CHAPTER SIX

 

 

Their feet crashed down, as unified as the heart beat of a single great beast. The halberds of the first rank, the steel teeth of this newly formed monster, shot upwards, the fat blades chopping through the air as the men snapped to attention. The back rank, meanwhile, held their guns vertically in front of them.

The sting in the beast’s tail.

Orbrant, holding his warhammer casually, stood to one side of the formation, his eyes bright with watchful pride.

The transformation the old warrior had wrought upon the mercenaries had been miraculous. Even now Florin could hardly believe that these soldiers were the same rabble that had greeted him on that first day aboard.

They were still dressed in a wild and ill assorted collection of clothes, it was true, and while some of them sported elegant beards and moustaches, others were clean-shaven, or stubbled.

But the discipline that Orbrant had instilled in them was all the uniform they needed. Now, as they stood to perfect attention on the gently rolling deck, their arms gleaming in the light of the tropical sun, Florin had to remind himself not to show too much contentment.

After all, this was hardly the time.

Four bodies lay on planks that rested on the gunwales. They had been sewn into sailcloth shrouds before being carried out onto the deck. All that remained of these men’s lives were these four neat packages.

For them the escape from the squalor of the ship’s hold had come too late. The fever that had found them there had eaten too deeply for a change of berth to make any difference. The disease had followed them hungrily to their new quarters, as mercilessly and eagerly as the rats that infested their food stores.

For the dozenth time that morning Florin felt a pang of regret that he hadn’t been able to help them.

It was ridiculous to feel responsible for them, he knew. He’d spent the storm in the grip of the same fever that had killed them. For whatever reason, fortune had seen fit to spare him whilst she had taken his men. That was hardly his responsibility.

Nor was it like him to feel so bad. Guilty, even. The Florin that had come aboard the Destrier wouldn’t have given the unknown corpses a moment’s thought. Life was hard, after all, and death eager. And if it took someone else instead of you, well then, that was all to the good.

But somehow, during the dark watches of the previous night, he had been tormented with regrets. Lying in the humid confines of his cabin, staring up into the darkness, he had fought in vain against the suspicion that he was responsible.

If only he could have had the men moved before the storm. If only he had spoken to the skipper before they sailed, or to old man Gorth himself. If only…

“At ease,” Orbrant’s bark, and the thud of halberd butts hitting the deck, broke Florin’s morbid chain of thought.

“All present and correct, sir.”

“Thank you, sergeant.” He cleared his throat. “Men, we are gathered here today to bid farewell to our comrades Gilles Chevron, Enri Batien, Michellei Vallard and Niccolo Jambon. It was your privilege to know them better than I, but I know that they were loyal comrades and true. They will be missed.”

The men remained silent and grim-faced.

“It is with sadness that we send their bodies into the deeps. But it will be with joy that they are remembered by those they leave behind, the joy of friendship remembered and loyalty fulfilled. Let that joy speed them on their way as we commend their souls to the great Manaan’s keeping.”

He paused, listening to the wind sighing in the knotted rigging above him, and wondered if there was anything else to say.

But if there was, he didn’t know what.

“Sergeant, the salute.”

“Back rank,” Orbrant roared.

“Aim.”

“Ready.”

“Fire!”

A dozen guns boomed as the volley thundered upwards and rolled away into the infinity of the ocean. Taking that as their cue, the men chosen to be pallbearers stepped forward and lifted the planks. There was the hiss of rough cloth on the planking, four distinct splashes, and the corpses were gone.

“Attention,” Orbrant barked. “And—wait for it—wait for it—dismissed!”

Florin watched the tight ranks of his company melt once more into a mob, and wondered how many more of them would follow those first four before the expedition was over.

 

There was no telling how old it was. It kept no count of the passing of years, or of seasons. Its life was lived to one rhythm and one rhythm alone: hunger.

And to follow this rhythm it was perfectly built.

Long and sleek, as dark and sudden as a nightmare, it scythed through the lightless pressure of the depths with a lazy ease. Every line of its great bulk was as sharp as a blade, every facet of its black skin as smooth as a pearl. From the high sickle of its tail to the thousands of tiny razored teeth that lined its maw, it was beautifully, horribly, lethal.

There was no telling where it came from. Others of its kin had been hatched from eggs or birthed from monsters such as themselves. This one, though, seemed too perfect to be natural. It was as though some insane god had crafted it as a living poem of terror, and of violence, and of constant, endless hunger.

The only hint that it was a thing of this world and not of some troubled dream were the traces of scars that marred the perfect blackness of its skin. They came from eons past when it had struggled against vast and alien beasts, horrors that had taken their mastery of the ocean’s trenches for granted.

Nightmares of beaks and tentacles they had grasped at it in a foolish ambition that was to spell their doom. Now all that remained of them were the cicatrices of healed wounds that punctuated their killer’s hide.

As the leviathan slipped effortlessly through the ocean’s deepest chasms, it knew that there was nothing left that would dare to challenge it again. Its dominance of this dark universe was unasailable, its hunger unassuaged.

When the first hint of blood drifted into its nostrils it didn’t hesitate. With a slight twist of its body, a fractional curve of its fins, it turned effortlessly away from its path and up towards the flesh that it smelled above.

 

“They have come on,” Commander van Delft said as Orbrant ran the company through their drill. Under his instruction the Bretonnians formed ranks, changed formation then fired a perfectly timed volley into the sea.

“Good work.”

“Thank you, sir,” Florin’s chest swelled with pride.

“I was talking to your sergeant.”

“Ah.”

Lundorf, ever the professional, tried not to smile. Graznikov made no such effort.

“Looks like he knows what he’s doing,” van Delft continued, tugging on the white walrus tip of his moustache thoughtfully.

“Yes, sir,” Florin nodded. “I hear that he used to be a warrior priest. One of those mad Sigmari…”

He trailed off, three words too late.

“Mad what?” the commander turned on him, eyes as cold and blue as Orbrant’s own.

“Nothing, commander,” Florin decided. “But I believe he used to serve his god and Emperor as a warrior priest.”

“Believe? Don’t you know?”

“I asked him, but he didn’t want to talk about it.”

“I thought you would have pressed him.”

Despite himself Florin felt a snap of irritation. Ever since the commander had turned up for an unexpected inspection, he’d done everything he could to keep Florin and Graznikov off balance.

“What the man did before he joined up is his own business.”

“Quite right too,” the commander nodded approvingly.

The little group lapsed into silence as Orbrant called the men to attention.

“Well done, men,” van Delft told them. “Glad to see that not everyone on this ship has collapsed back into civilians.”

Graznikov wisely ignored the jibe. His own men, all of whom were armed with the heavy, two-handed axes of their ancestors, had never been much for drill. Nor did he think that they needed it. As far as he was concerned the main skill a mercenary needed was to know who, not how, to fight.

If only the tsarina’s sheriffs hadn’t been so enthusiastic back home he’d never have signed them up for anything as hare-brained as this.

“Tell me, Graznikov,” the commander switched his unwelcome attention from the Bretonnian to the Kislevite. “Exactly why haven’t you been drilling your men, again?”

“No room.”

“And yet the Bretonnians seem to find room enough.”

“My men, real warriors. With axes. No room for axes here,” Graznikov, who was at least officer enough to know when retreat would be more dangerous than staying put, folded his arms sullenly.

“Well, if you say so,” van Delft shrugged. “But I think that you could do worse than to learn from Captain d’Artaud here.”

“Like you say, commander.”

Graznikov and Florin’s eyes met briefly.

No affection was lost.

Commander van Delft, who hadn’t become a commander by accident, pretended not to notice the hostility.

“In fact, I’m sure that if you asked him, d’Artaud here might be willing to take over for a while and train up your men.”

“No.”

“Just as you like, captain. We are all gentlemen of fortune, after all. I wouldn’t presume to put one captain in charge of another’s company.”

The possibility hung uncomfortably in the air.

“Well, I’ve seen about as much as I need to,” the commander decided. “You can dismiss the men, sergeant.”

Orbrant turned to Florin, awaiting his confirmation of the order. Florin felt a surge of gratitude for the display of loyalty, although he was careful not to let van Delft see it.

“Carry on, sergeant.

“Dismissed.”

“Yes, very impressive, your sergeant,” van Delft repeated as if to himself. “Graznikov, would you excuse us for a moment? Why not take Lundorf here and show him what sort of exercise drill you’ve implemented.”

“Yes, commander.” the Kislevite saluted and beckoned Lundorf, happy to escape.

Van Delft watched the two men clamber down onto the main deck and cross to the hatch. The two companies lined the gunwales on either side of them. The Bretonnians, following Orbrant’s lead, were busily sharpening their weapons. The Kislevites watched them with an idle interest.

Van Delft studied the two groups thoughtfully.

“I’ve been thinking about that campaign you mentioned against the orcs. The duke that led it, he was called d’Artaud too, wasn’t he? Any relation?”

“Oh, the count you mean. Yes, he was a third cousin. On my mother’s side.”

“I suppose that he’d have been a knight, being a Bretonnian aristocrat and all.”

“Yes, he was,” Florin agreed.

“Funny people, knights,” the commander mused. “Funny ideas about war. All that chivalry. Give me a clear shot and a cannon any day. We have one of those by the way.”

“Yes sir, Lundorf mentioned it.”

“Can’t see a knight using a youngster as bait while he hid behind a barricade.”

“It was an ambush, sir.”

“Sure he was a knight?”

“Yes. I mean…”

“And those orcs. Completely disorganised, you said. No leaders.”

“They might have had some leaders,” Florin shrugged. “It was so long ago.”

“How long ago?”

“Three years. Or was it five?”

“I’m a colonel, not an auctioneer,” van Delft snapped. He let the silence become uncomfortable before turning to his subordinate.

“Mad or not, your sergeant’s a gift from Sigmar, your men seem to respect you and you’re not as stupid as you look.”

“Thank you, si—”

“But if you ever lie to me again I will throw you off the pay roll. Which would leave you with quite a long walk home, wouldn’t you say?”

Florin, his bluff called, nodded meekly and looked out to sea.

“Yes, it would be. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” van Delft waved away the thanks. “And for Sigmar’s sake don’t go telling anybody else about this little chat. I doubt if they’d be quite so… forgiving.”

“No, sir.”

“Right then, that’s sorted. I hope you won’t take offence, but I want to get to the Beaujelois before the Tileans start serving up dinner. Gods know how they do it, but their lads seem to be able to make anything taste good.”

 

The four morsels drifted through the cathedral heights of the warm, upper reaches of its domain.

Adjusting to the unfamiliar light, the black orbs of its eyes changed from onyx to ivory. Gradually they adjusted to the blinding brightness of the long forgotten sun, and it bathed in the new sensations of light and darkness.

By the time it reached the first corpse it could make out every ripple of the sodden cloth which bound it, and every silver movement of the tiny fish which nibbled at its bloated flesh.

Although this prey was obviously long dead, still it attacked. The impact of its first bite tore the body in half, and filled the water with a mahogany cloud of blood. Swallowing the man’s torso it turned, an incredibly agile loop for such a huge creature, and returned for the remains.

There was no taste, not really. Just a sudden burst of ecstasy as the torn meat pulsed down into its stomach.

Spurred on, it lunged for the next body, and the next. By the time it had taken the fourth the sensation of fresh meat had set its appetite on fire. Arcing through the bright heights, its own blood pounding with a hideous excitement, it scented the currents for more human flesh.

 

As the second full moon rolled over the Destrier the long, sweltering heat grew heavier. Sometimes, beneath the blue furnace of the tropical skies, it became almost unbearable. Combined with the shrinking rations and the void of the endless ocean, it had conspired to drive more than one man into an insanity of despair, or violence. So far the Destrier had been lucky. The maddening heat hadn’t ignited the explosive tensions that had covered the deck of the Hippogriff with blood, nor had it boiled anyone’s brains enough to send them diving into the vastness of the ocean.

Lorenzo had actually seen the victim of the heat; he had watched him throw himself from the Beaujelois gunwale only to be hauled sobbing back out of the water by his comrades. At the time the sight had united Bretonnian and Kislevite both in uneasy laughter, but mock the Tileans as they might, most of them had already felt an inkling of his desperation.

There was already a rumour afoot that they’d missed Lustria. The storm, some said, had pushed them so far to the south that they’d rounded the cape and were now heading away into the endless oceans beyond. Others spoke of empty water casks, and the chaos that was to come when the last few drops were gone.

Thoughts such as these had led Lorenzo to today’s plan. It wasn’t much of a plan, more a way of driving such nightmares from his mind, really. Away of passing one more endless day without straining his eyes on mirages of distant coastlines, or seagulls that turned out to be sunspots.

The thought that anything would actually come of it never even occurred to him. After all, when he’d tried it as a boy he’d had gossamer thin tendon traces, and the finely carved bone hooks that he’d stolen from his uncle. He’d known the waters too, choosing only the deepest pools in the river that ran through his village.

Today, by contrast, all he’d been able to find was a rope, a twist of wire, and the sharpened hook of a long departed crossbowman.

Embarrassed to be seen playing the fool with such a string of rubbish he’d smuggled it on the stern deck before tying it together.

He was glad to see that the old skill of knotting and binding remained in his fingers, and by the time he’d finished he even went so far as to waste his ration of maggot-riddled dried fish on the end of the line.

Then, wrapping the rope around the railing of the stern, he’d thrown the uselessly baited hook over the side and started to think about eating the mouldy handful of ship’s biscuit that was all that remained of today’s ration.

Somehow, despite the example of the rest of the ship’s company, he’d never been able to crunch down the weevils that wriggled within the stale dough. He couldn’t even do it in the dark, when night would have spared him the sight of half eaten things moving about within the crust.

Instead he spent miserable mealtimes crumbling up his daily bread and sorting out the writhing maggots from the crumbs before eating them.

But today he was to be spared that ordeal. For no sooner had he broken off the first piece of the dough than the rope hummed with a sudden tightness.

Lorenzo looked at it disbelievingly as it began to drag itself along the rail. Jumping to his feet, heart racing with a sudden, disbelieving excitement, he tugged experimentally at the rope.

Something tugged back.

With a whoop of joy he braced his feet against the side and started to heave against whatever it was that he’d caught.

It was strong, whatever it was. By the time he had recovered just a few feet of the rope his muscles were burning, his skin glistening with a wash of sweat.

“What are you doing?” a voice asked. Lorenzo rolled his eyes back to find Jacques standing above him.

“Catching fish,” Lorenzo told him. “Want to lend a hand?”

“Anything for a comrade,” Jacques grinned disbelievingly and, wrapping the rope around his wrist, added his own gangling strength to Lorenzo’s.

Gradually, inch-by-inch, they hauled the dripping rope out of the sea. The tension in the hemp squeezed so much water out that soon the two fishermen found their feet slipping and sliding across the oak.

“Hey! You have caught one!” Jacques cried out, eyes alight with a sudden excitement.

There was a sudden, heart stopping slackness in the rope followed by a loud splash. The two men froze, hearts sore with disappointment, until an excited shout floated down from the bird’s nest.

“Go on! You got him!” the sailor yelled. Moving with a rush of renewed excitement the two men hauled in the slack rope and felt, once more, the fish struggling on the end of the line.

Lorenzo thought about how old the rope had been, and how casually he’d tied the knots.

“What’s that you’re saying?” Jacques asked him, but Lorenzo just grunted with embarrassment.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed.

Again the rope went slack, but this time, instead of a splash, the two men heard, even felt, a thud. A second later the weight on the end of the rope grew so great that it started to rasp through their hands.

“What the hell was that?”

“I think it’s clear of the water,” Lorenzo, tears of exertion streaming down the beaten leather of his face, groaned with the pain that burned in his arms. His scrawny muscles felt as though they’d snap at any moment, like so much old rope.

Jacques, his own hands starting to bleed where the rope had scratched away the skin of his palms, looked up at the men who had joined them.

“Come on then,” he snapped at them, his voice strained beneath the cords which now stood out on his neck. “Grab the rope. Help us pull the bastard in.”

Two men grabbed the rope, then two more. Now it began to slide up and over the rail, hissing against the wood as it came faster and faster.

Lorenzo let the others take the strain, his biceps singing with the joy of relief. Then he peered over the side of the rail, and his heart almost stopped.

It was huge, almost the size of a man. Its flanks flashed in the sunlight, shifting from silvered blue to metallic green as it fought. But although its body shone with the living colours of the ocean, rippling like living mother of pearl, the long sword of its mouth was as black and sharp as a thorn.

As Lorenzo watched it bite down upon the impossibly thin length of rope upon which it was suspended. The hemp hummed and groaned with the strain, thistles of snapped fibres sticking up at odd angles as the fish lunged desperately from side to side.

Lorenzo found himself beginning to pray again. He didn’t know what else to do as the fish was dragged even higher above the safety of the sea below.

Then he saw the gills flaring. His mind blank of everything but the image offish soup, he lunged over the rail and grabbed the great flare of skin.

The marlin lurched wildly at the agony of his touch, dragging him farther over the rail. Below him there was nothing but the foamed surface of the sea, the wake of the ship rolling hungrily beneath him.

Again the fish swung back out, and Lorenzo felt his hip slide over the gunwale so that, for a moment, man and fish hung there, each as captured as the other.

But by now more men had come to see what the commotion was. Without waiting for orders they threw themselves into the battle, Bretonnian and Kislevites both. From then on the struggle was short and one-sided. Fight as he might, the great fish was dragged upwards, and then heaved over the rail and onto the deck of the ship.

He thrashed around in the suffocation of this terrible new world, the rapier of his beak sending his captors scurrying back. It was Lorenzo, still too alive with adrenaline to feel the sprain in his fingers, who grabbed a hold of his dorsal and ended his pain with a dagger blow.

For a few more seconds the great fish continued to dance and skitter across the deck, his gushing blood painting grotesque arabesques upon the seasoned oak. Lorenzo waited until the final spasm had died away to a mere shiver before nipping forward to cut the hook from the side of its mouth.

“Let’s get this down to the cook,” He left half a dozen of his comrades to haul the fish down to the galley.

“And bring some more dried fish,” he called after them. “Seems that it is fit for animals after all.”

Jacques, his hair slicked with sweat and salt water, laughed with wild abandon.

“You’ll do anything to avoid those damn biscuits,” he roared at his own humour and slapped Lorenzo on the back. Still grinning he left his comrade slumped exhaustedly on the deck and went to peer over the rail.

“There must be more fish down there,” he called back. “Do you think they swim in shoals?”

“The gods alone know.” Lorenzo shrugged and flexed his bruised hand. “The only thing I caught before were trout.”

“Trout!” Jacques scoffed, leaning over the gunwale. “That thing would need a hundred a day to… hey, what’s that?”

“What?”

“That shadow below us.” The mercenary glanced upwards, but the sky remained empty of even a trace of cloud.

“What shadow?” Lorenzo asked, watching the excitement at the other end of the ship as the cook hoisted his catch up on a block and tackle.

“Look here. Beneath the ship. It’s getting bigger. Maybe we’re running over some shallows.”

“Can’t be,” Lorenzo turned his attention to the frayed and bloodied fishing line. The rope, at least would need to be replaced, he decided. It was miracle it had held the first time.

“Then perhaps… Oh no.”

Lorenzo looked up, surprised by his friend’s tone. He saw Jacques try to pull himself back over the rail. He was a second too late.

With a thunderclap the ocean behind the Destrier erupted into a dazzling column of water. It blitzed upwards from the surface, a liquid thunderbolt born of the deeps, with such violence that the plume of it rose as high as the Destrier’s mast.

It wasn’t this explosion that tore the scream from Lorenzo’s throat though. It was the thing that the sea had vomited up with it.

It tore itself from its sheath of water so quickly that it revealed hardly any detail. It was just a confusion of terrible parts, a nightmare made flesh.

It took Jacques without a pause, snuffing him out in a sudden spray of blood before crashing back into the sea as suddenly as it had come.

Despite the wash of salt water that swamped the Destrier’s stern, and the screams of the crew, and even the final image of terrible jaws closing over Jacques’ body, Lorenzo couldn’t believe what he had just seen.

Shock, as soft and lethal as a shroud, wrapped him in its embrace.

“What, by the gods, was that?”

Lorenzo turned, like a man in a dream, as Florin rushed across to him.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Lorenzo said vaguely. Florin grabbed him by the shoulder, stared into his eyes.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes. I’m all right.”

Beneath them there was a bone-jarring thud and the Destrier leapt like a wounded stallion.

“Lorenzo,” Florin urged. “Go below and get Orbrant.”

“Yes, boss,” Lorenzo nodded, feeling the white fog of shock drawing back beneath the fire of Florin’s energy. As he stumbled down into the hatch, fighting the tide of men that were pouring up, he saw his master gathering the company’s gunners around him.

“Fat lot of good they’ll do,” he muttered to himself, and elbowed his way through the confusion of men that now clogged the deck.

 

Back on the deck the same thought had occurred to Florin. He angrily thrust it to the back of his mind as he marshalled his gunners. “Come on lads, get ’em loaded. Michel. Michel! Go and get Graznikov. We need his pistols.”

He waited until Orbrant’s head appeared in the hatchway, and then leapt for the rigging that led up to the crow’s nest. Racing up it, the rough hemp scraping his hands, he glanced back to see the deck shrink away below him.

Climbing still higher he eventually stopped, looking back down at the foreshortened forms of the scurrying men below and then, almost reluctantly, out to sea.

The Destrier’s sister ships lay on either side of her, the three vessels forming the points of a tiny triangle in the vastness of the ocean. Florin could just about make out the matchstick men of their crews, and wondered if they had any idea yet of the danger that had come upon them.

Of the danger itself there was no sign. No dorsal broke the even swell of the ocean, no shadow marred the cerulean blue ripples of its surface. The only movement that stirred in its clear upper reaches came from the kaleidoscopic sunbeams that danced hypnotically through the clear water.

“Captain.”

The voice came from below. Florin looked down to see the frantically beckoning form of the skipper.

With a last look out across the sea he slid back down the rigging and dropped onto the deck.

“Leave the observation to my look-outs,” the skipper told him. “Just get your lads ready to shoot. We’ll tell you where.”

“Will do,” Florin nodded, running his eyes over the dozen gunners that waited for him. Now, at Orbrant’s instruction, they stood in two squads. Florin wished that he’d thought to do that himself.

Well, never mind that now.

“Well done, sergeant,” he said. “Now, I want you to take Michel and his mates to the stern. The others will come with me. Any questions? Good. Follow me, men.”

As if in response to the order another sudden impact boomed through the Destrier’s hull, sending the men reeling against the gunwales.

They looked at one another, pallid with fright as the Destrier settled back into the water. Beneath them the hull groaned dangerously, the sound dampening their brows with cold sweat despite the burning sun.

“Come on, jump to it,” Florin told them, jogging towards the fore-deck. There they lined the rail, peering down into the depths that had spawned this monster, or out over the rolling blue desert of its domain.

Behind them the skipper’s voice rose, a hard edge of fear cutting through the tortured creak of the ship’s hull.

Florin closed his ears to the sound as he peered desperately into the sea for some sign of their enemy. There was nothing to be gained from imagining the splintering of the vessel’s keel, the way the water would rush into her, pulling her down into the lightless depths below, no comfort from imagining the bloating of their drowned bodies as they turned in the tide…

Beside him his men, also listening to the whine and snap of the hull, waited for the next blow to come in fearful silence.

And suddenly, at the same moment as the look-out began to yell, Florin saw the monster’s return.

It was a shadow, nothing more. A cancerous darkness deep within the womb of the sea. And although it was small it was growing with a terrible speed.

“To the right side, men,” he shouted. “But don’t fire until I give the order.”

Now the beast was the size of a carthorse.

Now a cart.

“See it down there…?”

Now the blossoming shape expanded to blot out the light that danced in the oceans heights.

“Wait for it, wait for it…”

The monster powered upwards. One of the gunners, leaning over the railing to bring his weapon to bear, began to snarl.

Now the maw of the beast seemed to fill the whole of their world.

“Wait for the order,” Florin growled.

The water began to boil up, lifted by the lethal velocity of its attack.

The ship rocked gently upon the pressure that was building beneath it.

Still he waited.

And then, like a signal flare in a night sky, the dead orb of one of the thing’s eyes rolled into view. It was as cold as winter, as pale as death.

It was what Florin had been waiting for.

“Fire!”

Despite their terror, or perhaps because of it, the volley rang out in one solid thunderclap. This close, the noise of the black powder was deafening; the rolling cloud of smoke and fire blotted out the sun in a bright, stinking cloud.

Before it had a chance to clear, the beast struck.

It punched through the ocean’s surface like a spear through skin. The salt water explosion that burst around it rained through the gun smoke in a chill mist, blinding the men as they staggered back in stunned confusion.

Two of them weren’t quick enough. The monster caught them both in a single, savage bite. One of them, dragged by the snared flesh of his broken shoulder, screamed like a woman as he was pulled into the ocean.

The other died in the silence of absolute shock.

Florin, wide-eyed with horror, forced himself to look back into the alien depths into which the daemon had retreated.

But there was no trace of either man or beast. There was just the gentle rolling of the uncaring sea and a few dwindling flecks of foam.

 

It was gone for almost three hours. Time enough for Florin to wonder if the deaths of his three men might have been blood sacrifice enough. Time enough for the skipper to think that they might have outrun it. Time enough for the men to start to relax.

They were all wrong. The liquid fire of human blood was too rich a delicacy for their tormentor to ignore. And when it returned there was neither pause nor hesitation in its attack, just a constant drum roll of impacts against the hull of the Destrier.

Her sister ships drew in closer to her, their gunners firing occasional volleys into the sea around her. Yet for all the good they did they would have been as well to have saved their powder. Oblivious to their attack the great beast cavorted beneath the disintegrating hull of its prey.

As the sun vaulted over her masts and began to sink into the west, the Destrier sank lower into the water.

There was no attempt to outrun her nemesis now. All hands were below, fighting a war against splintering wood and snapping beams.

Their weapons were hammers and nails, and great vats of steaming black tar. Professionals to the end, they fought hard; even though they knew that this was a battle they were doomed to lose. Already the ship’s lower deck was submerged, the timbers of her keel split and torn so that she wallowed as heavily as a corpse in the water.

Florin stood on the foredeck and looked longingly at the ships on either side. He, like the rest of his men, had stripped down to breeches and shirts, ready for their last hope at salvation. When the Destrier went down, they would swim.

Running a comb through hair already ruffled by the evening breeze, he barked with a mirthless laugh at the thought.

“What’s so funny?” Lorenzo asked, sourly.

“Nothing,” his master told him. “Nothing at all.”

He gazed across at the Hippogriff and wondered how long it would be before he found himself clawing his way towards it. He studied the neat lines of her hull, and the golden reflection of the dying sun on the white canvas of her sails. She looked so solid. So safe.

Then he looked closer. Something, or rather somebody, was being hauled up that tall mast with a block and tackle.

His form swung from the bottom of a rope as inelegantly as a bag of potatoes, arms and legs windmilling around from the discomfort of some sort of harness.

Squinting his eyes, Florin leaned forward. From this distance he couldn’t make out much more than the figure’s flapping blue robes, or the wild tangle of his fleecy white beard. He looked old, hardly fit for the terrible demands of either sea or war, and the Bretonnian wondered what had brought the old fool out here.

When the struggling form reached the crow’s nest the lookout manhandled him into the lattice-work of the basket. Then, as soon as he was secure, the sailor climbed over the side and shimmied down the rigging as quickly as a rat from a burning barn.

“Who is that?” he wondered aloud.

“Must be Orbrant’s friend.”

“Who?”

“You know…”

The deck jumped beneath their feet. Both men tensed as they listened for the cry to abandon ship. Instead they just heard a chorus of desperate orders, followed by Graznikov’s drunken curses and the crack of his pistols.

“Drunken fool,” Florin muttered and looked back up to the strange figure that now stood atop the Hippogriff.

By now he had wedged himself firmly into the crow’s nest, where he stood tall. The wind flung his robes out behind him like a battle flag, and although his eyes were squeezed shut his mouth was moving. Florin guessed that he was shouting against the wind, even though he could hear nothing from here.

“He’s cracked up,” he muttered, watching in fascination as the distant figure began to gesticulate like a crazed actor. Then, with a final roar, he threw both of his arms down, fingers extended to the sea below the Destrier.

“I wonder if he is crazy,” Lorenzo mused, looking thoughtfully at the aged man. He remained stock still, fingers held in rigid accusation at the sea beneath their feet.

“I wonder if he’ll jump.”

“I wonder…” Lorenzo began, and was cut off as Florin seized him by the shoulder.

“Listen.”

Lorenzo listened. For a moment he could hear nothing but the lapping of the waves on the hull, the murmur of Orbrant’s prayers, the muffled cries and hammering from below decks.

But then, as soft and insistent as the hissing of absolute silence, he heard something else.

He craned his neck to find the source of the sound, gazing up through the lattice-work of canvas and rigging that creaked above them.

The noise grew louder, whistling like steam from a kettle. Lorenzo squinted up, then winced painfully as, against the darkening sky, the source of the sound appeared.

There were at least a dozen of them, probably more. They tumbled downwards from the clarity of the heavens, shapeless blurs of eye-watering brightness.

“Gods above,” Florin breathed, watching the fireballs hurtling downwards. The noise of their descent shrilled into a terrible scream as they fell past the sails, the blinding tails that trailed behind them sending crazed shadows dancing across the twilight-lit deck before splashing into the sea.

The storm of burning hail grew stronger, the missiles hissing like scalded cats as they hit the ocean. The squeak of instantly boiling water mingled with the splash of further impacts, and a thick mist rose up to drift across the waves.

“What a show,” Florin said, his predicament momentarily forgotten as the last of the meteors flogged the churning sea.

“Yes, lovely,” Lorenzo grumbled, watching the burning lights disappear into the darkness below. “It’s just a shame that the daemon wasn’t anywhere near it. I’m sure it would have been very impressed.”

“Maybe if it surfaces again…” Florin began.

But even as he spoke, the leviathan was doing just that. Before the last wisp of steam had cleared the water between the Destrier and the Hippogriff began to churn, roiling like the contents of a cauldron. Once more the sea darkened as the beast rushed to the surface.

This time, though, to the pressure of its ascent was added the white-hot .fury of pure agony. It leapt blindly; arching its back like a leaping salmon as it burst writhing from the water.

For one timeless moment it towered above the watching men, a sight that would live forever in the dark places of their dreams. The twelve tons of its form were suspended as effortlessly as a wasp in amber, every angle of its terrible form was revealed.

They saw the massive dagger of its dorsal, flaring as wide as a sail, and the smoothness of its underbelly, as thick as a schooner’s hull. They saw its razored jaws flung wide open in an insane grin, and the rolling orbs of its dead eyes.

But what Florin would always remember were the string of meteors that studded its body like diamonds in a tiara. They shone with a blinding intensity in the melting blubber of its form, as hot as hatred, as constant as love.

They were still burning when the great beast crashed back into the ocean. The thunderclap of its departure served the silent monstrosity as a scream, the tidal wave its bulk displaced a parting shot before it fled back to the icy embrace of the depths from which it had come.

So it was that, as dusk turned to darkness, and then to the starlight which lit the twin voids of ocean and heavens, the Destrier limped onwards.

The next day, as if gifted to the ship as a victory laurel, the misty line of Lustria’s shore rose above the horizon.