The Reign of Wizardry Read Free Page A

crackling sound, and saw a flash of blue, and caught a stinging odor. But the red-dripping silver vessel pitched out of dying hands into the sea. Severed clean, the priest’s head followed it.
    “Come!” shouted Theseus. “Follow the Falling Star!”
    He leaped down from the cabin, in the rear of the Cretan boarders. His steel parried an arrow, and cleft the archer’sthroat. He snatched a bullhide shield from a dying lancer, and his sword slipped hilt-deep through another.
    “Come on!” his deep voice pealed. “For the priest of the Dark One is dead!”
    Under the eye of the limping Tirynthian cook, four men hurled a pot of blazing sulfur from a net. It spread blue choking flame. The Cretans stumbled back, some of them shrieking in agony. And the pirates swarmedafter them, drove them against the busy sword of Theseus.
    The galley was taken—but briefly, for the unquenchable sulfur flames swiftly recaptured it. The pirates retreated from the asphyxiating blaze, with such weapons and other loot as they could snatch. Theseus ordered the galley rammed, to end the screaming agony of the chained slaves, and then turned to pursue the yellow-sailed trader.
    Now, after the battle was ended, he had a sudden sick awareness of the small margin by which death had passed him by. His arm was bleeding where the stone had stung him, and he found a long red mark across his ribs, where some point had thrust.
    And the Falling Star trembled in his hands, as he had time to recall the strange bolt that had struck down Cyron. Uneasily he remembered the rumors thatMinos ruled the lightning. His own dread of the wizardry of Knossos was not all conquered.
    “Poor old Gamecock!” he whispered. “Perhaps you were right. Perhaps a man cannot defy the gods.”
    He dropped on his knees beside the bearded Dorian. He saw the tiny smoke that lifted from a smoldering spot on the stiff splendor of Cyron’s beaded cloak; traced the long red burn, branching like a tree, thatscarred the pirate’s sword arm.
    “The warlocks have a power,” he muttered. “But you will be avenged, Gamecock.” His lean jaw was hard. “Because I’mgoing on until I die—or until the gods of Crete have fallen!”
    “Stay, Captain Firebrand!” Cyron gulped a long breath and opened his eyes. He sat up weakly on the deck, and his trembling fingers clutched desperately at the arm of Theseus. But Theseuswas staring at his eyes. They were filmed and distended with horror.
    “Forget your mad ambition, Captain Firebrand!” begged the choked dry voice of Cyron. “For I have felt the magic of Minos, and now I know the power of the Dark One—and it is a terrible power!”
    “I know that it is terrible,” Theseus told him gravely. “That is the reason that it must be destroyed.” He grinned, and lifted Cyronto his feet. “You’re a tough one, Gamecock! I thought you were dead.”
    “Almost,” whispered the pirate, “I wish I were!”
    The trader was a broad ship, deeply burdened, with but seven oars on the side to aid her huge square sail. The pirate, with red sail set again and oars dipping briskly, swiftly overhauled her.
    A flight of arrows winged toward the pirate. But the trader carried no more thana score of freemen, to handle arms and sail. When Theseus promised to set them all alive upon the nearest land, her captain surrendered.
    “A strange name you have made, Captain Firebrand!” commented Cyron. “There was never another pirate in these waters whose word would take a ship!”
    “It isn’t men I hate,” Theseus told him. “It is the warlocks and gods of evil. We will set the captain and hismen ashore on the headland, and leave them food and arms.”
    “A strange pirate, indeed!” Cyron grunted.
    As the yellow sail had indicated, the trader belonged to the merchant fleet of Amur the Hittite, whose house had become great under the protection of Minos. Her captain was a hawk-nosed, sallow-cheeked nephew of Amur himself. It seemed to Theseus that he