Scimitar Moon

by Chris A. Jackson

  “What’s he thinkin’?” He lowered his glass and called aft, “Row! Get my charts! Horace, plot a course after ’im.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  Orin’s Pride turned upwind, beating toward the northeast, cutting the gap to her quarry as their courses converged.

  *

  “Odea preserve us,” Cynthia muttered, shocked into immobility at the sight of the thing that was Hydra, but not, as it fed on a fallen man.

  The man’s chest had been flayed wide open, ribs torn as if by the claws of a great cat. Hydra crouched amid the gore, hands coated, her deformed face dipping down to slaver amid the pulsing flow. Her mouth stretched impossibly wide, a circle of needle black teeth.

  Camilla screamed at the spectacle, drawing everyone’s attention before turning away to bury her face in Koybur’s shoulder.

  “Makin’ bargains with monsters, Bloodwind?” Koybur turned his daughter away from the sight. “I don’t know what yer thinkin’, but that’s no sorceress. It ain’t even human.”

  “Hydra! What in the name of—” Bloodwind took two steps toward her, then stopped. The pirate upon whom she had fed was Tommy, his personal guard.

  “I needed blood, Captain.” She rose from her gory repast, shook herself once, and slowly regained a vaguely human aspect. “If I had not taken this man, we would have perished.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but a cry rose from aloft, “Somethin’ in the water ahead, Capt’n! A school of dolphins or tuna, maybe. Somethin’ ain’t right!”

  “What new curse is this, Hydra?” he asked rhetorically, turning to stare into the water ahead. The sea a quarter mile off their bow churned white with a thousand splashing shapes.

  “The power I have expended has brought them,” Hydra said. “They are Odea’s chosen. They come to oppose me. Give me blood now, Captain, or we will all be dragged down to their domain.”

  Bloodwind looked at the roiling sea ahead, at the flashing fins of a thousand merfolk rushing toward his ship, tridents and lances held high as they broke the surface in graceful arcs. Cynthia smiled thinly at the fear in his eyes.

  They come for you, Bloodwind, she thought. They come for you and the beast you have been using to torture the sea.

  “Bring her about! Close haul the main sheets! Drop that fore tops’l!” Men scattered to do his bidding and Hippotrin answered, rounding up and crossing the point of wind. He looked at the approaching school, then at their course and speed. “Bowmen to the taffrail! Keep them off our hull!”

  As crossbowmen lined up at the stern and began firing into the school of merfolk, he glanced at the opposing headlands facing him. To the south loomed the craggy face of Ataros Isle, her barren slopes cruel and unforgiving; well to the north stood Minos, less forbidding, but without a single passage or cove; between them lurked a maze of coral and rock ready to rip the bottom out of any ship trying to pass through. He knew these waters well, and he knew where he could sail that no one would dare follow.

  “We need speed. Hydra,” he said, gauging the angle of the wind.

  “Feed me or die, Captain. Your choice is simple.”

  As if in answer, one of the bowmen at the taffrail screamed and fell thrashing on the deck, a trident transfixing his abdomen.

  Bloodwind looked to Hydra, his lip wrinkled in distaste. “Take him, but make it count. I’ll not sacrifice any more of my men for you.”

  She silenced the man with one pass of her hooked fingers. Her maw opened again, gaping to close over the horrible wound in his throat. He thrashed and kicked, but his blows landed without effect.

  As the man died in Hydra’s chill embrace Cynthia felt the creature’s power swell. The sea at the stern of the ship built in a pressure wave, pushing Hippotrin forward. With the wind on her other side, the ship heeled steeply with Cynthia now on the low side of the deck. Water surged up through the scuppers against her feet.

  “Yes,” she said, luxuriating in the feel of the sea. She urged the water up to play over her tired, aching legs, and the sea answered.

  “We’re beatin’ ’em!” a man cried, pointing aft. “We’re leavin’ ’em behind!”

  Hippotrin surged forward, sails straining, pulling away from the murderous school of Odea’s chosen, and Cynthia Flaxal let Hydra aid the ship. She knew now where they were going, and she knew what would be waiting for them.

  CHAPTER Forty-Three

  Blood of the Hydra

  “She’s cuttin’ between Leviathan Shoal and Raven’s Reef!” Brelak said, scanning the tumultuous waters between the ships and tapping the narrow gap on the chart. They were closing the distance, but there were still repairs to be done on the damaged rig. “That gap ain’t but about a stone’s throw wide, and the tide’s runnin’ with the trades. It’s gonna be a mill race in there.”

  “More like a death trap, with that witch throwin’ rogue waves at us,” Horace said, as he scanned the sea between the two ships. “What’s that rough patch of water off of Hippotrin’s stern? Looks like a school of fish.”

  ”Lookout there! What’s off their stern?” Brelak’s call brought every eye on the ship forward. After their near capsize, everyone’s nerves were drawn tighter than the jib sheets.

  “It’s a school o’ them fish folk, sir! Damn big one, too! Looks like they’re followin’ ’em.”

  “What the hell? Merfolk? Why would they be followin’ Hippotrin?”

  “Who knows what mer think? We should cut to the north.” Horace pointed to the calmer waters to the north of Leviathan Shoal, some four miles distant. “It’s wider and the current won’t be so bad. We’ll make up the time not having to fight it.”

  “And if he tacks back to the south, we lose him completely. He could duck behind any one of these islands. I’ve played that guessin’ game one too many times. Hold your course, Rowland; half a point upwind of his transom.”

  “Aye, sir, half a point, right at ’em.” Rowland leaned on the wheel, sighting along the compass and grinning like a madman. “Right at the bastard.”

  *

  Cynthia bit her lip in trepidation, wondering if she had made a dire miscalculation. Her first thought had been to stop Bloodwind from escaping. But as she watched Hydra feed on yet another sailor—this one felled by the uncanny aim of a mer harpoon—she revised her priorities.

  There’s the real threat, she thought, watching the woman-thing’s obsidian eyes as they followed everyone on deck. Hydra bristled with power, but still she hungered. Bloodwind might wield her like some kind of foul weapon, but his petty greed paled in comparison to the burning horror that hid within that husk of flesh. That hunger could devour them all. That was the threat Cynthia had to neutralize first. Bloodwind would come later.

  Despite having fed, Hydra had not increased their speed. She kept them ahead of the murderous school of merfolk, but hoarded her power, saving it for the conflict she knew would come.

  She knows where the true battle will take place, where the sea is strongest, Cynthia realized, guarding her own strength. With her feet doused in a constant flow of the sea her power was doubled, yet she held it tightly in check. She could slow the ship enough to allow the merfolk to catch them, but they would swarm over the rail and slaughter everyone aboard. Cynthia could not control their indiscriminate hatred, and though she felt sure she would be spared, Camilla and Koybur would not. She wondered why she cared about the man who had brought about this entire ignominious tragedy.

  “So many lives, Koybur,” she said, her voice lost in the rush of wind and sea. “So many lives for one…” She paused as she considered her words. What would she have given to save her mother and father, or her grandfather, or even her grandmother? Would she have set such a plan in motion for the chance to be held in her daddy’s arms once again, as Koybur now held Camilla?

  “Yes,” she said finally, a different type of salt water wetting her cheeks. She let the tears flow unchecked. “Yes, Koybur.” And though her voice was drowned by the cacophony of their passage, his one
good eye turned to her. She nodded and smiled, and the surprise on his tortured features almost brought a laugh to her lips.

  He knew.

  She could feel the gap between reef and shoal approaching even without extending her senses into the sea. The hull shuddered as tidal current gripped Hippotrin like a giant hand, slowing their progress.

  “Steer for the southern reef, and keep her nose into the current,” Bloodwind told his helmsman. “We’ll have to tack to get through, but not until I say or we’ll end up on the rocks!”

  “Aye, Capt’n,” the man said, keeping one eye on his heading and the other on his commander’s sword. The entire crew gave Bloodwind a wide berth, none wanting to be Hydra’s next meal.

  Now, Cynthia thought, easing her thoughts into the sea, willing the racing current to turn slightly as it met the egress of the narrow channel. She asked the wind to match that turn, faster, and faster, to pull at the surface of the sea. The turn in the water created a void, which created a backwash, which made the turn more pronounced.

  More wind, more turn, more water, she pleaded and the river of tidal flow turned fully back onto itself. The sky above the narrow channel darkened and coalesced into a bank of swirling clouds.

  The water between the opposing reefs was very deep, and the weight of that much water turned back on itself formed a massive whirlpool, but Cynthia asked the sky to come down and play with the sea, and the two joined in a cacophony of forces. The sea leapt skyward, and the sky came down to urge the sea into the heavens.

  Sail through this one, you bastard, she thought, letting her power feed the growing vortex.

  “Waterspout!” the lookout called, pointing as the whirling mass of air and water coalesced only three boat-lengths ahead. It broadened and thickened in the span of a few heartbeats, filling the entrance to the channel, pulling the surface into an ascending arc that became a tornado of seawater. Burgeoning clouds swirled, darkening the sky in a sudden storm, lightning flashing at its center.

  “Turn the ship!” the helmsman screamed, but Bloodwind countermanded the panic with a swipe of his cutlass. The man fell at Hydra’s feet, clutching his gaping abdomen.

  “There’s nowhere to turn!” the pirate captain bellowed, taking the wheel himself. “Rocks to the north and south, and that school of monsters behind us? We sail through this, or we perish!” Then, in a lower voice he said, “Take him, Hydra. Take him and get rid of that thing!”

  “Yes, my captain.”

  Even before the witch descended upon the dying man, Cynthia felt the crushing weight of her foul energy slamming into the sea, beating against the natural flow of the waterspout. A countercurrent began to run against the edge of the vortex, and along the line of conflicting flow, the sea became a wall of ripping white spray. But Hydra only commanded the water, not the winds. She had no way to counter the tornado of air that Cynthia had called to merge the sea and the sky into one.

  Cynthia intensified her call to the sea and the air, pleading with both to maintain the merger of forces. Hydra rose from her gory meal screaming her rage and pain at the opposing power. Hate like a wall of fire slammed into Cynthia through her contact with the sea. The water ahead of the ship boiled, and the waterspout constricted ever so slightly.

  “No! Please!” she cried, not realizing she spoke aloud.

  “Sail on!” Bloodwind commanded, steering straight into the swirling vortex.

  Hippotrin struck the line of conflicting flows and staggered like a drunken sailor, heeling sharply to port, then careening hard to starboard as she raced forward, her sails cracking with the howling wind. The deck inclined steeply as their course turned to accommodate the tornadic winds. Spray from the waterspout lashed against them, making it difficult to breathe.

  “Loose the sheets! Let her luff or we’ll roll over!” Bloodwind’s bellow cut through the panic that would have destroyed them. The pirate crew reacted without thinking, without fearing, and without knowing their peril. He pulled the wheel over, steering into the vortex where the winds would press more astern instead of rolling them over. He could not sail past the waterspout without jibing, which would tear the booms off in this wind. He could escape the winds if he could sail around the maelstrom. Speed was his weapon, and Hippotrin was careening through the water so fast her bowsprit cut the waves like a knife.

  “Now! Haul her sheets!” He pulled the wheel hard over in the opposite direction and the ship began to turn away from the waterspout. Canvas cracked and filled, pushing them even faster. With enough speed, they would escape the waterspout’s grasp.

  “Gods damn, but that bastard can sail!”

  Cynthia stared at Koybur, astonished, and knew he was right. Bloodwind was a master, Hippotrin his instrument. But their momentum would not be enough to escape the clutches of Cynthia’s will. She shifted the vortex so the tornado of sea and sky moved parallel to the ship, pacing them in the opposite direction they had intended to go. They were racing at top speed right toward Orin’s Pride.

  “NO!”

  Hydra’s scream ripped the very air around them and snapped Cynthia’s concentration. The witch sat in the gore of her repast and shriveled as if the beast within her, finding no other source to sate its hunger, fed on the very vessel that kept it contained. Hydra reached out to a passing seaman, but the man cowered away; none would come close to Bloodwind or his sorceress for fear of becoming her next victim.

  “Feed me, my captain!” she shrieked, turning her bulging eyes to Bloodwind, but no man strayed near enough for him to murder. He stood alone at the wheel, unable to leave the helm unattended without sending them straight into the waterspout’s center.

  “No! No, you can’t!” Hydra cried out, though no one stood near enough to have earned her protest. The hag clutched at her head as if in great pain, and a line of black fluid ran down her face from her matted hair. “Give me blood!”

  Her dark eyes, now mad with terror, raked the deck, but none were near enough to be devoured—none save Cynthia, who stood tied to the shrouds.

  The witch lunged, her mouth gaping in a whirlpool of black teeth. The attack startled Cynthia into immobility long enough for the hooked hands to grasp her shoulders and that horrible mouth to near her throat. The ship lurched, but the attack commanded all of her attention. Breath like a ton of rotting meat slammed into her as that maw opened to end her life.

  Something fell between them in a flash of steel, and one of Hydra’s eyes erupted in a gout of black ichor.

  The witch’s scream ripped into Cynthia like a spray of needles, but a high-pitched cry of victory lifted her heart from the depths of horror into the light of day. The cry came from a very bedraggled seasprite perched upon her breast, one hand clutching a stolen dagger, the other her scimitar moon medallion.

  “Mouse!” Cynthia cried, hope warming her from scalp to toes.

  “Die, Odea’s favored!” A hand like the tentacle of a vile squid reached for the seasprite, but he yelped in fright and flipped over Cynthia’s shoulder. The hand grasped Cynthia’s medallion instead, and a flash of ice-blue lightning blasted it into a stump of charred meat.

  Hydra reeled back with a shriek that shivered the air, clutching her blackened hand.

  “It is you!” the witch hissed in a voice no longer even remotely human, her remaining eye wide with recognition. She reached for Cynthia’s throat, hooked nails biting deeply. “The blood of a seamage!”

  Cynthia gasped for breath as Hydra’s mouth stretched into an orifice of bristling teeth. As the mouth neared she felt Mouse sawing madly at her bonds, but she knew they would not part in time to save her.

  “Nice comp’ny you keep, Bloodwind,” Koybur said as he plunged a cutlass into the creature’s back.

  Hydra’s remaining eye widened, not in pain, but in absolute horror. Her grip on Cynthia’s neck fell away, her body twitching spasmodically as that black void of a mouth gaped and slavered to form words.

  “No! No! Please!” Her back arched impossibly, as she
reached back in an attempt to wrench the blade free, but Koybur would have none of it.

  “Please this, you hacked up piece of hagfish meat!” He twisted the curved blade savagely, working the tip deeply into her.

  The wound in her back gaped wide, but instead of a torrent of blood, six ropy tentacles wormed their way from the gap, each tipped with a bifurcated hook. One wound around the cutlass and Koybur’s one good arm, while the other five lashed out to encircle Hydra. Ten hooked digits grasped the edges of her screaming mouth and pulled, peeling the husk of flesh back from the demon that had been imprisoned within.

  A mouth like that of a huge lamprey emerged from the ripping sheath of dead meat, black teeth dripping venom, the sloped head sporting the eyes of a giant squid. The beast’s roar split the air, hammering Cynthia with a palpable wave of hate and hunger. The cocoon of human flesh, rent and oozing, pulled away in a wet, ripping mass, landing at the thing’s splayed feet like a noisome pile of discarded rags.

  The tentacle that held the cutlass pulled the blade free, and bent Koybur’s arm around until bone snapped and sinew parted. The old sailor’s scream echoed his daughter’s as the creature turned the newly freed blade on its owner. One thrust buried the cutlass to the hilt and flung Koybur across the deck, slamming him against the mainmast. Koybur hung there, impaled on the cutlass, gasping for breath, unable to even grasp the blade that had pinned him.

  Then the beast turned its attention toward the seamage.

  Cynthia’s scream tore at her lungs, her terror so great that she almost did not feel the bonds on her wrists part. One tentacle encircled her neck, a slimy, cold mass of gray-green scales. It peered at her as if she were a delicacy perched on a fork.

  “Now you die, Odea’s minion,” it growled, drawing her close.

  The hilt of a dagger pressed into her numb hand. Reacting instinctively, Cynthia buried the blade in the demon’s torso. It looked down at the wound and another tentacle encircled her arm. She twisted the blade but it seemed not to notice. Instead, it pulled the dagger free of its body and bent her arm while lifting her from the deck by her neck.