The Wildside Book of Fantasy: 20 Great Tales of Fantasy Read Online Free PDF Page B

deck to take a sunbath, one of them stepped on his tail and then made the limp apology, “Mistook him for a hawser.”
    “It looks,” I said to Astyanax, when the Rat had crossed the deck, “as if we may have trouble before Agylla.” Located close to Caere, my home, Agylla was the port where we hoped to find ship and crew to begin our search.
    “Don’t worry,” said Astyanax, pointing to a rare white dolphin in the wake of the Turan . “Her name is Atthis. She has been following us ever since Aeaea. A ship with a white dolphin enjoys good luck.”
    The luck, it seemed, belonged to the ship and crew but not her passengers. A week after our departure from Aeaea, Astyanax woke me in the middle of the night. I heard him thump noisily onto the floor of our cabin—cabin? It was little more than canvas stretched over timbers, but at least it gave shelter and privacy.
    “Are you going for a swim?” I asked.
    “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.
    I was well aware that the thump had been deliberate. When he woke in the night, he liked conversation. “Can’t you wait till morning?”
    “By then my tail will be stiff.”
    I climbed out of bed and threw a cloak across my shoulders. “I’d better go with you and ask Vel to lower our speed. You might lose us in the night.” The vessel was dark except for the fitful burning of a torch enclosed in a dried bladder. It was not usual for ships to sail at night; much more often they dropped anchor in convenient coves and waited for the coming of Thesan, the Lady of the Dawn, whom the Greeks call Eos. But the weather was clear and Vel preferred the sea to the doubtful refuge of a coast which belonged to the Greeks.
    With Astyanax in my arms, I stepped from the cabin. Most of the crew was asleep beneath a thick tarpaulin, but Vel and the one-eared sailor, huddled at the prow, were talking and motioning. I waited in the doorway. Something in their tone, a hushed excitement, a hint of conspiracy, warned me to pause and listen. The wind brought words in ominous snatches.
    “In Graviscae,” said the one-eared sailor, “…slave market…sell him on the block…Tritons are rare…good price.”
    “What about his friend?…can’t sell freeborn Etruscan…”
    “Brand him…pass him off as criminal condemned to slavery…”
    At first I wanted to laugh. Sell us into slavery? Incredible! My second thought was less reassuring. My travels had never led me to Graviscae, but the captain, no doubt, was known in the port. If he wished to sell us into slavery, who would believe that the Triton did not belong to Vel, and that I myself had begun the voyage as a passenger? In truth Astyanax would bring a handsome price. I had seen a centaur, trapped in the hills, sold to a troop of traveling acrobats who wanted him in their show. As for myself, sleek rather than brawny, I was hardly fit to become an acrobat, field hand, or gladiator, but I knew that Etruscan ladies, bored with their husbands, sometimes bought slaves for purposes other than work. After I was sold, I might convince my master (or mistress) of my true identity, but Astyanax by then would have gone to a different master and I might have lost him for good. The thought of that sea-loving boy as a slave appalled me.
    The wind rose to a whistling howl. I did not hear when they meant to take us captive. I stepped back into the cabin and sat on the couch to think.
    Astyanax spoke with more excitement than fear. “We shall have to swim for it, Bear!”
    “We’re a good ten miles from shore. I can’t swim that far.”
    “Not even if I push?”
    “Not even then.” I deliberated. “But there’s always the dinghy moored to the stern.”
    “Isn’t it a bit—well, undignified? As if one were skulking to safety.”
    “Skulking or not, the dinghy is our best chance.” Once ashore, we might fall prey to the Greeks, but even they were preferable to Vel and his Black Rats. I secreted a dagger in my loincloth. Everything