Crewmen ran to him, grasped him by the legs, the belt, trying to pull him down. But he would not let go of the line with his left hand. Finally a sailor climbed past him and unwrapped his fist, one finger at a time. Then they took their commander, their captain, their admiral, and laid him on the forecastle deck, hovering over him like lion cubs nosing and whimpering around their wounded mother.
“Stand back, you ham-handed lot—you’ll kill him! Give him air!” Andrew Haas pulled men away, pushed them back, cleared a space around his fallen captain. Then he knelt beside him. He looked closely into his eyes. “Admiral?”
No answer.
“Where’s Stitch?” Haas asked without looking up.
“Right here, sir,” the frumpy old surgeon answered. He had come up from sick bay when he heard the whoops of the crew. Blowing his nose as he came, he had pushed through the crowd, and now he knelt at John Hand’s right shoulder. He emptied his sack of tools onto the deck: a few clean rags, a saw, a file, a needle and thread, a hammer, a pair of pliers, tin snips, a role of baling wire, and a jug of malt whiskey. All the implements of his healing craft.
But he would need none of these, save the whiskey. And that he would take for himself.
“Can you stop the bleeding?” Haas asked, still focused on John Hand’s pale, sweaty face.
“There’s no bleedin’,” Stitch said, carefully peeling away what was left of a sleeve. “The lightning…it closed everythin’ off, like.” He was mesmerized by the soft white color, the smoothness of the stump, as though the skin had simply melted. It looked like a round of smooth, white cheese. “No surgeon coulda done it better.”
Now Andrew Haas leaned over to look. The cloth of both shirt and coat was cut through, ripped, and blackened. But sure enough, the stub was cauterized. “What about burns?” he asked.
Stitch just kept staring at the stump, then cautiously reached out to touch it. He pulled his hand back before he did. “I can still feel the heat of it.”
“I mean other places!” Haas’ irritation was evident. “From the lightning goin’ through him. It’ll have come out somewhere.”
“Oh, right.” Stitch checked the admiral’s feet, legs, torso, his remaining hand. “Nothin’,” he announced.
Haas sat back on his haunches. “Went through him clean, then. That’s a mercy. I don’t think he’s really even hurt. ’Cept for his arm.” He pondered a moment, then felt the need to add, “Which is mostly gone.”
Stitch pulled the stopper from the jug of whiskey, took a pull, then lowered it toward the admiral’s mouth.
Smelling it, John Hand blinked several times, as though coming around, although his eyes had remained open all this time. Stitch took the liquor away and drank again.
“What happened?” the admiral asked.
“You don’t remember?” Haas asked right back.
He thought for a moment. “No.”
“Firefish ate your arm,” Stitch offered, wiping whiskey from his stubbled chin. “But you’re okay.” He sneezed loudly.
John Hand looked at the stump of his right arm, ending at the elbow. Then he laid his head back on the deck and closed his eyes, pondering the surgeon’s words. The two statements did not fit together very well, in his mind.
The beast circled lower and lower, brooding. The morsel…the morsel…the image of that small, predatory face stayed, hung before its eyes, even as the taste of blood remained in its mouth.
The beast looked up, watching the Deep Fin fly on, wrinkling the gleaming water behind it, as though nothing had happened. But something had happened, something dark, something brutal. The Firefish could not understand it, did not comprehend it. The seas themselves had turned cold and dark. The taste of the morsel, tiny though it was, lingered, warm, tender…it fired a deep and angry hunger.
The beast needed to feed.
But what was the Deep Fin now? Master…predator…
Or prey…?
The two Drammune officers aboard the Chase looked to one another. Their hearts were in their throats. What had they just witnessed? The Vast commander had called forth the Devilfish somehow. And it had come. He had walked away from them proudly, to the prow of the ship, to command it. But then…what was the meaning of the attack? Why did it bite the commander? They conferred among themselves, but could only agree that they did not understand.
John Hand was helped up to a sitting position. He also did not understand. He felt sick, dizzy. His right arm ached and burned, all the way to the tips of fingers that were no longer there, that in fact felt nothing at this moment, being in the gullet of a beast far underwater. He looked at the faces of his men. They were blank, a slate on which he could write the explanation of his choosing. But he had nothing to write there.
“Firefish,” he said at length. “I liked it better when all we had to worry about was killing those yellow sons a’ mothers.”
The men laughed softly, relieved to hear such an earthy sentiment at a terrible time such as this. One or two even slapped him on the back. John Hand was not Packer Throme; he had just proven that. But that was okay. He was one of them, and he was alive, and he was on their side. And at the moment that felt at least as good.
“Can you stand, Admiral?” Haas asked gently.
“I think so.”
“Help him up, boys,” the first mate ordered, and multiple hands helped their captain to his feet, all taking care not to get too close to that bloodless white stump.
Once upright, John Hand took a deep breath, then looked up at the quarterdeck. The Drammune officers looked across at him, staring right through him. “Guess I better explain this to our guests,” he said aloud.
He started walking toward them. He would give them an explanation. He had about twenty paces to figure out what it would be.
The Firefish circled tighter and tighter, lower and lower, preparing to fly upward at its prey. It had made its decision. Its mind was now focused only and solely on its target. Yes, yes…now was time to feed. Time to crush, time to kill, time to destroy. The beast was a predator. Storm creatures were prey. All of them, all of them were prey.
It turned, eyed the creature’s heart, opened its mouth in a silent roar, and hurtled upward toward the surface for the kill.
The Drammune officers narrowed their eyes at the pallid figure of the Vast admiral who climbed unsteadily up toward them. They could read easily enough that he was uncertain. He had expected to command the beast, and he had been attacked. But this commander had fight in him. That they could also see.
John Hand managed half a smile as he topped the stair to the quarterdeck. He looked each man in the eye. “Dangerous beasts,” he said in Drammune. Then he turned away from them to face the prow, and put his good hand on the rail to steady himself. He sniffed once. “Takes a little practice dealing with them.” He looked at his two guests again, one after the other. “I’ll be glad to give you some pointers if you want to give it a try.”
Two Drammune jaws clenched and two faces went white. “Nagh,” one of them said, shaking his head and raising a hand to ward off the very thought. “Oma skayn aziza.” We will learn from you.
The little meaty lump had a predator’s face. The Firefish hated the little meaty lump. It made the Firefish fearless, reckless, wanting to kill. The darkness of that little face was a hard mystery, a cold question that cut deep, like sharp teeth into soft flesh. The Firefish had attacked the dark lump. But where was the beaming source of light, the joy that was truly Deep Fin…? Where was the radiant morsel? Where was the presence?
Gone…replaced somehow.
Hunted!
And that thought rocked the Firefish into action. Deep Fin was in danger, some strange danger, a danger from within. The small dark lump was not the presence, but had hurt the presence. It had hunted the presence!
Bloodlust rose, the desire to kill. But the Firefish could not attack Deep Fin. Not now. Frustrated, maddened, frenzied, it flew toward other prey, toward the nearby storm creature, the on
e toward which the Deep Fin ran.
And then, as it approached, it saw its entry…and rose.
Moore Davies was facing the Karda Zolt. His men had turned the jolly in an effort to put the stern against the hull so their captain could more easily climb up. He felt the dark rumble from under the water before he saw it. And then saw it before he heard it, barely before, the briefest yellow flash just under the surface. But when it struck, he heard, saw, and felt it as though it had come up through the bottom of his own little boat.
Drammune sailors were lining the gunwales with pistols and muskets raised, all aimed carefully at the approaching prisoners. The Drammune captain was looking down on the Vast captain when the beast crashed upward through the decking just behind him. A solid yellow pylon rose up, up through the sails, into the rigging. The captain and the well-armed sailors around him did not look back. They did not have time. The floorboards beneath them rose, pulled upward at the point of impact but still fastened to the beam ends at the gunwale. The planking rose at a sudden, severe angle, and it simply hurled them over the rail and into the sea.
There they splashed heavily, half a dozen ungainly bodies flung into the water mere feet from Davies’ boat. One or more of them might have landed within the jolly, had it not been for the fact that the Vast sailors at the oars did not hesitate, but pulled for all they were worth the instant the Firefish struck. They were all veterans of Firefish battles, having escorted the Trophy Chase, lowering longboats full of huntsmen to kill their quarry. Two of the four had been huntsmen, original killers of the beasts. The sight of a Firefish did not freeze them in terror, but it motivated them strongly to remove themselves from its presence.
They pulled for their lives.
Commander Zaya came up sputtering along with five of his men. He was facing away from his ship, which was already taking on water, and toward the rapidly fleeing shallop. He did not understand what had just happened, but he was sure these Vast had done something underhanded. Somehow they had set off an explosion, they had fired some sort of missile. His anger flashed. “Azo nochtram!” he shouted, spewing seawater and crashing his fist into the ocean. “Azo nochtram!” Kill them!
But his men, those still aboard ship and those treading water around him, paid no mind. A shadow fell over the water, and Zaya saw the faces of the Vast turn upward, craning their necks, their mouths agape as they pulled on the oars. A chill shot through him now, like ice water down his spine. He feared what he would see before he turned to see it.
And now he understood.
The Trophy Chase did command the Devilfish. The Vast had ordered an attack. These were his last thoughts.
The full weight of the Firefish, a hundred feet long and fifteen feet wide at its widest, came crashing down, smashing, crushing, and burying at sea Commander Zerka Zaya and his men.
The beast did not fall on top of the jolly. It missed Moore Davies and his crew. The wave the beast created actually pushed the shallop away. The thing had not fallen like a tree trunk, stiff and straight, but like a length of rope coiling into a barrel. It did not create an enormous sinkhole followed by a mountain of water, the sort that had soaked the Trophy Chase just minutes ago, or the sort that had taken Stedman Due and Gregor Tesh down in their longboat. Instead, it pushed a wave of water before it, a swell of only eight or ten feet.
The speed of the shallop, pulled now by blistering hands and arm muscles that were knotted and balled like monkey fists, allowed the small boat to skim down the surf. The rounded hull fled downhill from the beast on a wave, like a sledge down a snowy hillside.
Moore Davies felt elation.
John Hand felt a sharp and deep distress. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t watch. He had not sent the Firefish to attack the Karda Zolt, of course. He couldn’t command the thing. But he had just now made the Drammune think that he could. He shook his head, cursing yet one more evidence of his bad luck on this voyage. How much worse could it get? He had lost his arm. And now he had apparently just attacked a Drammune flagship sailing under flag of truce, with the most powerful weapon the Vast possessed.
He turned slowly to look at them. Their eyes turned just as slowly from the destruction of the Karda Zolt to look at him. John Hand saw what he expected—condemnation, accusation, and rising anger. The admiral shook his head.
“Eyneg skove zien sankhar koos tachtai.” He had ordered it not to attack. “Azo seydem nochtram,” he told them with a shrug. They like to kill.
“Sko sankhar koos!” the Drammune officer demanded. He had his pistol out, and though he didn’t point it at John Hand, the admiral had no question about the man’s intentions. Stop the Firefish!
Pistol hammers clicked back all around and above the quarterdeck. The admiral held up his left hand, his only hand, and glanced around at nearly a hundred armed sailors ready to pick off two overbearing Drammune brass. “These are our guests, gentlemen. We are not presently at war.”
He turned to his guests and shook his head. “Sankhar koos zien tcho,” he told them. “Azo tacht hezz.” Firefish are not dogs. They are difficult to command.
And with that he walked right back down the stair, across the decks and up to the bowsprit. The men watched him in amazement, but they lowered their weapons.
“Give me a hand here,” the admiral said under his breath, in a voice that sounded like a curse. Andrew Haas, still standing on the forecastle deck watching the dual spectacle of the Firefish and the one-armed admiral, took hold of his commander’s right arm just below the armpit and helped him back into place, to the same spot where he had tempted fate and lost not five minutes before.
John Hand felt pain shoot through his torso from his armpit, and sweat broke out all over him in a flash, as though he had suddenly been thrust into an overheated smithy after running a mile. He cursed under his breath, but he knew what he was doing and why, and once again he was determined to go through with it. Only this could undo the damage.
“Stop!” he called out, bellowing the words with every ounce of command he could muster, as though the Firefish might actually hear and obey. It was all show, of course. But a necessary show.
Up in the rigging Mutter Cabe shook his head once more, his sense of foreboding appeased not one whit. “His name is Hand. And that’s what the beast took.”
Delaney shot him a glance. “His arm, more like.”
The old sailor seemed to be speaking from far away, from inside a dark pit. He spoke with absolute certainty. “He can’t live. It took away his name.”
“It did not!” Marcus responded, quite shrill. “It didn’t take no name!”
“Anyways,” Delaney chimed in, “he’s got his left one yet. Admiral will do fine, you watch.” But Delaney watched closely himself. What John Hand was doing, climbing back up to that perch to face that beast again, struck Delaney as either the bravest or most foolish thing he’d ever seen. Maybe both.
Moore Davies turned away from the destruction of the Karda Zolt when he heard the admiral’s call. He looked at the Trophy Chase. He couldn’t figure out why Admiral Hand was standing at the prow. He couldn’t fathom to whom he was calling out, who or what might obey an order of that sort, presented in that manner. Stop who? Stop what? The command seemed senseless.
But the Firefish heard the call. It did not understand it, but it felt the urgency, the command within it. It was an animal sound, barked with the assurance of the vicious. This was the howl of an animal not to be denied. The beast turned, and faced the approaching storm creature.
The dark morsel was on the prow. The little meaty lump called out a challenge!
The beast swam toward it immediately, keeping its head above the water. It locked eyes with the lump once again. It now sensed both fear and anger. Its anger was the root of its viciousness. This was not cornered prey. This was a wounded predator. This was the enemy of Deep Fin!
John Hand saw the thing turn. A thrill of terror went through him as he realized he had, in fact, beckoned it. He had challenged it,
and it would accept the challenge.
Without turning, as the thing approached he gave another order, more urgent even than the first, but this one for his men and not the beast: “Get me a lure!”
CHAPTER 10
The Darkness
The admiral stood on the bowsprit, propped up by his deckhands, who held him from behind, who grasped his belt, his knees, his ankles. He looked back at the lure being handed up from behind. “Light it,” he ordered. Focused now on death, either his own or the beast’s, his voice quavered not at all. It was the essence of command.
Andrew Haas pulled the brass box back down, dutifully opened the hatch at the end, and with trembling thumb flipped the flint wheel. Sparks flew. The fuse caught. Haas slammed the door shut, pressed it tight against the wax that sealed it, then handed it back up.
The Firefish came face to face with the darkness again.
This time, it would crush the dark, angry lump. But now the darkness was powerful, more powerful than it had been before. It pulled light into it; it drew energy from the air, away from the beast, depleting the Firefish of its rage. But the beast would not be overcome. Its rage doubled. It would tear this tiny fury away from Deep Fin.
Its eyes blazed as it opened its maw. Its jaw unhinged, dropping low, white teeth bared to swallow the darkness.
John Hand could feel the heat from the Firefish, smell the stench of death on its breath. He reached back with his left hand and accepted the lure from Andrew Haas. He looked into the maw, saw splinters of wood, bits of cloth stuck in its teeth. He saw a Drammune helmet punctured through by one white tooth, a serrated blade protruding through a flattened, mangled, crimson skullcap.
John Hand did not look the beast in the eye this time. He had seen enough. He hurled the lure into its mouth.
“Chew on that!” he roared. The lure struck the back of the beast’s throat, and its concrete jaws closed around the brass box reflexively.
The Trophy Chase Saga Page 100