The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  But sparks leapt from the electrified teeth to Packer’s blade, firing through his hand, his elbow, his shoulder. He was knocked unconscious, his burned hand unable to release the sword. He hung by the safety rope from the masthead.

  “God above and devil below,” Scat said aloud. It appeared, to all the crew, as though Packer Throme had turned the beast away with his sword. They all saw the electricity illuminate him, making him glow from within as the lightning jumped from the beast to the sword. Or was it from the sword to the beast? Had he stabbed it? They had all heard the battle cry. And they all saw the Firefish retreat. They were unsure how it had happened, but there seemed to be no denying that Packer’s thrust had turned the beast aside.

  A cheer rose from the sailors, guttural and instinctual.

  It died just as quickly.

  Furious now, its mouth and gullet still empty of the prey, the Firefish continued its arc, coiling back toward the longboat, already eyeing the new enemy. It had shot virtually straight up out of the water, but it fell forward parallel with the ship, its head turned toward her, attacking now, as it seemed to the crew, the Trophy Chase herself. When it smashed into the waves not fifteen feet from the longboat, everyone on board got a good look at its angry malevolent face.

  And a thorough soaking. A huge wall of water followed the collision of scales and sea, drenching the entire deck and crew. Then the vacuum generated by the beast as it submerged created a black sinkhole in the dark ocean, a maelstrom that pulled hard at the Chase and laid her over on her side, on her beam ends. The deck pitched terribly, impossibly, at what felt like ninety degrees. The wind spilled out of her sails. There she hung, crew grabbing rails and lines and one another, all without taking eyes off the longboat.

  Scat, the crewmen, Lund Lander, John Hand, all but the limp and unconscious Packer Throme watched in horror as the longboat and its occupants were dragged away from the Chase’s hull, stern first, down a slope of water so steep the entire boat disappeared in an instant, following the monster deep into the sea.

  “Cut the bow line!” Scat yelled, suddenly realizing what would happen if they didn’t. He reached for his sword as though he could do it himself, but it was gone; he’d left it on the quarterdeck with John Hand. “The line! Cut it!” he repeated, hoarse and urgent. But it was too late, would have been too late even if he’d had his sword.

  Sailors standing by the whirring, spinning windlass were too stunned to move quickly. The waters closed over the longboat. The ropes stopped suddenly, the turning block groaned, the heavy, braided hemp creaked, and then the entire mechanism was uprooted from the deck, snapping away from the chains. Two crewmen who had the misfortune to be standing on the sea side of the windlass went with it, swept into the ocean so quickly they didn’t have time even to scream.

  And then the dark waters rose up as suddenly as they had sunk, the hole now a mountain. And from its top, like a small volcano, it disgorged the longboat and its cargo, casually flipping them to the surface with a modest spray of white saltwater, the boat upended, the occupants scattered. By now the longboat was twenty yards behind the Chase. Crewmen in the rigging saw Stedman Due surface, coughing, waving for help in the moonlight. Gregor Tesh did not surface.

  The great Firefish spiraled downward in a fury, then turned over to see its attacker above, near the surface. It was a shellfish-like creature not much bigger than a shark. Or perhaps it was the pincer of the great beast. Either way, it must be destroyed. To the beast, the occupants of the boat, still near it and swirling in the waters, were legs or claws, pawing the water, still on attack.

  This miserable little thing had caused the Firefish to miss its great prey, to lunge and miss? Rage moved the beast. It roared its message, holding the others in pursuit. It could not be bothered now to swim downward to gain speed, so it moved upward with a quick flick of its body, and lunged.

  The mouth of the Firefish took the inverted longboat like a snake takes a mouse, crushing it easily. The flash lit the sea. As the jaws came down on it, the crewmen could see Stedman Due, his hand held above the water to fend off what could not be stopped. It was another Firefish moving in for its share. Another flash and he was gone. And then two more flashes took the crewmen who had manned the windlass.

  Fear crackled through the crewmen like the lightning of the beast. They had feared for Packer and for the huntsmen. But now they feared for themselves. There were many, many more Firefish in this ocean. There was no way to stop them. The huntsmen and the longboat were both gone and no lures had been set. The yellow tracers would soon be upon them. Every eye scanned the seas.

  But the ocean was black and calm. Scat’s heart pounded furiously against his chest. An enemy like this needed to be in plain sight, and this one was suddenly gone.

  “What now?” Lund asked in the eerie silence.

  Hand looked up at the crow’s nest, shaking his head. Packer was moving again, struggling to regain both his footing and his consciousness. “I have no idea what just happened. Have you ever seen one leap like that?” he asked to no one in particular.

  “And why the crow’s nest?” Lund asked. He urgently needed the answer. They were like an army surrounded, with no idea what the opposing general might do. He knew now that for all he and his engineers had learned, he didn’t know nearly enough about Firefish.

  Mutter Cabe spoke. “The Firefish…they sense it.”

  “Sense what?” Lund demanded.

  “The Ghost.” Mutter was standing beside Captain Wilkins. He spoke with fear and trembling, so sure of himself he didn’t care what the reaction would be.

  “What ghost?” Scat demanded, eyes wide.

  “Whoever that boy was when he came aboard,” Mutter whispered hoarsely to the Captain, as though the words caused him great pain, “he’s someone else now.”

  “What are you saying?” Scat asked, teeth bared, masking his terror with anger.

  Mutter looked him in the eye, his certainty drilling his own fears directly into Scat. “He’s a spirit, Cap’n. He’s what Talon breathed into the dead boy’s body.”

  Scat’s chest tightened. His breath came hard. Talon had brought Packer back from the dead. She’d done that before, with men who had lost their own breath. But that wasn’t what Mutter was saying. Mutter was saying that Packer Throme was a ghost, someone else’s ghost, or a demon, walking around in Packer Throme’s body. This was exactly what would curse the Chase.

  John Hand saw Scat’s fears but didn’t know what to do about them, other than maybe to throw Mutter to the Firefish on the spot. “That’s nonsense,” he said. But Scat wasn’t listening.

  “We’ve still got two lures,” Lund said with an odd calm. He had dismissed Mutter’s theory out of hand, but he now had his own. He had that familiar faraway look in his eyes as he worked it out.

  “What good are they now?” Hand asked.

  Lund looked between the two lures and the crow’s nest, but didn’t answer.

  “What? Tell me!” Hand demanded.

  “Do you think he’ll do it again?” Lund asked, blankly.

  “I don’t know,” Hand said, shrugging. “Why don’t you tell me what the devil you’re talking about?”

  But Lund was already gone. He strode to the lures. He put his arm through the brass ring of one of them and went straight for the ratlines with it. He began to climb.

  “Where are you going?” Hand demanded once more, now a portrait of frustration.

  Lund looked down as he yelled the answer. How could John Hand not understand this? “Wherever the bait is, that’s where we set the lure!”

  Packer slowly and painfully unfolded his hand from his sword hilt, the skin pulling and blistering as he did. The burns were excruciating, covering the entire inside of his fingers and palm. The base of the palm had a raw white circle the size of a gold coin, where the bolt of lightning had entered. His head buzzed, and his joints ached. But he managed to remove the sword and get it back into his belt with his left hand. The pain o
f it was unbearable. And the sword hilt felt strange. He tried not to think that it was covered with a layer of burned flesh.

  He steadied himself, and then grasped the telescope with his left hand. It was hot to the touch, but otherwise all right. He looked behind them. Nothing but black water. He scanned the seas. No sign of Firefish. He looked in front of them.

  “Oh God, no,” he said aloud. “Please.”

  Scat went white, his forehead again soaked with sweat as he watched Lund climb. He looked at the water. Still nothing. Maybe they were gone? No, of course not! They were there, somewhere. But he couldn’t see them. Suddenly, he had to know where the Firefish went. He had to know. He turned and sprinted to the afterdeck rail.

  As Scat leapt up the steps, a pain shot through his left arm. He ignored it. He panted, wincing involuntarily, as he scanned the waters behind them, unwilling to be distracted. No dorsal fins, no chop in the water, nothing. They were gone. Had the ghost scared them off? Or were they beneath the surface…regrouping for an attack?

  And then Scat felt the pain in his chest, sharp and full, as though he had been shot through with an arrow. He couldn’t breathe. He clutched at his shirt, grimacing, and fell to his knees at the rail. His chest was in a vise. But he didn’t take his eyes off the black water; he couldn’t, he had to find the Firefish.

  Under the waves, the lead beast had sent the signal. The others fanned out, diving, to surround and attack their prey.

  Packer’s breath rushed out of him as he looked through the telescope. There, dead ahead, directly in the path of the Chase, he could see them. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

  Achawuk canoes.

  And in them, warriors were lighting torches.

  CHAPTER 17

  Bait

  The horseman rode up the beach, gray under the moonlit sky. He moved slowly now, riding north from Inbenigh, the sea on his right, the woods on his left. At one point he stopped, jumped from his horse, and studied the sand. From there he led the horse as he walked, his eyes constantly scanning the beach.

  When he reached the gray tree trunk, he let go of the horse’s reins. The animal stood motionless, obedient, as the man walked behind the fallen tree and knelt, touching the sand with a black-gloved hand. He brought a handful to his nose, smelling it. He dropped it; then he moved to the ashes of the fire, and poked at them. He stood again, surveying the scene one last time. He mounted his horse and rode south, back to Inbenigh.

  “Achawuk!” Packer cried out from his perch.

  John Hand closed his eyes. Surely he had heard wrong. The wind was blowing, the waves were spraying the deck. Surely he’d misunderstood.

  “Achawuk, dead ahead!” Packer repeated.

  Hand opened his eyes, set his jaw. He avoided looking at the crewmen standing at the rail as he walked by them to the forecastle deck at the prow of the ship.

  Captain Hand looked out over the dark seas ahead. Achawuk, to be sure. This time they were in canoes, and this time they carried torches. As he watched, more torches appeared, and then still more. It was as though canoes were materializing from thin air. Well over a thousand, Hand guessed, maybe closer to two thousand canoes, carrying three or four warriors each, undoubtedly, and spread across the ocean less than fifteen hundred yards away. The Chase was racing full tilt from the Firefish and couldn’t turn sharply enough to avoid the canoes without slowing enough to be caught. Hand wondered why these simple facts didn’t create in him a sense of urgency, much less panic.

  “It looks as though every last living Achawuk has come to pay respects,” he said aloud to Jonas Deal and Andrew Haas, who now flanked him.

  “Where in the devil’s blazes did they come from?” Deal asked, sounding far more alarmed than Captain Hand.

  Hand scanned the horizon, and could see the dark outline of what could be several islands in the distance. Somehow they knew about the recent battle, was all he could guess. Somehow they had come to avenge the loss. “Well, we haven’t exactly been tiptoeing through their waters.”

  “But how did these find out so soon?” Jonas Deal asked, amazed.

  Hand just shook his head.

  Jonas looked up at the crow’s nest, eyes narrowed.

  From Packer’s vantage point, the movement of the canoes was now evident. They were paddling from several small, darkened islands, which had come into view only in the past few minutes. They had paddled with unlit torches until they were positioned across the path of the Chase. Somehow they had lit the first torch, and then they began passing the fire from one torch to the next. More and more torches were being lit, giving the impression the canoes were simply appearing. It was a devastating vision. This was an enemy too great to defeat, too close to avoid. But Packer’s emotions were numb. He knew this was a noose tightening around them, recognized that their chances for escaping intact had been reduced to zero. He closed his eyes, wishing it were all a bad dream. But the throbbing fire in his hand was all he could think about. When he opened his eyes, the nightmare continued.

  Packer looked ahead, then behind, then ahead again. Something was very familiar about this. And then it dawned on him. He recognized this maneuver: The Achawuk were lined across the water like a trammel net, and the Firefish were driving them into it. The Trophy Chase was being snared.

  The Fish had become the fishermen. The fishermen had become the fish.

  Suddenly, Lund Lander’s head appeared at the rail near Packer’s shoulder, at the upper side of the angled perch. “Why did it leap?” the Toymaker asked intently, without any introduction.

  “I…I don’t know,” Packer answered, startled.

  “I brought a lure.” Lund hefted the brass box up over the rail. Packer struggled to help him, using his left hand. His right arm remained hooked around the masthead, his burned palm open to avoid contact. “If it jumps again,” Lund said, “set the lure and drop it into the beast’s mouth.”

  Packer blinked. “How do I do that?”

  Lund nodded grimly. He gripped the rail with one hand and opened the small brass door on the lure with his other. “That’s a flintwheel. See it?”

  Packer squinted through the moonlight. “I see it.”

  He looked at Packer, and now noticed his right hand. Lund took Packer’s forearm firmly, turned the raw flesh of his palm up to the moonlight.

  Lund looked down at the sea. His eyes grew distant.

  “What orders, Cap’n?” Haas asked John Hand.

  Hand answered with a sigh that housed a low curse. The Achawuk torches were now twelve hundred yards away. What orders would help? Battle stations? Then he looked around him. “Where’s Scat?” If any man could rally the troops for one more fight, it was Scat Wilkins.

  Deal and Haas both looked back to the main deck, amidships. Jonas Deal nodded. “I’ll fetch him.”

  Scat lay on his side on the polished oak planking, his head by the rail, peering into the darkness behind them. His breaths were labored, cut short by the pain in his chest. Something was wrong, he knew; something bad had happened inside him. His heart had given way, maybe. But he couldn’t think about it. He had to think about the Firefish, think what to do. He closed his eyes, but was instantly greeted with the image of the towering yellow beast, its jaws snapping, lightning leaping to Packer Throme’s sword. He opened his eyes again. He brought his knees up toward his chest, trying to find a comfortable position. He turned his forehead to the deck and closed his eyes again. But this time he saw Talon, her cold eyes inches from his, her voice a hiss…His spirit has been among the dead! He opened his eyes again, rolled onto his back, and looked up at the stars. He cocked his head slightly, watching the stars fade as blackness grew, seeping in from the edges of the sky. The moon’s pale light grew brighter as all else slowly vanished.

  And then a flag waved in front of the moon…a flag bearing the skull and bones, the battle flag of the Chase, rippling as it drifted across the dark sky.

  He closed his eyes, sure now that he was dying.

  Lund gri
tted his teeth and shook his head. Something had prompted the beast to lunge, and it wasn’t a ghost. No superstition had yet held up to the Toymaker’s scrutiny, and he believed none ever would. This lad was not a ghost, or how could he get a blistered hand? Mutter Cabe was wrong. It wasn’t Packer himself that the beast was after. But what was it after? Lund looked up at the skull and bones above him. But he had no time to work it out. It was Lund who was supposed to know the Firefish, and it was Lund who knew the lures. It was Lund who needed to understand the beast’s actions, explain them to the Captain and, hopefully soon, to a shipful of huntsmen. He pulled himself up over the brass rail. “Get down. I’m relieving you.”

  “There’s no need,” Packer countered. “I can do it.”

  “Your watch is over. That’s an order.” Lund swung himself around the wooden disk, and was practically standing on top of Packer in the small circle; there was no room or place for argument. “Andrew Haas has some salve,” Lund stated flatly. “Go get some.”

  “Aye, sir.” Packer heard nothing but coldness in the voice, and the man’s face was a scowl, but Packer saw beyond both. The Toymaker wasn’t angry about anything except the circumstances. This man had high principles, and a deep dedication to duty that could not be compromised simply because of personal danger. “There’s Achawuk ahead, sir,” Packer told him, upholding his duties as lookout.

  Lund glanced in that direction and nodded. “I hope you can fight left-handed.”

  Packer smiled. “In fact, I can.” Senslar was certainly thorough enough to demand ambidexterity of his pupils. Packer gave Lund the telescope and then maneuvered himself carefully, protecting his injury, over the lip of the crow’s nest.

  He paused to look up at Lund one more time. The Toymaker scanned the seas with the telescope, looking for Firefish, focused entirely and only on his duties.