Elric_ The Sleeping Sorceress - Michael Moorcock [107]
“Perhaps not,” said Dyvim Tvar. “Perhaps that explains why I stand beside you now, my lord.”
Elric darted his friend a puzzled look before he went below to find a helmsman whom he could teach how to steer the ship.
The ship sped swiftly over rocky slopes and up gorse-covered hills; she cut her way through forests and sailed grandly over grassy plains. She moved like a low-flying hawk which keeps close to the ground but progresses with incredible speed and accuracy as it searches for its prey, altering its course with an imperceptible flick of a wing. The soldiers of Imrryr crowded her decks, gasping in amazement at the ship’s progress over the land, and many of the men had to be clouted back to their positions at the sails or elsewhere about the ship. The huge warrior who acted as bosun seemed the only member of the crew unaffected by the miracle of the ship. He was behaving as he would normally behave aboard one of the golden battle-barges; going solidly about his duties and seeing to it that all was done in a proper seamanly manner. The helmsman Elric had selected was, on the other hand, wide-eyed and somewhat nervous of the ship he handled. You could see that he felt he was, at any moment, going to be dashed against a slab of rock or smash the ship apart in a tangle of thick-trunked pines. He was forever wetting his lips and wiping sweat from his brow, even though the air was sharp and his breath steamed as it left his throat. Yet he was a good helmsman and gradually he became used to handling the ship, though his movements were, perforce, more rapid, for there was little time to deliberate upon a decision, the ship traveled with such speed over the land. The speed was breathtaking; they sped more swiftly than any horse—were swifter, even, than Dyvim Tvar’s beloved dragons. Yet the motion was exhilarating, too, as the expressions on the faces of all the Imrryrians told.
Elric’s delighted laughter rang through the ship and infected many another member of the crew.
“Well, if Grome of the Roots is trying to block our progress, I hesitate to guess how fast we shall travel when we reach water!” he called to Dyvim Tvar.
Dyvim Tvar had lost some of his earlier mood. His long, fine hair streamed around his face as he smiled at his friend. “Aye—we shall all be whisked off the deck and into the sea!”
And then, as if in answer to their words, the ship began suddenly to buck and at the same time sway from side to side, like a ship caught in powerful cross-currents. The helmsman went white and clung to his lever, trying to get the ship back under control. There came a brief, terrified yell and a sailor fell from the highest crosstree in the main mast and crashed onto the deck, breaking every bone in his body. And then the ship swayed once or twice and the turbulence was behind them and they continued on their course.
Elric stared at the body of the fallen sailor. Suddenly the mood of gaiety left him completely and he gripped the rail in his black gauntleted hands and he gritted his strong teeth and his crimson eyes glowed and his lips curled in self-mockery. “What a fool I am. What a fool I am to tempt the gods so!”
Still, though the ship moved almost as swiftly as it had done, there seemed to be something dragging at it, as if Grome’s minions clung on to the bottom as barnacles might cling in the sea. And Elric sensed something around him in the air, something in the rustling of the trees through which they passed, something in the movement of the grass and the bushes and the flowers over which they crossed, something in the weight of the rocks, of the angle of the hills. And he knew that what he sensed was the presence of Grome of the Ground—Grome of the Land Below the Roots—Grome, who desired to own what he and his brother Straasha had once owned jointly, what they had made as a sign of the unity between them and over which they had then fought. Grome wanted very