“Damn it, Gariath,” Lenk shouted. “I thought we were done with this! Grab something and get down!”
Apparently, lunacy was not something the dragonman was ever quite done with. He extended his broad arms to the side, a mother embracing a giant, roaring child.
“Come and get me,” he said to the sea.
And the sea spoke back, in a cavernous howl from a gaping maw.
The wave struck before the beast did, a great wash of salt that swept over the vessel’s deck and sent Lenk straining to keep from being washed away. Salt blinded him, froth choked him, he had barely enough sense to see if Kataria had held on, let alone for the beast rising out of the water.
The sudden shock that jolted the ship and sent him sprawling, however, was impossible to ignore.
One hand grasping desperately at the railing, the other pulled back a sopping curtain of hair to behold the sight of teeth. The rudder, the railing, the entire rear of the vessel had disappeared behind the great row of white needles, the wood loosing an anguished, splintering groan as the Akaneed’s bellowing snarl sent timbers trembling in its grip.
Lenk’s eyes swept the deck, soaking, choking and half-blind. Of their companion, there was no sign but the spear lying upon the deck, tangled amidst the rope.
“Where the hell is Gariath?” he bellowed over the cacophony of ship and serpent.
“How should I know?” Kataria screamed back.
“This plan is terrible!”
“THIS ISN’T PART OF THE PLAN!” she shrieked.
It wasn’t until Lenk’s sword was out in his hand that he took stock of the beast before him. From its thick hide, a single eye stared back at him, burning with more than enough hatred for the missing eye. That one had been put out long ago by the very dragonman that was now inconsiderately drowning somewhere overboard. They had met this Akaneed before.
His sword hadn’t been much use then, either.
The beast let out a reverberating snarl, its head jerking down sharply. The boat followed it down with a wooden shriek, its deck tilting up and sending Lenk’s legs out from under him and his grip slipping from the salt-slick railing.
He skidded down the deck with a cry, striking against the beast’s snout and kicking wildly against its slippery hide as he scrambled for purchase. Pressed against it, he couldn’t hear Kataria’s cries over the heated snort of its breath and the throaty rumble of its growls. He could see her, though, one hand clinging to the railing, the other reaching down futilely for him.
He clawed desperately against the vertical deck, ignoring the pain in his fingers, ignoring the red that stained the deck as he sought to jam his blade into it and haul himself up. He had just drawn it back when the ship buckled sharply again, sending him skidding.
The last thing he saw was the beast’s mouth open a little wider.
When it came crashing shut behind him, there was only a wet, pressing darkness and the stench of old fish.
He balanced precariously upon the stern of the upended vessel, the wood splintering, snapping beneath his feet as the timbers were ground between the glistening muscles of the beast’s gullet. They closed in upon him, pressing his left arm to his chest, closing in upon his head, growing tighter with each shuddering breath.
Above him, a gate of teeth had shut out sky and sound. Below him, a guttural growl rose from a black hole of a throat that drew closer with each shudder of the ship. His mind flooded, panicked thoughts tearing through his skull, incomprehensible, indistinguishable.
Why isn’t Kataria doing anything?
Except that one.
“She does nothing.”
And that one, though it didn’t really quite count as his thought.
“Sword.”
What?
“SWORD.”
The answer became as solid as the steel in his hand the moment he stopped looking up and down and stared straight ahead.
At the glistening wall that was the roof of the beast’s mouth.
He had a distinct memory of drawing the blade back, plunging it into a thick knot of muscle, and wrenching it free with a vicious twist of metal. Past the great burst of blood that came washing over him, the agonized roar that accompanied it, everything was a blur. The ship crashed back into the sea, his sword clattered to the deck as it upended. He did not.
There was a floor beneath him again, but it was sticky and writhing and reeking and shifting violently beneath him as the beast pulled back. He felt himself flying on a cloud of fine red mist, chased by a wailing, anguished howl across the sky that crashed into the sea behind him.
He was aware only of the water pressing in around him, of the need to breathe. He tore through it, finding the surface. When he broke, it was with a wrenching gasp.
Around him, the mist settled. The water lapped. The foam hissed and dissipated. Gentle sounds. Poor companions to the thunder of his heart and rasping of his breath.
“Lenk!”
The voice, too, was gentle and distant.
“Lenk!”
A poorer match to the sight he saw as he turned in the water and found Kataria, far away upon the ship, soaked to the bone and bow in hand. Her voice was far too soft for the frantic gestures she made.
“GET OUT OF THE WATER, MORON!”
That was more like it. Even better when he followed her pointing finger over his head and saw the great fin sweeping out of the mist and bearing down on him.
“Hopeless” was the word that kept echoing in his head as he kicked and pulled against the water, flailing more than swimming toward the woefully distant ship. He didn’t have to see the shadow in the water behind him to know his escape was futile; Kataria’s arrows, flying over his head in a vain attempt to slow the beast, did that well enough.
His body went numb with the effort, the exertion too much to keep going. He was tired, far too tired to scream when the water erupted in front of him.
Gariath, for his part, didn’t seem to mind. He barely even seemed to notice the young man as his massive arms and wings began to work as one, pulling him through the water toward the ship. Lenk thought to cry out after him, had he the voice to do so.
The sensation of a tail tightening as it wrapped about his ankle removed the need.
He was pulled behind the dragonman, feeling rather like a piece of bait as his companion moved swiftly through the water despite the added weight. He sporadically bobbed up and down, gulping down frantic air and misplaced salt as he rose above and fell below the surface with each stroke of the dragonman’s arms. He tried to hold his breath, tried to shut his eyes.
Because every time he opened them, he could see the gaping, toothy cavern of the Akaneed’s maw drawing closer, the vast column of its body lost in the depths behind it, the fire of its yellow eye burning as it bore down upon them. After the third time, he stopped trying to ignore it and simply waited to feel giant jaws sever him in half.
As it was, he heard only the sound of them snapping shut. He was hauled violently from the water, sputtering and coughing as Gariath hauled himself and his frail cargo onto the ship.
The dark shadow swept beneath them, the great wave following in its wake sending their vessel rocking violently beneath them as it vanished into the sea. Lenk strained to keep on his feet as the deck settled along with the sea, waiting for the beast to return.
After a moment of silence, he dared to speak.
“Is it gone?”
“No,” Gariath replied.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because it hasn’t killed me yet.”
While certain it made sense to Gariath, Lenk had neither nerve nor intent to ask him to explain. Instead, he looked to Kataria, breathing heavily and pulling wet hair from her face. She turned a wary and weary gaze upon him.