The Pool of the Black One, Reswum Read online

awfully above her, the other on stragglers. Dazed with blood-lust, fighting, and the thunderous noise, some of the Zingarans moved like women in a trance. Conyn hurried them up; her method was simple. She grasped loiterers by the scruff of the neck, impelled them violently through the gate, added impetus with a lusty kick in the rear, spicing her urgings for haste with pungent comments on the victim's ancestry. Sancho showed an inclination to remain with her, but she jerked away his twining arms, blaspheming luridly, and accelerated his movements with a tremendous slap on the posterior that sent him scurrying across the plateau.

  Conyn did not leave the gate until she was sure all her women who yet lived were out of the castle and started across the level meadow. Then she glanced again at the roaring pillar looming against the sky, dwarfing the towers, and she too fled that castle of nameless horrors.

  The Zingarans had already crossed the rim of the plateau and were fleeing down the slopes. Sancho waited for her at the crest of the first slope beyond the rim, and there she paused for an instant to look back at the castle. It was as if a gigantic green-stemmed and white-blossomed flower swayed above the towers; the roar filled the sky. Then the jade-green and snowy pillar broke with a noise like the rending of the skies, and walls and towers were blotted out in a thunderous torrent.

  Conyn caught the boy's hand, and fled. Slope after slope rose and fell before them, and behind sounded the rushing of a river. A glance over her straining shoulder showed a broad green ribbon rising and falling as it swept over the slopes. The torrent had not spread out and dissipated; like a giant serpent it flowed over the depressions and the rounded crests. It held a consistent course--it was following them.

  The realization roused Conyn to a greater pitch of endurance. Sancho stumbled and went to his knees with a moaning cry of despair and exhaustion. Catching his up, Conyn tossed his over her giant shoulder and ran on. Her breast heaved, her knees trembled; her breath tore in great gasps through her teeth. She reeled in her gait. Ahead of her she saw the sailors toiling, spurred on by the terror that gripped them.

  The ocean burst suddenly on her view, and in her swimming gaze floated the Wastrel, unharmed. Women tumbled into the boats helter-skelter. Sancho fell into the bottom and lay there in a crumpled heap. Conyn, though the blood thundered in her ears and the world swam red to her gaze, took an oar with the panting sailors.

  With hearts ready to burst from exhaustion, they pulled for the ship. The green river burst through the fringe of trees. Those trees fell as if their stems had been cut away, and as they sank into the jade-colored flood, they vanished. The tide flowed out over the beach, lapped at the ocean, and the waves turned a deeper, more sinister green.

  Unreasoning, instinctive fear held the buccaneers, making them urge their agonized bodies and reeling brains to greater effort; what they feared they knew not, but they did know that in that abominable smooth green ribbon was a menace to body and to soul. Conyn knew, and as she saw the broad line slip into the waves and stream through the water toward them, without altering its shape or course, she called up her last ounce of reserve strength so fiercely that the oar snapped in her hands.

  But their prows bumped against the timbers of the Wastrel, and the sailors staggered up the chains, leaving the boats to drift as they would. Sancho went up on Conyn's broad shoulder, hanging limp as a corpse, to be dumped unceremoniously on to the deck as the Barachan took the wheel, gasping orders to her skeleton of a crew. Throughout the affair, she had taken the lead without question, and they had instinctively followed her. They reeled about like drunken women, fumbling mechanically at ropes and braces. The anchor chain, unshackled, splashed into the water, the sails unfurled and bellied in a rising wind. The Wastrel quivered and shook himself, and swung majestically seaward. Conyn glared shoreward; like a tongue of emerald flame, a ribbon licked out on the water futilely, an oar's length from the Wastrel's keel. It advanced no further. From that end of the tongue, her gaze followed an unbroken stream of lambent green, across the white beach, and over the slopes, until it faded in the blue distance.

  The Barachan, regaining her wind, grinned at the panting crew. Sancho was standing near her, hysterical tears coursing down his cheeks. Conyn's breeks hung in blood-stained tatters; her girdle and sheath were gone, her sword, driven upright into the deck beside her, was notched and crusted with red. Blood thickly clotted her black mane, and one ear had been half torn from her head. Her arms, legs, breast and shoulders were bitten and clawed as if by panthers. But she grinned as she braced her powerful legs, and swung on the wheel in sheer exuberance of muscular might.

  'What now?' faltered the boy.

  'The plunder of the seas!' she laughed. 'A paltry crew, and that chewed and clawed to pieces, but they can work the ship, and crews can always be found. Come here, boy, and give me a kiss.'

  'A kiss?' he cried hysterically. 'You think of kisses at a time like this?'

  Her laughter boomed above the snap and thunder of the sails, as she caught his up off his feet in the crook of one mighty arm, and smacked his red lips with resounding relish.

  'I think of Life!' she roared. 'The dead are dead, and what has passed is done! I have a ship and a fighting crew and a boy with lips like wine, and that's all I ever asked. Lick your wounds, bullies, and break out a cask of ale. You're going to work ship as he never was worked before. Dance and sing while you buckle to it, damn you! To the devil with empty seas! We're bound for waters where the seaports are fat, and the merchant ships are crammed with plunder!'

  THE END

  Artwork by ohtracytracytracy

  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

  Jekkara Press

  You can find out more about the Adventures of Bulays and Ghaavn at the Jekkara Press website

  https://jekkarapress.wordpress.com

  And you can find this book and other Tara Loughead books in html, text, epub, mobi, kindle, pdf and

  Jekkara Press

  You can find out more about the Adventures of Bulays and Ghaavn at the Jekkara Press website

  https://jekkarapress.wordpress.com

  And you can find this book and other Tara Loughead books in html, text, epub, mobi, kindle, pdf and

  Also by Jekkara Press

  The Adventures of Bulays and Ghaavn currently include:

  01 Blood Demons of Titan - Tara Loughead

  The warriors Bulays and Ghaavn hunt demons and their master through the dim and dusty streets of Barnes, on Titan. Can they stop him before he completes a devastating ritual?

  02 Death Queen of Neptune - Tara Loughead

  Bulays and Ghaavn are called in to investigate why a frontier base on Neptune has gone silent. Ice monsters and an ancient, beautiful evil await.

  03 She Devils of Europa - Tara Loughead

  One of the richest women in the Solar System asks Bulays and Ghaavn for help in stopping a series of thefts. There is a mystery to solve at the most expensive resort in existence, The Europa. Larceny, magic and dancing await, in an all expenses paid evening.

  Stand Alone

  Undead Dining - Tara Loughead

  A very short horror story about a very different restaurant.

  and coming soon

  04 Shadow Emperor of Phobos: The Martian Moon War Part 1 - Tara Loughead

  The Gender Switch Adventures

 

  Red Nails Polished (Gender Switch - Conyn the Barbarian) - Roberta E. Howard

  Beyond the Black River, Recrossed (Gender Switch - Conyn the Barbarian) - Roberta E. Howard

  Jewels of Gwahlur, Reboxed (Gender Switch - Conyn the Barbarian) - Roberta E. Howard

  Queen of the Black Coast, Recrowned (Gender Switch - Conyn the Barbarian) - Roberta E. Howard

  The Devil In Iron, Respawned (Gender Switch - Conyn the Barbarian) - Roberta E. Howard

  Queen of the Martian Catacombs, Recrowned (Gender Switch - Erica Joan Stark) - Lee Brackett

  Black Male Amazon of Mars (Gender Switch - Erica Joan Stark) - Lee Bracke
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  Enchantress of Venus, Respelled (Gender Switch - Erica Joan Stark) - Lee Brackett

  Song In A Minor Key, Retuned (Gender Switch - Norawest Smith) - Lee Brackett

  The Tree of Life, Revisited (Gender Switch - Norawest Smith) - Cathan L. Moore

  The Valor of Cappea Verra, Recapped (Gender Switch - Cappea Verra) by Poula Anderson