IX. Galley of Death
Carse straightened slowly and turned in the doorway, his back to the thing he had slain but had not seen. He had no wish to see it. He was utterly shaken and in a strange mood, full of a vaulting strength that verged on madness.
The hysteria, he thought, that comes when you’ve taken too much, when the walls close in and there’s nothing to do but fight before you die.
The cabin was full of a stunned silence. Scyld had the staring look of an idiot, his mouth fallen open. Ywain had put one hand to the edge of the table and it was strange to see in her that one small sign of weakness. She had not taken her eyes from Carse.
She said huskily, “Are you man or demon that you can stand against Caer Dhu?”
Carse did not answer. He was beyond speech. Her face floated before him like a silver mask. He remembered the pain, the shameful labor at the sweep, the scars of the lash that he carried. He remembered the voice that had said to Callus, “Teach him!”
He had slain the serpent. After that it seemed an easy thing to kill a queen.
He began to move, covering the few short steps that lay between them, and there was something terrible about the slow purposefulness of it, the galled and shackled slave carrying the great sword, its blade dark with alien blood.
Ywain gave back one step. Her hand faltered to her own hilt. She was not afraid of death. She was afraid of the thing that she saw in Carse, the light that blazed in his eyes. A fear of the soul and not the body.
Scyld gave a hoarse cry. He drew his sword and lunged.