Afsan felt the air go out of his own lungs as he slammed into the neck. Four of Afsan’s body-lengths below, half submerged, but biting away like a wild animal, was Keenir. Although he’d taken many chunks out of Kal’s muscular shoulder, the bites were insignificant compared to the creature’s great bulk, and each wave that washed over Kal’s back left Keenir gasping and cleared the blood away.
As soon as he hit Kal’s neck, smooth and sticky and wet, Afsan kicked off again, as though he were rappelling down the ragged face of one of the Ch’mar volcanoes. His body swung through the air and then came crashing back toward the neck, but this time Afsan twisted wildly in flight, using his tail held straight out to change his center of gravity, so that he landed on the other side of the neck. He immediately slid around and kicked off again. Kal, alarmed by this creature slamming into it, craned to see what was happening. Perfect: the craning made it easy for Afsan to land this third time near the spot that he’d originally hit. He swung over once more and began to shimmy down the rope toward the waves. Kal was probably too stupid to realize what was going on, but in anger it snapped its jaws shut, the splayed teeth interlocking, the rope shearing.
But it was too late for that. Afsan had effectively wrapped the rope around Kal’s neck, about halfway down its length. Above he could see the bulge of Hadzig’s body still making its way down the throat. The body fit so tightly that Afsan could make out Hadzig’s legs, her torso, and the small depression made by her long, drawn-out face.
Afsan hit the water gasping for air. Keenir looked up briefly and saw him. The other two sailors, missing for some time now, appeared bobbing on the surface. They, too, spotted Afsan. Suddenly they realized what he was up to and began swimming toward him. Keenir, too, slid down Kal’s side and swam in Afsan’s direction as fast as he could with his abbreviated tail. Others jumped off the side of the ship, sending up great splashes where they hit. Everybody grabbed the rope, claws extended, and swam with lashing tails toward the Dasheter.
More and more hands joined in, and the strength and weight of now ten, now twelve, now fifteen Quintaglios, pulled on the rope, dragging Kal’s neck down toward the water.
Afsan looked up, hoping that whoever was left on deck would know what to do. There, against the glare of the sun, a round silhouette: Dybo.
The prince was just standing there, stunned like one whose shell had been too thick.
Afsan called out to his friend, but Kal was crashing its flippers into the waves with such force that the splashing drowned out the words.
Then, at last, Dybo moved, and Afsan could see that he was shouting — but not to him. No, the prince was summoning others on the deck of the Dasheter.
Kal was yanking back on its neck, and Afsan felt himself coming to a halt in the water, then beginning to be pulled backwards.
Come on, Dybo…
Afsan looked up into the glare again. There, the angular shape he’d been waiting for, coming down over the side, black metal, five splayed arms, the anchor.
Dybo and the others were paying out the chain as fast as they could, but still the anchor moved slowly, the ratchet sound of its pulley mechanism like a symphony of cracking
Suddenly Afsan was completely submerged, pulled down fighting Kal. He gulped water. His eyes were wide open, but all he could see were sheets of bubbles. He felt as though his lungs would burst, and his vision seemed to be fading.
Then, at last, the anchor broke through from above, coming beneath the surface. Afsan fought the need to breathe and he and the others wrapped the rope around the anchor chain. Finally, when he was sure it was secure, Afsan let go of the rope and swam madly toward the surface. When he broke through into the air, he opened his muzzle wide and gulped and gulped and gulped.
Suddenly he felt an arm about his waist and then another supporting his elbow. A lifeline snaked down from the Dasheter. Afsan looked over his shoulder. Kal was madly attempting to bend its neck around enough to reach the rope tying it to the anchor chain, but it couldn’t. The chain continued to lower, pulling the great beast down beneath the waves. It fought with its diamond flippers and stubby tail to keep at the surface, but it wasn’t strong enough — especially now, unable to breathe easily with Hadzig’s body lodged above the constriction in its neck where Afsan had tied the rope. The anchor continued to descend as Dybo and the others released more and more chain.
At last the thing’s wicked head, with its jaws full of angled teeth snapping as it tried to draw breath, was pulled beneath the waves. Afsan watched as, for a time, its flippers flailed even more, splashing sheets of water onto him and the others. Then, quite suddenly, Kal’s flippers stopped moving at all.
Afsan, who had finally recovered his breath, let out a deep and long sigh. Dybo and the others pulled on the lifeline to hoist him back aboard the Dasheter.
*18*
The ship’s priest, Det-Bleen, had opined that he might be unable to bless the meat of Kal-ta-goot because tools — rope and anchor — had been used to aid in the kill. It was a weak point, though, and the hungry sailors and pilgrims didn’t seem keen on debating the issue. Keenir quickly settled it with a quotation from the Twenty-third Scrolclass="underline" "That which is at hand is there by the grace of God; use it if need be, but take not a weapon with you on the hunt, for that is the coward’s way." Well, the anchor and lifeline were simply at hand — they’d never been intended for killing — so Afsan’s use was quite acceptable, Keenir insisted. "It’s a variation on the same precept that allows us to use nets to haul aboard fish, mollusks, and aquatic lizards," he said, seemingly taking some joy in catching Bleen in an indefensible interpretation of the scriptures. "Those animals are at hand, just waiting to be picked up. No hunt is involved, since no stalking is required. God put them there for us." Bleen relented — somewhat reluctantly, Afsan thought — and said some words over the bobbing carcass.
The body of Kal-ta-goot had to be butchered in the water, since it was much too large to haul aboard. Once disentangled from the anchor, the corpse had floated back to the surface. Although Keenir and others had taken bites out of it, it did not bleed much. Still, enough blood had spilled to attract various aquatic predators. Mollusks, able to rise and fall in the water by adjusting the pressure in their spiral shells, used the beaks at the center of their clusters of tentacles to nip bites out of Kal’s tail and flippers.
Afsan himself, joining one of the parties in the water carving away at Kal’s body, was firmly bit on the leg by a coiled mollusk. It took much yanking by Paldook and Dybo to get the tentacles off Afsan’s leg. When they did release, the sound of the thousands of suction cups popping was like the breaking wind of a herd of plant-eaters. The bite was not severe, though: the lost flesh would regenerate within a dekaday.
They sawed through Kal’s neck at two places, severing it from the body just above the beast’s shoulders, then cutting off the horrid head, with its vicious teeth, as a trophy for Keenir.
The neck was slit horizontally to allow the removal of the body of Hadzig. Det-Bleen insisted it be brought aboard. An aquatic burial was acceptable, he said, but not here, not up ahead of the Face of God. Her corpse would have to be stowed until the ship returned to safe waters.
After that, the neck, spilling blood from both ends, was set adrift. Tentacled mollusks latched onto it immediately and soon aquatic lizards converged on it as well, their needle snouts ripping off gobbets of meat.
Afsan even saw one of the large wingfingers land on the long tubular neck, something he thought such a flyer would never do. But, after nipping off several choice hunks, the creature had no trouble regaining flight by running the length of the neck and flapping its massive furred wings a couple of times.