The Fiend and the Forge

by Henry H. Neff

  Bob was still awake when Max knocked lightly at his door. The ogre lived in a converted storage space off the kitchen cellars, a high-ceilinged room with windows cut along the eaves. Clutching a book against his huge nightshirt, Bob made a bow.

  “I am glad you came,” he rumbled. “I have something for you.”

  Upon a small bench, the ogre had placed a large basket of preserves, cured meats, and a tough, durable bread called hardtack.

  “What will you do for water?” he asked.

  “Find it when I can,” said Max. “Use mystics when I can’t. Water is the least of my worries.”

  The ogre nodded and accepted the bundle of letters and sacks of coins that Max asked him to distribute. It was strangely liberating as Max released them. Everything he now owned—or cared to own—was on his back. However, Bob insisted on making a quick inventory of Max’s supplies, granting his approval only when satisfied with the stores of woolen undergarments and a harpoon that could be socketed to his walking stick.

  “Please explain the things I can’t,” said Max, gazing about the room, trying to remember every last detail. “I’ll miss you, Bob. You’ve been a good friend to me.”

  “And you to me,” said Bob, stooping to look him in the eye. “Farewell, malyenki.”

  Minutes later, Max closed the Manse door quietly behind him. Skirting the main paths, he wound his way down toward the harbor, detouring slightly to run a hand along Old Tom’s stonework.

  Gràvenmuir was the last building he would pass. As always, the masked guards stood outside the gates, gangly and hideous. The more enterprising merchants were already setting up their stalls for the day, and despite the moonless night, Max kept to the hedges and shadows until he reached the stone stairs that led down to Rowan Harbor.

  Each step seemed significant—a turning away from food and shelter, warmth and civilization. Another world lay beyond the harbor, and there were no guarantees that it held the answers, purpose, or vengeance Max so sorely craved. But he had to try. That was the thought that carried him along the rocky beach and away from the loading docks and private slips where prying eyes might follow him.

  Clambering over rocks and sloshing through the ice-cold surf, Max walked a quarter mile before he deemed it safe to launch the Ormenheid. His teeth chattering, Max reached inside his cloak and set the tiny ship upon the black swell.

  He leaned close and whispered to it. “Skina, Ormenheid, skina.”

  Stepping back, Max waited for something to happen. He had expected a shower of faerie lights or something similarly dramatic. For several seconds Max entertained the awful suspicion that he’d been the victim of a colossal joke and paid dearly for a child’s toy while the real Ormenheid was moored elsewhere.

  But he had not been deceived. The Ormenheid began to gleam, stretching sinuously through the water until it reached a length of some sixty feet. Its shape began to broaden, ribs emerging from the stiffening keel and curving up to form a shallow hull of overlapping planks. Within a minute, the frame had assumed the characteristic shape of a Viking ship. As the mast rose and the sail unfurled, the great prow lengthened and formed the head of a dragon.

  Resting his hand against the gunwale, Max marveled at the reassuring solidity of a vessel that had recently resided in his pocket. Tossing his walking stick and pack aboard, he lifted himself out of the chilly brine and gazed out at the first signs of the approaching dawn.

  Changing quickly into dry clothes, Max arranged his bedroll toward the back of the ship, where the gunwales tapered. As he set out the last of the blankets, Max noticed a figure standing on the beach some twenty yards away.

  It was David Menlo.

  Max’s roommate still wore his suit from Mr. McDaniels’s funeral and his face still betrayed a ghostly pallor. As a fresh flurry of snow whipped about his shoulders, David merely stared at Max with the same disquieting maturity he’d exhibited since he’d been a squeak of a boy.

  “I came to say goodbye,” said David, his voice carrying eerily over the wind and waves.

  “How did you know I was here?” asked Max.

  David merely shrugged. “Do you know where you’ll go?” he asked.

  “They’re saying the Great God has returned,” replied Max, smiling grimly.

  “That they are.”

  “Well, then, I’m off to find him.”

  David offered a sardonic grin and a farewell wave that Max returned before setting the ship on its course.

  “Leita Blys,” he commanded in a clear voice.

  Long oars pulled through the surf, setting the ship into purposeful motion. A breeze filled the sail, and the ship eased out toward open sea.

  Once he was away, Max retrieved a small spyglass and took a last glance at Rowan in his wake. There was David walking slowly along the gray beach toward the bright watch fires that lined the harbor’s curving seawall. Raising the glass, Max glimpsed the statue of Elias Bram jutting above the cliffs, a tiny white figure set against the black sprawl of Gràvenmuir.

  ~15~

  INTO THE BLUE

  Max had been to sea before, but never alone. As the hours passed and all signs of land surrendered to a gray, impenetrable mist, the horrors of the sea and its immensity began to tell upon him. The breeze was cold and steady, the sky a spectral white that did little to distract from the gray, interminable expanse of wintry ocean.

  He brooded on his father. He fixated upon death’s terrible finality in that icy creek.

  It was impossible not to brood in such a cold, wet seascape. He supposed he should be happy that there were no storms, no wild nor’easter to come screaming out of the treacherous black cloudbanks as in fishing tales and storybooks. But even the cry of the gulls had faded, and the swell was so smooth that the Ormenheid’s sharp prow cleaved the water as though it were fresh cream.

  In the eerie silence, Max’s thoughts turned to David Menlo.

  David had always been odd, but his oddities were formerly marked by a cheerful, eccentric quality—the endearments of distracted genius. Of late, however, something darker had taken root. Max reflected upon David’s obsessive secrecy, his attacks on Enemy ships, and his dangerous experiments. Individually, each was a cause for alarm, but collectively they suggested something far worse.

  Max frowned.

  History was littered with tales of brilliant men and women who had delved too deeply in arcane matters and were driven mad for their insolence. It was not for mortals to brave Olympus or stare too deeply into the abyss.…

  As night fell, Max tried to banish these thoughts. He was comfortable enough in his warm nest of blankets, but the utter stillness of the sea disturbed him, and it would not do to compound its eeriness with dark musings. Well off in the distance—miles and miles across the sea—he saw the merest peep of light, a faint flickering against the dark. It was, no doubt, the prow lantern of a xebec or a particularly ambitious fisherman, and it comforted Max to know that he was not alone in this vast, darkening immensity.

  But he did not risk a lantern of his own, and it was long hours before his nerves succumbed to sleep on the open, exposed deck of the Ormenheid.

  As the days passed, Max fell into a sort of routine. At sunrise, he washed his face in cold water before starting a small fire in the shallow depression that served as a miniature hold. There, he strung and cooked his latest catch of the cod, which abounded in these waters.

  Food was plentiful, but the ice posed a problem. When the temperature dropped, whole sheets of it formed on the Ormenheid’s gunwales and rigging, slowing the ship considerably. Max spent many afternoons patiently chipping it away, his breath forming great plumes of mist while the oars and sail urged the ship toward Blys.

  He assumed they were headed in a straight line for Prusias’s kingdom, but the farther he traveled, the less certain he became. There were strong currents in these waters that pushed the Ormenheid ever south. Whenever Max tried to alter the ship’s course, however, the oars fell slack, as did the lines and r
igging. After two occurrences, he concluded that the ship knew its business far better than he did and he ceased his meddling.

  Leaving the sailing and navigation to the Ormenheid, Max occupied his time by huddling within his blankets and scanning the horizon for sight of a ship or icebergs. At night, it was much the same, although there were times when the sky was so wondrously clear, the stars so impossibly bright that he spent hours gazing up at them and listening to the whales singing their songs in the deep.

  A week had passed when the weather began to change. Unlike the smooth swells of the previous days, rough waves now slapped against the Ormenheid, sending a freezing spray over the gunwales that soaked the clothes Max had strung out to dry. After an hour, Max despaired of drying his laundry and began the careful process of retrieving his clothes so that a sudden gale would not carry a beloved pair of underwear or comfortable socks out to sea.

  As he stowed the cold, wet knots back in his pack, Max noticed something moving on the gunwale. A fat, hearty seabird had landed and was swinging its profile at Max as though deciding which of its cold, round eyes it should fix upon him.

  Another bird settled nearby, squawking rudely at its neighbor.

  Then another.

  Gazing up at the sail, Max saw dozens of gray and white birds alighting upon the spar while others dove and landed upon the deck in twos and threes until the ship was covered in them. Initially, Max found the scene comical, but soon he found that the battered-looking creatures were making a mess of his ship, fouling his deck, devouring his cod, and milling about in a dense jumble of feathers and beaks. Taking up his walking stick, Max did his best to shoo them away, but they merely flapped into the air, offered an aggrieved look, and settled defiantly back in their spots.

  After ten exhausting minutes, Max gathered himself for one final effort. Whirling his stick about his head, he leaped and shouted and cursed and pleaded. To his delighted surprise, the birds collectively acquiesced and flew away in a great screeching mass. Feeling rather pleased, Max took a moment to savor his victory and ponder how best to scrub a magical ship that was awash in bird excrement.

  The moment was brief.

  As the wind howled, Max felt a dramatic drop in the air pressure. The sky was filled with birds—terns and gulls, skuas and cormorants all racing across the pale gray afternoon. Following the trail of birds, Max looked ahead and forgot all about cleaning the ship, finishing his drawing, or checking his stores.

  He thought only about survival.

  The horizon ahead was a vast, tattered spread of blackness. A shadow had fallen upon the ocean as though the heavens themselves sagged beneath the awful weight of the coming storm.

  Max had never felt so small or helpless. There was no time to gape at the coming monstrosity. Running about, Max secured his belongings and lowered the sail to protect it from the grasping, greedy winds that threatened to rip it from the rigging. Pulling in the oars, he frantically tied them into long bundles and lashed them to iron rings set into the sturdy oak beams of the gunwale.

  The only remaining cargo to secure was himself.

  His breath sputtering in frozen gasps, Max wrapped a rope tightly around his wrist and tied a troll’s hitch to another iron ring. Taking meager shelter behind the gunwale, he steadied his breath and waited.

  Slowly, the Ormenheid’s bow began to rise as it climbed the first enormous wave. It was a smooth, gradual progression, but terribly unnerving as the rope tightened around Max’s wrist and he found himself staring first at his boots, then at the stern, and finally at the gunmetal sea. Timbers strained as the ship climbed ever higher. When it finally crested, the ship raced down the wave’s face in a gush of ice-cold seawater.

  There was driving rain and sleet and the howl of unimaginable gales as the Ormenheid was buffeted about like a spinning top. Wave after wave bombarded the ship, oceanic haymakers of terrifying size. Whether by sheer luck or some marvelous magic woven into the vessel, the Ormenheid often managed to evade the full brunt and fury of the storm. It slid within troughs, righted itself, and generally presented a narrow profile to the waves, which were never able to land a decisive blow.

  Max had never felt so close to death. He could not breathe—freezing rain and torrents of frothy seawater choked him whenever he gasped for air. Again and again his body was wrenched up from the deck, restrained only by his tether, and dashed against the hull or the gunwale’s biting rings.

  The noise was deafening—a screeching wail of wind and wave that was suddenly interrupted by a crack like a rifle shot. Max turned just in time to see an oar come loose and snap into several pieces of heavy, jagged wood. One or two pieces skittered harmlessly over the side, but another came rocketing toward him, skipping once on the deck before slamming into him like a freight train. There was a blinding flash, a dull ringing in his ears, and all became a warm, enveloping fog.

  Gulls. He cursed their shrill calls, vaguely aware of their shadows flitting beyond his eyelids. His skull felt as though it were wedged within a vise. A dull pain threatened jagged fury whenever he moved his head even a fraction. The sun was beating down upon his face—a far warmer sun than was usual for the north Atlantic. With a groan, Max cracked an eye and waited for it to focus.

  He was lying on the Ormenheid’s deck, still lashed to the ship by his tether. Blood matted his hair and had pooled beneath his cheek so that it was almost glued to the deck’s warm timbers.

  Gritting his teeth, Max pushed himself up and climbed slowly to his feet. By the time he stood panting against the gunwale, he was drenched in sweat. Despite the calm seas, he promptly threw up over the side and for several moments clung to the rail and tried to recollect what had happened.

  Staggering about to inspect the ship, Max was shocked at how little damage the Ormenheid had actually taken. His packs were still lashed down, most of the oars remained, and the sail appeared whole. Bit by bit, he set about the task of sliding the oars back into their locks and hoisting the sail back up the sturdy mast, muttering, “Leita Blys, Ormenheid,” before he sank to his knees and fumbled about for water.

  There was very little potable water left in his skins. His body was burning with a sickly fever, however, and he gulped down what remained. Bracing himself against the mast, he stood once more and got his bearings.

  From the sun’s position, he judged it was midafternoon. From the warm breeze, he figured he must have been adrift for hundreds of miles along a swift current that had brought him south and into warmer latitudes. There was no sight of land, just a rolling expanse of waves that might have been dunes but for their shimmer under the hazy sun.

  To pass the time, he began to record his daily observations in his sketchbook. The storm had warped and waterlogged the book, buckling its pages and smearing the previous drawings, but Max dried it in the sun and flattened the pages into serviceable shape before he jotted down the weather, his ship’s progress, and the animals he managed to observe.

  And the animals were numerous: porpoises, whales, seabirds by the thousands, and fish of every size, shape, and variety. He sailed over great patches of kelp and spellbinding acres of phosphorescent plankton. There were rains and even swift black squalls, but nothing to approximate the terrors of the nor’easter he had experienced. The weather was warm enough that Max was able to dispatch with the heavy furs and blankets and spend his evenings in quiet contemplation by the small pool of witch-fire that he conjured for cooking and comfort.

  Other than the storm, Max was surprised by the normalcy of the sea and sky, the general condition of the world beyond Rowan. He had always assumed that Astaroth would use the Book of Thoth to fundamentally reshape the world. Max had been braced for perpetual midnight, fire and brimstone, hell on Earth … not a tranquil sea and a mackerel sky.

  Astaroth’s impact might have been negligible, except for a sight Max witnessed some days later. It was late afternoon and dusk was falling quickly when he heard a splash from starboard. Abandoning the fire, Max peered over the
side and saw a seal suddenly leap from the water.

  He had already seen dozens of seals on his voyage, but this specimen was particularly fat and its skin was as red and shiny as a tomato. Leaning out over the gunwale for a better look, he spied a crimson blur streaking alongside the ship. Rising, it broke the surface once again, and he was able to get a proper look.

  It was not a seal.

  The creature had a seal’s plump, tubular shape and flipper-like appendages, but its face was decidedly toadlike, with large yellow eyes and a thin, drooping mouth. It dove smoothly into the water and wriggled in the manner of an enormous tadpole. As Max followed the submerged creature’s progress, he heard strange, tittering calls that were similar to a loon’s.

  Some quarter mile ahead, Max saw a series of black rocks jutting from the ocean. Peering through his spyglass, he saw that the rocks were littered with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the strange red creatures issuing their strange call or sliding down into the foamy sea. Upon closer inspection, he learned that the leaping specimen alongside the Ormenheid was hardly representative. In fact, no two creatures upon the rocks were identical beyond the plump sack of their bodies, the vivid redness of their skin, and the hyenalike titters that issued from their pumping throats. Some faces were toadlike, but others were birdlike, or bovine, while some bore a chillingly human physiognomy. These peculiarities were not limited to their faces. Some creatures had two fins, others four, while still others displayed vestigial limbs akin to a crab’s that sprouted feebly from their stomachs and backs. Max had never seen more hideous, jumbled forms of life.

  While the Ormenheid sailed on, Max settled in and watched the strange red creature that was shadowing his ship so closely. Despite its grotesque appearance, there was an efficient elegance to the creature’s movements, and the powerful flippers that doomed it to a clumsy existence on land were a fluid marvel in the water. Max grinned as he watched the red torpedo repeatedly dive down, dart ahead, and grow larger as it rose again to the surface.