Norman Invasions by John Norman Read Free Book Online Page A

black waves, to breathe. Then I was drawn deeper and deeper, downward. My action, I saw, had been irrational. Surely more impulsive than brave, more stupid than noble. I have lost the gamble, I thought, bitterly, lungs bursting, aching for air.
    I am not clear what happened then.
    I had thought I was drowning and then, oddly, it seemed, for an instant, that below the water I had somehow breathed, and just before I lost consciousness I had the sense of a mighty body beneath me, rising from somewhere below in the icy waters, and I was afraid, thinking Atlantic shark, come near the shore, or perhaps it was some large marine mammal, or some archaic, indomitable reptilian form of life, perhaps one of a handful of creatures, anachronisms, lingering past the prime of their species, and my hands clutched at the thing beneath me and I felt vertebrae, the articulations of a wide, massive, sinuous spine, and then what might have been kelp, but was somehow sensed as a rude, flowing, cold, salt-encrusted mass of coarse hair. I clung to this, and felt myself drawn upward, through the freezing waters, toward the shore.
    I came to consciousness on the rocky beach, below the cliffs, perhaps a hundred yards from where I had entered the water. I lay there, on my stomach. I was cold, terribly cold. It was still raining, heavily. The storm showed little sign of abating. My clothing was torn away, save for some shreds. I must have discarded it in the water, probably in panic, to free myself of the impediment it constituted, to rid myself of its dangerous, sodden drag.
    I became aware, lying there, from the whitish light on the wet, pitted sand, that the full moon shone on the beach. The clouds must have opened for a moment.
    I then stood on the cold beach, in awe, for not yards away was the calpa. It chose then to show itself in a form congenial to me, one familiar to me from antique and classical studies, that of a mighty, broad-chested centaur. Surmounting the gigantic, monstrous, hoofed, stallionlike frame was the human torso, hairy and bared, it, too, gigantic, but in ideal proportion to the body that bore it, from which it majestically arose. The thing stamped its hoofs. Then it pawed with one hoof at the sand, scattering sand and pebbles behind it. Its head was mighty, with beard and flowing hair, a head wreathed with kelp, like laurel. Its head was turned toward me, and I trembled. Yet was I pleased that it had deigned to show itself in a form I could comprehend, one that would not hurl me in a moment into the throes of madness. I lifted my hand, in surprise. In the mighty arms of this monster, held, cradled, sheltered, helpless, was the girl, carried there as easily, as securely, as might have been a small, lovely, living doll, or pretty toy.
    She cast me a piteous glance. She was small and naked. Her wrists were crossed before her, and I suddenly realized they were bound, bound with her own golden hair. What fate might lie now before her, my pure, chaste, prudish, haughty, cold, aloof Victorian maid, now that she was stripped and bound, and clasped in the arms of such a brute?
    How pleased I was, and then I struggled to put aside such thoughts.
    He will teach you the flames of passion, I thought. He will melt your ice, you vain, stinking little bitch. You will learn to scream with need, and beg, as the slut you are!
    â€œRelease her!” I cried. “Let her go, you mindless brute!”
    She extended her bound wrists to me, piteously, pleading.
    â€œPut her down!” I cried.
    The centaur, or centaurlike creature, put back its head, and laughed, a laugh which was like the wind and rain, like a force of nature, and it reared on its hind legs, and its prisoner, lifted so high in the air, yards over the beach, cried out with fear, and I stepped back, lest I be destroyed by the descent of one of those mighty hoofs.
    The creature turned then, and, not hurrying, began to move along the beach, parallel to the shore, a bit away from the