Whom the Gods Hate (Of Gods & Mortals Book 2)

by M. M. Perry

  Gunnarr’s prayer was interrupted by a shout from Nat.

  “Viola! What are you doing?”

  Gunnarr opened his eyes and looked toward the hatch to the lower deck. With it opened water would spill in and sink the ship. Perhaps Viola was simply hastening the inevitable, though he thought, that did not seem like her. His mind puzzled through what she might be doing when another violent shake of the ship tossed her overboard.

  “VIOLA!” Gunnarr shouted.

  He almost lost his grip on the Djinn in his shock. She was gone. Just like that, she was gone. Her passing was surely quick. The tentacles in the water were quite fast. Gunnarr barely had time to grieve when the ship was wrenched again. And again he saw Viola shaken from the ship and heard her splash in the water. He shook his head. How could there be two Viola’s, he wondered.

  “What in Laota’s name?” Gunnarr exclaimed.

  The ship lurched again and this time three bodies fell from the hold. One last shake, two more bodies and suddenly everything stopped. Tentacles slipped from the deck releasing their hold on the boat. As the kraken moved off, the boat creaked in a plaintive way as it settled back into the water, lopsided, but still floating.

  Gunnarr let go of Manfred’s leg and cautiously moved to the edge of the deck. There was only a three foot long stretch of the deck that still had railing. The rest had been torn away. Gunnarr peered into the moonlit water and watched as it swirled and bubbled behind the kraken retreating to the depths. Tentacles whipped gently in the air, almost dancing, as they eventually slipped into the water and disappeared in the darkness below. Gunnarr turned to his surprised crew. Nat was still holding his blade. Sam was bruised about the face quite badly and he was favoring one leg, but he was still alive. Manfred looked no worse for wear.

  Gunnarr walked over to the lower deck. The hatch was still open, a soft light filling the door. Gunnarr stepped down into the hold and saw two straw bodies lying on their side. The straw had been bound tightly with rope, much like small straw dolls would be. Only these were much larger than dolls. Clothing had been used to seal up the straw and a strange odor emanated from the large figures. Something oozy was seeping out from under the bound clothing on one of the straw men. Then Gunnarr saw Viola. She was unconscious, a rope tied from her waist to the main support in the center of the room.

  Gunnarr walked over to her and gently touched her brow. Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled.

  “Did it work?”

  The crippled boat moved slowly through the water. The sail they had rigged up to what was left of the mast was serviceable enough, but the vessel was no longer boat shaped. It was a twisted and crooked wreck that cut through the water as well as a sideways gordonna did. But it was moving in the general direction they wanted to go, so nobody mentioned the slow pace. They were all pleased they had managed to escape the kraken with everyone alive, even without the Djinn’s help.

  They were all sitting on deck taking in the sun. Even at the pace they were setting they had managed to exit the kraken’s territory hours before. They were finally relaxing when Viola woke. She had been resting since the night before. Manfred had given her a thimble of what was in his flask after much protestation by Gunnarr. The little Djinn claimed the liquor had healing properties as well and they would all be smart to take a drink of it after the battering they had received.

  Gunnarr was the only one who refused the liquor. Viola had taken it and passed out. Sam eagerly gulped down the little thimble sized cup and looked as if he was going to ask for more before he dropped to the deck in a snore. Nat took his slowly and only managed to down half the thimble before he was out. And of course, Manfred had his own thimble, even though Gunnarr was hard pressed to find any injury on the little man.

  Gunnarr watched all night over the sleeping crew while fashioning a makeshift sail. When they all awoke, save Viola, he was sitting quietly watching the sea. Nobody said much that morning. They all were waiting for Viola to come around and explain what had happened. When she finally did, Viola was bombarded with questions.

  “Let the girl speak,” Manfred said authoritatively, shocking them all.

  Viola patted her head where she had banged it the night before and noticed the pain had gone. The Djinn hadn’t been lying after all. Even her wrist, which she was sure she had broken while being tossed around in the hold, was just fine.

  “I figured I’d make a backup plan,” Viola said smiling. “Not that I doubt your ability,” she added looking at Gunnarr.

  He smiled at her and crossed his arms.

  “It’s just, a kraken, you know. No one has ever been known to defeat them and very few survive their attacks. I didn’t think there would be any harm thinking up something just in case. Not everything an enchanter is taught has to do solely with magic. Some is simple chemistry. We learn the basic ingredients for a lacquer and magically enhance it when we’ve made it to make it harder than steel. Or we make a simple poison and make it far stronger with our power. Each enchanter has their own style, but to be honest, I think most of that has to do with what we remember from our crafting lessons.”

  Viola stopped for a moment and straightened her tunic. She felt odd being the center of attention all of the sudden.

  “Anyway, I remembered a really sticky substance I used to make. I would increase the volume of what I made using my magic, because carrying around a lot of the ingredients would be impossible. I was just one girl and everything I needed had to fit in my vest pouches. But this ship, its cargo holds a lot of everything. And Gunnarr, you just so happened to have had two barrels of black cactus molasses. I’m sorry if you were hoping to trade it to the Cartan, I used it all up,” Viola said with a sheepish look.

  “I think it should be alright,” Gunnarr said grinning.

  “Well, I don’t know how the Cartan stomach the stuff. It smells awful and the one time I tried it my teeth kept sticking together for hours. In fact, it was because of that experience that I began using it in my trap spells. You add just a little new ant honey and that stuff is impossible to escape. The only problem was once the person or thing was trapped, it took days to get them out. And I stopped using it when someone stumbled into a trap who wasn’t the intended prey,” Viola said guiltily.

  The Djinn chuckled at this.

  “So since you had both ingredients, and enough to make a lot of the sticky stuff, I just made some straw people and coated them in the molasses glue then did the best I could wrapping them in clothes. By the way, we have no other clothes left than what we’re wearing. I kind of had to just wrap them in the clothes because there was no way I was going to be able to pull the clothes on proper over the sticky goop,” Viola once again looked guilty.

  Manfred laughed. He went on for several minutes before he stopped and wiped the tears from his eyes.

  “You filled that kraken’s mouth with taffy,” he said still chuckling.

  “Yes. I hoped it would just scoop up anything that looked remotely human and eat it without thinking too much. I suppose it helped that you enraged it first with your poison. It might have been more cautious otherwise,” Viola said.

  “The beasty will probably be chewing on that for days,” Sam said admirably, “You done pretty good.”

  “Well, hopefully we’ll still be able to get where we’re going on time,” Viola said looking around at the sad shape of the ship.

  “We’re certainly going to try,” Gunnarr said standing.

  As the others chatted genially, Gunnarr walked to the edge of the deck. Pieces of wood stuck out at all angles. The metal lining could be seen through the deck. It buckled and twisted in places. Gunnarr had been with this ship a long time. He had saved for it ever since he was a small boy in Braldashad. Much like most who grew up on Braldashad, he wanted to be out on the water. He never wanted to fish, unlike the few boys he counted among his friends. Rather, he wanted to explore. Gunnarr knew he would be unable to pursue his dreams if he was merely a deckhand on some other captain’s s
hip. So he scrimped and saved late into his teens, saving every penny he earned.

  Gunnarr kicked a loose plank of wood off into the water. The gesture was so similar to the one he performed when he first saw the ship all those years ago that he was struck with an intense feeling of nostalgia. The ship had been for sale for more days than any other on the docks. Barnacles clung all over the hull of the ship. The mast was split in two and most of the deck had been torn up by people scavenging for good treated wood to repair their own ships. The price was high enough most buyers didn’t give it a second look. But Gunnarr could see the strength in the ancient planks that made up the hull of the boat. It was a sturdy old ship that had seen many days at sea. With the proper steel lining it would last many more years to come.

  It had taken several years to restore the ship to a proper state, and much more coin to make it worthy of a warrior who would be required to travel in leviathan infested waters. Gunnarr looked down at the water around him, the waves broke off the bow unevenly, creating a splashy wake. His ship would make its last stop in Gull’s Port. There was no amount of restoration that could salvage what was left of the twisted broken mess. Only the strong enchantments in the metal that lined the hull kept Gunnarr’s ship afloat, and even those would not last much longer.

  They had made good time up until the kraken had attacked. Now they had to make what would take a fully equipped sailing vessel a half a day to travel in a little over twice that time. If they did not make Gull’s Port by the same time the next day, Cass would very likely be lost to them. The Djinn had as much as said so.

  Gunnarr knelt down and touched the broken deck just as a swell of water formed off the bow. Viola hopped up, fear in her eyes.

  “Did it come back so quickly? I was sure it wouldn’t recover for some time,” she said breathlessly.

  Gunnarr only smiled widely as several more swells appeared alongside the boat.

  “Ah,” Sam said as he approached the edge of the deck, “Look fast youngens. A sight you aren’t likely to see again, that is unless you change your profession to fisher folk.”

  Nat and Viola approached the edge of the deck cautiously. The wood was so twisted they had to be careful not to trip over it. Manfred shuffled up to the edge nonchalantly, a pipe he had procured from somewhere poking out his mouth. He looked down into the water and when no one else was looking, smiled peacefully. It had been ages since he’d seen the gigas whales.

  “Gigas,” Gunnarr said. “They rarely surface. Even their youngest only need air once every three days. If they’ve no little ones they stay down for twenty days or more at a time.”

  One of the pale blue creatures spouted a fine mist of salty spray that coated the ship and its occupants. Viola laughed, delighted. In the presence of such creatures Gunnarr found himself smiling, despite his own keen sense of loss and near hopelessness. Slow moving and majestic, even if he had seen them several times before, he always met each viewing as a blessing from the gods.

  Their smooth skin was paler blue than the blue at the highest point of the sky on a sunny day. They looked up at the ship as they swam alongside it. Gunnarr could feel the ship pick up speed as the whales swam beside it.

  “We’re speeding up!” Nat said excitedly. “Are the whales carrying us?”

  “Sala blesses us!” Sam cried out.

  “Sala? But she is the god of wind. Would not these creatures be the blessing of Laota?” Viola asked.

  “Most creatures of the sea are Laota’s. The gigas is one of the rare exceptions,” said Gunnarr.

  He sat with his legs hanging over the edge of his broken ship, watching the whales.

  “Sala complained to her brother one day that there were no creatures who sang in the sea. Laota told his sister that he could not make creatures who sang because singing required wind. Sala asked Laota if she created a creature who could use wind underwater if Laota would bless it with the ability to swim. Laota agreed. Sala dreamt up a fish and it was created. It was a small thing, the color of her favorite part of the sky. Sala knew she’d have to fill it with enough air to sing and breathe, so she began puffing into the creature. But there wasn’t enough room for all the wind it would need to sing, so she had to make it bigger. She kept puffing until she was satisfied. When she showed Laota her creation he cried out, ‘this is bigger than anything I have created. It is even larger than the kraken of the deep!’

  “Sala kissed her brother’s brow and said sweetly, ‘but unlike that creature, dear brother, this one will not be fierce. It will be beautiful and peaceful. It will sing and soothe the worshippers of the water.’”

  “And Laota taught them to swim,” Gunnarr finished having never once looked away from the whales surfacing all around them.Viola watched the huge pod of whales surfacing and spraying their water.

  “They are larger than the Kraken. So why do they fear it?”

  “They have no teeth, no claws. They are gentle creatures. The kraken will eat one, if he can catch one, but they swim fast making them too troublesome a prey for it. Unless they are young. The young are not as agile and fast, and certainly not as big. Leviathan are the only other thing known to attack gigas. Although they are much smaller than kraken, they sometimes hunt in packs during their mating season. They can take one out, but not before separating it from the pod. And it is unusual. Leviathan prefer smaller, easier prey,” Gunnarr said.

  “I wonder,” Nat asked, “how they can submerge filled with enough air to last more than ten days.”

  “If you had any idea what a creature like that weighed,” Manfred said puffing his pipe, “you wouldn’t wonder anymore.”

  Nat turned to Manfred to ask him something else when he noticed it wasn’t smoke coming out of his pipe, but tiny multicolored bubbles.

  “What are you smoking?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Manfred said.

  “Will they take us all the way, do you think?” Viola asked.

  “However far they take us, we’ll consider it a good sign,” Gunnarr said. “Come, let’s eat something and tell stories of the gods. It’s the best way I can think of to thank them for their gift.”

  Chapter 9

  The gigas whales had parted ways with the demolished Braldashadian ship at some point in the night. Gunnarr didn’t know when because he had fallen asleep shortly after sunset. They had helped the group along just enough that they were floating into high traffic shipping lanes by early morning. They managed to flag down a ship and trade their cargo for passage the rest of the way to Gull’s Port. They even ended up trading Manfred’s belongings, which turned out to be comprised of several jugs of fine wine tucked tightly into his trunk. This discovery led to a sour look from Nat who still remembered hauling it onto the boat. Sam fussed that they had been given the short end of the stick as he watched barrels of wine loaded up onto the new ship.

  “Why waste all that good drink. You could just use that fancy seal of the king you have. That’s why he gave it t’ya, isn’t it?”

  “Let’s not make a fuss, okay? If they saw that seal they’d charge three times what they’re already getting. Not to mention they’re already eyeing Manfred and whispering. I don’t want trouble,” Gunnarr said.

  Gunnarr didn’t mind the loss of cargo. The ship they had flagged down would be in Gull’s Port by early afternoon. Manfred was delighted at this news and Gunnarr knew that meant they’d finally find Cass. As the merchant ship pulled away from what was left of Gunnarr’s boat the large man felt the loss acutely. Nat patted the huge man on his back.

  “It saved our lives, that boat. A lessor ship would have succumbed to the kraken,” he said.

  “Aye,” Gunnarr said silently as they sailed away from his wrecked vessel.

  The merchant ship pulled into dock right on schedule and the group rushed to get off. Despite the pleasant time with the gigas whales, they were all extremely grateful to be on dry land again, far, far away from krakens and their ilk.

  Viola looked around the
bustling port town. There weren’t many houses proper, but the place was packed with warehouses and merchants from all over. Arless was the largest continent on Tanavia, covering the world’s south pole. Excluding Xenor it was the most sparsely populated and least explored area of Tanavia. The pole itself was frozen in perpetual winter, but Arless stretched out at some points so far that people could look across the sea and see Centria. The northernmost parts of Arless were quite clement during most of the year.

  Arless had natural resources that could be found nowhere else. When settlers from abroad came to work the land in Arless seeking a temporary economic fix, they found the people far less hospitable than if they were simply coming to trade. The native people of Arless did not take kindly to the idea of foreigners coming to pillage the land from under their feet. However, if visitors had something of worth to the people there, they were received with open arms. Anyone who had learned a trade or was interested in staying in Arless and making it their home was welcome.

  “Driscol is from here, isn’t he?” Viola asked as she looked around.

  “Yeah, he is. Some little city if I remember right. Cass said she didn’t know much about it,” Nat said.

  “Then maybe that’s why she’s here. She doesn’t remember who she is, right? So maybe she’s here to find out,” Viola suggested.

  “How would she know to come here if she doesn’t remember who she is, smarty pants,” Manfred scoffed.

  Viola crossed her arms and glared at him.

  “You’re the all-powerful Djinn, why don’t you tell me. You’re the one that told us to be here by this time.”

  Manfred just smiled enigmatically.

  “Why don’t we have a meal over at that pub? It looks like a good place to eat,” Sam said trying to move them along, “and might give us a good view of the new arrivals to port.”