They made no subtleties about it, simply charging the Ants with savage speed in an attempt to overrun them. They clashed, with the Kessen trusting to their mail and shields, and their constant watch over each other, to turn the many swords away. One of the four Ants went down, Danaen’s narrow blade curving over his shield’s rim to pierce the armour at his throat. Another Mantis was felled and writhing, pinned to the deck by a long arrow, and one more had his face gashed by a Kessen shortsword. Stenwold tugged at his own blade, turning to see To see what Teornis and Arianna had seen, and it stopped him in his tracks, too. It was an eye.
It jutted out from the waves, set into a pointed crest of rubbery flesh tall enough to overlook the barge’s low side: a mottled-yellow eye with a broad slash of black for a pupil, and measuring larger across than a man’s torso.
All around him they were fighting, Teornis’s people and his own. He heard the explosive snap of Padstock’s bow, and her voice calling out, ‘Through the Gate!’ which must have bewildered everyone there save for her own followers. The Dragonflies were aloft, sending down shaft after shaft at any Mantis that offered a clear target.
Teornis went down without warning. Stenwold thought he had been shot, then that a Mantis had got him, for his Kessen bodyguards were being overwhelmed, though they put up a stubborn and furious fight. Then Stenwold saw, and the sight made his stomach lurch.
Something had grabbed Teornis by the leg. Something like a leathery cable had snagged his ankle and was hauling him towards the rail. He had his rapier out, but its narrow blade was ill-suited to cutting, and his people were too busy fighting to hear his cries for aid. The sight was so horrible that Stenwold himself made a move towards him, with no other aim in mind but the rescue of his enemy.
In a flurry of wings, Laszlo landed beside him. ‘I’ll head for the Tidenfree!’ the Fly called out.
‘Laszlo, look!’ But, when Stenwold pointed, the terrible eye was gone. The Fly skipped into the air a moment later, eager to be away, and an arrow zipped past close to where he’d been.
Stenwold turned to find himself not five feet away from Arianna, with his sword to hand. Her knife was still out, his blood decorating the edge. Their eyes met.
Something slapped at his leg and, assuming it was an arrow, he dropped into a crouch, one hand raised uselessly to ward off the next. A moment later he was sprawled on his back, the breath exploding from his body. He kicked out desperately, feeling a tightness about his calf, almost losing hold of his sword.
A sudden contraction hauled him two feet along the deck towards the railing and he realized that it had him.
Stenwold jackknifed up, crying out as he saw the thick tentacle that had snaked across the deck to encircle his leg. He lashed at it with his blade, just as a new convulsion rippled down the length of it, and he was dragged another half-body length towards the sea.
His nerve broke. The thought of that eye, belonging to some unspeakable sea-thing lurking just beyond the barge’s rail, the thought of all that water, that all-consuming depth just yards away, was too much. Stenwold screamed in revulsion and fear, and hacked wildly at the grasping tentacle. His first blow glanced off its thick, oozing hide, while his second merely gashed open his own thigh. Another tug hauled him inexorably closer to the edge. He cast about wildly, still shouting for aid. He saw one of Padstock’s company go down, spitted by an arrow. The Mantids were finishing off the Ants, and some were sending arrows up at the circling Dragonflies.
Teornis With a snarl of pure futile savagery, Teornis vanished over the barge’s side, his rapier spinning from his hand. A moment later Stenwold’s free foot kicked against the wooden rail.
He tried to brace himself against it, feeling the appalling strength as the monster’s muscles seethed and pulsed. He hacked again, barely penetrating the creature’s thick skin.
‘Ma’rMaker!’ Laszlo was beside him in an instant. The Fly’s expression showed that, life of piracy or no, he had never encountered anything such as this before. His dagger was out in an instant, though, and he laid hands on the coils wrapped around Stenwold’s leg and began cutting. He should have been halfway to the Tidenfree by now, but Stenwold had never been so glad to have his orders disobeyed.
Another surge of strength sent agony tearing through his leg and made the railing creak and splinter. Laszlo was using both hands to drive the dagger deeper, now, heedless of whether it skewered Stenwold as well.
‘One moment, Ma’rMaker,’ the Fly hissed between his teeth. ‘Just one moment…’
His eyes met Stenwold’s, and there was a moment of shared horror between them as another leathery whip crawled over the side and lashed itself about his chest. Laszlo opened his mouth to yell, but in the next second he was airborne, not by his own wings but whipped from the deck in a single convulsive spasm, and a second later the sea had claimed him.
Stenwold struck the limb that held him a solid blow, aiming for where the Fly’s knife had scored its skin. It tugged yet again, and this time the railing half gave way. He had no wits left now for tactics or clear thinking; the sword was forgotten. Stenwold was clawing at the deck with both hands, a pointless struggle to stay clear of the dark and hungry ocean. He began howling something, some desperate plea. There was nothing left of War Master Maker but a sheer dread of the deep.
A hand grasped his wrist and hauled on it. He looked up into the fear-twisted face of Arianna.
‘I have you!’ she shouted.
‘Don’t let go!’ He was weeping, trying to kick out with his snared leg, trying to dig his nails into the wood, all craft and Art lost to him.
‘I have you, Sten!’ she cried again, dragging at him, stealing back precious inches from the sea. ‘I’m sorry, Sten,’ she was saying. ‘I’m so sorry!’
Stenwold saw the sword’s point leap from her chest before he realized what it was. For a moment it was simply an image he could not make sense of, just as that great yellow eye had been. Then Arianna arched back, blood exploding from her lips, her grip gone from his wrist. As she fell, she revealed Danaen behind her, grinning like a madwoman, arms bloody to the elbows. She spared a moment to catch Stenwold’s gaze, and her expression was pure triumph.
He screamed in grief and rage and terror at her, and then the tentacle hauled once again, and he slid past the broken rail and into the sea.
Part Two
The Abyss Gazes Also
Sixteen
The first thing that came to him as he awoke was the warmth of the muggy, humid air. It had a scent to it of sweat and the sea. His leg ached and burned, and he recalled how he had hacked at it in his haste, as it had been tugged and mauled by…
The sea monster, thought Stenwold. Hammer and tongs, it’s swallowed me.
Other fragments of his situation began to touch him, one by one. He was lying on a curving, hard surface, not cold like metal but feeling more like bone or shell. His uneasiness increased. There was a pulsing sound in the air, heavy and insistent, and with each pulse the floor jerked, and his innards told him that he was in motion.
He was soaked to the skin. Somehow, perhaps because the air seemed saturated with water, that sensation came to him only just before he opened his eyes.
Opening his eyes was not an improvement.
There was light, but like no light he had ever seen before. It was an oppressive reddish-purple, and he could see very little by it. His face was shoved close against the curving inside of whatever held him, be it beast or box.