‘What signal flag did you use?’ The captain screamed.
‘The only signal worth making.’ Jacob replied.
The captain shook his head in confusion. Looking up, he saw the flag waving proudly in the unnatural wind. A black flag, three times the size of the signal flags used to communicate between ships. And on that huge black piece of cloth was a golden circle. The flag of the Brotherhood of Light.
They rowed on beneath a lightening filled, dark grey sky. No one knew if night had fallen. Despair was heavy on the electrically charged air. Mammoth sea creatures raced past the ships, occasionally ramming the vessels or smashing into the banks of oars. Jacob anguished at the loss of life below deck as a shark or whale of some kind careered into the right-hand oar bank, the screams of pain drowned by the raging storm around them.
Then as suddenly as the storm had started it vanished. The sky cleared, and they could see it was still day. The slaves stopped rowing out of surprise; the air became still and silent, apart from the moans of the injured.
The captain stood by Jacob, panting for breath and exhausted from his efforts to control the ship. ‘Near forty years I’ve been a sailor, never …’ He stopped to catch his breath. ‘Never, have I seen a storm come and go in such a fashion …’ Again, he stopped, his breath ragged. ‘It ain’t natural’, he proclaimed.
Jacob said nothing. He looked out to the sea but took no notice of the scraps of wood that had once been solidly built ships, nor did he see the bodies that floated in the now calm sea. He saw beyond a mortal’s perception. And what he saw brought fear rising like bile in the pit of his stomach.
Brondolf’s voice cut through the silence. ‘Get men below. See to the wounded.’
Four brothers let go of the safety lines that crossed the ship and moved to the stairwell that led to the depths of the ship.
‘Belay that order!’ Jacob roared, causing the four brothers to halt. Jacob looked to Brondolf and said in a voice full of surety. ‘It is not yet done.’
Brondolf came and stood next to Jacob and spoke quietly. ‘You know what we face.’ It was not a question. ‘The storm will return?’ he asked, but Jacob remained silent, as if he chased the answer to a question in his mind. ‘But why would creatures who dwell beneath the waves flee from a storm? Speak to me, Jacob!’ Brondolf spoke the last with frustration clear in his voice.
‘They do not flee the storm. They flee from what the storm has called.’ Jacob spoke through a voice hoarse with emotion.
The ships of the great fleet had come together, bunching ever tighter as ship’s captains called to one another and gave accounts of their experiences. Beringer’s flagship drifted alongside the prince’s, now a mere fifty yards away, as Beringer called out in a loud voice, ‘It is good to see you well, my prince, are you in need of aid?’
Jacob ignored the lord. He seemed transfixed by the water, but his face had the expression of one listening, not looking.
Suddenly Jacob jumped backwards and drew his sword from his shoulder scabbard, though the water remained calm. Jacob grabbed Brondolf by the shoulder roughly. ‘It is here!’ Jacob said, terror open in his voice and in his eyes. ‘Death is here.’
Brondolf saw the pained expression in his prince’s eyes and drew his own sword, followed immediately by every other brother.
Jacob waved to Beringer and shouted, ‘Arm yourselves!’ Even from the distance of one hundred feet, Jacob heard the sniggers and comments. ‘Arm yourselves against a storm’, he heard Beringer say to his solders. They had no brothers aboard, only Beringer’s Housecarls and his men of note. Jacob looked about the other ships in proximity. Only one had raised the banner of the brotherhood. He hoped that banner was being raised on ships out of his view. He prayed his men were readying for battle. On Jacob’s ship the brothers were ready, sword in hand, shield set upon forearm, armour clad, warriors. On Beringer’s ship the soldiers were drinking ale, eating and celebrating their survival.
Their celebration was premature. A single tentacle, the width of a man’s lower leg and covered with small, circular suckers, crept slowly and unseen up the side of Beringer’s ship. A group of house guards lay about the deck, drinking, eating or sleeping. They rested, the woes of the horrific storm and the constant threat of danger behind them. Many closed their eyes and let the sun’s warmth revive their bodies and warm their spirit.
Then it struck. The tentacle silently wrapped itself round the throat of a barely conscious man and with no apparent effort, it yanked its victim to the deep, a splash in the water the only evidence of the attack. The men who were closest to him rose at the noise and called his name. Four men peered over the edge and investigated the innocent-looking water.
Brondolf caught Jacob’s attention and nodded in the direction of the ship and the strange behaviour of the men onboard and was taken aback by Jacob’s reply. ‘They are already dead’, Jacob said without a hint of emotion. Then chaos erupted.
A hundred tentacles, like the first, snaked from out of the water that had suddenly become a bubbling fury of activity. The four men who were looking over the edge of Beringer’s ship were taken with barely enough time to make a sound. Dragged to the deep, never to be seen again, and quickly followed by their fellows on deck.
Jacob and his companions had only seconds to witness the terrible fate of those onboard the Lord Beringer’s prized ship when they too were attacked. Tentacles reached out from the blackness of the deep ocean where they were met by the discipline of warriors dedicated to service with steel.
The air stank, death, decay and rotten fish assaulted Jacob’s senses as he lashed out with his sword. Tentacles slapped down on to shields and were severed with swords before they had time to drag any of the heavy bodied men.
Jacob found the captain standing on the steering platform with a large fishing spear in his hand and screamed at him. ‘What, in all that’s good in the world, do you call these things?’ But the captain’s jaw dropped open, and he stared in disbelief at something behind him.
Jacob turned and looked behind. The water had turned a sleek black, its surface covered in a film of oil and blood. And there, in the space between the two largest ships in the fleet, rising from the oily water, was a creature that defied the beauty Jacob found in creation.
A pair of gargantuan, bulbous eyes rose from the water, like a demon from the underworld, followed by the rest of its head which resembled a huge half-filled water skin, with all the liquid contained in a pulsating sack at the rear of the creature’s head. The creature continued rising as the few men onboard Beringer’s ship screamed in abject terror.
Jacob looked back towards the captain who gathered his wits and screamed a single word, ‘Kraken!’
Tentacles still attacked the men-at-arms, as if they were independent from the giant sea monster, though fewer and more sporadically. As the colossal head moved towards Beringer’s ship Jacob caught sight of Beringer himself upon the deck. The lord stood bravery and defiant in the face of such a horrendous enemy.
Beringer stood upon the deck. Blood ran freely from numerous cuts upon his face, neck and scalp, yet he stood firm. He saw the monster venture towards his vessel, and he moved to a position that brought him directly in its path. He bellowed at his few remaining men; the words carried across the debris strewn ocean. ‘Come and die beside me, lads! And die well, for your prince is watching!’
Jacob caught the words and felt a twinge of pride followed by grief. He saw the small group of men stood around their lord, midship, and felt the grief wash through him, then turn to anger. He raised his sword in a salute and as he lowered it he glimpsed a spear floating amidst the wreckage that covered the water.
‘Brondolf with me’, Jacob called to his comrade. Brondolf appeared at the prince’s side before Jacob ended the sentence and followed him to the side of the ship. Before Brondolf could protest, Jacob took hold of his most trusted companion’s hand and leapt over the side. Brondolf pulled with his great strength, as Jacob knew he would,
and the motion caused Jacob to swing back where he firmly placed his feet upon the hull. He reached out, grabbed the spear and was pulled back in the ship before the captain had even noticed that the second most powerful man in the kingdom had been ‘overboard’ on his vessel.
Jacob stood upon the deck. ‘When my spear strikes that evil creature of doom, you are to call out, strike your shield with your blades, and make enough noise to wake the dead!’
The Kraken had stopped ten metres short of Beringer’s ship and now tilted its head back. The large sack became submerged beneath the water and Beringer and his last standing men all screamed. It was a scream of pure terror. Two of the nine men Jacob could see fell to their knees. Another vomited. The men stood frozen to the spot in the face of something their minds could not fathom.
Jacob threw the spear. It flew straight and true, with all of Jacob’s unmatched power. It covered the distance with such speed its flight betrayed the eye and buried the long, thick blade fully in the monster’s head.
The vile thing that had risen from the pit beneath the deepest of oceans turned. Its head still reared back, a screech of pain, and anger came forth from the monster and stilled the painful moans of injured men. Then Jacob and the men who stood beside him were confronted with the sight that had brought Beringer and his brave companions to the brink of terror. Beneath the creature’s great bulbous eyes lay open a mouth that caused fear that would break all but the strongest of constitutions.
A huge beak. Open and emitting the stench of a thousand rotten corpses. Long and dagger-like with serrated edges, like the blades of the great tree felling saws. A beak that looked capable of crushing the mast of a ship without effort. Opened to a chasm of a mouth fully eight feet wide and more still in length.
The creature moved towards them, slowly but inexorably. The brothers beside Jacob began to incant a prayer.
‘Though I stand before the beast that heeds the Dark Lord’s call
I shall give into fear not, even if it means I fall.
For you are with me,
My breath, my blood, my arm that wields your sword.
My life is yours to do your will, to fight the holy war.
For you are the light that shines, until the Darkness is no more.’
The spawn of Darkness moved directly towards the prince, and Jacob saw what lay beneath the monster’s unnatural beak. Its mouth and gullet comprised circle upon circle of gore infested, triangular teeth. Then the creature swallowed and the muscles beneath the teeth contracted. The teeth squeezed tighter together, and at the apex of the monster’s swallow, the entire array of teeth moved down into the monster’s throat.
Jacob cringed as he imagined the fate of being consumed by the Kraken. The hundred upon hundred points of those teeth slicing into his flesh, gripping and pulling him down into the beast’s stomach. Then his imaginings became real. A score of tentacles lashed out from the water, taking hold of Lord Beringer and holding his screaming form twenty metres above the pit of death that was the Kraken’s maw.
Beringer’s men wailed pitifully at the horror that awaited their oath-lord. The tentacles’ suckers latched onto Beringer’s armour and clothing and ripped the items free, so he dangled naked, pleading redundantly to a creature who knew nothing of the concept of mercy.
The creature held Beringer by a single tentacle now, wrapped around the helpless man’s arm. His feet dangled between the opened beak, just one metre from the first rows of teeth. The creature seemed to take added delight in the prolonging of the experience. Jacob looked about the ship franticly for a spear, or anything else he could use, but to no avail. Beringer’s feet entered the gaping hole of oblivion. A slurping noise sounded, similar to the plunger of a butter churner being raised, only louder and grotesque in fashion. The strange noise was, a mere heartbeat later, drowned by the pain filled screams of Beringer as his feet were ground to bits by the monster’s teeth and his legs began being dragged further and further towards the belly of the beast.
Jacob held his sword in two hands and arched it back far beyond his head, but as he readied to throw the weapon, a blur of movement halted him. A mace had been thrown with lethal accuracy, to smash with bone shattering force into Beringer’s skull, ending the lord’s suffering along with his life. Jacob turned and saw Brondolf recovering from the throw, and both shared a look that explained the mercy.
The Kraken swallowed the lifeless form of Lord Beringer and screeched its rage at the interference. A tentacle raised to the surface, much larger than any other unleashed so far, its girth the width of a large man’s waist. It moved slowly behind the creature. The Kraken struck its horrid gaze firmly upon Brondolf as the gargantuan tentacle began snaking its way up the side of Beringer’s ship’s hull. The men onboard, grief-stricken and terrified, bravely attacked the gargantuan tentacle, but the smaller ones returned and swept them aside, whipping the already beaten soldiers to new levels of submission.
The larger tentacle crossed the full width of the ship and disappeared beneath the water. It applied pressure. The wooden beams of the ship groaned as they were stretched to their point of breaking and then the ship was crushed like kindlin., Smashed in two the ship sank in moments, taking the poor wretches below down to their watery grave.
‘Brothers, go below decks and release the slaves from their manacles’, Jacob commanded. The ship’s captain protested but was silenced with a short but powerful backhanded slap that left him on his knees and rebuked.
Edging forward, out of the wreckage and carnage, two ships came crawling into view. Tentacles grasped the oars, whilst the brothers aboard fought a ceaseless battle to keep the oars from their sucker held restraints. Both ships flew the flag of the Brotherhood of Light, and Jacob was momentarily revived that help had arrived. Until he saw the much larger tentacles appear, two appeared on each of the newcomer’s ships and one snaked out, raised in the air, seeking Brondolf as if the Kraken now felt a personal vengeance towards him.
Jacob saw the brothers onboard the two ships fall on the tentacles in a blur of steel, hacking like deranged farmers whose crops were infested with ivy vines. But still those tentacles moved, unrelentingly, towards the inevitable destruction of all who opposed the Kraken.
Jacob turned back to the fate of his own vessel and saw the tip of the vast tentacle reaching closer towards Brondolf. His friend and closest advisor pushed his brothers back and took a stance of defiance, his sword held high, ready to chop as soon as the arm of evil came within his great blade’s reach.
He was thrown to the ground, charged by Jacob, who had bawled into him with all his weight. Jacob stamped a foot down onto Brondolf’s chest, pinning him to the deck. ‘You will all stand clear!’ Jacob commanded. He reached down and took the shield from the protesting Brondolf and turned to face the sea monster.
The man proclaimed as the Lord of Light stood with arms outstretched, shield in his left hand, sword in his right. ‘Come and take me, beast! Or do you fear the power of the Light?’
The tentacle snaked around Jacob’s waist and lifted him effortlessly into the air. Jacob made no protest. Showed no fear. A dozen more of the smaller tentacles lashed towards him to disarm and remove his armour, but his sword danced about his form. The air became thick with the splattering of oily blood, and lengths of tentacle rained upon the creature’s head. The Kraken opened its beak, and a scream heralded its rage. A stench, like a physical blow, assaulted the prince.
Jacob looked into the maw of the beast and saw ground-up remains clogging the tiny gaps between the field of teeth. He was being lowered into the mouth. Twenty feet. Then ten. Jacob smiled, grinning inanely as if he welcomed the grisly fate Beringer had received. Five feet and Jacob moved, his action fluid as if rehearsed like a stage performance. He removed his shield and dropped it below his feet, swung his great-sword in the widest arch his restriction allowed, and fell.
The great tentacle that held him was severed. As he fell, the shield he dropped became a platform for his feet
. He crouched upon the hardened steel surface as he guided it to fall between the opened beak. As the shield came to land, Jacob pushed down with all the might of his legs, forcing the shield further into the beak’s grasp. With the motion he was standing, protected from the teeth. The monster tried to crush the shield with its powerful beak, yet the shield held, and more, the runes of the shield’s edges lit up, burning with a fierceness that went far beyond fire.
‘Hear me, Dark Lord!’ Jacob roared. His blade held in two hands. The tip of the blade facing the monster as he stood poised to deliver the downwards stab. ‘I shall destroy all your minions, all you send, until the day when your form is beneath my blade.’
Jacob stabbed. Again and again, he plunged the steel deep into the creature’s head. Oily blood sprayed out in great sticky lines. He burst one eye, then the other. And still he stabbed his blade into the creature that had come from out of the abyss. Air bubbles popped upon the surface and the monster began to drop. Still Jacob stabbed down, consumed by a furious rage and the need to avenge the lives the monster had claimed.
The prince of the kingdom, Lord of Light and unsaid general of the brotherhood, only stopped stabbing his great-sword down when the monster’s head had become completely submerged and he sank like the armour-plated rock he was. Coils of rope lay about him and he grasped the closest one, holding tight, he was dragged beneath the water, until the strength of the twenty men pulling the rope dragged him bodily onboard.
A dazzling brightness filled the sky. The Kraken was defeated, but the cost of victory was not yet tallied. ‘You’. Jacob said tiredly, pointing a finger at the captain. ‘How far to the closest harbour?’
‘It’ll be a day’s hard rowing to reach land, though how safe any harbour we find...’ The captain’s voice trailed off. Now the Kraken had been destroyed the true extent of the ruination it had wrought was revealed. Limbs floated entangled with the debris of obliterated ships: smashed lengths of hull planks, oars, sheets of sails, hempen rope and vast amounts of supplies converged into small hillocks of refuse. Pleas for help punctuated the calm air as the survivors made known their presence now that the monster was beaten. Pain filled sobs echoed, their whereabouts unknown.
The Banner of the Broken Orc: The Call of the Darkness Saga: Book One Page 38
