue is delicate, like layers of petals, essential for drawing oxygen from the environment. Madly did the great marine beast thrash; its jaws distended, trying to disgorge its victim, but it was held by the teeth; it tried to bite through the body in its jaws but the body was wedged well within the jaws and it could exert little leverage. Then the thrashing grew weaker. The Old One was still alive when I was drawn away from it, pulled by Hassan and another man to the surface of the raft. I could not release the dagger. Hassan pried it from my fingers with his hands. I lay on my back on the beams of the raft. Near me lay T’Zshal. I crawled to my hands and knees and went to him.