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 B

Etruscan.
    Just then I spied the one-eared sailor, the three Black Rats, and Vel himself advancing down the street. They paused to question a sailor.
    “Will you show us the cabin?” I asked quickly. We followed the owner into the cabin. The entire vessel, he told me, was fifty feet long and twelve in width. The cabin, though cramped into eight square feet, held a couch with the legs of a bear, a three-legged brazier, a bronze mirror with a curving handle, and a cabinet of citrus wood from Carthage. Above my head a small clay lamp, owl-shaped and painted black, hung from the wicker ceiling.
    I sat on the couch and the young man, whose name was Aruns, sat beside me, or rather slumped, for he seemed on the verge of tears. Lovingly he caressed a cushion.
    “Goose feathers sewn in silk,” he said. “You will sleep like a lotus-eater. As you may have guessed, I’m rather fond of my ship—everything about her. But Greek pirates have preyed on my other ships, and now I must sell the queen.”
    I touched his shoulder. “If you sell your queen to me, I will treat her royally.” Now came the awkward moment to discuss the terms of payment. “I can’t pay you at once.” I explained, and told him my story without evasion. Finally I threw back my cloak and exposed the brand on my forearm. “If you sail me to Agylla, I can pay you in gold and silver—generously.”
    “Of course I believe you,” he said. “Your story is much too preposterous to be invented, and no swindler would travel about with a Triton and two ragamuffins. Besides, I know an Etruscan aristocrat when I see one, brand or no brand. It’s something about the eyes. Their hunger is not for possessions—silks and gems, gardens and tall stone houses. They are used to such things. But what will you do for a crew? I have let mine go, and as for myself, I’ve never been more than a passenger on my ships, though I might help out with a captain to give me orders.”
    “I think I can settle that now,” I said. I whispered to Astyanax. Jubilantly he turned to Frey and Balder. “Bear would like you to join our crew.”
    “On this ship?” cried Balder. “It has been our dream!” They both hugged me at once, and the four of us, Astyanax in the middle, spun dizzily over the floor.
    “Get your things,” I gasped. “If it suits Aruns, we’ll sail with the tide. We won’t even wait to load supplies.”
    “We haven’t any things.”
    “Tell your parents, then.”
    “They died last year—swamp fever.”
    I spoke quickly to hide my emotion. “Do you know ships at all?”
    “We have sailed as cabin boys around Hesperia.”
    “Where are you going?” asked Aruns.
    “Beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Around Libya.”
    “In search of a wicked enchantress,” Astyanax added.
    “Who changes men into animals.” I expected the boldness of our venture to discourage him. If anything it made up his mind.
    “May I come with you? I know the Halcyon like a daughter. On such a voyage, I think she will need a father.”
    I engaged him at once and promised myself that, after we had found Circe, I would give him back his ship.
    “Now I will show you the rest of the Halcyon, ” he said.
    Aruns stepped from the cabin and, assured that Vel and his men were nowhere in evidence, called us after him. To rest my arms, I deposited Astyanax in a coil of rope and followed Aruns’ finger as he pointed to the red linen sail, heaped at the foot of the mast.
    “The tide is with us,” he said. “We have only to raise the sail and man the sweeps.”
    “All we need now,” I said, “is a woman for luck. The Argonauts had Atalanta.”
    “We have one,” called Astyanax from the bulwark. He pointed to the water. The snowy beak of a dolphin broke the surface. It was Atthis.
    “I have just engaged her to be our pilot.”
    “Atthis!” I cried. “But she is the one who capsized us and got us captured!”
    “She is terribly ashamed, she says. The whole thing was an accident. She