by Travis Bughi
Emily grimaced and looked away. Lonzo chuckled and put his shirt back down.
“Now, don’t you worry, though,” he continued. “Neither you nor I will be a part of the killing crew. That there is a job for the young and expendable. I expect Damian will be the first to volunteer.”
“Carlito should go, too,” Emily said.
Lonzo’s head snapped to her, and she shut her mouth fast. His sudden focus on her made her worry that she had misspoken. It didn’t help that he paused before speaking.
“Aye, he probably should,” he frowned. “But, there’s no guarantee he will. Immortal or not, he still feels pain, and most men will do just about anything to avoid that kind of thing. That and, if I can be honest with you, I don’t think his immortality would help him much.”
“It wouldn’t?”
“Well, think about it, lass,” he tapped his skull. “Immortals grow their flesh back and their wounds heal up, right? But the damage is done in the first place. So, let’s say his head gets blown off by a cannon ball? Or he gets eaten by a kraken? What’s he gonna grow back, eh? Nothing. Ain’t no coming back from that sort a thing. But even then, let’s say he does volunteer, and the launch tips over, and the leviathan doesn’t eat him? His skin will start to boil off, then his blood will leak out, then the rest of him will start to fall off—”
“Okay, I get it,” Emily cut in. “I don’t need a picture.”
“Ah, but you get what I’m saying, right? Immortality ain’t the prize it’s made out to be. They shouldn’t call it immortal, in my opinion, neither. They ought to call it something like harder to kill or some such.”
“Very poetic,” Emily teased.
Lonzo chuckled and relaxed his stance. Emily’s muscles relaxed, too, which surprised her because she didn’t remember any tension building in the first place. Like every other crewmember, she found Lonzo’s easygoing attitude blended well with his years of experience to create an aura of trust that was in short supply among pirates. Most of the others were easygoing as well, even experienced, but seemed a hair’s breadth away from malice. Lonzo, though, never seemed to wish ill toward anyone.
They remained in silence for a time, each one enjoying the moment and feeling no pressure to alter it. The wind continued to grace their presence, which prevented the sun from becoming an unwelcome guest. Emily did notice its heat was rather fierce, though, and knew this would only intensify the closer they got to Savara: the land of deserts.
She’d never been to Savara, but there had been no shortage of advice for her journey there. Everyone she’d spoken to warned her of the harsh landscape that was nothing but sand, heat, and wind. Water was a precious commodity and caused as many (if not more) wars and fighting than did treasure. Her sources also advised her to find more adequate covering for her body unless she wished to spend several nights in red-hot agony, for in that land, the sun killed just as often as the blade.
Intending to cross the large desert, she took all advice seriously.
“Urh,” Lonzo coughed.
Emily looked at him as her thoughts of Savara drifted into the wind.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something,” he said. “It’s about Carlito.”
Emily’s body went rigid for a moment, and her breath caught. Her lips, however, remained pressed together.
“Look, eh, I heard that you and him, uh, ain’t getting along so well,” Lonzo scratched his neck as he spoke.
“Ha!” Emily balked. “That’s an understatement. He’s about as welcome as a banshee. Do you know what a banshee is?”
“Can’t say that I do—”
“They are spirits on the Great Plains that seek out and kill people. They have no other purpose, and they make terrifying wails as they hunt. However, honestly, at this point, I’d rather be trying to outrun one of them than put up with that bag of dirt, Carlito, for one more day.”
Lonzo nodded and waited a few beats before he spoke up again.
“Well, thank you for the honesty,” he frowned. “Can I at least offer you some advice, love?”
“Please do,” Emily sighed.
“Alright,” he licked his lips, “but just a forewarning, it ain’t the kind of advice you’re going to like. Well, it ain’t even actually advice, really—more like a tip.”
“Either way, I’m listening.”
“Good. So, Carlito is a scummy pirate; ain’t nothing new there. He’s even a bit more scummy than most ‘cause he ain’t old enough for his pride to start fading, nor is he young enough to be shy about his scumminess. And that whole dying thing ain’t really a problem for him neither, but I’m here to tell you that you’re looking at this all wrong, see?
“It ain’t him you got to worry about it. It’s you. Carlito’s gonna be Carlito. He fancies you, and there ain’t much any of us can do about that. Not going to lie, love, but you’re a girl who men are gonna fancy, and being an unhitched lady on a ship of men just makes that more clear. So, knowing that, you got to think about you. What can you do about this? What options you got? Like robbing a ship, lass, you can’t be so focused on the other vessel that you forget what’s in your own hull. Mean, sure, best way to rob a ship would be to kill everyone aboard and take everything in sight, but that ain’t smart thinkin’ like. Sometimes that ship may be bigger than you, stronger than you, and you gotta be smart. You gotta realize that sometimes it’s better to be the rogue rather than the brute. You catch the ship, strand it in the water somehow, and then ransom the thing. You get less loot, sure, but there’s a higher chance of success with a lesser chance of getting a knife in the belly.
“Stop tilting your head to the side, Emily! It ain’t that hard to figure out. Look, all I’m saying is that, perhaps, you should try to be more . . . adaptable. In situations where you can’t just tough it out, try to be a little flexible. It’ll surprise you what opportunities will arise if you’re just willing to compromise. You follow me, love?”
Emily didn’t answer. She pursed her lips while the old pirate crossed his arms and relaxed his posture, showing the relief he felt in having delivered his speech. Emily just mulled the words over in her mind and couldn’t help but feel that Lonzo was being deliberately cryptic. She had half a mind to tell him so, but knowing the pirate, he’d just shrug it off.
In the end, Emily decided that silence was a good enough response as any. Lonzo’s advice had confused her more than anything else, but she would think upon it before demanding further explanation. His delivery reminded her of the method her parents used to give advice: one long explanation assumed to make perfect sense to the ignorant receiver. Emily was used to thinking hard after receiving such words of wisdom, so she did not immediately question what she’d just heard.
Still, how could she compromise any further? She had been nothing but apathetic to Carlito’s rude behavior. Was that not flexible enough? She hoped Mosley had had better luck convincing Carlito to give her space. That seemed the easiest way out of this. She only needed a little more time, and then she’d be gone from this ship for good.
Emily jumped and cried out suddenly when Lonzo jabbed her unprepared ribs with his bony elbow.
“Ah!” she said. “What?”
“Look!” he laughed and pointed.
Emily followed Lonzo’s outstretched finger into the distance and squinted against the bright sun where she saw a dense gathering of fog hovering just above the water’s surface.
“Ah,” Lonzo breathed deeply, “I can smell cooked leviathan meat already. Oh, no, wait—that’s just Damian’s burnt skin.”
Chapter 7
The merman was given a resounding ‘thank you’ before he headed off. As Lonzo predicted, Mosley barely restrained himself from trying to recruit the merman for the hunt, but their guide appeared exhausted from the day’s long travel so the Captain didn’t bother. The slaying of the sea beast would fall to the pirates alone.
And, of course, Damian volunteered first.
Some others were quick
to step up as well. Most of them were younger, but a few were well seasoned and spoke up only because they knew their recruitment was inevitable. Mosley put together a small group that would go aboard the launch. Nearly all of them had slayed at least one leviathan before, and Emily was surprised how commonplace it seemed to them.
To her dissatisfaction, Carlito did not offer his assistance. Also to her dissatisfaction, none of the other pirates seemed disturbed by this. It was as if they held no contempt for his laziness.
After being selected, the group set about gathering hooked spears and jagged harpoons. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew was split up into two tasks: one to get the launch ready to be lowered into the water and the other to prepare the bait. The bait—a collection of old bread, vegetables, and anything else that was at one time edible (apparently leviathans weren’t picky eaters)—was perhaps the most important part as Lonzo explained; it was used to break up the leviathans so a single one could be isolated.
Mosley was guiding The Greedy Barnacle again, and though he yawned once or twice, a few slaps to the face kept his eyes sharp for the task at hand. He set about circling the leviathans as quickly as he could manage, and as he did so, the crew systematically dropped large chunks of food into the water, with each chunk being smaller than the last. In time, this created a loosely organized ring of barrels around the leviathans, and they started to break away from each other.
“The larger bits will draw the eager ones, the younger ones,” Lonzo explained from the railing. “Also, they will draw the most. After the frenzy for that bit is over, they’ll start making their way around the circle, eating and fighting as they go. However, as dumb as leviathans are, a few of them got a bit more brains than the others, especially the older, bigger ones. They’ll try to head the group off and go for some of the last bits we drop. When that happens, that is to say when we finally get one alone following us, the Captain will make a hard turn away, and we’ll drop more food, which will draw that one out further until it’s completely separated. We drop a bit more food to keep her there, along with the launch, and then the real fun begins.”
Emily’s ears listened while her eyes searched the water. She could not see anything yet—the leviathans were nearly impossible to see through the steam they produced—but she waited patiently and tried not to blink. As Mosley circled, the low cloud of fog began to stretch out towards the food and then break off into smaller chunks. The leviathans were headed off in different directions, each one attempting to get to a bit of food before the others. When this happened, the heat from their collective bodies began to dissipate, the steam began to fade away, and Emily finally caught a glimpse of them through the churning water.
She immediately saw something that Lonzo had failed to mention. Leviathans were colorful.
Emily saw glorious shimmers of white, yellow, red, black, and blue. Some were a bright shade of a single color, while others were a beautiful patchwork of as many as three, arranged in everything from stripes to blotches to slabs up and down all parts of their large bodies. One had clear white skin with patches of black on its back that looked like stains. Another had a red belly and a blue top that faded into each other in speckles along its sides. Another was bright yellow with one huge red mark on top of its head like it had rammed something too hard. Emily noticed her mouth was agape.
“Wow,” she said. “They’re beautiful.”
“Hm,” Lonzo agreed, “and tasty.”
Suddenly, Mosley jerked the ship hard to starboard, sailing away from the leviathans. Emily stumbled as she was thrust up against the railing. She scanned the ocean for the lone leviathan that was foretold to be following them. In this, she was immediately successful. Her target was white with bright blue and red patches that would have been difficult to hide even in a moonless night.
The leviathan that chose to follow them was big, probably half the size of The Greedy Barnacle. It was slower than some of the others she’d seen, too, but eagerly swam towards that last pile of rubbish the pirates had dumped overboard. As it reached the food, it opened a massive mouth lined with small, sharp teeth and swallowed the contents whole. It didn’t even attempt to chew, and Emily thought that for having such a large mouth the leviathan sure did have tiny teeth.
The next chunk of discarded food crashed into the water, and the leviathan swam up to it with no more than a few kicks of its tail, swirling the ocean water behind it into a whirlpool. Emily felt her heart skip at the speed the creature could attain.
“Wow, it’s quick,” she said.
“Aye, that’s why we never go for the young ones,” Lonzo replied, “but leviathans are actually more about bursts of speed. They can’t hold a decent pace for long. You’ll see.”
Mosley drove the ship onwards. Being the experienced sailor he was, he had circled the leviathans in such a manner and with such accuracy that when one broke off the wind would be at his back. Those very winds were now driving The Greedy Barnacle through the waves with ease, and with the food dropping off the back, the leviathan followed eagerly.
Emily also noted that the leviathan was eating the food so quickly that the rest of the leviathans failed to notice the ship, and The Greedy Barnacle continued to lure the lone leviathan further and further out to sea until the others were nothing more than distant shimmers under the waves.
“Alright, lads!” the Captain yelled. “Let’s skewer us some meat, eh?”
The pirates cheered, and Mosley jerked the ship’s wheel once more, bringing the vessel to a lethargic stop. Immediately following, the pirates adjusted the sails to hold the ship, lowered the launch filled with men, and dumped the last bit of rotten food into the ocean. The leviathan propelled towards it as the oars of the launch bit into the water.
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” Lonzo spoke up, his eyes never peeling away from the launch. “Leviathan scales are tough and can even repel a good spear that strikes head on. The trick is to catch it turning and ram it in between its plates.”
The lone leviathan was circling now, gobbling down the food without a care in the world. It didn’t even seem to notice that the rest of its kin were forming up again and moving along without it.
“How can they possibly kill it with those spears?” Emily asked. “It’s so big. Surely it will survive a few stabs.”
“Aye, it’ll survive the initial blows,” he replied, “but do you see the spears? They got barbs and hooks on them that’ll rip some nasty wounds in it. The aim isn’t to kill it with a good blow, but to rip the beast open.”
“What will that do?” Emily asked.
“Make it bleed out,” Lonzo answered.
Emily swallowed, noticing as she did so that her throat had gone dry. In front of her, just beyond the reach of the ship, the leviathan was basking in the water, turning this way and that to catch every bit before it floated away. Meanwhile, the launch was slowly creeping its way forward. The men on the tiny boat were standing at the ready with weapons in hand.
They looked tense, and Emily couldn’t blame them—all except Damian, who was perched at the front of the boat and held his spear like a javelin.
The entire ship was quiet now. Every pirate who hadn’t joined the killing crew was leaning against the railings, though Mosley remained at the ship’s wheel, his hands gripping and releasing the pegs in a rhythmic manner. Emily looked down the railing and saw many of the pirates fussing as well. Some pulled out small items that they believed gave them luck, others chewed on substances of their choice, while the rest fidgeted with or tapped either their weapons or their clothing. Lonzo alone remained absolutely motionless. Emily noticed her breathing had slowed, and at some point, her hand had clutched her knife’s handle.
She took a deep breath and let it out. Her hand relaxed.
The launch closed on the massive creature. The leviathan continued to bend and twist, opening its large mouth to swallow whole the tasty morsels all around. It’s brightly colored skin reflected the sunlight as it broke the surfac
e, skimming along the top to devour everything in sight. The water around it fizzled with the heat the leviathan generated. All the while, it never once seemed even remotely disturbed by the tiny boat moving right alongside it.
“Now,” Lonzo whispered.
The leviathan turned away from the launch, and it was as if the men onboard could hear him. With a sudden yell, they all thrust their spears towards the leviathan’s lifted scales. About half of the spears were deflected, but the other half stuck and were shoved deep inside.
The leviathan let out a deep, throaty wail and jerked away, its sudden movement churning the water and causing the launch to rock violently. The beast’s scales, pulled apart when it turned outward, came together again as it bent the other way and snapped off the wooden shafts, leaving their jagged metal tips embedded deep inside. The tortured thing began to thrash wildly in the water.
“That’s it!” Lonzo cried out. “That’s it!”
The other pirates began to cheer as the leviathan thrashed, sending great heaves of ocean water about. Some of those waves washed over the launch, and the men there cried out as they were soaked in boiling water. Lonzo winced, as did a few others, but the men on the launch didn’t seem to be too badly hurt. The leviathan, however, was bleeding profusely.
One of the spears had hit something vital just behind the left fin. Red, boiling blood was oozing out into the ocean, even spraying occasionally as the leviathan continued to thrash. The men on the launch covered their exposed skin with their clothing and ducked quickly, while those men at the oars pulled with all their might to gain some distance. It was none too soon as the leviathan raised its tail up into the air and then slammed it down with incredible force.
Then it stopped. The leviathan went perfectly still, almost as if dead, and Emily put a hand over her mouth. Part of her wanted to look away, but for some reason she could not. Her eyes remained focused on the scene at hand.
“Finish it!” Carlito called out.
The other pirates began to call out similar things, and the men on the launch looked back at them with sour faces before returning to their grim work. The blood seeping out into the ocean sizzled and hissed, like a hot pan dipped into cold water. The pirates on the launch cringed as they took up more spears, and the men on the oars heaved a heavy sigh before sending the launch forward.
