"Uhm" Hakim grunted. "There's your Fenaja."
Rickli stood, ignoring the sudden sharp pain in his knee. "Part of one." He hobbled forward, helped others pall the mangled corpse from the pile offish. "Dymon!"
Tipsword came down from the helm, spent a long minute staring at the remains. "All right. Back to work. We've got a hold to fill. You three, put it back over the side. Its people will be looking for it." As activity resumed, the captain stalked back to his station. A new set of pennons ran to the main. The ship's armorer began making the round of battle stations, setting out harpoons, axes, swords.
Rickli resumed his seat, said nothing for a long time.
"What is it?" Hakim asked. "Half the body had been eaten. It still had a broken harpoon in its hand."
Hand was a misnomer, From the Fenaja's forward end, near what might pass as shoulders were it accustomed to going upright, a specialized pair of tentacles grew; the ends of these had modified into three finger-length sub-tentacles. The quasi-intelligent creatures used them as a man used hands.
"Meaning he maybe died fighting something that was eating him?"
"Uhm." Naturally enough, the monsters of the legends and folklore of the Children of the Sky were all creatures from the deep and, though Hakim had never encountered a man who had seen one, the sea people believed in their existence as devoutly as their ancestors had believed in dragons and trolls.
The.only known enemies of the Fenaja were human. But the Children of the Sky had little real knowledge of what lived at the bottom of the deeps. Their interest was the banks, an ecological cycle into which their ancestors had inserted themselves.
The seining, cleaning, and salting went on, though wary eyes kept glancing toward deep water. Yet the crew trusted Tipsword's judgment. Had he believed real danger existed, he would have had the nets hauled in and stored.
The tension bothered the Earthman. "Think I'll go get Esmeralda," he said, putting his knife aside,
Rickli nodded, reached for another blackfin. The thing the Earthman called Esmeralda had been one of the few possessions he had reclaimed after the looting of his ship. To Rickli it looked like an ornate mutation of a shipfitter's mallet, except that Hakim always handled it backwards. Manlove suspected it was some sort of Outside talisman. Hakim brought it out each time Rifkin's Dream sailed into danger, but Rickli had yet to see the man do anything with it.
Just as Thomas returned, flying fish began skipping across the sea. Tipsword judged their numbers and the length of their jumps, Shouted, "Ship the nets! Forget the fish! Bring them in!"
It wasn't necessary to tell the cleaners and salters to clear the decks. Every man able began pitching fish over the side. New signals rose to the main; hornmen stood by.
The sea began boiling two hundred meters off the port bow. "Cut it!" Tipsword thundered at the netmen. "Now! Move it!" Men shuddered. A good seine costs hundreds of manhours to make. But; if they were lucky, they could come about and recover it later. Bladders made of brunwhal stomachs would keep it afloat. Someone began wielding an ax. The trouble horns screamed across the water. Nearby ships became furious with activity.
"Hard right rudder!" Tipsword ordered. "Stand by to shift sail."
The rigging boys were already aloft.
Rifkin's Dream was the long-dead shipbuilder Rifkin's attempt to combine the best of two types of rigging in one of the fleet's largest vessels. She was square-rigged on her forward and top-main-masts, schooner-rigged on her main and mizzen. Sharp course changes could result in mass confusion.
There was little of that this time. Everyone was too frightened to make a mistake.
"Oh!" said Rickli. Nothing else would come.
"Jesus," said the Shipwrecked Earthman, softly. "What the hell is it?"
"Grossfenaja. The deepdarkdevil."
Rifkin's Dream slowly heeled over as her rudder took hold and she took the wind on her beam. Her stern slid sideways toward the thing rising from the deep. The nearest seining ship winded its own horns and cut its net lines too.
A shout from the masthead directed their attention forward. Half a kilometer ahead, another one was rising. Then another, off the port quarter.
"Never heard of anything dike this!" Rickli shouted, the nearest beast was still surfacing, more and more tentacles slapping water, some reaching for Rifkin's Dream. Dymon Tipsword shouted for the younger boys to get below.
"Must have been the earthquake," Hakim muttered. "Christ! Another one."
The main body of the nearest broke water. It was over sixty meters long and serpentine, like a fat Midgard serpent whose tail had turned into a kraken. The head was at the end opposite the main mass of tentacles, with just two five-meter Fenaja-type limbs nearby.
Regaining his composure, Rickli said, "Any of the other old monsters I would've believed, but this...."
The creature writhed in an effort to direct its head toward the ship, but it seemed Tipsword had acted in time and the vessel would slip away.
"Sandweg!" the forward lookout cried. A moment later he hurtled into the sea as the vessel plowed into a dense young stand, the tops of which hadn't yet broken water. The bows rose high, Rifkins Dream shuddered, then lurched forward as her momentum snapped or uprooted the plants.
But she hadn't enough way on to carry her through. Her stern and rudder hung up. In moments she was dead in the water.
"Battle stations!" Tipsword bellowed. "You boys below, see if she's sprung any leaks. Spearsong, get a boat over. Winchmen, stand by to kedge her. Thomas, get coals from the galley."
Hakim ran. Rickli, trying to stay out of the way, wondered how their puny weapons, even fire, could stave off the predator. He glanced at the rest of the fleet. No help there. Panic and confusion were the supreme admirals of the moment. And running for shallower water seemed no real solution. The creature that had surfaced immediately ahead was already dragging itself through water just four meters deep. Speed seemed the only escape.
He noted a racked harpoon with an ornate grip of brunwhal ivory. His own, that the crew had given him when he had been Left Hand Sea Terror, best chaser spritman in the fleet. He hobbled over and exchanged it for his cane. There was comfort in the familiar grip. He would die with his old companion in hand.
The decks and tops seemed utter chaos, yet the frenetic activity had its purposes. But for the thing bearing down, it might have been the last moment before an ordinary Fenaja fight. There had been more panic and confusion at LaFata. Rickli stayed out of the way, gradually drifted forward.
The sword, ax, and harpoon men all seemed so young, just boys. Where were the longbeards, the grizzled old men who had manned the rail at LaFata? Dead, of course. Still there, consigned to the deep. Not many had been as lucky as he. Half this crew had transferred aboard after that battle.
"Jesus," he murmured, borrowing from the Shipwrecked Earthman. The thing's head was scarred with a mouth large enough to take a man or Fenaja at a gulp. Twenty meters from Dream, it plunged beneath the water, torpedoing into the sandweg wrack left by the ship's passage. Rickli shouted a warning to Spearsong, but too late. The head rose and destroyed the longboat with a single snap of huge jaws. The fore-tentacles snatched men from the water. The thing's rear smashed into the port side. The vessel jumped, shook, groaned in protest. Everyone went tumbling. Rigging boys rained from above, smashing into deck or sea with terrified screams. Rickli lost the harpoon. Tipsword thunderously ordered everyone back to the rail. Then a tentacle whipped over and snatched him away from the wheel. He went , over the side, into the sea, hacking with a rare metal sword.
Though they numbered only twenty and were no thicker than a man's arm, the monster's rear tentacles seemed to fall in a deadly rain. Against them harpoons were useless. The sword and ax men managed to damage a few, but the beast seemed oblivious to pain. Its head reared high to starboard and observed critically while its tail worked murder to port.