The Wildside Book of Fantasy: 20 Great Tales of Fantasy by Fritz Leiber, Gene Wolfe, Robert E. Howard, Paul di Filippo, Lin Carter, Tanith Lee, Clark Ashton Smith, E. Hoffmann Price, Thomas Burnett Swann, Brian Stableford, John Gregory Betancourt, Brian McNaughton, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Clive Jackson, Darrell Schwetizer, Achmed Abdullah Read Free Book Online Page A

Bear.”
    “But he’s so elderly,” cried Frey. “He must be—twenty-six!”
    “Yes, but he has experience.”
    “Twenty-five,” I muttered.
    The boys looked at him and then at me. “Be good to him, sir,” said Balder.
    “First we must hide him—and us,” I said. Already it was too late. The Black Rats charged us from the street. Quick as a snake, I flicked out a foot and tripped the first of them. He spun toward the ground, recovered himself like a cat, and kicked me in the shin. I swayed on a single leg and balanced Astyanax in front of me. All this time the Triton was swearing and waving his arms. I had not suspected the eloquence of his oaths—I should have, sailors had helped to educate him.
    “Zeus, Hera, Ares, Artemis, and Hades,” he swore at the hapless Rat, “blast you with thunderbolts, drown you in whirlpools, feed you to Scylla and Charybdis.” Then, remembering that he was in Etruscan territory, he added Tinia, Uni, Mantus, Vanth, and even a Roman god, Janus. “And may Charon roast your liver in burning asphalt.”
    When the Rat charged us again, Astyanax swung from my arms and swatted him with his tail. The Rat reeled to the edge of the pier and, helped on his way by the sudden thrust of my foot, fell into the water. Together, it seemed, Astyanax and I made a formidable combination, a self-propelled battering ram. Flushed with victory, we rolled to help the brothers.
    We found that they did not need us. Four young heads, two blond, two black, their hues as opposite as salt and pepper, bobbed in a tempest of limbs. Balder and Frey, at first, fought back to back, but soon they took the offensive and surged like catapults sweeping to storm a battlement. When Frey tottered beneath the blows of a Rat, the resourceful Balder, hurling his own assailant into a heap of overcurious spectators, leaped to succor him, and seconds later the brothers stood in monumental grandeur, crossing their arms like victorious gladiators. Meanwhile, the Rat I had kicked from the pier had clambered out of the water and, looking for a change like a well-washed turnip, slunk into the crowd, where he joined his battered brothers.
    “They will go for Vel,” I said. “Now we must really hide.” I looked at the ship and thought, Why not buy her? At the moment I had no money, but a few days’ sailing would bring us to Agylla, the port of Caere, my home. If I could convince the owner of my credit, Astyanax and I could sail on our voyage for Circe, and while we bargained, the ship would hide us from Vel.
    Followed by the brothers and still carrying Astyanax, I climbed onto the deck, which sparkled with fresh-hewn timbers of cypress wood.
    “Look,” said Astyanax, pointing to the figurehead. “He is just my age!” The figure of a boy, cunningly carved from wood, strained from the prow with his arms outstretched to the wind. “Come,” he seemed to say. “I will lead you to Circe.” I recognized Tages, the boy with an old man’s wisdom, who had stepped from a clod of earth and given Tarchon, our national hero, the sacred books of Etruria.
    A young man emerged from the cabin and looked at us with more sadness than surprise, though we must have appeared disreputable, a Triton, two young ruffians with bloodied faces, and a doubtful gentleman with a rich cloak but no other sign of status.
    “Is she for sale?” I asked.
    “Yes,” he sighed, as if he were putting his wife on the auction block.
    A good trader conceals his eagerness—shows himself interested but not avid—and Etruscans, with merchant ships in every sea, are the best of traders. But I had no time in which to dissimulate.
    “Your ship has bewitched me,” I said. “I would like to buy her.”
    “She is right out of the shipyards at Cosa—built to my own design. But I can’t afford to keep her.” He wore a domed hat and trim red boots which gave him, from a distance, an air of jauntiness. But his large black eyes were mournful even for an