Rhune Shadow

by Vaughn Heppner

  She scanned the parallel shore. It was over five hundred paces away, she estimated. She expected to see a sorcerer standing before a brazier, chanting, having summoned this thing of the deep. As far as she could tell, the shore was empty, although flickers of movement farther down the beach…

  Elissa twisted in the harness to look back the way she had come. She could make out bobbing points of light moving along the shore, and it appeared they had ridden out of the city. Counting the lights—lanterns, no doubt—there were half-a-dozen riders moving toward the Tyrant’s camp.

  Assume the worst and you’ll never be surprised, the troubadour had once told her.

  Elissa nodded. That had sounded too pessimistic at the time. Tonight…horsemen surely hunted for her. She had spent too much time riding the thermals above Karchedon. But if she hadn’t, she would already be in the sea down there with the monster.

  She was forty feet from the waters now. She heard the lap of waves. Then she heard the parchment sheets creak above her. She felt the faintest lift. The tiny waves below were giving her small upward gusts.

  The sea-monster didn’t keep up with her. She spied another twitch of its tail-tip splashing salt water, but it was farther behind her now.

  By the Shadows, she hated the sea. She wished she had struck south for the desert. Nasamon trackers during the day—no, she would never have escaped the Nasamons in the desert for long. Going south would have been a bad idea.

  The skay shuddered and lurched five feet lower.

  Elissa gripped the steering strut with manic strength. Alexon’s camp was still a half mile away. She spied campfires. Their fires flickered off the palisade’s walls. On the other side of the walled camp, she knew, were the great wooden behemoths, the quinqueremes that had broken Karchedonian sea supremacy—maybe for the rest of her life.

  If only the wind would blow harder. As if hearing her thoughts, a gust blew the skay higher. The wind picked up then. It was a freak occurrence. Elissa laughed with delight. She reached fifty feet again. And she saw the monstrous sea beast gliding below her, having turned from its previous course. If this wind held, the monster wouldn’t matter.

  The troubadour was wrong. You didn’t have to assume the worst. If she had, she would never have swung out of danger today using the plinth, the gilt lettering, and her hook and line. She would never have attempted building the skay.

  The wind gusted even harder. The skay jerked upward. The movement startled her, but she smiled a second time. It looked like she might make the half-mile to shore after all. That’s when the strut of bamboo finally snapped in two. It might have held in place because of the parchment sheets sewn to it, but another sharp gust twisted the severed bamboo and ripped the sheets apart.

  Elissa gasped at her wretched luck. Earlier, she had sworn an oath never to scream again. The skay’s destruction now came with brutal swiftness. Other bamboo tubes splintered and broke in half, and the skay crumpled as if an invisible hand were crushing it. The bamboo and parchment mass plunged toward the sea. Worse, the silken harness entangled Elissa’s arms, pinning them against her side.

  Unable to free herself, Elissa fell. She braced herself and hit with a splat. The water punched her stomach and chest, but her bracing kept the wind from being knocked out of her. Then parchment sheets and bamboo struts folded over her, shoving her head underwater. Salty water shot up her nose. She gasped, drank briny water by mistake and coughed explosively. That expelled precious air from her lungs.

  With dexterous cunning, she managed to twist her feet free. They swung downward toward the sea bottom. Her tangled arms made her nearly helpless, however. Seawater stung her eyes and began to soak into the parchment sheets, making them heavier.

  Elissa might have screamed at the unfairness of it. She might have thrashed. The knowledge that in seconds, the vast and gliding sea monster might swallow her along with the skay in a gulp nearly drove her wild with terror. She was a Rhune, though. She had repeated this as a litany in her mind during the sickening plummet toward this watery trap. Therefore, instead of panicking, she kicked her freed legs and managed to shove her head out of the water and up against the wet parchment.

  She wheezed pitifully and drank wonderful air. Then she sank, pulled down by the weight of her wet clothes and pushed down by the increasingly heavier parchment. She kicked again and breathed once more. She did this two more times before reason began to churn in her mind.

  You’re dead, Elissa, unless you untangle your arms.

  She expelled her air in an explosion of bubbles, kicked up and drew as deep a breath as possible. As she sank underwater, she forced herself to relax. She concentrated on her arms. The left was the freest. With slow movements, so as not to entangle it further, she hitched that arm up until it strained against a silken line. With her left hand on her thigh, she used her fingers to climb and push even higher. She felt the scabbard there as her lungs ached for air.

  You don’t get to breathe just yet. You will. Wait another few seconds.

  With hard-won patience, she twisted the scabbard until the handle of her Rhune dagger rested in her grip. She unsnapped the cord binding the handle and slid the blade free. Then she kicked wildly and shot her head up against heavy parchment. It only gave her time for a small sip of air.

  As she sank, she let herself relax again, but she knew she only had a few seconds to win free. Conscious of the dagger’s magical sharpness, she cut the silk line as far away from her body as she could reach. Leaking blood near sharks was a terrible idea. The silk parted, giving her right arm motion. She began to switch the blade to her right hand, her knife hand. She was conscious of the dreadfulness of dropping the dagger. It would sink into the depths. For an instant then—maybe because she had thought the awful thing—the handle slipped free.

  No! she howled in her mind.

  She clutched at the slipping bone-handle with her right hand and slashed silken line. She cut too fast, however, and nicked her left arm.

  Elissa kicked upward for another breath and this time she cut and slid out of the silken web. By now, she had become aware that her wet clothes made her too heavy and that it was hard to kick with waterlogged boots.

  Don’t think. Do.

  She kicked out from under the wreckage. Then she flutter-kicked to keep her head above water. She lifted her left arm. Blood dripped from the shallow cut in her forearm. The sight frightened her. She shook her head. This kicking was tiring. With great care amid her fluttering, she sheathed the dagger. But she couldn’t strap the line over the handle. She would have to trust the scabbard to keep hold of her precious blade.

  She let herself sink and struggled to shrug off a small pack. While underwater, she rummaged in it and pulled out a slick and rather large piece of sealskin. With tiring effort, she broke the surface again. By the Shadows, she couldn’t take much more of this. She fumbled with the skin, unrolled it and found a wooden tube. She uncorked it and began to blow. As she fought to stay above water, she filled the sealskin with air. It took time and the blowing made her lightheaded. Finally, however, she corked the tube. Once done, she clung to the float with fatigued gratefulness. With luck, she could now kick herself to shore.

  She kicked several times and then moaned in terror as she felt the water stir directly below her. The conclusion was obvious. A vast body moved under her. In the terror of helplessness and her exhaustion, Elissa vomited. She knew with grim certainty that she was about to die in the most horrible manner possible: swallowed by a sea-beast. Throughout this entire day and night—not even in the corridor when the Gepids had trapped her—had she felt so utterly helpless as now.

  The upper tip of the sea monster’s tail cut the water two feet from her. She watched the tail-tip. It did not fade far into the darkness. It turned lazily, the water frothing around it, and headed back toward her.

  Elissa clung to the buoyant sealskin, defeated. What was the use of trying? It was over.

  Unbeknownst to Elissa, the mighty creature cruis
ing below her was a whale shark. It ate plankton, tiny marine animals and plant growth that drifted in a vast clumped mass. During the day, the present cloud of plankton had buried itself about three hundred feet below the surface and farther out to sea. Now that it was night, the plankton had risen to the surface and followed a gentle current into the much shallower Bay of Sails. The whale shark swam through the plankton cloud, using its wide mouth to scoop and feast. The demands of its forty-foot body kept the gigantic fish constantly hungry.

  The skay’s splash had aroused its minimal curiosity enough to induce it to leave the plankton cloud to investigate. It had feasted well tonight and was comparatively full. It lacked the deadly, serrated teeth that most sharks possessed. What it did possess was a shark’s sandpaper skin. Carpenters living around the Great Sea often purchased sharkskin. They used it to smooth rough wood just like sandpaper. If the whale shark swam too close and brushed Elissa hard enough, its skin could sandpaper off her clothes and maybe several layers of skin. She would bleed heavily. That blood would likely summon the man-killing sharks. At the whale shark’s appearance, the smaller, deadlier sharks had departed the surface for the bay’s bottom. They would likely cruise there until their monstrous cousin departed back toward the open seas. There was one other danger. With a flick of its huge tail, the whale shark could accidentally break Elissa’s bones.

  As she bobbed on the sealskin float, defeated and exhausted, Elissa knew none of this. Although she was half-Karchedonian, she hated and feared the sea. In this, she was pure Rhune. Her wide curiosity had never led her to learn about the sea, galleys, merchantmen or the disgusting creatures that infested the murky depths. She only knew how to swim because Karchedon possessed many baths. Some baths were huge, and people swam there. Despite her catlike dislike of watery bodies, she had humored her stepmother and her stepmother’s friends and their daughters and had joined them at the baths. In order to join in their games, she had reluctantly learned how to swim, but was far from having any expertise in the skill.

  Elissa shut her eyes, moaning as the frothing tail-tip swept past. The water underneath her stirred evilly. In the dark, inky waters, knowing that the monster was just inches away, Elissa froze in dread.

  Once more, the monster glided underneath her and after a hundred feet turned lazily. Then the tail-tip headed straight for her. The frothing white wake boiled with the fish’s intention. To Elissa, it seemed like an evil arrow of doom. After toying with her for several passes, the monster had surely decided to gulp her.

  Something snapped in Elissa. She had moaned during its passes. Nothing had happened, and the excruciating suspense had worn away just a fraction of her initial terror. She fumbled for her dagger. She had a fantasy of diving down to meet it in its watery domain and killing it, to do anything other than dying like a frightened cow.

  With one arm, Elissa let go of the float and reached for her dagger. She half-slipped off the float, and her chin touched water. The idea of going under—the murderous fantasy fled as she scrambled to get a better hold of the float. She kicked and clawed, lifting higher out of the water.

  That’s when the whale shark reached her, the head of its forty-foot body. It brushed the deepest toe of her boot.

  Elissa yelped. She couldn’t help it. And to her horror and amazement, she found herself running across the top of the monster’s body. The soles of her boots were tough enough that each fractional touch of the whale shark’s body was too little to scrape away the soles, but the sandpaper skin was enough to give her wonderful footing.

  Before the tail-tip reached her, the whale shark dove. It didn’t like the tap-tapping on its back. It dove lazily, forcing her off its back.

  Panting, Elissa waited in numbed horror, wondering what all this meant. After a goodly amount of time had passed, she slowly thawed out of frozen shock.

  I ought to swim for shore.

  She craned back toward Karchedon, knowing that horsemen rode along the beach. Despite efforts to kick hard enough to rise up and look farther down shore, she couldn’t spy them. She desperately wanted to get out of the sea. Yet, as terrible as this was, it would be better to swim in this hateful water than to allow her enemies to capture her on land.

  Deciding it would be wise to leave before the sea-beast returned, Elissa hardened her shaken resolve, hugged her float and steadily kicked toward Tyrant Alexon’s camp a half-mile away, being careful to keep her feet below the surface to avoid splashing.

  -4-

  The Tyrant’s camp boiled with nighttime activity. From where she floated, Elissa watched in disbelief. Sailors dragged rowboats into the water. They climbed aboard and shoved oars into position. On each rowboat, a seaman lofted a lantern-topped pole. They were searching for something or someone. On shore along the beach, soldiers raised torches and spread out in all directions.

  Are they looking for me?

  “Assume the worst…” she heard the troubadour say once more. They are looking for me.

  Elissa hung onto the float. She felt more like a drowned dog than the daughter of the Suffete of Karchedon. Her hair hung like seaweeds and her sodden garments made every move exhausting. She watched all the activity and found that she had run out of ideas.

  The rowboats scattered across the water. She’d seen the horsemen earlier. While she’d quietly kicked for Alexon’s camp, Nasamons on nimble ponies had trotted along the shore. Several young boys carrying torches had raced ahead on foot, lighting the path for the riders.

  The Nasamons must have carried a message to Alexon, telling the Tyrant about her. That must be the reason for all this activity.

  Elissa watched a nearing rowboat with its lantern-topped pole. Oars clunked, four to a side, and the boat’s planks creaked. A sailor in the prow squinted into the darkness, while an archer with his bow and a notched arrow knelt in the middle of the craft.

  Himilco had entered the temple with the Prophetess. Elissa had witnessed that from the temple rooftop. The Nasamons likely wanted the Gauntlet of Ice. Elissa nodded wearily. She had secreted the gauntlet in Karchedon, deciding the hostile magic would hinder her escape. And no one could take from her what she didn’t have.

  “Turn aft!” a sailor shouted from the boat.

  The rowboat turned away from her before the lantern’s light revealed her position. Just how hard was it to spot something motionless in the sea at night?

  Elissa kept still as a current took her eastward away from the beach. Given enough time, she would leave the Bay of Sails and find herself miles out in the Great Sea.

  No. That would not do.

  Elissa stirred and forced her tired legs to kick. Drowning was better than screaming to death on a torture rack. Yet, drowning would be certain if she floated too far out. Dying by torture lay in a future that might not occur. Therefore, she would fight to stay alive and to reach the shore.

  By degrees and by remaining motionless when she heard the rowboats, Elissa neared the beach. The current had already taken her past the palisade. Now she headed toward the beached quinqueremes.

  Fortunately, the current relaxed here as gentle waves washed her toward shore. During that time, a rowboat passed within fifty feet of her, and she heard men on shore shouting to one another. Elissa caught some of their words. Some were running short of lantern-oil, therefore men ran to the palisade for more, thinning the ranks of searchers. To her left, a lantern winked out.

  Elissa was too tired and too dispirited to think she had any luck left. She simply clung to the float and washed toward shore. Then something slimy slapped her face. Her eyes bulged with fear. She flailed and entangled her arm in that something.

  It’s an octopus!

  Her mouth worked in a soundless scream. She squeezed her hand against the creature and something squishy popped.

  Popped?

  Elissa blinked stupidly, looking at what she held. By starlight and because of her Rhune sight, she spied rubbery leaves. She exhaled with a shudder. This wasn’t an octopus. It hadn’t
risen from the depths to drag her down. It was a stalk of rubbery seaweed with leaves and small pods. She quietly shook it off her arm, taking slow, deep breaths to calm her racing heart.

  The fright had shaken off her stupor but it also left her feeling thoroughly shaken. She studied the nearing shore. Men marched with bent heads, obviously searching for tracks.

  They’re also making tracks.

  A tired smile twitched the corners of her mouth as a plan began to form.

  She needed sleep. She needed a bolthole. The beached quinqueremes seemed as good a place as any to hide.

  What if they search the quinqueremes?

  She heard the question in her mind in the troubadour’s voice.

  “Let tomorrow worry about tomorrow,” she muttered. It was a saying he’d taught her, and she wondered if he’d be proud or affronted to hear her use it.

  Suiting thought to action, she uncorked the plug and began to let air out of the float. Her right foot touched a sandy bottom. That revived her spirits: land, blessed land. She slid off the float and stood on solid ground. The water only came to her breasts. She grinned like a maniac. This was wonderful. She never wanted to float, swim or fall into dark water again.

  Elissa crouched lower as a man walked near on the beach. He was wearing a simple tunic and went barefoot. He raised a torch and peered toward her.

  She gripped her dagger and squeezed the float, listening to escaping air. She peered through almost-closed eyelids to reduce the risk of torchlight reflecting from her eyes.

  A soldier strode out of the darkness to join the barefoot man. “Do you see something?” the soldier asked. He carried a spear and wore a scarlet cloak, with the hood up.

  The barefoot man waved his torch back and forth, causing the flame to brighten as he held it up again.

  “Should we wade into the sea?” the soldier asked.

  Elissa let her gaze slide off the two men. They were likely a mercenary and his slave. Most of the soldiers in Alexon’s service were mercenaries. They were the chief source of his political power. Instead of watching the two, she noted the elephantine size of the nearest quinquereme.