Duke Elric - Michael Moorcock [11]
“For where do we sail?” he asked.
Brut shrugged. “I know only that we had to stop to wait for you, Elric of Melnibone.”
“You knew I would be there?”
The man in the shadows stirred and helped himself to more hot wine from the jug set into a hole in the centre of the table. “You are the last one we need,” he said. “I was the first taken aboard. So far I have not regretted my decision to make the voyage.”
“Your name, sir?” Elric decided he would no longer be at that particular disadvantage.
“Oh, names? Names? I have so many. The one I favour is Erekose. But I have been called Urlik Skarsol and John Daker and Ilian of Garathorm to my certain knowledge. Some would have me believe that I have been Elric Womanslayer …”
“Womanslayer? An unpleasant nickname. Who is this other Elric?”
“That I cannot completely answer,” said Erekose. “But I share a name, it seems, with more than one aboard this ship. I, like Brut, sought Tanelorn and found myself here instead.”
“We have that in common,” said another. He was a black-skinned warrior, the tallest of the company, his features oddly enhanced by a scar running like an inverted V from his forehead and over both eyes, down his cheeks to his jawbones. “I was in à land called Ghaja-Ki, a most unpleasant, swampy place, filled with perverse and diseased life. I had heard of a city said to exist there and I thought it might be Tanelorn. It was not. And it was inhabited by a blue-skinned, hermaphroditic race who determined to cure me of what they considered my malformations of hue and sexuality. This scar you see was their work. The pain of their operation gave me strength to escape them and I ran naked into the swamps, floundering for many a mile until the swamp became à lake feeding a broad river over which hung black clouds of insects which set upon me hungrily. This ship appeared and I was more than glad to seek its sanctuary. I am Otto Blendker, once a scholar of Brunse, now a hireling sword for my sins.”
“This Brunse? Does it lie near Elwher?” said Elric. He had never heard of such a place, nor such an outlandish name, in the Young Kingdoms.
The black man shook his head. “I know naught of Elwher.”
“Then the world is a considerably larger place than I imagined,” said Elric.
“Indeed it is,” said Erekose. “What would you say if I offered you the theory that the sea on which we sail spans more than one world?”
“I would be inclined to believe you.” Elric smiled. “I have studied such theories. More, I have experienced adventures in worlds other than my own.”
“It is a relief to hear it,” said Erekose. “Not all on board this ship are willing to accept my theory.”
“I come closer to accepting it,” said Otto Blendker, “though I find it terrifying.”
“It is that,” agreed Erekose. “More terrifying than you can imagine, friend Otto.”
Elric leaned across the table and helped himself to a further mug of wine. His clothes were already drying and physically he had a sense of well-being. “I'll be glad to leave this misty shore behind.”
“The shore has been left already,” said Brut, “but as for the mist, it is ever with us. Mist appears to follow the ship—or else the ship creates the mist wherever it travels. It is rare that we see land at all and when we do see it, as we saw it today, it is usually obscured, like a reflection in a dull and buckled shield.”
“We sail on a supernatural sea,” said another, holding out a gloved hand for the jug. Elric passed it to him. “In Hasghan, where I come from, we have a legend of a Bewitched Sea. If a mariner finds himself sailing in those waters he may never return and will be lost for eternity.”
“Your legend contains at least some truth, I fear, Terndrik of Hasghan,” Brut said.
“How many warriors are on board?” Elric asked.
“Sixteen other than the Four,” said Erekose. “Twenty in all. The