The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  “No reason?” Scat laughed his low, rumbling laugh. It was disquieting. “I don’t call my orders ‘no reason.’ He wouldn’t have been the first to die for me. Wouldn’t have been the last either.”

  Packer looked back down at Delaney. The bandage was doing its job. He picked up the two swords from the floorboards, put Delaney’s at the sailor’s side and turned his own sword-handle toward the Captain.

  “The last time you offered me a sword, I didn’t know you quite so well. Keep it,” Scat said, and walked away, showing Packer his back.

  “Sir!”

  Scat stopped, turned back. Packer’s eyes were suddenly bright and earnest. “Delaney said you’ve put Talon off the ship.”

  “So?” Scat knew exactly why the boy asked the question.

  “Begging your pardon. I need to know if you’ve sent her back to the village…if her mission is about me.”

  Scat paused. “That’s what you need, is it? Well, I have no corresponding need to tell you. But since you ask, I figure if she kills all the fishermen in all the villages, then I can keep my side of our bargain at little cost to me.”

  Packer blinked several times. Then Scat laughed softly. “Come on, son, I’m a businessman! That would be bad for business. No, she’s on a different mission entirely.” He put the cigar back in his mouth. Packer hesitated, their eyes locked. Packer wanted to believe him, but needed more assurance. This time it was the Captain who stood still, waiting. The boy would either have to doubt his word or accept it.

  When Packer finally looked back down at Delaney, Scat spoke. He was not displeased. The boy was smart enough not to question his Captain, but also insightful enough to doubt his word. “You can sleep well. Talon has strict orders to stick to her mission in the City of Mann,” he lied. Finished with the subject, he turned away, spoke as he walked. “I’ll take you to your quarters. You’ve earned a berth.”

  Even if the Captain was telling the truth, and Packer had no reason to believe him, would Talon follow Scat’s orders? But there was no more to be said about it now.

  “What about Delaney?”

  “I’ll send someone for him,” the Captain lied again, already out of sight.

  Packer went to Delaney, knelt beside him. The sailor was breathing gently and seemed in no danger. “You are a good man,” Packer told him.

  To his surprise, Delaney opened one eye. “As are you,” he said in a whisper, with a ragged smile. “Better go on.” Packer smiled back, clapping Delaney on the arm. As he did, he noticed again the cross tattoo. Now he could read the banner draped over it. Delaney winked and held out a hand, which Packer shook. “God bless you, for a merciful man.”

  Packer didn’t know what to say. Delaney flicked his hand, gesturing for Packer to get moving. Packer smiled, then ran after Scat Wilkins, knowing something good had just happened, the first good thing since he had boarded this ship. He had an ally. And likely, he had more than that.

  Delaney’s tattooed banner read, “Brotherhood.”

  Panna shivered. She had not been cold at all during the night, wrapped in her winter cloak, but with the glow of sunrise breaking over her the air seemed suddenly icy, cutting through to her skin. She crawled out from under the pine tree where she had slept in the thick duff and, dragging her knapsack behind her, stood painfully. Her legs and back ached. She seemed sore from head to foot. While she wondered at so much pain, she couldn’t find anything that would declare itself as an actual injury.

  She looked at her hands; they were filthy. The knuckles of both her hands were dark and swollen, scraped and bruised, and covered with mud. It hurt to move her fingers. Her face was probably as dirty as her hands, she thought. She wondered vaguely how the backs of her hands got dirtier than the fronts. Perhaps rolling down the hill. Then she noticed that the dirt had a reddish tint.

  A horror emptied her like the bottom dropping out of a bucket. It was not dirt that colored the backs of her hands. It was blood. She looked at her knuckles more closely. This was not her blood. It was the blood of the fisherman. Fear rose up from within her, and she trembled. What had she done? How badly had she hurt him?

  The specifics came back to her in stark, terrible, relentless detail. Gouging at his eyes. Her fist to his nose. The cracking sound. She shuddered. The old man falling backward to the ground. The sick, pained gasp when he landed on his back. The fists to his face, over and over. The whimpers, the crying out. The wetness of his face, his body going limp. Now a remorse far greater than the previous night’s fear threatened to overwhelm her. What if she had maimed him permanently? What if she had…

  What had she done? How could she have done it? She was but a young woman, a girl, and he was a grown man, a fisherman. In her mind, that made her weak and him strong, a child fighting an adult. She had believed she needed every ounce of her strength, everything she had, just to stop him, just to fool him into believing she was a man. But now she realized she had been completely deceived. She was the stronger one, probably by far. He had fought back with all the fury of a feather pillow.

  She held up her swollen hand in the light and turned it slowly around, seeing something totally foreign now, something she had never seen there before. Her hand was a weapon. She hid it beneath her cloak and looked around, fearful that someone was watching. She wanted to cut it off, throw it away, bury it.

  Then she had a vision of herself. She was a figure wrapped in a dark cloak, hiding in the woods from villagers. She was the dangerous rogue. She had brutally attacked one of their own. Without provocation. Her face went white.

  This cloaked figure in Panna’s vision was an outlaw.

  Panna knelt on the ground, crumpling with the weight of these thoughts. She had rejected a return to the village, but up until this moment it had been her choice. Now any return to the village would be followed by arrest, and disgrace. It would take her a while, she knew, to adjust to this. But she would adjust. This was not something she had foreseen. It was not the step of faith she had envisioned. But neither was it going to stop her. Just the opposite, she now knew she had to keep going. Now she had to find Packer. Now there were no other options.

  The huge Firefish circled, its long, lithe, serpentine body squaring off each turn with a lightning-fast darting movement. Still stalking, still ravenous, it surfaced behind the shellfish, to avoid detection.

  When the beast’s head broke through the water, Monkey was in a dream state, very near the point of collapse. Talon was weary and angry, less vigilant than usual. She had spotted land off the port bow, and knew it to be a sparsely populated island less than a league from the shoreline, not far from Hangman’s Cliffs. They had made good time. She was not interested in stopping, and she hoped to row past it without Monkey ever seeing it. She only needed three more miles out of him, and didn’t want him whimpering about the need to rest.

  He would never reach shore, of course. He was far too much a liability now, too much a blithering imbecile, too likely to say anything to anybody. She cursed silently. Monkey had been an ally, and a loyal crewman as far as his feeble capabilities let him. Doubtless, he was completely incapable of attacking her. But that didn’t matter now. He would meet the same fate as Ox.

  And Ox! Ox had proven to be a murderous traitor. She had known how much he feared and hated her, of course, but she had been unprepared to believe his fear could so easily have been overcome by his hatred. What could have moved him to such a suicidal plan? Likely it was the simple fact that she had been sent back to shore; likely he believed the Captain was displeased with her over the stowaway. The stowaway. This was Packer Throme’s doing. Of course it was. Well then, Ox was the first death payment in her revenge on Packer Throme, the first body left along her bloody pathway back to the source of the poison, Senslar Zendoda. Monkey would be the second.

  In Monkey’s dream state, Talon had her knife out, and was calling his bunkmates on the Trophy Chase into her stateroom, one by one, behind a wooden door marked with gashes and blood. None of them p
ut up a fight, all went obediently. None came back out. She returned each time with her knife bloodied and called the next one in. Ox would protect him. Ox had crushed the skull of the man who had battered his face, who had left him with his permanent wink and his miserable half grin. Ox, Monkey’s protector, went last, but he was just as docile, and went just as easily. And then she came out from behind the door, her knife held downward, dripping blood from its tip. She beckoned to Monkey.

  Tears rose in his eyes as he looked into hers. He had not been a good man, or even a brave one. She would kill him. She would have no pity. He deserved none. But she just looked at him and waited. Who could save him? Krendall Room didn’t mean to be so bad as to deserve this. He just wanted to belong, to fit in. That’s all he had ever wanted. He had mocked church, and family, and God. But he didn’t really hate anyone. He just wanted to live another day. Who would help him now? Who would show him mercy?

  There would be no mercy here, her eyes told him. Talon’s eyes told him: Now is the time to go quietly, to follow his friends, to follow his choices where they all led. Those eyes! They were cold and cruel. They were yellow, wet, and unblinking. They were oddly yellow, and growing brighter. Almost like a…He cocked his head to one side, confused.

  The Firefish was perhaps twenty yards from the boat, looking directly at Monkey, and Monkey was looking directly into its eyes. Talon would have seen the thing too, but she had glanced over at Monkey at just that moment. He was still rowing, but she saw the strange, quizzical expression on his face. She looked out over the ocean. She squinted against the rising sun. But she saw nothing. The Firefish was gone.

  To the beast the twin mounds protruding from the top of the boat were certainly the shellfish’s eyes. And one of those eyes was focused on him. So the Firefish had quickly slipped back under the water.

  Talon looked back at Monkey. His mouth moved, but no sounds came out. She decided she had better give him some bread, and so she told him to quit rowing, picked up the duffel by her feet, and rummaged for the hardtack. Before she could pull it out, the beast broke through the water again, this time much, much closer.

  It had watched from below for a moment, its long, snakelike body writhing to and fro as it held its place. It had seen the shellfish quit paddling its little fins. The shellfish wasn’t running. No protective measures were being taken. It had seen its predator, and frozen. This could only mean the creature trusted its shell for protection and had no ability to defend itself otherwise. If it trusted its shell against even so great a threat, then that was all the more reason not to be hasty. After a few more seconds the beast rose again, closer now, to discover how it might consume the meaty part without crunching through the shell.

  Talon saw it rise not five yards from her. She couldn’t have missed it this time. Although in silhouette with the sun behind it, it was now light enough that Talon could make out its features.

  The beast’s head was a mountain, bald, irregular, and misshapen. It glistened with small, dark scales overlapping in no discernable pattern. Its enormous mouth, reaching across the entire base of its head, the rough triangle visible above the water, was like that of a deepwater devilfish, a sullen horseshoe frown set in a permanent grimace enhanced by a dramatically jutting jaw, with ragged, razor-sharp white teeth poking up like an array of knives. It struck Talon that, should it open its mouth, the effect would be like a huge sluice-gate opened near her. Her boat would simply float in and down its gullet.

  But she was most taken by its eyes. Bulbous and yellow, lidless and watery, positioned about halfway up and on either side of the triangle of its head, these eyes darted quickly, alertly, between her and Monkey. They were unlike those of any animal Talon had ever seen. While a shark’s eyes were dull and distant, terrifying in their murky inscrutability, and a dolphin’s were sharp and focused, disarming and accessible, the Firefish had eyes that were sharp, focused, and inscrutable all at once. This was an intelligent killer. As Talon watched, she was convinced she saw a smile behind its hunger, within its eyes. This thing delighted in the hunt. It loved the kill.

  Talon shook herself, cursing her own lack of attentiveness. Dazed though he was, Monkey had seen this monster and could have warned her, could have given her the few extra seconds that might have saved them. She knew that unlike a shark, a Firefish could attack from a stationary position. Sharks needed to work up a head of steam, but the Firefish had a skeletal framework like a snake’s, and could strike like one. This one she estimated to be at least eighty feet long. It seemed still, but she knew its body, every bit as wide as its head, was undulating through the water. It was ready, and could lunge forward ten, fifteen, perhaps even twenty feet in an instant. These beasts were quick, too, much quicker than sharks, with the lightning reflexes of a school of silverfish. Usually they snapped their prey, but she had seen one unhinge its jaw in order to engulf an entire longboat, like a python eating a pig.

  She had no time. She looked down at the duffel in her hands. It contained her only hope of survival, the lure she had packed there, the Toymaker’s brass box. But it would take her several seconds, perhaps half a minute, to retrieve it and set the fuse. Now she cursed out loud. Why had she not anticipated this? She looked back at the Firefish. The beast’s dark, scaly skin was now glowing yellow, building the electrical charge that would in a moment flash across the sea. She looked at Monkey. He stared, mesmerized, unmoving. She needed time.

  He would provide it.

  With both hands, she grabbed Monkey’s shirt at the collar, behind his neck, thrust her hip into him, and slung him over the stern, throwing him as far as her strength would allow, toward the beast. Almost before Monkey hit the water, she was pouring the contents of the duffel onto the boat’s floor. She needed that lure.

  The Firefish did not hesitate to accept the morsel as offered. The thing was surprised to see one of the shellfish’s eye mounds drop into the water, but neither memory nor instinct allowed delay. The tasty morsel was eaten.

  Talon fell to her knees on the floor of the boat, the large brass box, her only hope, now firmly in her hands. But she didn’t have a chance to ignite the fuse. She did not hear the crack of the beast’s electrified teeth as they snapped down on Monkey, hundreds of twelve- to twenty-four-inch knives backed by rocklike jaws, puncturing, crushing, and shredding him instantly, even as a thousand volts anesthetized him.

  She did not feel the rush of water generated by the beast’s lunge forward. She never felt the water as it spilled over the stern and propelled the boat forward. She was unconscious, anesthetized herself by the beast’s power, as it prepared her to be its next bite with several hundred volts that discharged through the water toward her.

  Having swallowed one meaty morsel, one eye mound of the shellfish, and feeling successful in its efforts, the Firefish rose again, hoping for more. It was disappointed to find that the shellfish had moved twenty yards away and that the other eye mound had disappeared. The beast immediately retracted its head and looked around underwater, thinking that perhaps both eyes had fallen into the sea and it had eaten only one.

  Talon regained consciousness lying against the transom at the stern of the shallop, cold water sloshing around her. The lure had been pushed back under the wooden seat. Her joints ached with the residual effects of the electric shock, and her brain seemed to be buzzing. She cursed these symptoms, then ignored them. She had the lure back in her hands and was kneeling over it again almost instantly. The side of it was dented. She knew that this lure had been placed on a stack of lures to be reconditioned. She knew there was a chance it wouldn’t work. She opened the small brass door beside the large ring at its top; the wax seal was already broken. Inside was the fuse. She poured water from the opening. There, next to the fuse, a flint wheel was mounted. She turned it quickly with her thumb. A spark jumped, but the fuse did not catch.

  She felt the boat shift in the water, and heard the beast’s head break through the surface again. She pinched the fuse, squeezing seawate
r from it. She turned the flint wheel again. A spark jumped again, but the fuse did not light. It was a futile effort. A shadow fell over her. She turned the wheel with her thumb a third time. The fuse would not ignite. She cursed out loud. Water dripped down around her, on her back, down the back of her neck. She looked behind her, and then up. The Firefish looked down on her, its huge head looming over her, the water dripping off its protruding teeth, its smiling eyes fifteen feet above the stern of the boat. It was craning its neck down on her, pleased to find the other eye mound.

  This time Talon was not just impressed, she was stunned. The beast was probing, hungry, seeking, brooding, ready, and studying her intently. It was absolutely pure of purpose. It wanted to kill, to kill now, and to devour its prey. But it approached its quarry with skill and craftiness in order to defeat it, and with utter disregard for it otherwise.

  What stopped her, what prevented her from setting the lure, what kept her from the one act that could save her life, was that these were the traits she respected above all others. This giant, meticulous killer had absolutely no capacity for remorse, or fear, or pity, or self-doubt. It didn’t care whether its victims fought back or not. It was calm, almost joyous about its business. Perfect in design. She was astonished to see her own ambition achieved so perfectly. So triumphantly. On such a magnificent scale. She felt she was looking into the eyes of a superior being.

  The beast had needed to raise its head quite high to find this eye mound, which had apparently been retracted into the shell. But there it was. The Firefish waited, giving this morsel a chance to drop into the water as the other had. But that did not seem to be happening. The remaining eye mound watched, but the shellfish again took no defensive action. It was frozen again; a desperate and silly attempt on the part of prey to avoid detection even when cornered. But there was something missing. All these behaviors were expected. An uneasiness grew. The beast sensed no fear. There was a calm presence, not threatening, with intelligence all out of proportion for a fleeing shellfish. Its instinct was to attack, now.