"Good Captain," said Bleen, bowing deeply, "our vigil beneath the Face was not yet over. We had three days of prayers and rapture left."
Keenir kept his eye scrunched to the lens of the far-seer, the yellow scar on the side of his head a close match in color for the brass tube. "Does not God hear all?" said Keenir.
Bleen looked perplexed. "Of course."
"Then She will hear your prayers whether we are directly beneath her or not."
"Yes, but, Var-Keenir, for many aboard this is their first pilgrimage. It’s important they stay the twenty days, do the thirty-seven penances, read and understand the nine scrolls of the prophet."
"There will be other trips."
"My fear is that there will not be. You take us into unknown waters. You take us into parts of the River that God Herself has not checked for us."
The ship rocked as it moved against a large wave. "I will have that monster, Bleen. I will have it!"
"Please, Keenir, I beg you to turn back."
The captain swung the far-seer around, trying to refocus on the distant serpent. "I have the authority of Prince Dybo for this journey."
"So Dybo tells me. You’ve got forty days."
"Then talk to me again at the end of that period."
"Keenir, please, it’s blasphemy."
"Talk not to me of blasphemy. Before I’m done, these waters will be red with blood."
Bleen reached out to Keenir, bridging the territorial space between them, and touched the captain on the shoulder. Keenir, startled, at last lowered the eyepiece and looked at the priest.
"But whose blood shall it be, Keenir?" said Bleen.
The captain squinted at the holy one, and for a moment Afsan thought that Bleen had finally gotten through to Keenir. But Keenir shouted out, "Onward!" and went back to peering through the far-seer. One of the officers ran to sound the ship’s beacon of loud and soft bells and drums, and Bleen, tail swishing in despair, moved to the aft deck, turned toward the setting Face of God, and began chanting prayers for mercy.
The Dasheter had chased the serpent for thirty-nine days now. Keenir was more agitated than ever. Sometimes they would lose sight of it for daytenths at a time, but whether because it had dived beneath the water or simply had slipped over the horizon, Afsan couldn’t say. The lookout in the perch high atop the foremast always managed to catch sight of the beast again, and the chase continued. It occurred to Afsan that perhaps the monster was toying with Keenir, that it was deliberately staying out of reach. Regardless, the Dasheter continued its eastward journey, until eventually the Face of God touched the westward horizon behind the ship, a huge striped ball sitting on the water.
At last a cry went up from the lookout officer: Kal-ta-goot had turned around and — no mistake — was barreling toward the Dasheter.
Afsan and Dybo ran to the foredeck, looked out through the choppy waters toward the eastern horizon. Without the far-seer, it was difficult to tell, but, by the prophet’s claws, yes, the long gray neck looked closer.
Keenir, nearby, did have the benefit of the magnifying tube. "Here it comes," he muttered in his gravelly voice. "Here it comes."
Afsan’s first thought was that the Dasheter should turn around, should run from the approaching serpent. But Keenir, perhaps sensing the fear rippling through the passengers and crew, shouted out, "Stay the course!"
Soon the beast was close enough that details could be seen with the unaided eye. The long neck, something like a thunderbeast’s but more flexible, did indeed end in a drawn-out flattened head filled with incredible teeth, teeth that stuck out and overlapped like a spilled drawer full of knives, even when the creature’s mouth was closed.
The monster’s body, round and gray, striped with green, was only partially visible. The bulk of it seemed to be beneath the waves. Periodically, though, Afsan saw parts of four diamond-shaped fins or flippers clearing the water, churning it into foam with their powerful strokes. The tail, only glimpsed occasionally as the creature weaved left and right, was short and stubby, and seemed to have little to do with the beast’s locomotion. The long, sinewy neck and the round, flippered body made Afsan think of a snake threaded through the shell of a turtle, but the thing’s torso seemed unarmored and its head, with those terrible interlocking teeth, was more horrible, more deadly looking, than the head of any snake Afsan had ever seen.
The monster was easily as long as the Dasheter itself, although better than half its length was its protracted neck.
Closer and closer it came, a dynamo charging through the water, a wake of foam trailing behind it almost to the horizon.
And then, suddenly, it disappeared, diving beneath the waves, the tip of its short tail the last thing Afsan saw before it was gone completely from view.
Afsan tried to calculate the thing’s speed and trajectory. At the rate it had been moving, it would only be twenty heartbeats or so before it would reach the ship. He grabbed the railing around the edge of the deck, bent his knees, leaned back on his tail, stabilizing himself with five points of support, waiting, waiting…
Ten heartbeats. Fifteen. Afsan looked left and right. Those who had surmised the same thing he had were similarly bracing themselves for impact. Dybo hugged the foremast. Dath-Katood grabbed the climbing web at the base of that same mast. Bog-Tardlo simply fell prone to the deck.
Twenty heartbeats. Twenty-five.
Keenir was leaning against the railing, too, his extended claws digging into the wood.
Thirty. Thirty-five.
Where was the creature? Where was it?
Keenir let go of the railing, swung around. "It’s trying to get away!" he shouted into the wind. "Paldook, bring us about…"
But then Afsan felt the Dasheter rising as if on the swell of a huge wave. The upward movement continued, higher, uglier still, the ship leaning wildly to port, the side railing dipping beneath the water. It was like being in a landquake, above and below no longer the same as up and down. Afsan saw one crewmember go flying, saw a passenger sliding across the deck, sliding toward the submerged side of the boat.
And then the lifting stopped. The Dasheter rocked back in the other direction, water washing across the deck, spilling against Afsan’s legs. The ship crashed down, and, on the port side, rising out of the churning water like a vision from a nightmare, was the great gray neck, water rolling off it. It rose up and up until it stretched half as high as the Dasheter’s own masts, the mouth now opened wide, screaming a slick and wet reptilian scream, the razor teeth jutting out in all directions.
And then the neck lashed out like a whip, moving with blinding speed, and Tardlo was gone, scooped from the deck. Afsan briefly saw her bloodied form in the thing’s mouth, limbs and tail as askew as the creature’s pointed dentition. The serpent turned its head up toward the sky, tossed the body into the air with a snap of its neck, then caught it again, this time headfirst. The jaw labored, chomping and biting, and Afsan felt his stomach turn as he saw a thick bulge work its way down the serpent’s elongated neck.
Everybody scrambled to the opposite side of the deck, out of the thing’s whiplash reach.
Afsan thought how useful it would be to have a long pointed shaft of wood, or some other implement that could be used to ward off the creature. But such tools had been forbidden by the cult of the Five Hunters, and even in these enlightened days of the prophet, that stricture remained.
A Quintaglio kills with tooth and claw, said the First Edict of Lubal. Only such killing makes us strong and pure.