I’d grown used to carrying a curved sword in part because it was one of the few things left to me from my father, may peace be his. But I prized them also because a skilled wielder may draw and strike at once.
The men with bludgeons were close, and my sword was but half drawn when the first rushed me. He took an elbow to the mouth as my sword came clear. He staggered into a table and both he and the insensate man upon it tumbled to the deck.
My next assailant, a man of Indian extraction instinctively warded my strike by throwing up his hands and discovered too late how finely I hone my sword, for I sheared both limbs off below the wrists. He sank screaming to his knees as blood fountained from the stumps.
Behind, Dewei cursed and shouted to his followers, who seemed reluctant to close upon me. Thus he ignored Dabir and ducked through the doorway, stabbing at my flank.
I sidestepped, slipping a little on the bloody deck, so that my return strike crossed not through his chest but his lantern, which splintered, spraying hot oil across his shirt, which flared up an instant later.
Dewei dropped the flaming remnant of his lantern to the floor, along with his sword, to beat at his shirt. Dewei did not end his life on fire, for Dabir’s push set the man into my sword edge.
This was enough for the third sailor, for he ran toward the darkness forward, screaming alarm. Tongues of flame, meanwhile, licked eagerly across the deck.
I called out to Ghassan, our first mate, and his eyes flickered feebly.
“What is this?” I asked Dabir.
He answered in disgust. “Sorcery.”
“Why does it always have to be sorcery?” I asked as I stepped to Ghassan. “Isn’t a giant sea serpent enough of a problem?” I cut the line that led to Ghassan’s chest. Blood flowed briefly from the connection and then the line fell away, like a withered vine.
I helped Ghassan to stand.
Dabir, meanwhile, roused the helmsman, though he was even more groggy than the first mate. The cook couldn’t be wakened at all, which meant I had to carry the fat man over one shoulder.
Fast as we moved, the fire moved faster, and that space quickly filled with smoke and crackling red flames. We heard the patter of feet on the decks overhead, and some out in the corridor beyond, and we knew we had no more time, even had it seemed possible to save the wretched souls stretched on tables all around us.
Dabir had stolen glances toward that clanking bronze machine. “Dabir!” I cried. “We’ve got to get to the deck, and our boat!”
“We’ll need water,” he said distractedly, but led us toward a door in the stern.
It was wedged tight until I kicked it thrice. When it yielded before me we saw that we’d arrived at another cabin with yet another clanking machine, fed by a larger glowing sorcerous line, likely funneled from the one attached to the bleeding men. Further, this machine stretched from deck to rafter.
Had we been upon an exploratory outing I’m sure this cabin would have been of great interest, but we were desperate for an exit. Apart from the door I’d just kicked open there was but one egress, a gangway leading up.
I left Ghassan holding the dead weight of the cook, snatched a lantern from Dabir, and ran up the passageway to the hatch.
Praise Allah, the portal was unlocked. I threw it open and found myself in an immense stern cabin. Great windows looked out upon the ocean behind us, where the moonlight cast a wavering silver pillar.
In most ships the stern galley is given over to the captain’s quarters, and here was no exception, for I’d emerged within a nest of feminine luxury, replete with cushions and shelves filled with carven statues and scrolls. Also there were more of those painted silk images hung against the bulkheads.
But none of this held my attention for any time, for my eyes fell full upon the large glass pyramid anchored to the deck in the cabin’s center. Its frame was fashioned with delicately intertwining creatures of the sea, masterwork that would have astonished me had I not been revolted by the contents of the pyramid itself.
It held strange green fluid that only partially managed to obscure an immense pulsating, bulbous, black organ of some kind.
I stared a moment longer than I should have, until I heard footfalls without the cabin. I shouted for Dabir and the others to hurry, then raced to the cabin door and barred it with a wooden crossbeam. Just in time, too, for someone was soon hammering upon the thing with a fist and shouting in Chinese.
Ghassan staggered up from the hatch on his own. Dabir had to push the helmsman, then called up that he could not move the cook even as there were shouts directly behind him.
I still regret that we’d made no better accommodation for that poor fellow. As it was, so swift was the pursuit after Dabir that I had to grab his wrists and pull him to safety as an enraged sailor cut at his leg. I shoved my friend roughly away then flung a handy blue pot upon the snarling face below.
There came a satisfying crash and thump and shouts, but I did not see the extent of the damage for Ghassan wisely slammed down the hatch, securing it with his own weight.
I found Dabir examining the pyramid, his face alight with both interest and horror. The helmsman bent his ear near the cabin door, where Lady Xin was addressing us.
“Harm my work,” she cried, “and I shall flay you all alive! “
“Release us,” Dabir called, “or we will destroy this heart.”
Some determined fellow was banging upon the hatch. An ax blade driven part of the way through the wood a handspan off Ghasson’s foot made him doubt the wisdom of his plan to prevent entry there. He looked to me for guidance.
“Call off your men!” I shouted to the captain. “Or I will break the glass and the heart in a single stroke!”
She called then in Chinese, and the activity below ceased, although I heard them shuffling around down there and wondered if she’d ordered some other mischief.
“The fire will be out shortly,” Laid Xin told us confidently. “We have pumps, and hoses, and while you have caused some damage, you have been merely… inconvenient. I am willing to forgive, so long as you depart my ship immediately.”
“Do you believe her?” Ghassan asked quietly.
Dabir answered him only with a shake of his head. “You underestimated us,” Dabir called to her. “A true sage would act with greater care.”
I shot him a look. Why was he baiting her?
He made a slow winding motion with his right hand, by which I inferred he hoped to stall her.
Her conversational tone sounded forced. “I rarely meet any intellect that approaches my own. Now what is it that you want? I shall give it to you. If you want gold and jewels, these, too, I can set aboard your boat.”
“That sounds most fine,” said Dabir. “How much gold will you give us?”
As I have elsewhere said, Dabir had no head for money, and we were well supported from the caliph’s coffers in any case. Likely he neither knew nor cared about her riches.
“I can fill buckets with jade and rubies,” she said, beginning to sound desperate.
“Do you have any emeralds?” Dabir briefly considered the small emerald ring upon his left hand, a gift from his great love, Sabirah. “I am especially fond of emeralds.”
“I will give you as many emeralds as I possess!”
“Also,” Dabir said slowly, “you must pledge that you shall leave our waters forever.”
“Done!”
“She agrees,” the helmsman said tiredly, “too fast.”
“What is this all for?” I asked Dabir.
“The monster sank no ships but ours,” he spoke out, loud enough for her to hear, “because we attacked it. Lady Xin has been the one sinking the ships, to find blood to keep this… travesty beating. Those poor men below were captured in her raids.”
“It is no travesty,” the sorceress shot back. “It is a work of genius! Can you even fathom the cocktail of chemicals I must use to make the heart beat? The sorcerous secrets I have unlocked?”
“At what
price?” Dabir asked her.
She laughed at him. “What matter the price? The serpent’s heart powers the ship, and me, and all who drink of its essence! That is no ordinary heart, but an engine of immortality!” More quietly, almost conspirationally, she said, “If you wish, “I will permit you and your man a single sip of the elixir I brew from the heart’s fluids.”
“What will that do?” Dabir asked. He thumbed me over towards the galley window. I wasn’t sure what he meant me to observe, but I stepped over.
The ship had slowed, recall. The waters were too deep for an anchor to reach the sea bed, but the sails had been taken up, and the ship but drifted. And now, in the moonlight, I saw a disturbance in the waves closing upon the vessel. I knew then why Dabir had lingered, but it was truly a dangerous game he played.
“It shall lengthen your lifespan twofold!” she cried. “Do you not see?”
“The serpent wasn’t sent after you by another sorceress at all, was it,” Dabir said. “It hunts you because you slew its mate… nay, its child.”
It was my turn to be struck still in surprise.
“It is just a beast!” the woman snarled. “It should never—”
Finally someone on the decks above spotted the serpent nearing, or so I inferred from the panicked Chinese shouting.
“I hope you’ve readied your poison barrel,” Dabir said drolly. “There’s no way you’ll outrun it now.”
And only a few dozen spear lengths out a great serpentine neck soared suddenly from the sea. It was wide around as a pair of teamed horses, and bore a head the size of a whole elephant. I heard the twang of bowstrings. The beast’s roar of defiance rattled our cabin windows.
“Oh, Allah,” the helmsman breathed.
Outside the cabin door was a chaos of voices, and Lady Xin shouting orders. Below the hatch I heard sailors fleeing.
“Should I skewer the heart?” I asked Dabir.
“It comes for the heart,” he said, savagely. “So long as it beats, it will attack.”
“But where are we to go?” Ghassan asked.
Dabir pointed at the sealed cabin door. “Take up any weapon you can find. We’ve little choice but to flee.” He himself carried Dewei’s sword. Both Ghassan and the helmsman lifted elaborate jade dragons that might be used as clubs.
I looked at the three of them, gauging their readiness. Our chances were slim, aye, but it was far better to go down fighting.
I threw open the crossbar and flung wide the door. “God is great!” I shouted, and charged forth.
Lady Xin was no longer directly before the cabin, and the fellow who was saw my onrush and parried. Mine was a strike to numb an arm. I did not break his guard, but I forced him back as the others hurried on across the weather deck for a ship’s boat that Dabir pointed out, stowed along the rail.
Something heavy struck the ship behind us and set everyone sliding. The monster’s roar was so loud I felt it through the deck and suppressed the urge to cover my ears.
The captain screamed commands amid the chaos and was frantically waving two men carrying a barrel after her. They raced up behind her towards the high stern galley.
Other sailors were pulling desperately at ropes to raise the ship’s sails, and the clanking had increased in frequency, almost as though the ship itself were panicked.
I locked swords at the hilt with my opponent, then gut punched him and slammed him in the temple as he sagged. Dabir called for me, for they had reached the boat and were throwing off its tarp.
“Cast it free!” I shouted and dashed up the stairs after Lady Xin.
By Allah, but the beast was angry. Its huge armored head was more lizard than serpent-like, and the spear I’d cast still stood out from beneath one of the heavy ridged eye sockets. Its scales were silvered in the moonlight as it brought its huge skull down upon the rear rail and tore most of it away with a terrific crunch.
The ship rocked, but the two men with the barrel righted themselves very near the top of the flight. Lady Xin, meanwhile, pointed them at the monster. She was fearless, that one.
I remember still how the beast threw back its head and cast away the rail and deck. I wondered if it could see through the gap in the decks to the weirdly beating heart of its dead child.
I thought of my own daughter then, and the anger that had kindled within me raged to a great flame.
I am loath to strike an unarmed man, so I kicked the leg out from under the rear barrel carrier, and he collapsed upon the stairs. I trod over him even as Lady Xin screeched at me, her eyes aglow with hate.
“Madman!” She cried. “What are you doing?!”
I have said before my sword was keen, and if I possessed it still I would beg you to study its length, for it was made of metals men never mastered. The sailor who yet gripped the barrel’s other end gaped as I swung my blade. The wood parted like paper, and the foul smelling powders sprayed forth, along with a flutter of loose feathers from the parts of dead chickens tacked to its surface.
“Asim!” Dabir called to me.
The serpent’s great head loomed even higher and it let out a mournful, angry cry before it swung down, clipping three sailors in half.
I threw myself down the shuddering gangway.
Dabir and Ghassan had pushed the helmsman into the boat and were now using a complicated rig of winches and pulleys to swing it over side. As I ran up, a trio of sailors charged them with swords. That might have been Dabir’s end had not the beast struck the port side with its tail. Two of their attackers tumbled right past them and into the water and the third smashed his head on the side of the boat and fell, stunned. Ghassan was somersaulted onto the boat’s rowing benches, and Dabir somehow held to the boat’s side, though with it slung out from the ship this left him nearly horizontal.
Screams filled the air, though all sounds, even the measured clanks, were drowned by the roar of the angry serpent. I steadied Dabir as the small boat rocked back to port. He moved to fiddle with one of the winches, but we had no time. “Strike the line on three,” I shouted, and on that count he used his sword against the aft rope, and I used mine on the fore.
Ghassan and the helmsman fell within the boat and cursed as it struck the waves far below. Dabir leapt after them to the sea. I sheathed my sword, then vaulted over as well.
In a brief moment I saw I’d jumped too far. There was the boat below, and a spluttering Dabir pulling himself aboard as Ghassan leaned for him. I bethought I would surely crack my bones upon the prow.
Yet the beast lashed the water, and through some erratic motion the boat slid away so that when I struck the water I missed the prow by the length of my nose. In a moment more I was blinking salt water from my eyes. Dabir yelled at Ghassan to row even as he thrust a dripping sleeve into my face and helped drag me aboard.
The sounds of screaming, and the rending of the ship, and the roar of the great beast echoed after us. I wasted no time finding my own way to oars, then set lustily to work.
Lady Xin’s sailors dropped into the water after us, but it is a strange truth that many sailors cannot swim. They made no good speed after us, no matter our waning strength, and we soon out distanced them.
A quarter league out we ceased rowing and watched as the black vessel listed to starboard, then dropped deeper into the waves, prow pointed toward the moon. The clanking continued unabated even as it took on water. Here and there sailors clung to flotsam, but the great serpent snapped all of them up as it circled.
“It will come for us,” the helmsman said.
“It might,” I said. “And with just reason. The wound I gave it may yet slay the beast, and that shames me.”
“Is that why you risked your life to spoil the poison barrel?” Dabir asked.
“Aye.”
He clapped my shoulder. “Allah is merciful,” he reminded me. After a moment he pointed further out to sea, in the direction of the moon. Beyond the sinking prow we perceived a second boat, and a bevy of sailors frantically rowing it. Silhouet
ted upon its stern was a proud, scarlet figure.
The monster spotted the boat at the same moment, and its sinuous course toward Lady Xin’s vessel set little whitecaps rolling towards us.
I had not yet seen so much of the thing upon the surface of the water, and I swear to you that it must have stretched on for the length of five of the caliph’s finest warships. In only a dozen heartbeats it had reached the Lady’s boat.
I shall say one thing for Lady Xin. She did not lack courage. When the serpent reached them and rose with gaping mouth, the men cried out in fear. Yet I heard no woman’s scream.
The monster circled the wreck for perhaps a half hour more, but never did it seek us out, and eventually it submerged. I never looked upon it again, nor heard of its presence south of Basra.
As for us, we four drifted until a few hours after dawn, when we were discovered by a spice merchant bound for the caliphate. He paid both Ghassan and the helmsman a tidy sum for their jade dragons, and plied us with fine foods and luxuries, so much did he love our tale.
He did not believe a word of it, naturally, and I do not blame him.
Monstruo
Mike MacLean
I’m in a Mexican-Irish pub, about to chase my second Tecate with a Jameson shot, when Jorge rushes into the bar. He looks like the devil just gave him an enema.
“Que tal, amigo?” I ask.
No answer from Jorge. Instead, he grabs my whiskey, knocks it back, and slams down the empty shot glass. “Vámonos,” he says. He’s rain-soaked and shivering. “We need to get out of here.”
Diego the bartender and Mickey Lopez glance up from an old soccer match on TV. During Puerto Vallarta’s tourist season, gringos pack the pub to capacity – mostly Americans sick of Mariachis and tacos de pescados. But now, in the rainy season, it’s just the three of us, two locals and me, an American expat.
Jorge is drama prone, so I ignore him and order a fresh Jameson’s. He spits some Spanish too quick for me to follow. Then he swings behind the bar for the remote and changes the TV to Azteca 7’s nightly news.
Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Page 14
