Empire of the East by Fred Saberhagen Read Free Book Online Page A

that it resembled some badly-stuffed figurehead.
    Mewick, a bow still in his hands, was trotting anxiously from one side of the hummock to the other, trying to learn from which direction the soldiers were approaching. Loford, standing ankle-deep at the water’s edge beside the canoe, kept bending and scooping up massive handfuls of grayish swamp-bottom muck. Each time he muttered over the glob, and then let it dribble back into the water. At last one string of droplets veered from the vertical, went spraying out sideways as if caught by a strong blast of wind.
    Loford pointed in the same direction. “They come from that way, Mewick,” he called out softly.
    â€œThen let us go the other way, quick!” Mewick came running to the canoe.
    But Loford was now muttering faster than ever, and making odd sweeping motions with his arms, like a man trying to swim backward through the air. His fingertips threw droplets of muck. He kept up this gesticulating even while Manka was guiding him to take his seat in the dugout, so that he nearly swamped it in his clumsiness, for all the others could do to maintain balance. And I thought him a warrior! said Rolf to himself with a pang, looking back impatiently from his position in the foremost seat. Then Rolf’s jaw began to drop. He saw ripples growing in the swamp-water, swells that came from no wind or current. Growing in amplitude with each motion of the Big One’s steadily sweeping arms, the waves followed the timing of those arms; and they did not spread like ordinary waves but instead, gathered together building higher.
    Manka shoved off from shore, and then paddled from the rear seat, while the nexus of disturbed water raised by the Big One’s magic followed sluggishly after the canoe. Rolf paddled in the front, his sword in the canoe bottom ready to hand. Mewick, still holding the bow with a long arrow nocked, was in the second seat, whispering Rolf directions on which way to steer among the rotting tree-stumps and the small overgrown hummocks of firm land. Rolf kept glancing back. In the third seat, Loford still labored to build his spell. He shifted his great weight awkwardly and once more nearly rolled the canoe. Rolf thought that they were going over, but a muddy projection like a sheeted hand bulged up above the surface of the water to hold, briefly but strongly, against the gunwale. Then Rolf understood that he was witnessing the raising of an elemental, and his respect for Loford jumped to a new high.
    The reptiles had seen the first of the raising too, for one of them now left the circular formation that was holding over the canoe, and flew back over the big hummock the canoe had just left, crying out a warning.
    But the warning might be too late to do the pursuing but still invisible soldiers any good. Urged on by the ever smaller and more precise movements of Loford’s hands, the disturbance in the shallow water behind the canoe had become a slow, fantastic boil, which mounted higher and higher and now raced away, sweeping back around the big hummock, beyond which the enemy must be drawing near.
    Now the water around the canoe was grown quite still again. As if by some command, Rolf and Manka had both ceased to paddle. All but the blinded bird sat looking back and waiting.
    Loford’s hands were still outspread. “Paddle!” he urged, in a sudden fierce whisper. For a moment Rolf was unable to obey—because he saw now, on the other side of the big hummock, and mounting almost instantly to the height of its central trees, a great upwelling structure of mud and slime and water. Shouts greeted the elemental, the startled and fearful voices of men enough to fill many canoes. Rolf could not see those men, but beyond the trees he could see the thing of mud marching among them ponderously. It was gray and black, and shiny as if with grease, and what little shape it had oozed from it as it moved.
    Screams rang out that came from no