Crimson

by Warren Fahy

  The decks heaved over another set of swells, from the south this time, which smacked the starboard broadside. The heavy seas worked against the thrashing dragon, too, however, as it strained to intercept them. Only a compass point off their port bow, it climbed the waves a mile distant like a wind-up toy, its long arms pointed high before it. Its chilling sound reached them over the waves like a jungle of crickets.

  Nil fixed their course just north of the island ahead. He bluffed the dragon by conning the Sea Mare three points to the north in the troughs, which made the sea monster adjust its path four points west to close the gap sooner. Then Nil took the Sea Mare back two points to the south on the swell. In this way, he teased the monster closer, betting fully on the Sea Mare’s speed.

  All watched, unnerved by the chase as the whistling beast came within a few hundred yards, pushing over the water four points off the port bow.

  “Hold your fire,” Lince said calmly to those fingering catapults and crossbows. The Creature curled around his leg.

  The crystal monster shrieked like a thousand teapots as it crossed a swell to port bow and cast luminous lights and shadows on the decks. Its dozens of shimmering legs worked a froth as great crystal arms clawed the sky with pincers reaching for her rigging.

  But the Sea Mare passed by the grasping monster even as its arms came down and crashed into her wake.

  The beast turned, churning its legs in pursuit of them and the men got a good look from the aftercastle. Its forest of crystalline legs and appendages churned like a machine as it tore across the sea behind them.

  “Too fast for it!” Karlok shouted.

  “Maybe,” Nil said, craning his neck for a look around the mainmast.

  “Fire at will!” Lince yelled.

  The men on the aftercastle fired a round of firebombs lit with rag fuses. Two of the clay vessels shattered and spilled fire on its ice-like arms, which plunged into the sea behind them. As the monster fell further into the Sea Mare’s wake it seemed unable or unwilling to continue.

  “That did it!” Nil said, raising a fist.

  Karlok hooted from the bridge and threw his hat to the wind.

  The men cheered.

  The beast turned and rolled its hind oars, propelling itself away from them with fierce haste.

  Only now did the statue of Trevin blaze brightly above.

  The crew looked skyward in confusion.

  As they mounted the next swell, three great orange fingers reached out of the sea and the Sea Mare groaned. They were thrown forward across the decks as an orange hand squeezed the ship’s timbers.

  Chapter 23

  Caught!

  The Sea Mare yawed to port, and the men slid across her decks as the Gyre closed more fingers around her.

  “Fire at will!” Lince cried.

  “Second watch, clew the mainsail two-thirds! Third watch, clew the lateen! First watch, drop the forward jib,” Nil shouted.

  The men sprang up the shrouds and spread across the yard to clew the straining mainsail that threatened to capsize them. The first watch hauled down one of the billowing jibs as men fired a harpoon into the arm closing over the starboard fo’c’sle.

  The Sea Mare’s hull moaned as all regained their feet and took their posts. Archers let fly at the milky tube-feet ringed with purple lips that writhed and rippled the underside of the Gyre’s orange arms. Thousands of these cupped feet had already latched onto the Sea Mare’s hull as the arms tried to crack her open like a nautilus shell. But the Gyre could not get a clean grip with the spikes along her keel. They heard a grinding sound below as the beast began gnawing at the copper spikes.

  Atop the Gyre’s arms, turquoise eyes ringed in gold waved on purple stalks, staring hungrily at the scrambling men. Senthellzia and her archers fired arrows into the arms curling over the starboard foredeck, the port main, and the starboard aftercastle.

  Lince ran at the arm closing on the mainmast’s shrouds on the port main deck. “Fire at its underside, you there on the poop deck!” he shouted, and he plunged his short sword through the chainplates into the writhing arm of the beast. The blade sank to the hilt, sending the arm reeling back and pulling the sword out of Lince’s hands. “Damn, you spotty creep!” Lince spat at it, for it was his father’s weapon.

  The arm quaked as if enraged, and just as Lince feared it would lash out, Rawley pogoed across the deck and made a nifty throw, striking the tender underside of the arm with a lit firebomb. The clay pot shattered into dripping flames over the grasping tube-feet, and the arm reared back and curled under the sea.

  “Lob a net to port, boys,” Lince said. “And when that arm rises let a millstone go!”

  The harpoon drew the net high, just missing the rising eyes. The black net draped over the arm and Bat swung down his mallet to knock out the chocks. With a grinding drumbeat, the millstone rippled the deck planks and plunged over the side, glancing off the Gyre and pulling the net taut.

  “Send another starboard!” Nil shouted. He gave the helm to Karlok and slid down the ladder.

  The men on the aftercastle fired another net over the Gyre’s arm there. The purple stalks at the end of the twisting arm waved frantically as the arm dodged Senthellzia’s arrows.

  Swathed in nets, the three orange fingers around the ship twisted sideways to protect themselves from arrows, firebombs, harpoons, and sword-strokes. The orange hide of the beast, studded yellow and crimson, was so hard that arrows and even harpoons glanced off its surface. Meanwhile, the Gyre chewed at the copper spikes on the keel, moving sternward as it had done with spiny nautilus many times before.

  “Keep the arms from closing!” Nil shouted. “Fire another net to port and let another millstone go! Each watch, send three men alow to jab the arms through the scuttles! We’ve got to be a cactus, men. Keep the bloody thing from giving us hug.”

  “Fire, you mudsuckers!” Lince cried, and the men shot another net portside over the Gyre’s arm. Bat swung the mallet and sent another millstone overboard.

  The men had clewed the sails and the decks no longer listed to one side, though they rode dangerously low in the water as waves licked over the waist onto the mid-deck.

  Nil gripped the port rail where the grisly arm struggled with two weights pulling it back. Under the sea he saw two more arms that seemed to be kicking—pushing them south. “Fire another net over the port side!” Nil cried.

  The men complied, and the weight of three millstones finally immobilized the Gyre’s arm, which sank back from the Sea Mare.

  The two arms remaining above water closed with a vengeance at the starboard fore and aftercastle.

  Teams were ready with bows and swords in hand, raining arrows into the undersides and hacking and stabbing the undulating tube-feet. So furious was their assault it proved unbearable to the Gyre and the arm at the prow retreated, even as the arm at the stern came down. Three men tasted its wrath as it dashed two across the deck and the other into the sea, mortally wounded.

  Queto, of the third watch, jumped on the starboard rail of the aftercastle, waving his sword under the arm as it once again curled down. He whipped his blade through the Gyre’s flesh, shredding the grasping tubes. The arm reeled and twisted, but Queto’s blows were relentless. When the trembling limb drew back, pointing skyward, Queto turned to the others, and they cheered his deed.

  But the Gyre’s arm came down with frightening speed, crashing through the rail and driving Queto through the deck. When the Gyre’s arm rose, Queto was stuck to it, bloody and screaming as needles inside the arm’s tube-feet pumped venom into his back. The arm retreated with the mangled sailor and passed his body along its tube-feet under the waves to its maw to the crew’s horror.

  When the arm rose from the sea, Senthellzia’s falcon dove talons-first onto its eyes, even as it twisted its hard back toward the men to fend off their arrows. Harm tore its eyes off one by one and pierced others with his beak as a few white tubes stretched up at it, but the bird hopped and hovered, avoiding
them.

  The arm surged blindly at the damaged aftercastle, but Bultin charged at it like a steer and he gored the mighty arm with his crystal sword. The Gyre drew back and rippled with pain, sending shudders through the ship as it shifted its whole body further astern.

  The two arms that had been kicking to push them south now rose, one by the mid-deck and the other by the port aftercastle. Then the livid fist closed.

  Inside a fragment of the Cronus Star, as though seen dimly through windows and mirrors, a reflection of the crew fighting on the decks of the Sea Mare appeared.

  As Trevin peered through his spyglass into the diamond, it seemed he saw through the eyes of his own statue atop the Sea Mare’s mainmast.

  With unwavering purpose the Ameulintians confronted the horror of his own making, and with death breathing all around them they worked with discipline, ingenuity and heartbreaking bravery to launch their counterattack against his guardian with their meager means. Each lunge of the starfish made him shiver in self-loathing, and yet each effort of these men to win the day warmed his heart with unexpected awe and gratitude. Though their mortal lives were short and precious, they risked them mightily to save their king and kingdom. With doom surrounding them, they met it head on and fought with all their might and minds against it.

  As he watched them their every act of defiance revealed something he had never imagined. “Get out more nets!” he found himself crying. “Beat it back off the stern!” His lonely exhortations echoed in his chamber as he peered through the tiny diamond window.

  “Get a grip!” Drewgor sat on a block of stone above the viewing pool, scowling as he watched. “Why doesn’t he just crush her hull and be done with it? What is he waiting for?”

  The King’s advisors sat with him around the pool watching with hidden hope as the mortals of the Sea Mare confounded their master’s dire boasts.

  “This is one of my fiercest recruits, Theosophiclar,” Drewgor said, with Trevin’s voice.

  “Eh, lord?” Theosophiclar replied, puzzled.

  “At first, the young fool had no control over what passed from Wynder through his diamond. He did not even know that Wynder existed! So I let through the stone a demon even you foolish Wyndernes must remember: Deevex.”

  His counselers, even though they had heard terrible legends about Deevex, showed no sign of it. For they sensed now that this Trevin was not their King.

  “Have you not heard of Deevex?” he responded, enraged.

  For a moment, Theosophiclar noticed a different shape, crimson and hot, emanating from the impostor. “I’m sure we shall see his power soon, lord.”

  “There he goes!” Drewgor said, pointing at the pool. “Watch closely now, Wyndernes. See how unwise it is to put your faith in mortals. See how easily their lives are whisked away.”

  Some yawned, feigning boredom, and silently cheered the Sea Mare’s crew.

  The sailors fired a net port over the newly-risen arm there and let another millstone over the side. They shot a net starboard that tangled both the arm amidships and the arm astern. Another millstone rolled over the starboard side. The Gyre’s eyes popped through the netting on the tips of both arms, glaring at the men, but Harm swooped down and clawed them.

  Archers fired into the fingers of the great hand. But they had all twisted to show their tough orange back to the arrows as the Gyre learned.

  Senthellzia took advantage of the tiniest openings to plunge arrow after arrow into the beast’s soft underside, knowing they forced the Gyre to break the shafts off before it could fix its suckers to the hull. Senthellzia and some of her marksmen even managed to pierce some of the beast’s eyes.

  On the castles, the men hurled firebombs at the scarred arms and sent them curling back under the sea to douse the flames each time. The arm off the fo’c’sle that received the blow of Bultin’s sword trembled, still pointing at the sky ten yards from her bow ever since the Bultin ran it through.

  “Report to the starboard aftercastle, Mister Bultin, and wreak some havoc with that weapon!” shouted Nil.

  Bultin charged down the deck, dodging the last millstone as it rolled over the starboard side, and he held his crystal blade high. The sailor ran up the ladderway toward the arm that rushed at the ship. He leaped into the air as the arm bent down and his sword flashed as he clove off its tip with one lunge. It landed on the deck with eyes and feet still moving. The Gyre was shocked by the grievous stroke as gouts of blue and yellow blood poured from its arm.

  All of its arms retreated from the Sea Mare and pointed straight up around her, turning their backs to the ship. Quaking in agony—battered, burned, pierced, blinded and swathed in nets that weighed it down—the Gyre still grasped the ship below the waterline.

  Leaping down the ladderway to the mid-deck, Nil reached the open sea doors before his cabin. He knew that gyres followed the same behavior every time when presented with the spikes of the spiny nautilus. They would methodically try to eliminate the spikes without success until reaching one they could chew more easily in their maw to gain a purchase on the creature’s shell and crush it. This longest spike of the spiny nautilus, while easiest to chew, concealed a surprise.

  Rept threw a fire-bomb at the arm off the starboard fo’c’sle, setting it on fire. But instead of submerging, the burning arm rammed the Sea Mare’s prow, smashing the ship’s rail and splintering her deck. The horse’s head snapped from its place under the bowsprit and bounced off the beast’s back onto the foredeck. It tumbled and slid to the edge of the sea door across from Nil.

  Rept straddled the bowsprit as the rampaging arm plunged into the sea and emerged beneath him, and he gashed the monster with his blade as it surged up and knocked the sword from his hand. Rept turned as Skillah threw him another sword, but Rept overreached and lost his balance. He slid from the top of the bowsprit and hung upside down as the arm paused, its last few eyes probing. It rammed into him and Rept screamed as the bowsprit bent up and ruptured, roaring into the sky.

  Clutching the shattered spar, Rept soared through the air, his body broken. The mainmast moaned, its forestays loosed, and the inner jib floated up and tangled on the mainyard. Rept struck the deck, crushed under the shattered spar, staring at Nil as blood welled in his mouth.

  Bultin ran and swung his glimmering sword at the furious arm and with one blow opened a great gash in its hard hide.

  The arm retreated as all five fingers of the Gyre pointed skyward skyward again, streaming wakes beside the Sea Mare. They all untwisted and showed their underside to the men, fearlessly.

  Nil leaped down the ladder into the hold as the monster’s fingers converged. The men fired arrows and firebombs, but the arms were not slowed down this time and slammed into the groaning ship; only the arm with three millstones weighing it down could not close now. The arm by the starboard main deck, however, weighted with two millstones, slung them against the ship and all heard the sickening crunch and croaking gasp.

  The horizon rose around the Sea Mare as the breach filled the hold. Nil saw water well up over the Green Deck through the sea doors. “Heel her port!” he cried and he dove into the cold water.

  Nil recalled Lince’s advice about never wearing boots as he tried to kick forward. He saw two gaping holes in the starboard side as the ship canted port, and he knew the men had dropped the clews and were using the sails to roll the breaches above the waterline. He heard the masts groaning with their forestays cut.

  There was a pocket of air against the overhead in the hold and he surfaced to gasp a breath. He heard the crew cranking the fore and aft bailing lines that poured processions of buckets overboard. He looked along the dark hold as a wave of debris rolled toward him. Kicking aftward, Nil sucked in a breath and dove under the wave.

  The ship was down by the stern, and he knew the water reached the overhead now, but he kicked harder. A millstone cracked beside him, even lower on the starboard hull, and he felt the sea rushing in. He saw the harpoon ahead, but a bolt of canvas wrapped
around him and he turned upside down, trying to kick it off.

  He spun, his lungs bursting and mind dizzying, but lunged forward, reaching out to grasp the coiled spring of the harpoon.

  He pulled himself in to look through the eyepiece that pierced the shaft.

  He saw purple-rimmed tube-feet marching past the harpoon’s bronze point, thinking they were strangely beautiful as they blurred into monotony as serenity settled over him, muffling the groans and screeches of his ship. His heart beat slower as a drugged clarity possessed his mind. The translucent cylinders undulated like a field of weird flowers, fading as though night were falling… Boom! Crunge! BOOM! Nil heard the millstones bang the hull miles away when the crawling tubes suddenly parted and revealed a gnashing beak of bright crimson.

  Nil stared at the Gyre’s ravenous maw for a moment outside of time, passive and uncomprehending. Then, as if coming to the conclusion before he did, his whole body convulsed and he swung his right boot, knocking the chock from the shaft.

  The mechanism whined as the shaft shot down against the hull, and the harpoon’s flared end corked the hole as the Gyre broke it off with a wrenching convulsion.

  Boots can be useful, too, Lince, Nil thought, planting them on the deck and lunging backwards toward the blue light filtering through the water… He vomited his breath like poison and gasped in seawater. The light faded even as he seemed to touch it with his fingertips, and Nil sank into the darkness.

  Set almost parallel with her keel, the full mainsail heeled the Sea Mare to expose her wounds, yet now she took on water over her starboard waist. Young Tobbs, with a tearful sigh, tossed the buoy and closed his eyes.

  The Gyre’s arms writhed and shot out bolt-straight, lifting the ship out of the sea.

  Rippled to the very tips of its arms, the Gyre let go.

  The Sea Mare nearly capsized as she tipped over a high wave, but the men of watch two were ready at the sheets and hauled her mainyard, righting her in the nick of time. The bulkheads Nil designed had sealed enough parts of her Green Deck and castles to keep her rails above the sea.