Dragonclaw Dare

by Brian S. Ference

  With a shrug, he made his way down the other side of the hill.

  Another thin stretch of beach greeted him. What was that? A hooded figure?

  He gazed, surprised to spy a black-robed man standing on the sand below, waving his arms wildly. To whom? To what?

  There was something moving in the water, an enormous, blue-black bulk idling restlessly by the shore. ‘Thing’ was hardly the word to describe it. It looked like a serpent. A cold knot of fear snaked up his arms, sending chills into his shoulders. Could it really be a sea serpent? With its strange, sinister oblong head and long, undulating body, all green and black, this could be nothing but. It lifted its ugly head and gave another low rumble that shook the air.

  The man nearby raised an angry shout. The beast hesitated, slipped back into the troubled water that shimmered with an odd hue and was gone.

  Darek blinked. He focused his eyes and saw another figure among the group, huddled aside a boulder. The young man seemed shackled or roped to the large boulder, his feet on a tether.

  The hooded figure advanced, shaking his head, evidently miffed that his monster had withdrawn. The prisoner cringed away.

  Darek felt his lips part and his breath stop.

  Creeping closer, he saw the captive, blond-bearded man had matted hair and welts on his face and arms from abuse. He was bleeding where he had tried to wrench free from the cord binding his left leg. He had only a ten-foot radius to move on the boulder. Another bedraggled figure lingered nearby with his head slumped in defeat. The prisoners’ heels were bound together and tethered to an iron pin dug deep into the rock.

  Darek shivered. Whoever these people were, even with the sea serpent leaving, they were condemned to death when the tide rose. Darek shook his head. He made a two-fingered sign to ward off the eerie thrall in the air.

  Prompted by morbid curiosity, Darek edged closer on his hands and knees, using shrubs and rocks as cover, despite the prickles digging into his palms. The figure’s hood had slipped. Darek saw a strong back and broad shoulders with black hair and aquiline noise. But the face was cruel and black eyes all too penetrating. Darek wondered at the depths of the man’s depraved motives to be torturing these young men and flirting with serpents.

  Something like the hissing of snakes rattled in his ears. He crept behind the rocks, poked his head up.

  The dark figure in the black robe lifted his hands. In one, he gripped a strange staff with a hex-shaped stone at the end, in the other, an eerie lantern, lit by an unwholesome light, powered by unknown means, which did not seem to be a flame. An ancient cauldron, some black pot of corroded copper writ with ancient symbols boiled beside him over a wood-stoked fire pit, not dissimilar to the one he had passed.

  Should he know that figure? He shook his head. He recognized something daunting, and wiry and sinister about him. Darek’s eyes shifted and wandered up out to the cove. Two pillars of rock rose in the waters near the shore like snake fangs. Between these, the sea frothed and bubbled.

  A thin green mist oozed from the boiling cauldron and sent questing fingers out to the sea. An accompanying parallel mist, like a mirror copy, curled from the water out at sea to greet it.

  The figure spoke in a foreign tongue with a sharp exclamation, “Arnak! Tornik! Volkrek!”

  The coils of smoke opened like arms and the water between the rock fangs boiled faster; a sinister, large shape lifted from below. Then the spell-caster spoke in the native tongue:

  “Bring water and serpent to boil!

  Thus comes beast and terror to roil!”

  Darek loosed an inarticulate gasp. It dawned on him what the figure was doing. He was summoning serpents—a wizard then.

  Darek gazed in fascination as the green mist coiled in greater masses to coalesce into a tangible form. A wedge-shaped head with reptilian snout rose from the water and a sinuous body shimmered out of the blue seawater. This was no apparition. Mist had become a reality. The creature plunged shoreward with blue-black fins and huge flippers which it used to propel itself forward and grip the sand with a heart-stopping menace. From its tail coiled a poisonous barb that sent shivers down Darek’s spine.

  “Aha!” grunted the wizard in triumph. “My time has come! Arise, my pet! Arise, my slave!”

  Darek watched, fascinated and chilled. Dragons, serpents, sea monsters! It was like some kind of macabre dream.

  Darek clutched his throat and ducked back in the shadows behind the rocks, cursing himself for his folly of curiosity. If the mysterious figure discovered him here...it would mean his death.

  Still, the scene was a source of eerie fascination for him, and he could not slink away.

  The massive serpent slithered closer to the men chained to the rock in an unhurried fashion, as if it were drugged or under a spell. The thing’s eyes, grim oval orbs, glowed like pale lanterns on a moonless night while the two prisoners wailed and thrashed, giving up on all hope.

  From the man’s lips burst an explosive sound, “Agrikumph!” The serpent broke out of its trance.

  Lifting its head, the creature bared thigh-length teeth and shot like a viper, snatching the first prisoner in its razor-like mouth. His scream died quickly. The other young man who tried to scrabble away, tangled himself in his leg restraint and fell flat.

  The serpent dragged the victim out to sea, snapping the cord, dipping under the waves in a flowering foam of crimson bubbles.

  Chapter 4.

  The Pirates

  Nearby the wizard nodded, muttered a perfunctory sound. Darek’s blood froze. A jolt of icy terror broke through his normal calm veneer. This couldn’t be happening! Was he in some dream? A young man’s life had been snatched away like a child’s toy. In cold blood, the black-garbed wizard had sacrificed one victim and looked ready to repeat the process. Darek swallowed the lump in his throat and crept back in the sand, jabbing himself against a crop of sea thorns.

  The wizard leaped forward toward the remaining man, preparing to murder his next victim. He summoned his strength, power, incantations, whatever fiendish things were at his disposal, and began the next rite with bright-eyed enthusiasm. The prisoner scrambled about in a near hysteria, uttering gibberish, pleading with the spellcaster to stop this barbaric sacrifice.

  “Silence, mewling!” Lifting a bony hand, the wizard summoned the next creature from the sea with a similar technique, this time with yellow wisps of gas floating from the warlock’s pot instead of green. The sea between the fangs of rock bubbled and another prehistoric head, crusted with green slime and rust-colored barnacles floated above the surface, its eyes unblinking like a frog’s. This monster was more massive, toad-like, and waddled onto the sand like a huge land reptile.

  Darek clawed back to flee and never return. His breath caught in his chest, but he couldn’t go far. A terrible feeling had risen in his gut that if he left that young man to die, he would condemn himself for life, a coward running in fear and small-heartedness.

  He groped about him, his heart pounding and his fingers curled on a long-forgotten rusted spear.

  Choosing his moment, he leaped up and the spear flew out of his hand while both youth and serpent were distracted, eyes coveting the last human sacrifice.

  The spear whizzed by the mage’s ear and sunk into the approaching serpent at the soft fleshy area near the base of its skull. The creature screamed in agony.

  The magician whirled about. “Who’s there?”

  Darek scrambled back in the shadows behind the rocks. He mumbled in horror, guessing the dark magician would discover him there and blast him with magic.

  The monster gave a ghastly bellow. It turned on the magician, enraged. The startled magician blinked, frozen on the spot with surprise and terror. He jerked his limbs to action, looking into the monster’s ugly face which returned him only a bloodthirsty glare.

  Too late.

  The serpent had snapped out of whatever spell it was under, wrapping an angry tail around the human’s waist and drawing him closer. The man w
as swept out into the cove as the serpent plunged into the misty water, coiling more loops about the magician’s torso. Fine sprays of magic fire sizzled from the spellcaster’s hand, sizzling water and serpent flesh. Steam rose from the churning sea as man and serpent battled in an epic struggle.

  Wasting no time, Darek lent his feet speed, skipping lightly over the blood-speckled sand on a mission to free the quaking captive.

  “Are you okay?” he gasped. “Hurry! We’ve got to get away from this demented place and that madman.”

  The figure nodded feebly. “A-Away from this sick place.”

  Darek slashed the cord binding the man’s ankle with his fishing knife and pulled him to his feet.

  Up and over the brow and tangled woody crest of the hill they raced. Darek caught a last glimpse of a black, bedraggled form thrashing and hurling echoing shrieks in the water below, muttering thaumaturgical words over the hiss of wind and spray of brine. He shuddered and stumbled back down the other side toward the Vissicur. Oblivious to the pricking of the shrubs, he felt his adrenaline surge.

  The young prisoner was not a handful of years older than himself. His face paled in terror, but his long legs sped him to outpace Darek as they ran.

  Whether the mysterious, black-caped figure escaped the sea monster’s wrath, remained a mystery, so fast was Darek leaping like a gazelle with his comrade over charred fire pits, exposed lichened rock, his heart bursting in panic. Whoever he was, he had not yet mastered the serpents.

  The two splashed into the water, dog paddling toward the sloop. The young man lagged behind in the rippling water. Struggling to keep up, his winded gasps made Darek think he would not make it. “Hurry, before that monster can slither after us.”

  Paddling ahead, Darek gripped the rope ladder and hauled himself over the gunwales. Pulling in the anchor, he readied the sails. The prisoner finally reached the boat and Darek grabbed his wrists and pulled him in. With fumbling fingers, he raised the mainsail and got the sloop moving out to sea, cutting through the gathering swells.

  “Thank you for saving me,” gasped the young man, his shivering arms draped over his chest.

  “Nothing you wouldn’t have done,” said Darek. He trimmed the jib to move them faster out to sea. “Only a coward with a stony heart could have left you to die. No one should fall prey to the jaws of that beast.”

  “You saved my life with your fast thinking.” He stared at Darek with grateful amazement.

  Darek wiped the salt water from his eyes. He returned the youth’s gaze who was half sprawled on the deck. “Who are you and how did you come to be in the grips of that madman?”

  The youth croaked, “My name’s Briad. My brother, father and I were waylaid by a passing ship. If you see a white crest and a black hull—flee. It belongs to that wizard. My pappy tried to protect us, run the accursed man through, but he lifted a hand and sent my dad sailing overboard to the sharks. He hung his head in sorrow.

  “I’m sorry,” said Darek, realizing with even more sinking horror, that it was the young man’s brother who had been eaten by the serpent before his very eyes.

  Briad glared, fighting back the tears. “That monster you saw on the beach—that abomination. It killed—it killed—”

  “I know, your brother.”

  The young man nodded, forced the anger from his throat. “He took us in and enslaved my brother using some foul device, a globe or prism of sorts. The rest you know. I remember no more as I was drugged on some herb. Only to find myself shackled and staring into the face of a beast of nightmare.”

  Darek shuddered as he recalled the features of that gruesome sea monster. He looked back. The sacred isle was now a rounded wedge of green trees and bare grey rock, a dwindling spur on the horizon. His eyes caught a flicker of movement. What was that? A blot? He squinted against the cross-glare. Hellfire! Had the wizard survived and set his serpents upon them?

  Darek scrambled to trim the jib and pointed the bow closer to the wind, steering in close-hauled to maximize speed against the freshening wind. The wind caught the sail, propelled the ship faster. Star-runner tilted against the slapping waves, her mast creaking against the strain. Darek urged her to greater speed. “Come on, old girl. Don’t give out on me!”

  Another speck grew in size to port. What was that? Black Claw patrols? No, it couldn’t be! There was really only one other possibility.

  Darek paled. A convoy of three-masted schooners with gaff-rigged masts loomed like a deadly plague. The lead ship rode with a black flag, flying high on the mizzen, spider-webbed rigging with ragged-edged sails flapping in the wind. Hot terror swept through Darek like a huntsman’s flame. Pirate cabals were known to rove these seas and he was not nearly close enough to civilization.

  Reeling with panic, he looked about for options.

  Desperately he strove to get his ship as far away from them as possible. Should they shoulder in and wind-block him... a tacking duel would be the result and he would lose. These ships were three-masted with massive sails and built for speed and power. Under no circumstances was capture an option. Only the gods knew what those savages would do to him. It was a long way back to Cape Spear, and there were no islands in sight. Only wind, sky and sea... and Windbit isle, but no way was he was going back there—nor could he, he thought with mad dismay, with a sea serpent threading closer. Howler’s Isle was five leagues distant, he estimated. Perhaps if he could beach the craft there, he’d have a better chance of losing his pursuers on the island. Perhaps hiding in some cave or footing it overland. Yes, he’d be stranded, and could die marooned on the island, but better having some extra moments of life to work out an escape solution. He gulped back the terror washing over him. He was only sixteen, too young to die! His dark hair whipped against his neck, wetted by the fine salt spray. He fixed eyes on Briad. “Quick, move to my side and balance our weight. We’re going to need every ounce of speed we can get.”

  Briad hopped to motion to sit a few feet from him on the teak gunwales. A loud screech cut through the air and Darek looked up in dismay. High above, a sole sea dragon and its rider flew, a lookout for the pirate ships. How to escape this trap?

  Curse those bottom-feeding pirates! With all eyes trained on his ship, they must not have spotted the serpent yet. The lead ship loomed larger every minute. He could make out bandana-bound figures on the decks, wielding cutlasses, yanking on the canvas’s yards. Six large harpoon guns hung mounted on her gunwales. Darek flinched, anxiety washing over him.

  A sinuous shape with slimy green wedged head floated to the surface next to his ship.

  Darek jerked back with a gasp. The warted face rose out of the water, a larger sea serpent than any he’d spied thus far. A cross between a sea slug and a monster crayfish, with two pointy eyes on stalks. He tacked aside, switching to the other side of the boat as he gripped the tiller. He ordered Briad to move with him. Briad complied. The sails luffed, flapping in the wind, losing their propulsion for an instant. The sea creature moved with the boat, as if with an evil grin carved on its feral face. Star-rider was doomed.

  With a loud clack, a spring-powered harpoon launched at his ship. Then another, latching onto the hull. The hull shuddered, pulled along by the much larger craft.

  “Kraton’s Balls!” Darek cursed with fury. The serpent had vanished as quickly as it appeared, perhaps swimming beneath the ship in preparation to attack it.

  He could see the cruel, leering faces of the crew on board, their eager jeers anticipating their spoils. What could this motley lot want with two penniless sailors? The boat? Slaves? Or were they just hungry for blood?

  The sinuous shape surfaced again, thrusting toward the larger ship like a sea worm. It snagged the towropes as if to play with them. One snapped, then another. Shouts came from the men on board and as if on cue, the sea dragon flying in the air swooped down.

  Looking back at the carnage, Darek saw the serpent fighting the pirate ship’s ropes. Harpoon towlines flew at random, hopelessly entangling one
of the large masts. The creature bit into a section of deck, taking one of the pirates with it.

  With a roar of rage, the serpent lifted its crusty, barnacled head and smashed into the hull like a battering ram, staving a hole in her side. Screams of anguish and terror filled the salt-sprayed air as the doomed pitched into the water and the beast snapped them up in its fanged jaws. A sinuous tail propelled it along like a viper of the deeps, a nightmare that would be the last memory of many a sailor.

  Instead of helping, the other two schooners left them to their fate, tacking in on a beam reach to run down Darek’s smaller craft. Within moments one had closed the distance on Darek’s ship. As if attracted to the movement, the sea serpent left the sinking vessel to give chase.

  The pirates were drawing the sea serpent right toward him!

  In a panic, the pirate ship began to turn, striking his ship with a sickening crunch. Darek was plunged into the chaotic water. Briad was also thrown clear, and lost from sight in the mounting waves. Darek kicked as a white crest washed over his head and he swallowed a mouthful of sea brine.

  Clinging to a piece of wooden wreckage like a castaway, Darek choked down another mouthful of water as the sea serpent swam toward him. He looked full on into the serpent’s blazing white eye, as it rose to half its full height, seeming to scrutinize him from afar with a demonic gaze. Darek felt no fear. He was beyond that, knowing that when his time came to die, he would die bravely. The serpent seemed to sense something of this and raised its head, its wide, fanged mouth rumbling in hideous challenge. Darek’s unblinking gaze met its. For whatever reason, he reached out with his mind, not sure how or why he did so. The beast’s flippers rippled in reply, and yet it stayed its course, as if governed by a primitive understanding, of something it saw in the boy. The beast did not attack.