The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  She grabbed his hair and held his head tight against her cheek. “You have the power,” she hissed into his ear. “You. God has given it to you. Use it! Do you think He wastes such gifts? No…He wants you to use it.”

  “Look at him now,” Mutter said as Talon whispered to Packer. He and Delaney had descended at Talon’s command to the foredeck and stood at the port rail. Mutter gestured toward Packer. “Where’s all his big talk? He’s not so cocksure now.”

  Delaney furrowed his brow. “Packer’s never been cocksure.”

  Mutter shook his head. “Walkin’ to the prow like some holy man. He ain’t so big. Turns out he’s just a fisherman after all.” Mutter clearly took satisfaction in what he saw as Packer’s comeuppance.

  Delaney tried to understand this. He and Marcus had heard the confessions, seen the torment of Packer’s soul. But what if someone never knew what was going on inside of Packer Throme? What if there had been no window into him? Could it be that Packer would seem confident, even arrogant? Yes, Delaney concluded, it might be possible.

  “Firefish,” Cabe said suddenly, looking into the sea, over the rail. “Comin’ up now.”

  “Achawuk!” another sailor said, and all looked up at the haze, saw the first faces appear from the mist, dark masks of death.

  “Drammune!” another shouted from the stern. All looked to the Kaza Fahn, now sliding up on the port side.

  Delaney almost felt thankful. At least there was something to fight. He looked at Packer once again. Nothing. The woman who had become their captain was still drawing the man who was supposed to be their king into her spell, whatever it was. Delaney checked his pistol one more time. “Hope you got plenty a’ ammunition, Mutter. We’re on our own now.”

  “Look,” Talon was whispering in Packer’s ear. “Look down. Look deep. You will command them.”

  Packer’s heart and mind gave way, and both sank, as though he were asleep. His heart was stone, a stone sinking now through dark, cold waters, falling, failing. There was no light here. No warmth. His mind…he felt his mind collapse, as though crushed by the cold, by the pressure of falling so far, so deep. His body quaked, and he let go, tumbling down into some place, some cold and stony place he’d never been.

  And it was there he saw the vision.

  This was not like Talon’s vision, of domination of the seas, and thereby the world. Nor was it like the one he’d been given before, when kneeling on the deck of the Trophy Chase. Then God had taken him to the cliffs to speak to him, that he might remember.

  God was not in this place. This was a place of darkness, and Packer knew he was falling into that realm where souls go to be abandoned, where spirits without hope fall and remain forever.

  In his vision, Packer stopped falling when he hit the deck of a ship. The ship was aflame. He landed face down, and his right hand went through the decking, through the planks of the ship. He pulled it out, and his hand was missing. He had a stump of an arm, just below the elbow. He looked up and he saw Talon, dressed in black. He now recognized this place. It was the quarterdeck of the Trophy Chase. The Trophy Chase was burning. Talon wore her robes, the robes of the Hezzan, but here they were all black. Her hair was wild, long, and loose, blowing slowly in an unseen, unfelt wind. Her eyes, though, were cold and calm. Before her was an iron cauldron, sitting amid the flames. In it, something steamed and boiled.

  The witch, he thought.

  Or perhaps he heard the words. That appellation, that nickname, that accusation…it was the one she never could escape, that followed her from ship to ship and shore to shore. And now it had caught her. She watched him, distant, predatory. She held his eye, then looked into the cauldron. Packer rose, and walked near, and he looked into the cauldron, too.

  A mist floated across it, a steaming poison, dark gray, like soot. She blew on the mist, and it vanished. Underneath, clear waters boiled. In the boiling waters he saw snakes. Serpents, alive and angry, hundreds of them swimming under the surface, chaotic, frenzied.

  They stir! she said. She was looking at Packer. They rise!

  Now Talon dipped a wooden ladle into the pot, and she stirred. The beasts moved around in circles, and the water moved, and they all swam in unison, clockwise, faster and faster, until a whirlpool dropped down in the center of the cauldron. She let go of the ladle. As he watched, the wooden spoon spun into the center of the maelstrom. But it was not a ladle now; it was a ship. A ship with tall masts, white sails, a long, lean ship with a deep, deep keel. And men were on that ship. He saw one man standing atop the bowsprit, clinging to the guy lines, looking down into the water, watching the serpents as they circled.

  Huk Tuth saw the yellow hair standing at the prow, with Talon behind him, as the Kaza Fahn slipped smoothly up beside the Chase. He knew what this pair was doing. He’d seen this before, had seen Packer at the prow of this very ship when the Rahk Thanu and then the Nochto Vare had been destroyed.

  The yellow hair would command the Devilfish. And Talon, the Hezzan, would command the yellow hair.

  Tuth snarled his disgust. He opened his mouth to shout the single word that would teach them both respect for the Worthy Ones. His men could open fire and end this. But he didn’t give the command.

  Instead, he heard the knocks, the hammering. Spears like teeth biting into wood. And on his port side, where he had positioned no men.

  He spun around. He peered into the mists as he ran to the port rail, now fully aware of his error. The warriors were thick, and covered the sea, choked it with painted faces, bodies, spears, floating blocks of cork, covered it fore and aft, like a thick wool blanket.

  They were halfway up his hull. Halfway to the deck.

  As the Marchessa slid slowly even with the Chase, just off her starboard rail, Moore Davies saw, as all his sailors did, Packer at the prow, Talon behind him on the beam, her hands now clamped on top of Packer’s hands, as he gripped the lines. She was whispering to him. His eyes were closed. He seemed limp. Talon, dressed in black, hunched over Packer, and all but wrapped around him—she seemed to Davies like some kind of cancer, a tumor growing on him.

  Beyond the Chase, off her port side, Davies could see the Kaza Fahn, could see the danger she posed. As the Marchessa pulled even, Davies hailed the Chase. But he had no more than called out the “ahoy” when the rapping started. The Achawuk, swimming from the farthest shore, were on his starboard hull. They had emerged from the mists. They had surprised him just as they had Huk Tuth.

  The Vast captain on one ship and the Drammune commander on the other, each flanking the Trophy Chase for a different purpose, protected the great ship between them from the Achawuk. Each captain gave the same command at almost the same time, and for precisely the same reason.

  “The Achawuk, starboard!”

  “Achawakah! Thantach!”

  “Fire at will!”

  “Charnak!”

  Drammune and Vast sailors released their ammunition, lightning and thunder down the rails, clouds of smoke leaping out in an angry hurry, then rising slowly, calmly. Each pistol and each musket was aimed true by a trained marksman at a target much closer than those used on Drammune or Vast shooting ranges. Almost every shot found its mark.

  The cannon was even deadlier. The Vast started with grapeshot, and after one round of cannon balls, the Drammune deck guns spewed canister across the water. Far less accurate but far more effective. Many more living swimmers became casualties, turning the water red. And yet more Achawuk pushed them under. Wounded or dead, it didn’t matter. If they could not continue, they were submerged beneath a canopy of those who could.

  And they kept coming. Too many. Too many. The Achawuk boarded the Marchessa. They boarded the Kaza Fahn.

  Dayton Throme’s heart withered as he watched. The mists were clearing as those who had been stoking fires, creating the smoky fog, now left to join their brethren in the seas. The Achawuk were now a solid mass within the waters.

  The ships had followed, nearly all of them now, one afte
r the other into the mayak-aloh. They had made it through the narrows, into the mists, only to find the Achawuk within that fog, deadly and waiting. After the first three ships arrived unscathed, the next six were simply overrun. And now all would be overrun.

  He watched the brutal drama play out, remembering his own experience, the panic, the dread, the pit of fear into which he plunged as it came to him that there would be no way out, no way but death, and that this savage people could not be stopped.

  He prayed for mercy for those aboard those ships, just as he had prayed for mercy for his companions six years ago. It was a mercy that had not come then, and he knew in his heart would not come now.

  The crewmen of Rake’s Parry, Danger, Candor, Campeche, and Swordfish, fought, and died, with honor.

  They had erred against the Drammune, and had come here to seek a pardoning glory in these waters. And here they found it, at the cost of their lives. More than one man, swinging a sword, or the butt end of a musket he had no time to reload, looked up into the rigging, saw the limp sails, and prayed for wind. But that storied miracle, the one that had saved the Chase, would not be repeated here today. The Achawuk were strong. Their spears were sharp, and bloody. A blind and mindless dedication drove them. And they were just too many.

  These sailors would fight a losing battle here today. Blood would flow from earnest veins onto the decks of good, true ships, and then into the waters of the mayak-aloh. And their blood would mingle there with the blood of their enemies, of Tchorga Den, and all the sailors of the Hezza Charn, and then those of the Ganda Flez, Chammando, Herza Ko…all Drammune ships with storied pasts, now silent as the grave, their sailors driven from this life at the point of a spear. And their blood would mingle with their enemies, the Achawuk. What Achawuk survived the boarding of these ships would move quickly on, returning to the sea to swim to the next ship, red or white, it didn’t matter, and continue their trek toward the tannan-thoh-ah, the final destruction, the Mastery, the end of the world.

  And all that blood would mingle, and seep downward, and dissipate, and raise the ravenous hunger of the Firefish.

  In Packer’s dark dream he watched the small beasts swim in circles under the surface of her boiling cauldron. The little ship now spun, turning at the center, at the mouth of the whirlpool.

  The blood is in the water, Talon told the serpents.

  Then Talon had in her hand a wooden cup, and she poured red liquid from it into the waters. She poured and poured, and it turned the boiling liquid a dark and murky crimson. But the cup would not be emptied. And the liquid drove the serpents mad. They writhed, they rose, they swam at faster and faster speeds. As she kept pouring, Packer saw writing on the cup. He peered at it, stepped closer. He could read the words.

  These were names. Many names. Packer saw them; he read them as she poured. He recognized them. Fen Abbaka Mux, John Hand, and Scatter Wilkins. Lund Lander. Jonas Deal. Ned Basser and Duck Tilham. Mather Sennett. Bench Urmand. Senslar Zendoda. Will Seline. There were many other names he knew, Cane Dewar, Seval Carther, Ricks Goodfellow…he recognized them from the roll of the dead he’d written after the last Achawuk battle. And then there were many names he didn’t know. Vast names. Drammune names. And Achawuk. Soldiers, sailors, men of war. Men with families and friends, with fortunes great and small, with homes and possessions and pasts and dreams, men with everything but futures. Men who had killed other men, and had done so with all the strength that they could muster. Talon poured their blood into the cauldron.

  The serpents in the water glowed bright, bright yellow, bright like liquid gold. The blood turned the waters black, but it turned the snakes to gold. They swam, their eyes ablaze, their mouths agape, their golden teeth bared in their ravenous desire to devour, all wanting more. And she gave them more. The more she poured, the more frenzied they became, swimming in circles, angry, hungry. The more they devoured, the more they wanted. And Packer knew they would never be satisfied. There was not enough blood in the world to sate these golden beasts.

  “Stop pouring,” Packer said to her. His voice was far away, and slow.

  Talon looked at him as though she didn’t understand, couldn’t comprehend. “But you are the one who pours,” she said to him. “You have done all this.”

  Packer looked at the cup again, and the hand that held it was marred, and scarred, and bore a signet ring. It was his hand, his right hand. He looked down at his arm, and it was still severed. He tried to drop the cup, but he couldn’t. Her hand was on his, covering his, holding his as he held and poured the cup. She just laughed, cold and present, in his ear. “You command them. I command you,” she said.

  “No, God!” he cried.

  “No God?” she asked. “That is correct. No God has given you this gift. It is yours alone. Yours to use. You have renounced the sword, and taken up the Firefish. A greater weapon, greater by far. And it is not possible to renounce this weapon. You must use it. It is yours to use.”

  And then he saw the ship, the small ship at the center of the whirlpool, go under. It sank to the bottom, and was attacked by the serpents.

  And then the Firefish rose.

  Dayton saw it. So did the Vast aboard the Trophy Chase. So did a handful of Drammune. So did a thousand warriors in the water, near enough to watch the beast, to see its massive, knobbled head, its yellow, glowing scales, its fiery eyes.

  It rose to the bowsprit. And there it stopped, its eyes even with those of Packer Throme. It looked at Packer and at Talon. Talon saw into its eyes. She saw the question there, the hunger.

  And then she saw its rage.

  “Command it, Packer Throme!”

  But Packer did not move. Nor did he open his eyes. Now Talon looked into its maw as its great jaw unhinged. As its huge mouth dropped open, she felt its heat. She saw along the jagged row of teeth a single tooth that protruded through a Drammune helmet, crushed and pierced.

  “Command the beast, Packer Throme!” she cried. “Command the beast!”

  Packer heard the words, felt the command, the urgency in Talon’s voice, but he heard all within his dream. He watched a golden serpent within the cauldron. And the cauldron itself had changed. It was golden now, and the liquid within it was golden. It was not a cauldron, but a crucible, and on the surface collected dross, every impurity. And still the golden serpent watched him.

  And then it cocked its head to one side. And then it leaped toward him, flying from the crucible, its golden teeth bared, its golden skin alive and liquid, to devour him. Packer cried out, and opened his eyes.

  There beside him was the Firefish, aglow, mouth open, eyes ablaze. It saw him, locked its enormous eyes on his, and cocked its head.

  And Packer’s heart leaped within his chest. He knew this beast. This was his Firefish, the one who knew him, the one that longed to speak and couldn’t speak.

  This was the very beast he had commanded once before. And it was awaiting his command again.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Presence

  John Hand had thrown the brass box, the lure, into that gaping maw. It had struck the back of the beast’s mouth, triggering a reflex that brought its jaws down hard, snapping at the morsel, releasing the lightning that shattered the bowsprit that killed the admiral. The Firefish had then submerged, enraged, intent on circling back below, to rise again to the attack, to kill the darkness that strangled Deep Fin, that sucked in all the light, and that had now thrown this false food into its mouth.

  But a terrible thing awaited it beneath the waves. It was that stench, that horror. It was that poison in the water. The burning! One of these storm creatures had released the poison! It was the same terrible wretchedness that had caused it to flee once before, when the great pack of storm creatures killed that small one, the straggler. Then, the beast had lost its appetite, and had run with all haste as far away as it could run.

  And so that same poison made the Firefish run again. It turned and fled, seeking to get as far as possible from this noxious, toxi
c venom. And as it ran, it gagged, and as it gagged, up came the offensive, tinny morsel.

  Behind it, as the beast fled through the seas in sickness, it felt a shudder, and then an aching, crashing, crushing boom, a wave under the waves. It hit the beast, hurt it deeply, and drove it to run in panic, faster, farther. And then in anger and in fear, sickened both with poison and with pain, it ran deep. It descended once again, deeper now even than before, into a coldness and a pressure so encompassing that all things turned black and empty. Here, its own heartbeat echoed throughout its body, every beat slicing, pushing from within as though striving to get out. And then it waited as the pulsing slowed, and slowed, and slowed until its very sense of being faded, until it was a current in itself, a flow within a flow, cold and slow and hardly conscious.

  It stayed there, alone, near death, near life, until the drifting currents far below the sea surfaced it slowly, over many days. It came back to the warmth. Back to the light. And as its grogginess departed, it found that it was well, and healed.

  And it was hungry.

  Food it could find; whale and shark and eel and schools of fish. But the Deep Fin it could not find. Deep Fin was gone again. The old ache returned. The gnawing need that could not be satisfied, the emptiness that would swallow all the seas.

  Until, one hunt not long ago, it spied a school of storm creatures on the surface of the sea. Out ahead, running ahead, was a fast, sleek creature, with a long, deep ventral fin. And yes, yes! It had that skin, the skin of the Firefish. And so the beast swam closer, close enough to see.

  But not too close.

  The memory of the poison, and the painful boom, the memory of the dark presence, the meaty little lump with the cold predator’s face, there where light and joy should be but were no longer, that memory kept it away. And so it watched. It swam along, watching from far away, not daring to hope. It was unseen, except for once, when tiny eyes along the side, just two small eyes had seen it, and it had submerged, escaped.