Kerrick knew the kind of ship Coraltop was talking about. Indeed, the sturdy trading vessels were probably the most common large craft along the coast of southern Ansalon. Occasionally one would stop and visit Silvanesti, though the royal tariffs were exorbitant and insured that only elven captains made much profit bringing goods to or from the great port of Silvanost.
“What happened to the galley? How did it sink?” He knew that the trading galleys were famously seaworthy and offered a brief prayer to Zivilyn in memory of the doomed sailors.
“We got smashed up by a dragon turtle,” Coraltop replied cheerfully. “Boy, was that exciting! It had fins the size of your sails, and a mouth as big as a castle gate! Why, it bit that galley right in two. Some of the sailors got eaten up, I’m sorry to say. The rest of them tumbled into the water, but they didn’t swim as well as I did. Fortunately I was holding onto a barrel-it turned out to be a barrel half full of water, which is a good thing because you can’t imagine how thirsty a person gets-”
The kender prattled on, but Kerrick wasn’t listening any more. Instead, he was staring at the vast, domed shape wallowing in the waves, looking at it with a sense of dull horror.
Dragon turtle! He had never before seen one-nor had he ever spoke to a sailor who had encountered one of the legendary ocean monsters. They were the stuff of nautical folklore, horrors of the deep that could reputedly crush a ship with one bite, scattering its crewmen into the sea, allowing the monster to leisurely gulp down the hapless adrift sailors.
That, he suddenly realized, was what the Cutter had rammed. With new wariness, he looked out at the floating blob, noting the knobs on its rough surface, gaping at its huge size. Yes, dragon turtle it was-and if he was lucky, it was stunned or sound asleep.
“Get to the mast!” hissed the elf. “We’re going to raise the sail!”
Was it his imagination or had the great shape twitched? He looked for a sign of a scaly head or a vicious, lashing tail, claws like iron battering rams.
A wave splashed against the hull, breaking to either side. Now the head was rising, a visage of ugly leather, crusty with barnacles except for a sharp, beaklike snout, impossibly, monstrously huge. Water spilled from the flat skull, a sheet of brine pouring like a waterfall. The monster craned its neck and yawned, revealing a slick, pink maw surrounded by a pair of serrated jaws wide enough, it seemed, to swallow the Cutter.
“The mast is that big pole, right?” Coraltop asked, standing up. “I’m becoming quite the expert sailor. What do you want me to-”
“Quiet!” whispered Kerrick, seizing the kender and yanking him down into the cockpit. His eyes just barely above the level of the gunwale, the elf watched the great dragon turtle, trying unsuccessfully to suppress the trembling that seized his limbs. The creature’s face was primitive, saurian. The one eye turned lazily toward the sailboat was black, cold, and easily as big as the elf’s armspan.
“Oh, we’re hiding?” Coraltop guessed, with an exaggerated whisper. “I like this game!”
Kerrick’s full attention was focused on the dragon turtle. The legends had spoken of a shell as long as Cutter’s thirty feet, but this monster was three times that, at least. The great armored plate slowly began to swivel towards him. Water churned, and the elf saw two huge webbed and taloned feet kick into the air. The shell angled down, and a large wave churned as it surged toward the sailboat in a rolling crest.
The beast dove, vanished. A long, scaly tail thrashed the air and followed into the depths, leaving a vortex of frothing water swirling on the surface. Kerrick and Coraltop clutched the gunwale as the wave heaved Cutter upward, rocking them violently back and forth as it passed on until, once more, they bobbed on a placid, featureless sea.
“Lucky for me-as my grandmother used to say-that it never did that while I was sitting on it,” Coraltop said.
The elf’s head was spinning. “You were riding on that dragon turtle.” He glared furiously at the kender, straining to keep his voice low. “I thought you said you were clinging to a barrel.”
“Oh, I drank almost all the water that was in that keg, I remember, and I was starting to get kind of hungry. Then the dragon turtle surfaced, and I think it fell asleep. Say, do you have anything to eat?”
“Yes-but first let’s get some canvas up. I want to be away from here before that thing surfaces.”
“Not much chance of that,” said Coraltop Netfisher. “It’ll be coming up real quick now, like it did when it ate my other boat. First you see it, then you don’t, then bang!” He leaned over the gunwale, stretching down so far that his nose was bare inches from the gentle swell.
The elf wasted no time staring into the depths. He scrambled past the cabin and started to unlash the sail from the main boom. If the dragon turtle had sounded merely to rise up and smash his boat, they would never get away in time. If it had dived for reasons of its own, they still had a chance.
His hands shook so badly that for a second he could only fumble with the lines. Forcing himself to be calm, he at last freed the ropes, one after the other, that bundled the sail onto the long timber. He was reaching for the mainsail guyline when Coraltop Netfisher’s voice, incongruously cheerful, reached him.
“Here it comes!” chirped the kender, pointing into the ocean deeps.
Kerrick felt the boat slide sideways and grabbed onto the mast as Cutter tilted violently. He swung into space, certain they would capsize, but the little boat spilled down the water rushing off of the great carapace. The dragon turtle’s great head broke from the surface, rising past the boat, one eye glaring coldly. Its jaws were wide, blue-green brine gushing out, as the elf tumbled, getting tangled in the sail. Coraltop fell sprawling on the deck of the cockpit.
“Look out!” shouted the kender, his narrow face split by a wide, toothy grin, as he tried unsuccessfully to lift himself up.
“Zivilyn Greentree protect us!” the elf prayed fervently, lost in the folds of the sail, clutching the mast and feeling the impact as the sailboat spilled off the shell and plunged back into the ocean.
The bow and half the hull vanished into blue water, but in another instant Cutter’s sharp prow rose up out of the sea, water pouring off the deck. The elf swung wildly, free of the sail now, still clinging to the mast, then slamming into the boom and feeling-hearing-his arm snap. He saw the monster’s rough, scaled shell rolling past, looming out of the water like a mountainous horizon, then following the head, which had already plunged into the depths.
The last thing he saw was the spiked tail, long and wicked as a dragon. It lashed overhead, striking the mast and boom with a sickening crack of timber. Kerrick was buried under a wave of billowing blue canvas as a hard beam smashed him in the skull.
The blue faded to black.
9
How many more days?” Garta asked Moreen, as the tribe broke camp on a drizzly fall morning. The wind was light, fortunately, but dampness permeated every one of the Arktos, and there was no wood to spare for a breakfast fire. “Remember, Little Mouse said he found a cave yesterday. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to at least have a look at it before we go any farther north?”