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He was amazed to find himself once more confronted by the Bronze Man, but he
unlimbered his Trident, and used it again to good effect on Talus. The triple
blast of the thrusting spear hurled the metal figure violently back, across
the
room.
Facing an opponent who had beaten him once before, Talus was evidently
unburdened by any concern for honor, feeling no duty to die in his tracks. He
turned his back on the angry god and sprang clear out the window. It was
entirely possible that the long, skidding, and tumbling plunge toward the
rocks
and the sea that waited far below would do him less damage than the
close-range
anger of an armed god.
Gripping the Trident, Triton darted to the window and looked down, in time to
see the metal body of his opponent vanish with a splash.
"See to the Mouse," he commanded sharply, and Hal bent over her. The children
were clinging to their mother, who was unconscious. The northman tugged at
the
woman's fetters, then reached to take a key from the belt of one of the dead
guards. In a moment the shackles and chains had been undone, and Hal tossed
them
rattling down the stair.
For the second time in as many fights, Triton/Proteus had seen the waves
close
over the head of Talus. This time he meant to finish off the Bronze Man, as
he
had just done for the Giant, but there were other matters to be taken care of
first.
The deep water down there was reacting to his presence, to his staring eyes
that
conveyed his divine fear and rage. A whole arm of the Great Sea was stirring
with an elemental kind of life.
"Mouse's fainted, but she'll come round," said Hal, panting and gloating at
his
side. "What next?"
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"Now I think it is time for a thorough house-cleaning."
Reaching forth with all the power of magic that he still possessed, Triton
evoked a great, gray-green foaming column, thick as a house and straining
more
than a hundred feet above the sea, brought it curling and foaming to such a
height that its crowning spray blew in at the castle's upper windows. Triton
could not maintain it at that altitude indefinitely, but he thought he could
prolong the feat for long enough.
For the past two days, beginning while the Argo had been still many miles at
sea, he had been silently calling for Scylla and Charybdis to approach the
harbor of Iolcus, and to wait a few miles offshore for new tasks he would
assign
them. They had been far distant in the Great Sea when Triton's summons
reached
them, and only now had their amorphous shapes appeared on the horizon, moving
under a strange sky, a sunset glowing through what looked like the natural
cloud
and lightning of an early winter storm.
Minutes ago he had urged them to come on at their greatest speed. And now
they
were on hand.
"Lord Neptune has urged us to follow you, and fight for you with all our
strength!" came a great gurgling howl.
The god's voice roared in command. "Charybdis, Scylla, combine yourselves
into
one creature. Come to me now!"
"We hear, and obey!"
And by an act of concentrated will, Triton and his willing helpers set the
roaring, rising column into full motion, even as the jet of a geyser explodes
upward from the tormented earth, in some ill-fated land where the Underworld
lies near the surface. The result was a great reaching fist of a wave, ready
to
strike with crushing force. More than a wave, but a great columnar upwelling
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that took within itself the power of many waves.
Looking out from one opening in the castle's wall, admiring his magical
handiwork, Triton did not see the huge fingers of the second crawling,
climbing
Giant, as they reached inside the chamber through the room's other window.
One moment Triton was savoring the triumph of the powers he had set in
motion;
and in the next his conscious memory had been wiped away.
And in the moment after that, the head of the towering column of water he had
raised came smashing into the high rooms of the castle and right through
them,
pulling the rest of the watery avalanche after it, like the body of some huge
climbing serpent.
Haraldur saw the gigantic thumbs and fingers at the window, but his yell of
warning came just too late. The hands were not quite as huge as he had once
imagined those of all Giants had to be only comparatively small members of
their
race could make the climb up through the hidden tunnel.
The Giant turned his massive head to see a single human rushing at him,
apparently unarmed, empty hands raised as if they held a weapon. It was not a
sight to make a fighting Giant try to dodge, or get away.
Hal took one sideways step, charged at the window from its flank, and swung
the
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