Dead Bait 2

by Steve Alten

  “Nay,” the man replied. “And I’m sorry to take you as I did, but no other would come out with me. I tried to hire a hand, but all were either already employed or on their own to take the bounty.” As the man spoke, he continued to pull on the huge, oak oars. His arms were like corded iron, bare and tanned; his hands were callused, but whether from oars or from some other honest work Hoggman could not say. At his feet was a large bundle tied in tough green canvas from which emanated an unearthly awful stench.

  Aboard the boat where he could plainly see were six good harpoons and lengths of cord. There were also hooks of iron, perfect for snagging something as large and as awful as a krang was supposed to be.

  “As things look, I’m lucky I did hire no one else. I’ve never met a man who had successfully killed a krang. Nor even seen one!” His eyes went wide at that and Hoggman was suddenly afraid, as if he were in the presence of madness. The promise of gold could do that to a man.

  And the bounty the princes of Mangrove were offering for the krang was great. That much gold could indeed inspire a man with madness. Weren’t the docks already filled with people crazed to earn the money? Hoggman groaned and leaned over the side, vomiting yet again. Maybe he could just slide overboard and swim back to shore. One arm he had, but he could swim just fine with it, krang or none. Lifting his head, he peered out and saw nothing but water stretching away to every horizon in which he looked. Lake Dorr was a vast place, he’d heard, but had never realized it until then, for he’d never actually been out on it.

  “We’re two miles out,” the man said. “I can tell you were thinking of jumping. Don’t.” He nodded toward the harpoons. Then he nodded toward the scabbard secured to the oarlocks to his right. The sword was the real deal, high quality steel Hoggman could tell from the bit that glinted between the hilt and scabbard. “I’m not by nature a fisherman, but I’m in need of real money and… well… how much do I need to know with you on my side?” He smiled and the grin seemed genuine.

  “I’m sick,” Hoggman said. Perhaps he could talk him into heading back to shore.

  “Don’t worry,” the warrior said. “I’ll give you a fair share of the bounty. My boat, my harpoons, my line. But I’ll cut you in. You just do your part and help me take the creature,” and he continued to smile, his teeth all white and good and in their places.

  The man was young and strong and either very stupid or very naïve. Hoggman wasn’t sure which. But he had to either ride this out or talk his way back to shore. He did not belong out on these waters. He lay back and wiped his mouth, trying to figure a scheme that would work. “What is your name?” He asked. If he could break the ice he could talk his way out of the trouble.

  “Danilov,” the youth told him. “I’m a mercenary from the outlands, not far from the northern borders. But there’s no one to fight these days. Mangrove’s kings have crushed so many enemies that everyone’s afraid of them. So.” He looked down the length of the boat at Hoggman. “My family needs money and until I can take up my job as a free soldier again I have to find something else. This bounty. I’ll kill the krang and... well, hell… it’s enough to retire. I could grow old on that much gold!”

  Rising, Hoggman tried to find his legs. The boat rolled and he rolled with it and almost fell. “There are five hundred… no, a thousand others trying to find the krang,” he blurted. “We don’t have a chance in Hell of finding that creature.”

  But the soldier smiled again. “My mother did not raise a fool,” he insisted, pulling at those oars, taking the craft farther and farther into the huge lake. The wind was mild on them, the sun bright, the temperature even. It was as if they were out for a pleasant jaunt over the rolling waves of the lake. “I learned what it is that krang most desire. With the bait that I have brought, they cannot resist.”

  And then Hoggman once again eyed the canvas bundle at Danilov’s feet. “But you should already know this. For you yourself have killed and caught a mighty krang!” That goddamned smile. Hoggman wondered about his odds of just picking up something and bludgeoning the fool and being done with it.

  But then he watched the bunching and flexing of those amazing arms, saw the quick twitch of the youth’s every move, and he knew that if he made the wrong choice his life was no good. He would just have to wait it out. That was all there was to it. How bad could it be? How long could they go?

  After a while, Danilov stopped rowing. He stored the oars and stood on the platform aft and peered out into the lake.

  “Good,” he said, barely above a whisper. “We’re alone.” Indeed, there were no sails visible at all. There were no other boats anywhere—it was as if they had the lake to themselves. Danilov looked back toward Hoggman who was sitting in the lip of the small cabin, having stolen a glance now and then inside to note that the space there held casks of water and of wine and hard tack and dried beef. There was even a bed in there.

  “We troll now,” the soldier said.

  “What?” Hoggman asked.

  “We troll the lake. I have it on good authority that the krang will not be able to resist. It will be ours.” The dark-headed man, his locks hanging down past his own shoulders spread those godlike arms. “And then the bounty will be ours! Yes?”

  “Yes,” Hoggman agreed. “Just as you say.”

  “Time to bait the hooks,” the youth said. At that, he bent and began to untie the canvas bundle on the narrow deck. The beggar watched as the other man worked at the tight twine holding the baggage closed. As the fabric loosened, the stench from the canvas increased and became more sickening until, finally, the contents were visible. Inside the bag were parts of a person. And not just a person, but…

  “They’re so small,” Hoggman croaked.

  Danilov’s eyes speared his shipmate. “I came by them honestly,” he said. “I am not a killer of children,” he insisted.

  And yet again Hoggman went to the side of the boat so that he could vomit.

  “You are a strange man for one who has killed the krang,” the mercenary stated. “Now, help me bait the hooks.”

  ***

  All the day they fished the waters. Danilov had four hooks in the waters of Lake Dorr, each baited with the bits and pieces of the corpse of the child. Hoggman was afraid to ask him how he’d acquired those small limbs, and was only glad that all he had to do was sling the hooks overboard, tossing the awful hooks and their baits away from him.

  The sun climbed into the sky. Hoggman learned all about how Danilov had hired his sword arm out to a dozen different dukedoms around the northern fringes of the nation of Mangrove. Unlike his own stories, these rang true, and as he listened to them he realized that he would be not just a fool to try to overpower the man, but also a dead fool. Between hearing tales of how the youth had hacked this man to bits or that soldier in half, Hoggman lied as best he could whenever Danilov asked him what they would go about the deed when it came time to do in the krang.

  For his part, Hoggman could only hope that he’d been fed a line of bullocks concerning the attraction of krangs to the rotting bits of dead children.

  “I was wondering,” Danilov finally asked him, after they’d shared a biscuit and some water. “What exactly does a krang look like?”

  Hoggman cleared his throat. He’d never seen one of those books the priests kept with pictures of them. And he’d never spoken to anyone who admitted to having seen one. The existence of the krang was just one of those things one accepted as true. After all, the princes themselves were so worried about them that they’d put up a ransom in reward for its capture and death.

  “They’re huge,” Hoggman began. “Thirty feet from nose to tail. And armored like a rhino,” he said. When Danilov nodded, he knew that he didn’t have to elaborate on what a rhino was. “They have a mouth wide enough to bite a man in half. Or swallow him whole. And a row of teeth down each jaw like butcher knives. But white, like bone!”

  “What color are they?” The soldier continued to pull at the oars, the lines and hooks
trailing behind the boat.

  “Well… they’re like a fish,” he said. “Green above and white on the belly. But with spots. Red spots.”

  He could tell that Danilov was going to ask him about the spots when suddenly one of the lines went taut. Then the boat actually turned in the direction of the line and began to list.

  “I knew it,” Danilov exclaimed. “The old witch never has steered me wrong!”

  I’ll be damned, Hoggman was thinking. His eyes bugged as the roped went suddenly deep and the boat tilted down, as if it might capsize. But before that could happen, the cord suddenly went slack and the boat righted itself.

  “Damn,” the soldier said. He began to reel in the line until the end came into his hands. The bait was gone, but the end of the thick iron hook was still on the cord; it had been bitten clean through, good iron though it was.

  As Hoggman was sighing in relief that the hook had saved them, the boat was jerked from the other side, another line having been taken.

  “Grab a harpoon,” Danilov ordered his mate. “We’ll gaff him when he comes to the surface.” For that was precisely what Hoggman had told him one had to do when the krang was brought to heel.

  As the beggar grabbed up the weapon the tension on the new line went slack just as the previous one. And when the soldier reeled it in the hook was, like the other, bitten right through, as if it had been a bit of bread given to a diner in a tavern.

  “We have two more hooks,” the soldier told Hoggman. “We’ll get him. If he takes the hook right he won’t be able to slip it! We’ll pull him in and nail him with our harpoons!” No sooner had these words left his mouth than the third hook was taken. Apparently the flesh of children was totally irresistible to whatever was beneath these waves.

  This time, the tension in the line did not give and as Danilov pulled on the cord the beast below pulled back and the boat began to ride, the pair finding themselves careening through the low waves, spray flying, “This time,” the soldier said.

  But, as suddenly as it had begun, the sleigh ride ended. The boat settled down in the sea and they stared at the cord as Danilov pulled it in, still with the hook, but absent of the bait. “It took the others,” he said, hope on his young face. “It must certainly take the remaining bait. Yes?”

  Hoggman nodded, hoping he was wrong. “Yes. It certainly must.”

  But they waited. Nothing happened. No tension came on that last line and it did not move at all as the time slipped past them, the sun crawling across the sky to mark the day. “Maybe it fled,” Hoggman told the other man, his eyes flicking back in the direction where he thought the shore might be.

  “Oh, no,” Danilov suddenly blurted. “What if…” And then he ran to that last baited line and began to pull it aboard, coiling the rope at his feet as he dragged at it. Finally, when he had it on the deck it was revealed as just the empty iron. He could see where the teeth had scraped along the metal, leaving the hook but having taken the bait.

  The huge youth sat down on the deck and stared with great disappointment at the empty hook. His eyes swept out on the vast lake. Hoggman’s own gaze followed that of the man who’d kidnapped him and there, no more than forty feet off the bow the krang came to the surface and rolled on its side, showing them one great eye that stared at them as if in challenge.

  In fact, the krang looked nothing like Hoggman had described. It was not green with spots, but solid red, the color of arterial blood that Danilov had often seen gushing from men he’d cut down in battle. And its snout was nothing like that of a fish, but more like the bears he’d seen in the cold hills beyond the northern borders. And it had whiskers, not scales. It wasn’t anything like the monster that Hoggman had delineated.

  “I’m out of bait,” Danilov said.

  Hoggman cringed, realizing that the other’s eyes were on him and not on the spot where the great krang had just slipped below the water. “We can go back,” Hoggman said. “You can get more… more of that bait.”

  “No,” the soldier said. “I never go back. I only go forward. That’s the most important lesson of all. Only go forward.” He said this as he reached down and plucked his sword from its spot along the oarlock. And just as Hoggman had suspected, it was revealed as most excellent steel when the mercenary drew it slowly out of its scabbard. “I see what I need and what I need is bait.” His sword flashed in a precise arc and Hoggman saw that, indeed, he’d have been stupid to have challenged the youth.

  ***

  These days one can see the man when he comes down to the docks to enjoy the inns where the beer flows, where he can tell his stories. Some say that he was once a beggar but now dresses in fine clothes and lives in a stout house in a fine part of Mangrove itself.

  Sometimes, when he’s in a good spirit, he will tell how he came by the cash that made him comfortable, if not rich. “I killed a krang,” he’ll say, sometimes even mentioning the glorious youth who had actually fought the animal and struck in the mortal blow. Then he’ll tell how they’re not really fish, but more like seals or whales, but vicious and foul and quick. He’ll tell how they love to eat the flesh of children and how they can wipe out all of the fish in any place, even in an inland sea like Lake Dorr.

  And often, when people hear his tale or laugh at his jokes, even though he is a rich man of means, they will buy him wine or mead and cheer him on as he speaks. Some will do this because he’s just good old Hoggman who is full of piss and vinegar.

  But some buy him a cup because he has but one arm.

  The End