Yet somewhere deep down below in the blackness, Mancellor saw them, fluttering in the water. Half-formed images, multiplied. Hard to capture, like light refracting through prisms and gemstones and then slanting though stained-glass again and spreading out over a polished cobbled floor like a giant puzzle, a puzzle sounding against the darkest fathoms of his soul, a puzzle that slowly solidified.
He saw himself—fighting in a gladiator arena, Jenko Bruk at his side. A green dragon. A skull-faced knight in green armor. A city boiling in silver and blood. A crumbled stone abbey full of thieves. A tower. Falling. A young dark-haired queen . . . a girl he so desperately loved, but could never have—
Something crashed into him, and he was torn from the mermaid’s grasp.
With a sudden surge of energy, he launched himself toward the surface of the sea, clawing his way upward, crimson bubbles churning. When his head broke the skin of the ocean, sunlight engulfed him, bright and raw. It felt as if he’d been underwater for a harsh eternity. Pain-scorched lungs near to bursting. He choked. The taste and smell of so much death and blood gagging him.
His hand went immediately to the pocket of his leather breeches, finding the two angel stones still there, safe and sound. Both now hot against the palm of his hand.
The shrill shrieking of the merfolk all around sliced into his ears and scraped along his every nerve ending. But it was that very starkness of their screams that woke him. He took the measure of his surroundings, as grim as they were, everything still a hopeless bloody wet havoc.
Spiderwood fought beside Hammerfiss now, the red-haired giant still astride his white stallion, the Bloodwood atop his Bloodeye steed. Naught but the neck of each horse was above water now. Both men were engaged in battle with Leif Chaparral and a small contingent of a dozen mounted Gul Kana knights. Every horse with a rider struggled in the gruesome cruddy filth of the channel, armored knights weighing them down. Sharks and merfolk still slithered among the combatants too.
Mancellor was swimming, feet no longer touching the bottom of the channel. A swell of the tide lifted him high, tossing him straight into the flanks of Spiderwood’s Bloodeye horse. The Spider kicked him away. He was hemmed in on almost every side now, merfolk, sharks. He saw a boat, a small white skiff, bobbing and twisting in the waves almost drunkenly. Without thinking, he swam toward it, his injured arm all but useless. Dark water lapped against the boat, bloody streaks of flesh and viscera washing down its side in fresh twining rivulets. He ignored the pain, ignored everything between himself and the boat and paddled straight for it with all the strength he could muster, knowing it was his only escape.
Enna Spades stared down at him from the sidewall of the boat when he finally reached it, hair matted red and stringy to her pale face. “Aboard!” she shouted. Most of her armor was gone. She held a long wooden oar in one hand, angling it toward him, urging him to grasp hold. Jenko Bruk stood in the boat just behind her, also armorless, a long spear held firm and ready in his grip.
“Grab it!” Spades shouted, the oar still extended as the boat nosed into another wave, lifting the prow. The bloody wash almost sucked Mancellor under the boat. The currents of the channel were gathering strength, lazily pushing and pulling him in the rolling swells. Spades nearly pitched face-first into the bloody channel as a second furious wave lifted the skiff’s aft end high. Jenko lost his balance and fell to his knees.
It was then—as the boat listed forward on the foaming wave—Mancellor caught a glimpse of the ax and the helm.
Both Forgetting Moon and Lonesome Crown were jammed under a white wooden bench near the rear of the white skiff. From the angle of the boat rising in the water, Mancellor caught just the merest glimpse of both treasures. He felt the angel stones grow instantly warm in his pocket. Hot. Burning. The moment Laijon hath promised me. Then the skiff rolled back away from him, and they were gone from sight.
Sputtering for air, Mancellor swam toward the boat as it swung out of the trough of the wave. Spades was once again at the sidewall, oar reaching out. In the rising surf, the stern of the boat slewed to the right. Bloody waves buffeted and hurled Mancellor against the side of the skiff. He felt the oar slap against his shoulder. Another wave tossed him high, and strong hands seized the neckline of his shirt. It was Jenko. Mancellor scrambled up the side of the skiff, Jenko helping to haul him up by his tattered and sodden shirt. He slid over the wooden sidewall and flopped to the bottom of the boat, choking for air. The skiff had about a foot of crimson water sloshing along the white floorboards.
“Lucky bastard!” Jenko lifted him to his feet. The Gallows Haven boy wore naught but leather breeches and a ragged, bloody shirt clinging to his back. Spades also wore little: leather breeches and thin leather belt, sheathed dagger at her side. Her sopping black undershirt clung to her flesh, torn in many places.
The boat was about twenty paces long by ten wide. Not big, but safe. But other men were attempting to climb aboard on every side. Knights, fighters, all of them panicked and bloody, armorless and wet, some even naked as the day they were born.
“They’ll swamp us!” Spades shouted, oar cracking the head of the first man into the boat, sending him toppling over the bulwark back into the sea. Jenko stabbed his spear at the first face he saw, splitting it wide, the dead man sliding back into the water.
“Help us, you fool!” Spades screamed at him. “Row us away from here!”
There were so many men clinging to the sidewalls trying to lift themselves aboard, Mancellor knew the boat would soon overturn. He scanned the vessel for a weapon, finding the shiny ax and helm lying in the rippling red water, both artifacts jammed under the white bench.
Spades clubbed men with her oar. “We’ve got to get out of here!” she yelled again. “Untie the long oars and hook them into the rowing frame.” Mancellor saw the oars strapped to the sidewall. “Row us away from this madness!” Spades screamed.
Mancellor lurched forward, seizing Forgetting Moon by the haft, tearing it from under the bench. Despite its great weight, the double-bladed battle-ax fit perfectly in his two straining fists. He lifted it high, gripping it tight, injured shoulder howling in pain as he brought it crashing down onto the exposed back of the nearest man crawling aboard.
The ax’s curved blade sliced the hapless fellow in half as if he were made of thin wisps of air, burying itself deep into the sidewall of the boat, wood splintering. The bottom half of the dead man’s torso dropped into the sea, the top half spilling into the skiff, bruise-colored guts slithering over the white floorboards.
“You fool!” Spades yelled, throwing away her oar. “You’ll tear the boat apart with that thing!” She leaped forward and shoved Mancellor aside. He slipped in the slop of guts and went down hard, clutching his injured arm.
Spades grabbed the ax haft and ripped the weapon free of the wooden sidewall. She jammed the weapon back under the bench. “Lady Death take you, leave it be!” She drew the dagger from her belt. “Get the long oars into the rowing frame like I ordered!” She whirled, dagger slicing into the throat of the next man to climb aboard, blade gleaming with blood.
Jenko, balanced against the aft sidewall, stabbed down with his spear into the next man who clawed at the white walls of the skiff, yanking it free.
Something heavy hit the boat. It lurched roughly to the left. Mancellor was tossed to the gut-strewn floorboards again. He crawled through the sloshing blood and slime toward the long oars, unhooking them from the portside bulwark, standing, struggling to fit each into the rowing frame. The boat lurched again. A shark thrashing near the stern, Jenko’s spear hitting it over and over.
Mancellor shoved the oars into the frame and pulled, muscles straining against the press of the sea, pain shooting from his injured arm through his entire body. The drift of the tidewater was too strong. It didn’t seem to matter how hard he rowed toward Saint Only; the boat was at the mercy of the current.
A flash of silver spun over the sidewall of the boat, landing with a thud, wrigg
ling at his feet, squirming. He kicked at the flopping creature. The beast unfolded gangly little arms and screeched a horrific sound. It was one of the merfolk, a male. Sharp bone weapons were clutched in his clawing webbed fingers. Mancellor’s heart failed a beat as the monster slithered along the bottom of the boat straight toward Forgetting Moon and Lonesome Crown.
“Kill that gill-fucking fiend!” Spades kicked at the creature with her bare feet, knocking the slimy half man onto its back. Heaving gills along the beast’s neck splayed wide, hissing for air. Jenko whirled and stabbed the tip of his spear rapidly down into its slithering fellow’s chest twice. Blood welled from each wound. The merman grimaced in pain, thin purple lips curling back to expose gruesome rows of sharp pointed teeth. Jenko stabbed it in the chest again, then whirled, stabbing at another man attempting to board.
Then he stopped fighting and stared out over the ocean.
Spades stared too, eyes wide in horror.
Slicing and coiling through the churning mass of drowning men, sharks, and merfolk, cleaving the entire battlefield right in half, came a sea serpent. Its flat head, the size of an ale keg and color of polished bronze, came gliding above the water within twenty paces of Mancellor’s boat, tongue flickering out slippery and fast, large round eyes on either side of its head keen and watchful.
As long as the tallest of pine trees, the serpent moved smooth through the channel, pushing up scarlet swells of floating battlefield carnage before it. The bulk of its tan-and-umber-striped body was submerged underwater. But judging from what was exposed above, the beast’s girth was as big and round as two full-grown men. It confidently plied the red channel, sending even the sharks and merfolk scurrying for deeper haunts. At least a hundred more serpents slithered right behind the first, a slithering line of dark death stretching off into the northern horizon.
“Bloody Mother Mia!” Jenko swore, gore-coated spear still in hand, legs braced against the sidewalls of the boat. The skiff rose up in the swirling eddy created by the passing serpents. And the drift of the ocean seemed to be taking them south.
“We’re pointed the wrong direction!” Spades shouted. “Mancellor, turn us about!”
“The current is too strong!” Jenko hollered back. “And there’s thousands of men in the water between us and Adin Wyte! We can’t go that way without them swamping us! We’re cut off from Saint Only!”
Spades struck with her dagger at a half-dressed man who’d managed to scramble aboard during the distraction. The stunned fellow reeled back, neck sliced open from ear to ear, grinning wound gaping wide as he fell over the side. The skiff was tipping and yawing alarmingly, one of the sea serpents jostling it from beneath.
Spades fell against the sidewall, dagger tumbling from her grip. “Then row for Lord’s Point, Mancellor!” she roared. “Row for Lord’s Point before these damnable serpents swamp us!”
Mancellor rowed, wide eyes fixed on Forgetting Moon and Lonesome Crown, the two ancient artifacts sliding along the bloody floorboards of the boat, his mind caught by the grip of the two angel stones in his pocket.
* * *
In time, the squalor of war, all the entrails and stench and lakes of blood and screams of the dead, seeps into the dirt. In time, the torture and terror and agony fade. In time, war takes upon itself a rousing and romantic shape, a pleasing nostalgia bathed in naught but beautiful glory. In time, all things sanctioned of the gods become righteous.
—THE ANGEL STONE CODEX
* * *
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
BISHOP HUGH GODWYN
5TH DAY OF THE FIRE MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON
SAINT ONLY CHANNEL
The sea serpent plowed through the battle, its slithery body slicing through the red water, bloody filth unfurling in its wake. Bishop Godwyn treads water with Liz Hen and Dokie, the channel’s swift-flowing undertow pulling at his legs. Luckily, his gaoler armor was long since discarded, now somewhere at the bottom of the channel.
Liz Hen had removed most of her armor too, naught but her breastplate strapped around her chest. She was sluggishly swimming toward a rider-less horse, the beast neck-deep in the rolling waves. Reaching the horse, she threw her leg over its back and pulled herself up into the saddle. She punched the first man who tried to pull her from the saddle right in the face, snatching the man’s sword from his hand as he fell back. She stabbed at another knight nearby. It didn’t matter anymore who was who, whether one was from Gul Kana or Sør Sevier; it was every fighter for himself, and Liz Hen was attacking everyone. Beer Mug paddled in the water at her side, panting long heavy breaths, head barely above water.
Leif Chaparral struggled with a shrieking mermaid. He was in a desperate fight, head constantly sinking below the surface. Hammerfiss, atop his white stallion, the beast sturdy in the gathering waves, pushed his way toward Leif. Another fighter, a Bloodwood assassin on a demon-eyed steed of pure midnight, with wide flaring orbs as red as the bloody sea, was right behind Hammerfiss. Spiderwood! The dark-haired newcomer in black leather armor was the very image of Hawkwood, only his hair was cropped short.
Hammerfiss ended the mermaid’s life quickly, crushing her head with one heavy blow of his spiked ball mace. A scarlet spray of blood and brains sprinkled the already scarlet sea. At the same time, Spiderwood swiftly had Leif around the neck with a black leather cord, strangling him. Leif’s dark-rimmed eyes bulged as he struggled to escape.
Liz Hen shoved her newly acquired mount into the fray, her horse thudding straight into the Bloodeye, knocking Spiderwood from the saddle. Leif slipped away and dipped under the scarlet skin of the channel. Hammerfiss swung his mace at Liz Hen. The girl parried, but the heavy mace snapped her sword and plunged straight down onto the forehead of her mount, crushing it. The horse disappeared under Liz Hen into the swirling water and vanished. Liz Hen sank with it. Beer Mug dove down after her.
“We’ve got to save her!” Dokie drifted in the water near Godwyn, panic on his face. “She’ll die down there! Beer Mug can’t pull her up from the bottom of the ocean!”
Two burly hands grasped Dokie by the nape of his jerkin, hauling him up out of the water. The boy’s legs kicked as he was pulled straight up the barnacled side of a wooden sailboat and over the portside bulwarks. The boat rose up in the swell, the bloody wave breaking over Godwyn’s head. His vision was suddenly awash in red oblivion as the filth-ridden salt water raked his face, then sunlight again.
“Grab the rope!” A coil of rope slapped the water near Godwyn’s head. He seized hold and held fast as the men in the boat pulled him up and over the sidewall, sodden body landing with a wet thud against the floorboards. Weary, he looked up at his rescuers. It was Derry Richrath, the proprietor of the Turn Key Saloon, and the serving boy, Otto. Both Derry and Otto were encased in gaoler armor. A dozen wide-eyed soldiers cowered against the sides of the boat, all armorless and sopping, all recently rescued from the horrors of the channel, trauma etched in their faces.
Dokie gripped the sidewall, frantic eyes scanning the ocean. “Liz Hen! Beer Mug!” Godwyn scrambled to his feet, joining Dokie at the prow. “We have to find them!” the boy screamed.
“They’re gone!” As the chaos of battle swirled around the sailboat, Godwyn’s straining eyes scanned the red-churning horizon. Sharks plied the waters, great jaws ripping and tearing and feasting. Mermaids pulled any fighter they could get their webbed hands on into the deep. Serpents coiled around both horse and man. It was bedlam. A macabre dance of frenzied destruction and pure vicious slaughter.
And Liz Hen is gone!
Godwyn whirled, focusing on the unfurled sails of the thousands of sailboats in the distance, skiffs and fishing boats that had been dragged out for just such a rescue—the current and drift of the tidewaters scattering them in all directions. The nearest one was overturned, men scrambling up its barnacled hull as sharks and merfolk tore at their legs. Lord’s Point was in the distance, rolling breakers still white with foam and unbloodied. “Someone help me unfu
rl the sail!” Derry shouted at the men cowering in the boat. “Gather oars and row! Do something, you bloody fools!”
A black dagger spun passed Derry’s head and buried itself into the chest of the first knight to stand. The stunned man fell forward clutching at the blade, moaning, blood pooling under him. Godwyn whirled again. Spiderwood was balanced on the starboard bulwarks, a second black knife in hand, slicing open the neck of the serving boy, Otto, with a wicked flash. The boy slid silently over the side of the sailboat and disappeared into the sea, leaving a wide streak of blood in his wake.
With a shout of rage, Derry Richrath snatched up a long wooden oar and swung it at the assassin. But the Bloodwood ducked the blow, kicking the staff away, his blade slicing into Derry’s neck next, brutal and savage. Derry toppled overboard and was gone.
Spiderwood was now perched on the sidewall of the skiff like a raptor about to swoop down upon its prey, with Dokie Liddle cowering just under him. Like lightning the Bloodwood struck. And just as quickly he was gone, wrapped in the thick coppery coils of a sea serpent and yanked roughly backward. The assassin stabbed at the beast as he was pulled under the crimson depths of the channel, water thrashing as both Bloodwood and beast disappeared. “Bloody Mother Mia!” Godwyn exhaled. Then he turned and yelled at the men behind him. “Do as Derry said! Gather oars! Row!” Every man lurched to his feet in search of an oar, some untying the sail.
Dokie stood on shaking legs and leaned against the prow, pointing. “It’s a miracle!” he exclaimed. “Look, Godwyn, Leif Chaparral approaches as if by magic!”
Godwyn looked. It was Leif Chaparral. The top half of the Dayknight’s body seemed to float above water, as if a horse was underwater, buoying him up and carrying him toward them.
Beer Mug paddled madly just in front of Leif.
“Come on, Beer Mug!” Dokie shouted. “Come to me!”
The Blackest Heart Page 88