Voyage of the Shadowmoon Page 11

  Feran came clambering over the cluttered decks to where Laron was standing. In the distance was something with a long, serpentine neck and a triangular head.

  “Never seen one act like that,” said Feran. “They seldom stay at the surface for long.”

  “I think that one was scalded by the last fire-circle. It could solve our provisioning problems at a single stroke.”

  “Us, attack that?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s twice as long as the Shadowmoon, and we don’t even have proper harpoons aboard.”

  “We have shark harpoons and crossbows. The thing has been injured; that’s several tons of fresh meat floundering about out there. What do you say?”

  “I say no! It’s huge!”

  “It’s seven weeks to Helion.”

  “And seven minutes to get killed, perhaps less.”

  “I have a bold and daring plan.”

  “That being?”

  “I have special powers.”

  Laron did not elaborate, and Feran wondered if his stomach might be able to cope with whatever the vampyre considered to be “bold and daring.” He thought for a moment, then turned to the quarterdeck.

  “Deckswain, ten points to port.”

  The arcereon was shaped like a turtle but was as big as a medium-sized whale. It had no shell, and with its long, serpentine neck and tail it measured fifty feet in length. As the Shadowmoon closed with it, the creature paid no attention, and continued to fling its head high into the air, then smash it down on the surface. The carpenter had rigged up five spears with ropes and barbs, but the size and strength of the thing grew ever more impressive as they narrowed the gap.

  “This may not be a good idea,” Feran warned as he stood ready with his harpoon.

  “Seven weeks to Helion, sir,” Laron reminded him again.

  Feran threw, but the harpoon did not even reach the arcereon’s body. Velander and Terikel began to haul the harpoon rope in. The deckswain tried next, with no better result.

  “Dare not get in closer, navigator,” said Feran, staring intently at the floundering creature. “Some of those things can spout enchanted fire—”

  “Burning oil, from a sac just behind the head,” said Laron, then added “probably.”

  “Whatever! It’s sticky and it burns. That’s why they call them sea dragons.”

  He had not noticed Laron pick up the third harpoon. Laron flung it, and, being a vampyre, he had many times Feran’s strength. The point buried itself at the base of the arcereon’s neck, and it gave a bellow of surprise and pain. Laron picked up another harpoon.

  “Stop! Don’t attract its attention!” shouted Feran.

  “Too late for that, sir.”

  The second harpoon struck low in the creature’s throat.

  “It’s turning for us!” cried the deckswain.

  There was a frantic scramble for the gigboat and hatchways as the arcereon bore down on them, then Laron jumped over the opposite railing as a blast of smoky flame sprayed the empty decks. The Shadowmoon shuddered as huge flippers smashed at its rigging and superstructure, and the spar of the mainmast smashed down across the gigboat. In their first act of agreement since boarding the Shadowmoon, Velander and Terikel screamed together.

  Arcereons normally used their burning oil only to shoot large flying reptiles and birds out of the sky, preferring speed of escape as a defense against attackers. This one was in such a blind frenzy that it had no sense of discrimination. It clambered up across the schooner, spraying fire and thrashing wildly with its clawed flippers. After a few moments it discovered a new torment, however. The Shadowmoon was burning. While the arcereon’s weapon was fire, its skin was never actually in contact with its own flames, and it was no more fireproof than the fire-breathing conjurers to be found in any market, in any city, on any continent.

  Frantically the arcereon tried to scramble back into the water, but it was tangled in rigging and harpoon ropes. The Shadowmoon capsized, extinguishing the flames, but as it righted itself again the arcereon turned back upon it. This time, as it reared up onto the schooner, Laron was on its back, holding on to one of the harpoons as he chopped into the vertebrae of the reptile’s neck with an ax. At the third blow the spinal cord was severed, and the arcereon went limp. Two more chops exposed an artery. Closing his eyes and steeling himself, Laron bit down and drank.

  By the time the first of the crew ventured back on deck to see why the Shadowmoon was still largely intact and why they were still alive, Laron was chopping right through the neck of their attacker. He was drenched in blood, and they had no way of telling how much of it might be his.

  “Free the body from the rigging and push it free,” he ordered, and nobody was inclined to disobey.

  Even though both masts had been smashed, the sails and much of the rigging burned, the bottom of the gigboat stove in, and everybody had cuts, bruises, and burns, still the circumstances of the Shadowmoon’s company had improved greatly. They had several tons of dead arcereon to harvest, floating beside the schooner at the end of two harpoon lines that were tied to the railing.

  “My bold and daring plan succeeded, sir,” said Laron, gesturing to the body with his ax.

  “What was your plan?” asked Feran.

  “Ah. You were under the gigboat, yes. You did not see.”

  “See what?”

  “Er, my plan … sir.”

  Wide-eyed and speechless, Feran pointed first to the arcereon’s severed neck, then to the floating body, then to the ax. “Navigator Laron, you provoked the arcereon into attacking.”

  “Yes.”

  “It got tangled in the rigging.”

  “Yes.”

  “It sprayed the boat with flames.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then capsized it.”

  “Yes.”

  “And by chance as pure as the wind-driven snow you happened to get close to the thing’s neck in the confusion.”

  “Yes.”

  Feran raised his hands to the heavens before clasping them down on his soaking hair. “You witless bastard, you had no bloody plan at all, did you?” he screamed at the very limit of what his lungs and vocal cords could sustain.

  “Er, no—sir.”

  “Next time you have a bold and daring plan I’m going to take the sharp and pointy end and stick it up your—”

  The water beside the Shadowmoon exploded upward as two gigantic jaws surged out of the depths and closed across the headless body of the acrereon. They had the fleeting impression of a flipper the size of the schooner, then the vast head splashed back down with the dead reptile. The port railing tore away with the harpoon ropes, and the serrated back of whatever it was seemed to go on forever as the thing dived. A long, thick tail waved high in the air for a moment, then the Shadowmoon was alone again on the surface of the Placidian Ocean.

  “You’re welcome,” Laron said softly, to the swirling confusion of water in the enormous predator’s wake.

  The neck and head of the arcereon were twenty feet long, and turned out to have enough meat for several weeks of unstinted eating. The rigging and deck were a shambles. Both masts were down and the railings that remained were smashed. Great lengths of rope were badly singed and had to be cut out, but there had been another set of sails stored below.

  Feran ordered all the smashed wood to be gathered, to roast or smoke the arcereon’s flesh, then they rigged up the mainmast securely enough to take a small sail. They were soon under way again, and high among their priorities was lunch. The carpenter and Velander cut the meat from the neck as the cook struggled to light a fire.

  “What we can’t roast or smoke, we can cut into strips and dry in the sun,” said the deckswain as he and Feran tied the head down on the deck.

  “No scraps are to be thrown overboard,” muttered Feran. “None! That thing was the size of a deepwater trader, and it had a definite taste for arcereon.”

  Laron lay resting in the sun, every so often feeling for t
he beard that had been washed from his face and lost. Terikel knelt beside him.

  “Whatever Feran says, that was unthinkably brave of you,” she said, smiling and clasping her hands.

  “It smashed up the Shadowmoon.”

  “We cannot eat the Shadowmoon, and now we have food to last until Helion.” She put a hand to his neck. “Navigator, you’re as cold as death!” she exclaimed.

  She put her arms around him and hugged the heady softness of her breasts against his skimpy chest. Laron squirmed, then pushed her away.

  “Rest, need rest,” he muttered. “I’ll be in my cabin.”

  He got to his knees and crawled hurriedly away to the hatch.

  “But don’t you want your share of the meat?” she asked.

  Laron had by now backed into his cabin. Looking out across to where Terikel was sitting, he could see the puzzled, hurt look on her face. Not far away, Velander was smirking.

  “Miral disease, Worthy Terikel,” he said, waving a hand in circles. “Best not to touch people. I appreciate your concern, though.” He slid the hatch closed.

  “And he is your medicar?” said Terikel, turning to Feran.

  Lying out flat with the musky scent of Terikel in his blankets, Laron fought a feeling that would have been nausea, were he actually alive. The surfeit of raw, sour ether from the arcereon had almost overwhelmed him.

  He breathed out gustily. Overcharged with the arcereon’s blood and ether, his breath charred the planks above him. Whatever other problems lay ahead, feeding would be low on his agenda for three or four weeks. After that, he could fast for perhaps a fortnight more, and after that … If they were not at Helion by then, it depended on who aboard the little ship had been able to annoy him the most.

  After a week of running repairs they had both masts more or less vertical and were able to fly full-sail. The arcereon’s flesh lasted well, although most of the crew soon became weary of the oily taste. For Terikel it was a mixed blessing, for it meant that she now had something solid to throw up when she was seasick, which was most of the time. Feran did not allow any other scraps to be thrown overboard until he saw that a large shark was trailing along in the Shadowmoon’s wake.

  Laron was sitting on the foredeck, sketching on the back of a parchment chart, when Terikel approached him again. It was a good charcoal likeness of the arcereon’s head, split right down the middle.

  “That is fine work,” said Terikel as she sat beside him.

  “Uh, thank you. Arcereons are difficult to hunt, and their bodies seldom wash ashore. Scholars in Scalticar have long wondered exactly how they produce their fire. Look here. This thing had a sac of oil here, behind its head, and a bladder here with muscles all around it. It blew oil through this little orifice here, at the back of its mouth, then ignited it with a white-hot casting suspended between its teeth.”

  “A mere beast that can do fire-castings? That could be seen as heresy by most of the main religions.”

  “Heresy or not, it seems true. The eleven fire-breathing animals that we know of, are all quite intelligent. Some can even mimic human words. Six are leatherwings, four are serpents, and the other is this one. I am the first to dissect and describe an arcereon. I might get a place in scholarly history books.”

  “I think that you already have a place in history books,” said Terikel.

  “How so?”

  “As the only example of your kind.”

  Laron looked up from the sketch, his eyes narrowing. “Velander has been speaking to you.”

  “Oh yes. She was quite amused that I would try to embrace what she described as a cold, dead predator.”

  “But I am cold, dead, and a predator.”

  “Maybe so, but there is more warmth in your hearts than in Velander’s. If ever I can come to your aid, Laron, just call.”

  “My thanks. And if ever Miral is down and you need a man you can trust, may I recommend my warrior friend Learned Roval Gravalios?”

  “I suppose he is all terribly honorable,” Terikel responded, sounding skeptical.

  “He is actually honorable without being boring.”

  “That sounds like an oxymoron.”

  “Er … I don’t think he’s one of those. But he is alive.”

  “Honorable, warm-blooded, and fun to be with? No, not possible—too good to be true.”

  “You’re right, he probably died like everyone else when—”

  Laron caught himself, but knew he was far too late. Terikel squeezed his shoulder.

  “No hurt done, little brother,” she sighed. “And thank you for cheering me.”

  Seven weeks after the battle with the arcereon, the ragged twin peaks of the island of Helion appeared on the horizon. There were weak but heartfelt cheers from the crew as the unburned pine trees on the slopes became visible in Laron’s farsight. The two-mile speck of land was only a week’s sailing from the coast of Acrema. It was an outpost of the seafaring Vidarian kingdom, a nation conquered by Warsovran only a year earlier. Not surprisingly, it was very hostile to the former Torean emperor, and had become a refuge for the remains of the Vidarian battle and trading fleets.

  “I can see more trees, farther down the slopes,” Laron called from the top of the mainmast. “I can also see … That’s odd.”

  “Those are two words I dislike intensely when I hear them together,” deckswain Norrieav muttered to Feran.

  “Ships! Hundreds of ships!” cried Laron.

  Everyone rushed to try to see for themselves. Even Terikel looked up from where she was being sick over the bracebar at the stern.

  “Warsovran’s fleet!” Feran exclaimed. “He must have known about the fire-circles. He sent everything that could float here, to safety.”

  The entire boat’s company gathered on the middeck to confer. They had collected enough rainwater to survive a week, but their meat had almost run out. The Acreman coast was a lot farther away, and the Shadowmoon had required bailing several times a day since the arcereon’s attack.

  “I say we surrender, sir,” said Norrieav. “The alternative is death anyway.”

  “Why surrender?” asked Feran. “Nobody knows the Shadowmoon is a Vidarian spy vessel.”

  “And a Scalticarian spy vessel,” added Hazlok.

  “And a Metrologan spy vessel,” added Velander.

  “And a Sargolan spy vessel,” added Laron.

  “There are two Metrologan priestesses aboard,” Terikel pointed out as she joined them. “Warsovran’s feelings for Metrologans are less than sympathetic.”

  “If we dress you and Velander in sailcloth trews and tunic, then who would know?” suggested the deckswain.

  “But what are we meant to be doing aboard your vessel, at sea, out of reach of the fire-circles?” Terikel asked.

  “We’ll say you were whores, working your passages to—”

  “There’s only one whore aboard this boat!” interjected Velander.

  “The idea is nevertheless sound!” shouted Laron, waving his hands for order. “Terikel, Velander, you had best start changing.”

  “I’m a priestess; this is degrading,” protested Velander.

  “Then you can swim to Acrema. Make up your mind quickly. We are going to Helion.”

  “Why not just dress as sailors?” suggested Laron. “With a bit of rancid acereon oil rubbed on, nobody is going to come close enough to notice that you have breasts under your sailcloth tunics.”

  On the flagship of Warsovran’s fleet, the Thunderbolt, there was nothing that could have been of less interest to anyone in authority than the presence of one small and battered schooner sailing out of the east. A trader had just arrived with a despatch from the emperor. Its sailors and officers had also brought word of a gigantic wall of fire and steam that had reached to the sky and stretched from horizon to horizon. It had loomed over them, then collapsed into a boiling confusion of fog and wind. Warsovran had been on a nearby trader, and he had turned back to investigate.

  In the small but luxuri
ous state room of the Thunderbolt, the fleet council was gathered to hear what news and orders had been brought.

  “In the meantime we have the emperor’s original orders, sealed in this separate scroll,” said Admiral Forteron.

  His council of admirals and nobles watched, nervy and puzzled, as he broke the seal. Forteron was in a delicate position. While a duke himself, he was by no means the most senior of those present. Many were quite annoyed about that. He read, alternately raising his eyebrows, then frowning, then staring with surprise. At last he looked up to his audience.

  “The invasion of Helion has been canceled,” he announced. “We are to raise the blockade immediately and proceed straight to the coast of Acrema. There we are to attack, seize, and hold Diomeda.”

  This news was the cause of some consternation. Diomeda was a large port city. Diomeda was also sufficiently big, old, and central that the trading language, Diomedan, had spread all around the Placidian Ocean’s rim.

  “I shall post the official despatch in a moment,” Forteron concluded, “but there is a little more. What I am about to tell you is for your own ears only. In his covering note the emperor has ventured fears that some terrible catastrophe may have taken place in Torea. If that is indeed the case, Diomeda may be our new home and capital.”

  “What?” laughed Duke Parthol. “The whole continent can’t be gone.”

  “I hope you are right. Nevertheless, tell your men that Diomeda is not to be looted, vandalized, or its inhabitants molested in any way—other than to take and secure the city, of course. Above all, trade is to continue with the other kingdoms of Acrema.”

  While the others were reading the despatch for themselves, Forteron went on deck and gave orders for the blockade to be raised. All ships were to raise anchor, form into a convoy, and sail due west. Code flags began to be hoisted, and signal trumpets blared across the water. The dash galley that had been making for the Shadowmoon hastily broke off and returned to the fleet.

  He knew, Forteron thought uneasily. Whatever had happened in Torea, Warsovran had known it was coming. As much of his military might that could be made to float had been sent to Helion and safety, while everything else—including the empress—had been left to perish. Was Warsovran to be trusted? In a way he had been quite logical. His enemies had been destroyed, and given no warning, or chance to escape.