The King looked down anxiously at Atar and me. Then, with sudden dominance, his roaring voice stilled the confusion.
“Silence all! Your King speaks! Are you Maagogs that you defy the majesty of your King? You are unjust to the half-breeds. The half-breeds are loyal. Their Maagog blood is forgotten. Tainted they were by heritage—but their taint is washed clean by our Marinoid Waters. They are your brothers! You must love them! They are loyal to me! I trust them!”
“Loyal!” the King repeated. “And when the war is over and we have defeated our foul enemies from the Water of Wild Things—the loyal half-breeds will be honored among us!”
A crowd is easily swayed for the moment. Soon they were cheering the half-breeds—exhorting them to remain loyal. The girl whose taunting words had started the trouble was swimming toward us across the open cube of water. Some instinct at that moment caused me to glance overhead. A figure was clinging to the foliage directly above the King—a half-breed man. I saw his arms fling something downward. Something long and thin, and gleaming green-white in the glare of lights. It looked like a spear. But it came down more slowly.
And then I saw it was swimming! A needle-fish the length of a man, with a nose two feet long, pointed and stiff as a rapier! With increasing speed it was swimming downward directly at the King!
A second or two of confused thought too rapid for action. The needle-fish was darting downward faster now than a thrown spear. The King was unaware of it. The fish’s rapier nose would run him through from back to chest!
I found myself gripping the King’s legs, trying to pull him down. But another figure from near at hand dove at him. The Marinoid girl who had taunted the half-breed! Her arms went around the King’s neck. . . . A flash of silver as the needle-fish came at them. . . . A choking female cry. . . . The girl’s body sank to the roof-top at the feet of the startled King. On her face, inert, she lay with the fish like a sword-blade buried in her back!
The King was unhurt. He was shouting commands at the excited crowd. Overhead there was a scuffle—a scream of anguish; the half-breed’s body—he who had launched the needle-fish—came slowly down to us. . . . I saw a dozen spears from the enraged crowd sticking in it.
We lifted up the girl—grotesque to my mind with her four arms—but by Marinoid standards one of their greatest beauties. She was still alive. Thoughtlessly, I pulled the fish from her wound, broke its sword-blade nose across my knee—snapped its slim body as one would snap a length of string.