Lund lowered the scope and looked down at Packer. “Well?”
“I…appreciate your taking the watch, sir.”
Lund stared at Packer. “They change,” he said simply. “Stedman Due was right about that.”
“Sir?”
“The Firefish,” Lund explained. “They change. They learn. Tell the Captain. Get down to the deck; your duty is there.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Packer nodded, knowing that what had just passed between them was not something more words could add to. Lund Lander was content that his final words in this life should pertain to duty, and be spoken with calm assurance to an underling. Packer started down, feeling deeply honored and deeply saddened.
“The captain’s down!” Jonas Deal’s voice was an uncharacteristic yelp. He knelt by the unconscious Scat at the afterdeck rail. “I need hands!”
The crew on the main deck paused a moment, then rushed, every one of them, to their captain’s aid.
The Firefish would not be denied this time. It had given the signal; the pack had spread out, the Chase was surrounded. In a matter of seconds the others would turn and streak for the sleek animal, striking the prey in a furious attack from all sides. But now, more than ever, the lead monster wanted the kill to itself. It was going for the throat again.
Packer stopped to watch the sailors run to the afterdeck. The great beast broke the surface again, now lunging with a fury and a velocity that exceeded even its first attempt.
Lund felt the sea open below him. A rush of energy went through him, and he grabbed the lure by the ring. He dropped the telescope, which he had not bothered to hang about his neck, and it bounced off the wooden perch, falling end over end toward the beast. He focused on the brass door, then on the flint wheel, but at the edge of his field of vision, the world below him was growing into a menace he could not avoid. The beast was rising, a growing yellow ring around growing blackness. He had the strange, dizzying sensation that he was falling into a hole.
The telescope struck the beast on the forehead and bounced away. The Firefish pressed the attack upward toward the sleek prey’s neck. Nothing would distract it now.
Lund pressed his thumb against the wheel and turned it. A spark flew. But the Toymaker saw nothing more. The Firefish engulfed him, snapping its jaws down around the crow’s nest, the masthead, the lure, and the lookout, its spiked teeth crushing them together in an explosion of electricity and yellow flame, illuminating a jack-o-lantern grin visible to no one but God and Packer Throme.
As soon as Packer saw the beast leap, he wished he had a safety rope. He assumed that the Fish would knock him out again. He hugged the mast and quickly looped his belt over one of the wooden foot pegs. As he did, he could feel the heat from the Fish’s body. He was so close he could have put a hand on the glowing scales, or so it felt. But the electrical charge, when it came, passed through him without significant trauma, other than to make his right hand ring with increased pain.
But the crash of teeth on wood was quickly followed by the groan and creak, and then the crack and snap, of the mast just under the crow’s nest, not twelve feet above Packer. He clung for all he was worth as the mast vibrated like a plucked fiddle string. Splinters flew, many of them burning. He lowered his head.
Packer opened his eyes in time to see the head of the Firefish fall past him. In the moonlight, the beast’s single wet eye was angry, hungry, vicious…and the gaping, slashed eye socket was dark and empty as a bottomless pit. The Firefish whipped back and forth as it fell backward toward the sea, like a shark tearing at its meat. The flag, staff and all, was still gripped in its teeth, the skull and bones billowing full. The black cloth was ablaze at the bottom, nearest the Fish’s mouth. The beast’s tearing movements gave the impression that it was waving the flag as a soldier might wave a banner in victory.
Scat Wilkins saw the flag as it crossed the path of the moon, saw the Firefish fall.
The beast’s yellow skin went dark as it hit the black water. It landed on its back this time, creating the same huge wall of white water on either side of it, the same hole in the ocean, the same maelstrom that pulled at the Chase. And then it disappeared in a plume of white foam and spray.
And now Packer could see the glow beneath the water, the blazing skin of sixteen other beasts streaking toward the Chase, converging on her hull, all less than a hundred yards away.
Packer looked up to see only black night sky and stars where Lund Lander and the crow’s nest should have been. Where Packer had been only moments ago. He closed his eyes again, and hugged the mast.
The lead Firefish was not satisfied. It had reached the animal’s neck, clamped down on it, and wrenched downward. The animal should have been pulled into the sea, wrestled under the waves, but the neck had been severed easily—too easily. Once more the sleek prey had not cooperated. The neck was not very meaty, and the beast was still upright. If it was a kill, it was not the satisfying kill the Firefish had anticipated, not the sating of its lust it had coveted.
The beast turned to join the others in the attack.
John Hand and Andrew Haas steadied themselves at the rail. The Firefish had pulled hard at the mast, levering the port deck well into the water before the mast snapped, rocking the entire ship and washing the last remaining lure overboard. They glanced at one another, unable to speak the extent of their amazement. That the Firefish had taken the crow’s nest was dumbfounding enough, but that the Chase had survived—that she had twice in twenty minutes been on her beam ends and survived—was all but miraculous.
The bosun surveyed the damage to the mainmast above them.
“Did we lose any men?” Hand asked, knowing how difficult it would have been to hold onto ropes in the rigging.
“Only the lookout, I believe.” Andrew Haas said it with more than a trace of sadness. He’d liked Packer.
John Hand looked out to sea, saw the glow, saw now the many Firefish attacking from all sides below. So much for the ghost, or the saving hand of God. The Chase’s remarkable engineering is what had kept her afloat so far, and some quick thinking, and a bit of luck. But now John Hand had no weapons, no maneuvers, no hope. Unless, somehow, Throme had set the lure…“Where’s Lund?” he asked. He should have returned to the deck by now.
Haas shrugged, studying the rigging.
But even if Lund had gotten the lure to Packer, there would likely have been no time to set it. Even if it had been set, chances were it hadn’t gotten into the Fish. Even if it had gotten into the Fish, so what? One Firefish might be killed; there were plenty more. And if by some miracle the Trophy Chase and her crew survived the Firefish, there was a small matter of a few thousand Achawuk.
“Orders, Captain?” Haas asked calmly.
Hand just shook his head. He couldn’t think of a single order that would make a difference, even one that might give them something to do, something to keep them busy, trying, until the end. He looked at Haas and smiled. “I’m sorry, Andrew.”
“Nah,” Andrew answered with a gleam in his eyes wrought by both sadness and pride. He had never in his life heard those words uttered by John Hand. Nor had John Hand ever called him by his first name before. “It’s been quite a ride, Cap’n. I wouldn’t trade it. Not even now.”
Hand nodded, then looked back out at the Achawuk. “It has been quite a ride, hasn’t it?”
“He’s gone,” said Mutter Cabe, helping Jonas and the others lift Scat Wilkins.
“What are you saying, man?” demanded Jonas Deal, still shrill, still reeling from the collapse of his captain.
“The Ghost, I mean,” Cabe answered quickly, an eye toward the rigging. “If he’s gone, maybe those monsters’ll leave us be.”
“Forget ’em! Let’s just get Cap’n Wilkins into his quarters so he can rest. That’s what matters,” Jonas instructed sternly, as though all would be well if they just cared for the Captain. “Careful there!” he scolded Delaney, who had stopped dead in his tracks, halting their progress.
&
nbsp; “I believe they won’t be leaving us just yet,” Delaney said softly. He was looking across the rail and downward, at the glowing streaks racing under the water toward the Chase.
“You pay attention to business, and that’s an order!” Deal snapped.
The first Firefish to hit the Chase struck from directly below. It hit the keel, upper quarter astern.
It was a small Firefish, by standards of its companions, and while it took a dozen square feet of the keel with it, it didn’t puncture the hull. But it hit hard, and the ship rocked so violently that even experienced, sure-footed sailors fell. This was not the movement of a ship at sea, even one as tight as the Chase. This was the movement of a ship under siege. Deal, Delaney, and the others, burdened with Scat Wilkins, could not keep their feet and fell together in an ungainly heap.
“Pick him up, men!” Deal bellowed.
Three sailors in the rigging also lost their footing, and had no deck under them to give them a second chance. Their knotted muscles and sweaty hands had kept them safe once, from the jolt of the mainmast breaking, but not twice. They could not hold the lines, and the rigging whipped them into the sea. They flew overhead with anguished screams, splashing into the water, the momentum of their fall carrying them deep under the waves.
Packer lost his footing on the pegs and, with only one good hand, he also lost his grip. He found himself dangling by his belt, which was still looped around the foot peg. His ribs banged painfully against the mast. When his feet found the pegs again, he gave up descending and chose to hug the rough wood of the mast and await the end.
He looked ahead. The Achawuk were within eight hundred yards.
The second Firefish to reach the Chase angled its attack at the hull, just above the keel. But rather than strike, it veered upward for the easy morsel, a crewman from the rigging who struggled furiously for the surface but would never find it. The next two Fish also veered off course for flailing sailors. Three quick flashes ended their struggle.
A dozen more Firefish zeroed in on the hull. The big Fish with one eye was back in the lead.
Lund Lander did not survive the jaws of the Firefish, nor did Stedman Due or Gregor Tesh, nor the unlucky crewmen who had been pulled in by the windlass or slung from the rigging. Their immortal Creator had not engineered them to withstand such use. But the lure did survive, engineered to do just that by its very mortal creator. The explosion was precisely timed from the moment the fuse caught fire. The lead Fish did not hit the Chase. Instead, it blew apart just below the neck, where the long passageway of its gullet began. The force of the blast sent a shock wave through the water. The impact of the shock wave smote all the attacking Firefish a painful blow, startling them enough to turn them off their course. Only two of twelve struck the underside of the ship, and both at glancing angles. Neither penetrated the hull.
The crewmen carrying Scat Wilkins dropped him yet again, what with the combined force of the explosion and the Firefish strike creating a series of even more extreme jolts. “Just stay down!” Jonas ordered this time, still focused only on his captain’s comfort. “Hold him steady, boys!”
While Jonas Deal stripped off his shirt to provide Scat a pillow, the other sailors watched the sea roil, and then saw the white Firefish meat surface port astern. “We got one!” Delaney sang out.
“Shut up!” Deal ordered in almost a yelp, pained by the lack of respect, the inattentiveness such a shout of joy revealed.
Packer braced for more impacts, hugging the mast as tightly as he could. But there would be no more impacts.
He looked down, expecting to see the yellow streaks in the black water converging on the Chase. The streaks were there, all right, and he saw them, but they were no longer in pursuit of the ship. Instead, the yellow tracers led to a single focal point, the spot where the dead beast’s remains bubbled up from under the water. The boiling sea where the lead Firefish had come apart had turned a bright yellow.
The Firefish, the entire pack, had recovered from their shock and, instead of returning to the hunt, they attacked the remains of their own dead like a flock of vultures diving for a single carcass, a school of piranha skeletonizing a hunk of meat. And the fury of their attack grew until the sea behind the Chase simply erupted. The sea turned to a fountain, black water and white spray and chunks of flesh, tails, teeth, jaws thrown high into the air, thirty, forty feet up, and at least twice that in width, all illuminated by the eerie electrical discharges of ravaging bite after ravaging bite.
Packer watched in growing horror. The extreme violence of their thrashing, the fireworks of their lightning strikes above and under the water was as spectacular as it was terrifying. It soon became apparent to him, as the grisly event went on and on, growing still in intensity as it drifted behind them, that these Fish were not simply feeding on the flesh of one fallen comrade.
They were fighting and killing one another.
And in fact, beneath the sea, the Firefish had begun a mindless, raging battle. It had started with feeding on the lead Firefish, but that was only the trigger. Almost immediately, one of the other beasts had bitten yet another, ripping a huge gash from its side. And that one turned not to attack its attacker, but instead to tear a ravenous hunk from near the tail of a third. And within seconds, others, attracted by the blood, began to feed, and then be fed upon. The beasts were destroying one another.
The crewmen helping with Scat Wilkins left him, and ran to the rail for a better look.
“Come back!” Jonas yelled after them. “The Captain needs us!” But now the sailors paid him no mind. Jonas Deal was as helpless as their Captain. He wasn’t going to do anything but pat Scat’s hand and whimper.
At the rail the sailors shook their heads in amazement, a wonder that slowly turned to relief. The hunt was over. The Firefish were devouring one another, and not them.
Packer tried to make sense of it. It didn’t seem right; why would animals kill one another? Was there any other animal that would do such a thing? He thought grimly of the decks of the Chase, these very decks earlier tonight, where men had killed men with every ounce of strength they had. Then he remembered his father’s insistence that Firefish were solitary hunters. They are loners, he wrote. But something gathers them together in the Achawuk waters.
Packer wrenched his eyes away from the glowing feast and looked at the ranks of the Achawuk ahead. The canoes were moving forward now, no longer waiting for the Chase to come to them. They were paddling hard.
If the Firefish were indeed solitary beasts, by nature and by instinct, it was for a very good reason, which was now being played out in this graphic display of brutality. They could hunt in a pack, but they could not connect with one another; they could not form a family. If God had created them to be loners, they had turned against their own natural instincts. But how? Why?
Packer wondered how long it would be before the Achawuk attacked again, when he noticed that the canoes were not paddling for the Trophy Chase. He stared for several seconds, for what seemed to him like minutes, before he could trust his eyes. But it was true, the warriors were ignoring the ship. They were pulling, with all their considerable might, toward the Firefish.
“Ready your arms, men!” John Hand cried as he too realized that the Firefish danger had passed. “Let’s take as many of these butchers with us as we can!” He was energized by the sudden elimination of one virtually invincible set of foes. Only one more virtually invincible threat remained. The Achawuk canoes were hardly more than two hundred yards away, and the crewmen were outnumbered a hundred to one or more. But what was there to do but rally the crew one more time, and give it all they had?
Sailors still in the rigging quickly worked their way to the foresails for a better shot. Sailors on deck drew their pistols, loading and charging them even as they ran to the foredecks.
“Hey!” Jonas Deal shouted at the sailors as he still knelt by his Captain. “Come back, ye rat badgers!”
No one paid him any mind. It was as much
as outright mutiny.
Jonas turned a sorrowful face toward his Captain, his leader, his master. Scat’s skin was ashen, his breaths were short and labored. “Don’t you worry now, Cap’n,” Jonas said, cradling the pirate’s head. “Jonas Deal won’t leave ye. He’ll never leave ye.”
Why had the Achawuk attacked the Trophy Chase so ruthlessly, with such determination? And why did they now seem to be ignoring the ship completely, only to paddle toward the Firefish? Why did the Firefish start devouring one another, fighting each other to the death to do it? It wasn’t until one of them died…
And then Packer understood. It all came together for him. He understood why the beasts gathered here in these waters. He understood the secret his father had learned about Firefish and the Achawuk, why they were both here, together. There was a reason the Achawuk attacked ships like the Chase. There was a reason for the Achawuk numbers, a reason for their solemn faces, their almost superhuman strength. The reason was so simple, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t understood it before. Years before Scat Wilkins and the Trophy Chase, the Achawuk had learned to take the Firefish.
“Fire when ready!” John Hand commanded, his own pistol held out. He took aim, angling well up above the heads of the nearest canoes in order to ensure that the ball didn’t drop too early, into the sea. Then he pulled the trigger. Very quickly some forty shots rang out. Half a dozen Achawuk slumped from their canoes. The men reloaded. By the next round, they would be well within range.
“Hold your fire!” came an urgent, fierce call from above. It sliced through the air like a spear. It was the voice of Packer Throme, the stowaway. The Ghost. Was he not dead, eaten by the Firefish? Hadn’t they all seen it?
“Hold your fire!” Packer repeated urgently through the mind-numbing pain caused by using his bad hand as well as his good to get him to the deck quickly. “Hold your fire!”
All eyes turned upward, and finally located the yellow-haired stowaway as he came flying down from the dark sky, lowering himself hand over hand in the bosun’s chair, the whine of the pulleys like a single note sung and held. He came into view below the mainsail on the starboard side. He was grimacing like an angry bear.
The Trophy Chase Saga Page 30
