by James Somers
The two of them walked across the street. Sarah noticed a pillar of dark smoke rising from beyond the hills of her family’s property. “Our farm! The house must be on fire!”
“I’ll go tell your father!” Matthew started to run back toward the laundry. But the thunder of galloping horses stopped him cold. They both stared down the road coming into town. Wraith Riders poured in like a storm surge. They rode into Millertown with weapons raised high and torches set ablaze.
As they passed through, sending pedestrians running in terror, they flung their torches through the glass windows of storefronts. Anyone caught nearby was slain with the sword. Matthew pulled at Sarah, urging her to escape. She stood in shock at the sheer ferocity of the attack. Why are they here? Why now?
Neither Sarah, nor anyone else in Millertown, saw the demon flying here and there among the people, searching for the girl he had seen with the priest of Shaddai—his wife, now with child five months. As fierce as the Wraith Riders were, they did not kill any of the young women, knowing the girl was extremely valuable to Lord Mordred, their entire purpose in Millertown revolving around her safe capture.
Half of the town stood burning, forcing anyone in the buildings out into the street where the riders sifted for Mordred’s prize. The demon found her. Sarah tried her best to run ahead of the tide of marauders. Matthew pulled her along as best he could. An invisible hand seized her by a wad of her blonde hair. She jerked backward at the neck, but Matthew kept her from falling. “Matthew!” she screamed as the demon stopped her from going any further.
The Wraith Riders responded quickly once the girl was identified. Black horses surrounded Sarah and Matthew. A Wraith Rider dismounted and seized the girl—careful not to damage her unborn child—collateral for their master’s use.
Matthew battered the black rider, but a leather gauntlet backhanded him out of the way. Sarah wondered where her father was. All she could see were the stamping hooves and snorting muzzles of their dark steeds. She thought, for a moment, she heard the voices of men trying to stop the riders from taking her. A brief clash of steel ensued beyond the circle of horses, then the moans of the dying.
The rider bound Sarah’s hands with a leather cord and hoisted her up onto one of the saddles. The muscular arms of a Wraith Rider surrounded her from behind, controlling his horse with leather reins. He turned the animal quickly, then they shot away from the chaotic scene. The others followed, leaving Millertown in their wake of terror and destruction.
Matthew struggled in the dirt. The right side of his face throbbed terribly. When he rubbed it, his hand came away covered in blood from several deep gashes across his cheek. People he knew wailed in the streets for their loved ones slain in the attack. Others, wounded, moaned, rolling around in pain like salted slugs.
A pair of strong hands reached under Matthew’s arms, hauling the boy to his feet. He could hardly stand. His head spun in a daze. “Matthew, are you all right?”
It was the voice of Arness, Sarah’s father. Her mother was crying next to him. “Matthew, where is Sarah?”
The boy tried to fix his eyes on Sarah’s parents. Blood dripped onto his shirt collar. “They took her,” he said, trying not to cry.
Sarah’s parents looked at one another. There could be only one reason why Mordred’s Wraith Riders would single out their daughter and abduct her. Somehow, Mordred knew about Sarah’s association to Gideon—knew she was his wife. And as Sarah had confided to her parents: Gideon was traveling with Shaddai’s Deliverer.
SEA DRAGON
Since the time of their departure, Captain Bonifast’s crew had been working feverishly to keep the ship running hard toward the Isle of Macedon. Since the time daylight illuminated the sea around them, they had doubled those efforts because two of Mordred’s Man-O-War battleships had been spotted hot on their trail.
Cannon shot sailed toward the stern of the Trinity, then fell abruptly short, crashing into the sea, sending up plumes of spray. “It’s uncanny!” Levi complained as he watched them from the helm. “We should be outrunning them.”
Ethan and Gideon stood nearby. “How long before they get within firing range?” Ethan asked.
“My guess is they’ll be able to hit us within twenty minutes at the rate they’ve been gaining,” Gideon reported.
“Get those specials up here, boys!” Levi demanded. “I want two on the stern rail!”
Several men labored to bring two of Captain Bonifast’s special, long-barreled cannons up onto the poop deck in order to fire them off the rear of the ship. When they had fastened them into position, another man followed with powder and prepped them for firing.
“Ready, Captain!”
“Fire at will and get more ammo up here!”
A steady stream of sailors carried Levi’s specially cast shells, with the oblong bodies and pointed ends, up to where the cannons were positioned. The gunners ignited the cannons. One of the shells hit a Man-O-war high on the hull. A plume of wood chips erupted and was sucked away by the wind. The other shot fell into the sea between the two ships.
“Ah-ha! We hit ‘em!” Levi shouted proudly. “Let ‘em have it again, lads!”
The gun crews reloaded as the Man-o-wars fired another volley. They still fell short of the Trinity, but not as much as before. The gun crews readied, aimed and fired the two special, long-range cannons.
Ethan watched the shells hurtle through the air toward their targets—one several fractions of a second ahead of the other. He gasped as a demon shot away from the deck of one of the enemy ships. He appeared powerful, though not in the same league as Jericho.
The demon pulled his sword from his side and crossed into the path of the first shell from Captain Bonifast’s cannon. It all happened in the blink of an eye. The demon cleaved the metal slug in two, then hurled his weapon away toward the second inbound shot. The sword spun around like a boomerang, clipped the shell and then returned to the hand of its owner.
The precision was amazing, but to the eyes of Captain Bonifast and his crew, one shell had exploded in mid-air while the other seemed suddenly to veer off course to drown in the sea. “What happened?” Gideon asked. The surprised look on Ethan’s face was unmistakable. He had seen something more than the rest of them had.
“There’s a demon deflecting our rounds,” he said. Ethan expected the demon to rush ahead and board the Trinity. He prepared to launch into the spiritual realm in order to defend them, but the demon did not approach.
“What’s it doing now!” Gideon demanded.
Ethan concentrated upon the demon. “I’m not sure. It’s not coming any closer.”
Bonifast’s special cannons fired several more rounds, but each met with the same demise: deflection or destruction. Meanwhile the Man-O-wars still closed on the Trinity and their shots fell into the sea nearer to the stern than before. Soon they would be able to hit the Trinity while their rounds still had enough momentum to do real damage.
Ethan watched as the demon suddenly veered away from the entire exchange. It dove into the depths of the Azure Sea and Ethan lost sight of it. “It’s gone. I’m not sure where it’s going—into the sea for some reason,” he said.
“Why would it do that?”
But Ethan could only turn to his mentor and shrug. Gideon’s expression softened. Unfortunately none of them had long to wait on the answer to the question. Something breeched the water off the starboard side approximately five hundred yards away. A plume of water erupted skyward, giving birth to a nightmare of gigantic proportion.
Calls came from all over the ship. “Sea dragon!” they yelled.
“What?” Ethan couldn’t believe what he saw. “I thought they were only myths—stories told to children!”
“Get the cannons ready port and starboard!” Levi demanded.
“Have you ever seen one of these before, Levi?” Gideon asked. The look on his face gave the priest his answer—none of them had. “I’ve only heard tales,” he said. “But who ever pays any atte
ntion to those? They say the sea dragons only hunt large whales in the depths. People have claimed to see whale carcasses shredded to pieces or bitten in half, but I never believed them.”
The snake-like serpent had armor of richly colored blue scales, except on its white underbelly. This dragon possessed no wings or appendages of any land sort at all—a sea serpent. Great fins protruded from various places on its body, allowing it to navigate more efficiently in the depths of the Azure where it normally hunted.
The beast drew its body upward and threw its hydrodynamic head toward the Trinity as the ship passed by. The dragon produced a piercing, high-pitched screech. The dragon flashed row upon row of large, serrated teeth like a shark, then plunged back into the water, the entire body following the course of the head. A great lump of its body rolled just above the water ending when the tail finished the course and disappeared beneath the surface again.
“It’s coming!” Ethan shouted. His sight allowed him to penetrate the murk and see the massive creature swimming toward the Trinity.
“Ready the guns, men!” Levi commanded. He kept a white-knuckle grip on the helm, hoping the sea dragon would not emerge at the bow or stern where defenses were weakest. “When you get a shot, take it!” he shouted to the gunnery crews.
For what seemed like an age, everything remained still. Only the sound of the Trinity treading water was heard now as even the enemy ships had stopped firing—most likely curious as to the dragon’s appearance and its next move.
Ethan watched as it drew nearer. The beast swam incredibly fast. Then the great toothy head erupted from the Azure on the Trinity’s starboard side. Its head seemed even more massive close-up and its open maw could have swallowed an elephant whole. The huge serpent held its body aloft for a moment and then brought the head down to strike.
The mouth split into rows of jagged teeth and smashed into the deck. The strike caught three men. The deck boards buckled and cracked where the men had been standing. One sailor disappeared inside the mouth completely. Another dangled by one leg caught between the teeth. He screamed frantically as his tan trousers turned red. The third man fell away to the side sustaining scrapes, cuts, and probably broken bones.
What happened to the first man in the next flash of those teeth was too horrible to describe—rows of serrated knives transformed from bone white to crimson. The second man fell away as the head rose up, chewing, swallowing. His lower leg was gone. Some rushed to help him. They brandished blades, trying to hack at the sea serpent. Gideon ran among them.
Ethan looked within the creature and saw the demon possessing it—the same which had been protecting the enemy ships. That was why the sea dragon, usually never seen, had come up from the depths to attack them. The beast struck again, becoming entangled in the rigging. Gideon jumped up and grabbed some of the ropes tangled about its head. He thrashed it with his blade.
“Shoot the body!” Levi commanded. The Man-O-wars were still approaching fast. The beast held the Trinity in place as the wind fought against the sails to drive them forward.
Cannons exploded, striking the beast where it draped over onto the deck. The sea dragon lurched and screeched, pulling away from the rigging ropes. The head sped on over the other side of the deck with the long body following like a shimmering blue archway over the ship. “Gideon!” Ethan cried.
Gideon disappeared over the side, still tangled in the ropes about the dragon’s head. Ethan leaped after him into realm shift, entering the spiritual plane to follow. Gideon tried to free himself, gouging the beast with his sword, giving it all of the effort he could muster.
The beast shot up toward the surface again, breeching with Ethan hot on its trail. He reached the head and saw the ethereal form of the demon within riding along like a passenger in a coach. Ethan’s blade leapt to his hand and he slashed into the dragon’s head—more at the demon than the animal. He had a plan.
The demon had to be struck three times to dislodge him from the dragon. The spirit writhed and then evaporated away as he’d seen happen to their kind before, during the attack on the slaver ship. Gideon thrashed, trying to catch his breath and his bearings before the serpent dove beneath the waves again. Everything happened so quickly.
Ethan leaped at the head, attempting to enter the dragon as the demon had, but he was repelled. For whatever reason, he could not possess the creature as a purely spiritual being could. Instead, he straddled the neck behind the head. His sword became liquid mercury, forming a silver chain in his hand.
Ethan wasn’t sure exactly how he accomplished it, but he didn’t care so long as he saved his friend. He had seen the demons using various weapons in combat and he wondered if they weren’t all the same weapon with this ability to change. Ethan whipped the chain over the serpentine head, then jerked it firm like a bit into the dragon’s mouth. He now held a crude bridle on the beast, hoping to force his will on the creature.
The serpent struggled against him, trying to free itself, but Ethan exerted all of his strength. He muttered a prayer for divine help and forced the dragon to submit. Willing it forward, Ethan dug into the scaly flesh and the sea dragon surged away toward the enemy ships. The Man-o-wars were almost upon the Trinity and preparing to resume their attack.
Ethan, the dragon, and a bewildered Gideon all plunged down beneath the surface of the sea. Ethan hoped Gideon could hold his breath for a few moments more as he sent the creature on the attack. The priest had little choice but to hang on for dear life.
The dragon veered to the port side of both Man-O-wars and then surged upward. The breech was so powerful that three quarters of the serpent’s thick, muscular body left the water and hung suspended over both ships. Ethan waited for just the right moment.
It all happened slightly slower than the time it took a man to blink his eyes. Ethan pulled the chain away. It became liquid then sword again. He sliced away the rope binding Gideon to the sea monster, grabbed him bodily, and leaped away.
The hulking mass of serpentine muscle struggled only a moment against gravity and then it all came crashing back toward the sea. Caught in between were both Man-O-war battleships. Wooden masts splintered and toppled. Deck planks burst asunder from the impact of the sea dragon’s bulk. Both warships buckled and stopped dead in the water.
Ethan returned to the physical world, still holding onto Gideon. But their tumbling bodies produced too much centrifugal force and he lost his grip. Both priests of Shaddai splashed into the sea.
Ethan felt drained, much like his experience after sinking the slaver ship and the demon battle that had taken place onboard. He barely managed to struggle against the water and keep his head above the surface. Ethan moaned. Exhausted, he slipped beneath the rolling waves of the sea.
A hand seized him—Gideon’s. He called to Ethan, but his words grew faint and distant. Unconsciousness swallowed up his final reserves of strength. And when he knew that his friend held him secure, bobbing on the surface of the Azure Sea, Ethan surrendered to it.
PRISONER OF WAR
Sarah slumped sideways, lying exhausted against the powerful leather clad arm of her captor. They had been riding for more than a day non-stop. Somehow the horses pushed on without water or food. Perhaps, she thought, their horses are as abominable as they are.
There were twelve Wraith Riders in their group—the same who had come to Millertown and burned it. Sarah had gone through bouts of crying during the long journey south. She had no idea if her parents had survived their brief attack.
Why had they not killed her already? What were they waiting for? Perhaps Mordred simply desired to perform the deed himself. Maybe he hoped to wring information about Gideon and the Deliverer from her before she died. She resolved to tell him nothing—a resolution Sarah hoped she had the courage to keep when faced with the warlord face to face.
Several columns of black smoke rose above the tree line ahead. The twelve riders in black leather armor turned from the road, riding in that same direction. Sarah thought of esc
ape, but she had no chance of getting away. Even if she had not been heavy with child, she could never have hoped to outrun the riders.
When the riders breeched the line of trees, Sarah saw the village beyond. It had been occupied by several hundred people. Now the only living beings moving in it rode upon black horses. She immediately thought of Millertown although the heinous act committed here was far worse.
Images of people running in terror, then cut down like wheat, flashed through her mind. The lodges still burned while the smaller homes had been reduced to smoldering piles of waste already. The sparse countryside, with its few trees and yellow straw grass, was littered with the inhabitants of the village.
Mordred’s Wraith Riders had spared no one. The only weapons the villagers had possessed with which to defend themselves were farming implements. It was a total waste of life without reason. Sarah’s eyes strained to produce tears once again, but she was all dried up.
Some of the riders in the village took notice of them as they approached and one in particular. A particularly large man, on his horse, trotted toward them. His black and red, leather armor gleamed with gold trim. And what appeared to be batwings stretched upward into points upon his black facemask like ears. Drawing near, he held a long double-edged sword. The metal was thick and grossly stained with dried blood. He replaced it into his sheath, then came to a halt before the twelve riders and their prisoner.
Sarah supposed this man, sitting on the large black horse before her, had to be Mordred. His gaze fell upon her like a weight and Sarah felt she could not hold it without fear overwhelming her. After a moment, he reached up with a gloved hand and removed the hard-shell, black mask.
Sarah had never actually laid eyes on the Lord of the Wraith Riders. She was surprised to find him so handsome. Raven hair fell around the man’s broad shoulders as he shook free of the helmet. His sinister gaze penetrated to her very soul. He held a subtle seductiveness, as deadly as a python charming its prey before the inevitable strike.