“Oww,” Max said.
He did not have to fake it. The punch was hard. Harder even than a hit from big Otho at the orphanage. And Otho had never pulled a punch in his life. Snow’s punch would definitely leave a bruise.
“Crab stones. That hurt,” he said, “Maybe you are some warrior princess.”
“Princess?” she said with mock disdain. “I’m a warrior Queen.”
The storm raged on. And though weary, Max had little luck falling asleep before the seas began to calm. Mega chose that time to return to the night sky. Its welcome slice of light shone like an enormous coin’s edge on the horizon and silently signaled for Max to finally close his eyes.
Chapter 12
Snow had been dreaming when she awoke. She was on a ship in the dream, not a boat. It was dark outside and there were stars, so many stars. There was something else too. A noise. A signal on the radio. It was important. Very important. But sinister too. She couldn’t understand the signal. But she knew what it meant. ‘Do not venture forth,’ it said. It was a warning. More than that. It was a threat. A promise of consequences. She tried to hold onto the details, but they slipped away as she woke. Soon, even those slivers of the dream she’d managed to cling to seemed silly and unimportant. Scary, but just a dream.
White light beamed through the windscreen. She got up, wrapped her blanket tight around herself and stepped over to look out the window. It was night, but the massive crescent of Mega sat just above the horizon and lit the sea all around. The crescent was slim and dim enough that she could still see the brightest of the stars. And in the water, all around she could see white objects bobbing gently in the small waves. Curious, she walked by the sleeping Max and opened the hatch. Outside she stood and gazed, soaking in the scene. The boat was surrounded by beautiful white spheres in a variety of sizes. The smallest she could have held with both hands, the largest in the distance she guessed was bigger than their boat. She thought the shape looked familiar. Then she recognized why. The shapes floating in the water were giant swirled snail shells, the same as their boat. She watched beautiful creatures for a minute alone, then went below.
Max lay in a tangle of blankets on his bunk, long arms and legs jutting out in all directions.
“Max,” she said, shaking him gently.
There was no response.
She leaned down to his ear and whispered, “Maa-aax.”
Still no response.
“Hey. Beanpole. Wakie, wakie, rise n’ shine. It’s daylight in the swamp.” She spoke at full volume, close by his ear.
Max sat up quickly, blinking. Then he yawned.
“Well… moonlight. Errr… mega-light,” she said. “Come on, you gotta see this.”
She led the way up on deck. Max wrapped himself in his blanket and followed.
“Toe-no-yats,” Max said when he saw the scene of white shapes in the water. He dropped his blanket into the hatch and rushed over to the main sail. Fumbling to untie the lanyard he said, “Quick, raise the jib.”
Snow hesitated, but only for a moment, before rushing to adjust the sail.
Of course. We’re sitting in the middle of a buffet!
She unwrapped the jib from its storm position and looked over to see Max doing the same with the main sail. Beyond Max she saw more bad news. The presumed assassin’s boat, rather than being left behind, had gained ground in the storm. It was headed right for them.
Chapter 13
The target was up on deck and there was a woman with him. How had the strange-looking woman gotten on board? The hunter didn’t know. Had she been somehow hidden in the cargo of the sled? It made no sense. If she was there in town, surely it would have been the target hiding in the sled. And if they had followed that strategy, they would have successfully slipped away. That suggested she’d already been on the boat. Lucky for the hunter then that he’d stepped so lightly when attaching his trap.
He had hoped to find the target’s boat adrift and with only one life form aboard. Specifically, a crab with a belly ache. That hadn’t happened, but at least the hunter had found the target again, and that would have to be enough. A bounty this large did not come up often. It was an honor to receive it. If he failed, he would never again receive one of such a high value.
He pushed thoughts of payment aside and focused on his task. They had seen him but appeared unconcerned. They were instead focused on something in the water. That was good, he had time to catch up before they could get too far. He could overtake them if they ran, but it would be best to avoid a chase. A chase could make things difficult. And he was still tired from the ordeal of the storm. He’d been unable to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time without losing the target, something he was unwilling to do. Not after the delays in the ice and the unexpectedly long search.
There was a flurry of movement on the target’s vessel. They were now rushing to rig the sails, though they still seemed unconcerned by him. If he missed this chance, he might not soon get another and before long they would be in more frequently traveled waters. Having made a decision, he put down his telescope and pulled the mainsheet to trim his sail, squeezing velocity from every last puff of wind. If there was to be a chase, so be it. The time to play it safe was over.
His boat slipped through the waves, gaining more swiftly on the smaller craft than the hunter had hoped. For though the target’s boat was rigged, and its sails were full, it listed heavily in the waves. Something was slowing them down. He looked through the telescope again. At first, he saw nothing. Then he noticed something in the water. The glinting of crescent-Mega off the surface had camouflaged them at first, but now he could see that the water was littered with white objects of various sizes. There was a solid ‘clunk’ off the hull, and he felt its reverberation through his legs. His boat veered up and off to starboard, jamming the telescope into his eye socket. He let out the main sheet and the boat immediately slowed, though not before hitting a few more of the less massive objects. Over the bow he saw that the creatures were spread out, covering a much larger area of the sea than he realized.
“Wriggling free again…” he said bitterly, “Not yet.”
Placing his bruised eye back into the telescope eyepiece he panned around steadily. To port, which lead to the shore, the sea was most densely packed. In places, the creatures were shell to shell. The wind was pushing them to the rocky cliffs. When the target came into the telescope’s view, the hunter recognized what the creatures were. His whole life in the south he’d seen the shell boats but, until now, never the creatures they were made from. To starboard and a short distance out to sea, the shells were less densely packed. The target was heading straight for shore, right through the worst of it, but the hunter would go around. He took a quick look at his chart. He tapped his finger on the map where it showed a passage ahead, between a small island and the shore. The island was no more than a few miles long and less than a mile wide. He could go around the outside and if he got to the passage first, there would be no escape for them.
He changed course and before long the creatures had thinned enough that he could make a decent speed while still able to weave around the boat sized shells. He soon began to wonder if he’d made an error. While he was weaving around them, they in return weaved around him. Perhaps the wind was not blowing them to shore. Was this important? He had assumed the target was making the error in heading straight for shore. Perhaps the target and these creatures knew something that the hunter did not.
Movement to port of the hull caught his attention. A line of the shelled creatures suddenly changed direction away from shore and towards his boat. Then, no more than sixty yards from his position, the water lifted, as if a huge wave were spontaneously forming amidst the field of white shells. A great ring of long spines were thrust up from below the water, then the wave erupted as a gargantuan mouth rose from the sea to engulf dozens of the creatures, large and small, trapped by the ring of spines. The mouth, now filled with snail shells, slid back down below the surface
.
The hunter’s mouth went dry. The wave continued towards him, composed as much of giant snails as it was of water. The panicked creatures rode high in the water and jetted out of the peak. He quickly turned the boat’s stern to the oncoming wave. Small white shells leapt from the wave’s peak and onto the deck. One snail, more than half as wide as the hunter was tall, smashed into the mast snapping it in two.
Chapter 14
Another big wave hit them from the stern, and the boat lifted and rolled. Snow squealed in excitement as she was tossed upwards from the deck. She reached out and grabbed the nearest handhold, the edge of the main sail. Clinging to the sail, she swung back down to the deck. It took longer to land than she’d expected. The boat sunk away from her as it slid down the wave, but it felt like it was more than that.
Suddenly the deck rose again, lifted on another wave. She was forced hard onto her butt. She struggled to find a hand hold and slid on her stomach towards the mast, which she grabbed with both arms and hugged close. The boat rumbled again with the impossibly deep call of the nearby Craik. And it was nearer than before. When the boat lifted again, it had a different feel to it. And along with the feeling came the sound of the boat scraping against something. Snow imagined rows of large teeth marring the sides of the hull as the Craik dragged it under and them along with it. She drew a breath and forced herself to stand up. The boat was shaking less than she expected whilst being swallowed by a sea monster. She peered over the edge of the boat and was surprised to find no Craiks of any size.
Surrounding, and lifting the boat in their press, were countless numbers of the large shell creatures, Garg Snails Max called them.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Better than fine, this is kinda fun.”
She could tell by his expression that he wasn’t sure if she was being serious or not.
Which was fair. She wasn’t sure if she was serious or not. “I will have been having a good time, later. If we are—” she was interrupted by more scraping sounds as the boat was lifted further out of the water “—alive to have enjoyed it,” she finished with a gulp.
The wind wasn’t moving them any further at the moment. They were instead carried towards shore on a snail flotilla. The Craik broke the water again in the distance causing another ring of waves filled with retreating Garg snails. It took another mouthful, a half dozen or so boats worth of snails, and slid back below the surface. It sounded a call again, which rumbled through the boat’s hull and shook Snow’s body deep into her core. The sound traveled through the snails as well, encouraging them to shift and jet more vigorously below the boat.
By the time the boat scraped back down into the water sometime later, they had reached the safety of shallow water. Since the boat was no longer in immediate danger of being swallowed whole and they no longer needed to be ready to abandon ship, Max declared it safe to return below deck. There they found Doozer sleeping, curled up in one of Snow’s blankets.
Chapter 15
They had lost sight of the other boat in the panic of escape. And now that they were safely in the shallows, the other boat was nowhere to be seen. It was for the best. If there had been some sign of wreckage, Max might have—would have, felt obliged to offer assistance. He put the binoculars away and went back below deck.
Snow was putting something in her mouth. When she saw him, she covered her mouth and tried to appear nonchalant. When that had obviously failed, she tried to appear innocent. When that too failed, she opened her mouth to speak around the candy-catch filling her cheeks.
“Did you know we have candy?” she said. A dollop of drool slid down her cheek, slipped off her chin, and splatted on the floor.
“I…” He paused. “Yes, we have candy. But don’t eat too much. It’s expensive. And it will give you belly beans. And rot your teeth. And give you cankles.”
She wiped the drool from her chin. “What are cankles?” she asked around a mouth full.
“I have no idea. Something I heard in a movie,” Max said.
“Is this too much?” she opened her mouth and jammed a few more of the amber gems in, then worked her jaw in an exaggerated fashion and waved her arms, fingers wide in monster claws.
Max just smiled and watched, wondering if she had popped any yet. He got his answer a moment later.
Her jaw closed suddenly as several of the candies collapsed at the same time. Her expression morphed from savage mock monster to shocked surprise and then delight. She chewed and chewed the sticky toffee-like mixture until her jaw slowed from the effort.
Max chuckled. He had been there. Anyone that had ever filled their mouth with candy-catch would recognize it. The intensity of the sweetness was a unique experience for Grailliyns, North, South, and in-between. “Your jaw muscles will be sore for days,” he said.
She finished up and swallowed enough of the candy to speak more clearly, “You have been holding out on me.” She looked around the boat. “What else do you have hidden in here? Steak? Potatoes?” She began searching in bags and cupboards.
Max stood by helplessly, watching her toss the joint. Finally, he said, “I wasn’t holding out on you—”
“I’ve been eating those bacterial turds day in and day out and it never occurred to you to offer me a pleasant after slime palate cleanser?” she said.
Max was having difficulty gauging how angry she was. A moment ago, she had been happy. Very happy he thought.
“No?” he said uncertainly then recovering, “No. No of course not. And we’re not eating turds. I told you. We eat bacteria. Healthy and nutritious—”
“Oh yes what an important and helpful distinction. ‘Not poops, poopers.’ “ she said in a deep, unintelligent sounding voice and standing up on her tip toes in what Max took to be an impression of him. “The point is you were holding out on me.” She stood, crossing her arms while trying very hard—Max suddenly realized—to look cross.
“Look, “ Max said, “It never occurred to me to offer you any. I don’t really eat a lot of catch. It’s kind of expensive.”
Snow regarded him, looking slightly less suspicious, as though she were considering his story.
“Have you really eaten steak and potatoes?” he said, making his own attempt at a topic change.
“I don’t know. I think I have. I swear I know what they taste like…” she said in a voice that was less faux-murderous, more legit-dreamy.
Max walked over to the open bag of candy-catch and popped one into his mouth. It immediately overloaded his saliva glands, as it always did. “Don’t eat them all. We need to sell them.”
He picked up the second still sealed bag of catch and stowed it in a net on the wall.
They continued sailing along the coast. The Garg snails had thinned in numbers for now and they picked up speed. Max was on edge as they passed out of a narrow channel between the shore and a mid-sized island. The tight space left no space to maneuver, and nowhere to go should they be ambushed. Snow too was wary. She found the boat’s lancer harpoon and brought it below deck, where they stayed hidden, watching nervously through the window. Doozer reacted in the opposite way to their encounter with the Craik. He was on edge, activated by Max’s calm alertness. His fur was vibrating with seizure inducing frequency as he ran circles inside, so he was banished from the cabin and popped outside where he could do laps to his heart’s content.
Tension remained as they passed the island. But time passed, and no threats appeared. With the return to long distance views came a return to their former semi-relaxed state. The next day passed by quickly.
Mega was now clear above the horizon and along with it came a gradual lifting of the tide. Smoke could be seen rising from the steep rocky shore in the distance. Max watched the somewhat familiar cliffs with anticipation. The smoke, he knew, came from the small village he’d passed on his way to the True North.
He hadn’t bothered to stop then as not only was he was full up on supplies, but he was also eager
to properly begin his survey. This time was little different. They had enough supplies to make it to SoChar, which would take two days of travel, and he was plenty eager to get there. But Snow had other ideas.
“If they don’t have a harbor, I’ll just climb the cliff,” she said. “It doesn’t look too hard.”
The tide had lifted some, but the water level was still quite low. Scaling the cliff would be a feat of effort as well as an unnecessary one since the town in fact had a rather fine harbor
“So, it’s settled then. We visit Small-town-on-the-cliff and rest our sea legs for a bit,” Snow said when Max told her ‘the good news’ about the harbor.
Max kept his mouth shut while he thought of a well-considered response. “What?” Snow said in response to Max’s face.
Max’s face had been less successful than his mouth at keeping his initial thought to himself, which was that this was a bad idea. Obviously. He couldn’t deny that he would appreciate a night in a real bed… but the cost of that good night’s sleep might be very high indeed. Max thought it should be obvious, but he said it any way, “I mean, you know… It’s a risk to go ashore.”
“A risk of what? Is Small-town-on-the-cliff a major hub of HOSaS activity in this region or something?”
“No.”
“So how likely is it that there will be HOSaS agents waiting there to murder us?”
“Not likely,” Max said, “but if they are—”
“They won’t be,” Snow said. “Come on, Max, I just want to stretch my legs a bit. It has been quite a while…”
She was playing the ‘Poor me, I’ve been asleep in a pod for gods know how long’ card. Fair enough.
“Okay,” Max said. He was aware of the difficulty he would have trying to keep Snow from going ashore if that was what she chose to do.
“Yes!” Snow said. “You won’t regret it.”
“We’ll see,” Max said, “but if we get murdered…”
Starship Relic (Lost Colony Uprising Book 1) Page 7
