Scimitar's Heir

by Chris A. Jackson

  Uag raked the rest of his crew with his eyes, then knelt to do what he must. His knife parted her familiar flesh, and he took her beating heart from her chest. He lifted it for the others to see, feeling her life force in its slowing cadence.

  “I claim Prak’s power. What was hers is now mine.” He brought the warm, pulsing meat to his mouth.

  He kicked her head over the side, where it bobbed in the clear water. The dark haze of blood quickly dispersed into slow current that flowed past the city. He gestured to his crew, and they fell to their meal.

  There would be no more arguments.

  ≈

  “Sound the alarm and prepare to repel boarders!” Horace bellowed, drawing his cutlass and staring in shock at the wriggling mass of pale shapes converging on Orin’s Pride. The alarm horn moaned out over the still water of the harbor, and his crew leapt to their stations.

  “What in de Nine Hells are dose t’ings?” Disgust was plain in the crewman’s voice.

  “I don’t bloody know, Torik, but they scared that mer enough to make it fly like a bird. Now get to your station! Signal the Dream: Ware below, under attack.” He gauged the angle of the assault. “Port side, stand ready!”

  The crew responded. Though skilled, the native warriors assumed their stations sluggishly compared to the Pride’s former crew of seasoned privateers. Within moments, however, cutlasses, pikes and bows lined the bulwarks, a barrier of glittering steel to repel the attackers.

  “Stand ready!” Horace called out. “Don’t let ‘em get aboard. Chop off their arms, their heads, whatever, to get ‘em back in the water.”

  He braced himself as the writhing attackers reached them. The ship heeled with the force of the impact, then rocked back and settled, but to his surprise, none of the creatures climbed up the side; nothing even broke the surface of the water. His sailors stood their ground, gazing down into the water and exchanging worried glances, but no attack came.

  “What the…” Horace muttered. He moved to the rail and looked over the side himself. He could see the creatures against the hull, their tails wriggling as if they wanted to push the ship sideways, which didn’t make any sense at all. But the next moment he heard it, then felt it through the deck: the grinding of teeth against wood.

  They’re not gonna swarm the deck, he realized, they’re gonna chew right through the hull!

  “Belowdecks, quick!” he bellowed, pushing away from the rail. “Man the pumps and rig to repel boarders from below!” The crew responded, their eyes wide in horror. The creatures were attacking the ship as if the Pride were a foundering whale that they could devour.

  Horace grimaced as a tide of even more creatures continued past them toward Peggy’s Dream. How could he fight these things? How could he keep them from chewing holes in the hull? Granted, he had a few moments to think; four inches of hardwood would slow them down. But slowing wasn’t stopping. He had to stop them, kill them before they scuttled the ship. But how could he attack something he couldn’t even reach under the water?

  Chapter 23

  Blood and Fire

  “You’re Samantha?” Cynthia said, gaping at the girl holding the knife at Ghelfan’s throat. “You’re Tim’s sister? Count Norris’ daughter?”

  “The name’s Sam, not Samantha, and I’m no daughter to that worthless fop!” She wrenched Ghelfan’s hair hard, eliciting a grimace from the shipwright. “Tim’s a traitor to his real father. Captain Bloodwind adopted us both, taught us to fend for ourselves, to be pirates. He’s the only father I’ll ever claim.”

  “Yer the one who fired the catapult at the Clairissa,” Feldrin accused, leveling a dark, dangerous glare at the girl. “You cost more than twelve hundred men their lives!”

  “Twelve hundred imperial soldiers?” she scoffed with a harsh laugh. “Well, that’s a good start. Edan, you can come with me now, and we’ll be rid of this witch!”

  “Come…with you?” Edan’s eyes were as wide as hen’s eggs. “Why would I…”

  “To get away from her.” She glared at his blank stare, her dagger quivering at Ghelfan’s throat. “She had you chained in the hold of that ship! That woman she was keeping prisoner, Camilla, said so.”

  “Camilla?” Cynthia’s mind reeled; she’d had too many shocks, too much stress and too much exhaustion. Her knees trembled and her concentration flagged. The sea surged into the room, and she forced herself to urge it back. “Please, Sam, just calm down. We’re not going to hurt you. But Edan’s not prisoner, and neither is Camilla.”

  Feldrin looked toward Edan, his brow furrowed, suspicion in his eyes. “Edan, you know this girl? If you’ve been plottin’—”

  “No!” Edan denied, his face flushing. “I mean, we…met on board the Pride before we got to Fire Isle. She stowed away, convinced me she was hiding from you. She’s the one who let Flicker out. But I didn’t know she’d be here!”

  A dreadful sense of déjà vu settled over Cynthia. Once more, she faced an enemy with a knife too close to a loved one’s throat for her to counter with a call to the sea. And now, there was a new question: Did Edan’s loyalty lie with her and Feldrin, or the girl? She tried to stall for time. “How do you know Camilla?” she asked.

  “I met her on Plume Isle, of course.” The girl’s feral grin sent a shiver of horror down Cynthia’s spine. “Your safe haven isn’t so safe when you’re not there to protect it, sea witch. Your friends are dead, and Camilla’s gone off to be Parek’s plaything. Seems she’d been waitin’ for someone to come along and get her out of there…away from you. Now, that’s enough talk. Edan, you’re coming with me.”

  Everyone on Plume Isle dead? Could she be telling the truth? Cynthia felt nauseous. This was unreal, a nightmare… Who was Parek, and why would Camilla go with him? “Samantha, I—”

  “It’s Sam, gods blast it to the Nine Hells!” She stood and pulled Ghelfan up to his knees by his hair. Keeping the knife tucked under his jaw, she released his hair and drew a cutlass with her free hand. “I came here to save you, Edan, and I’m bloody well going to do it! Now, come here!”

  “Sam, please,” Cynthia pleaded. “You can’t get out of here without my help. We’re underwater. The corridors are flooded. Just put down the knife, and we can talk about this.”

  “I got in here, I can get out!” Sam pointed the cutlass at Cynthia. “I don’t need anything from you! You killed my father, the only father who ever…ever really loved me! You killed Bloodwind, and you’re going to pay for it!”

  The obsidian knife slashed.

  Ghelfan’s face transformed to utter shock as a sheet of crimson cascaded down his chest. His hands reached reflexively for the gaping wound, and blood flooded from between his fingers. His almond-shaped eyes rolled up and he fell forward. Kloetesh Ghelfan, renowned half-elven shipwright, was dead before he hit the water.

  Cynthia choked. A great hole opened in her heart. Ghelfan had been the truest of friends, her mentor and her colleague. Without him, she never would have become a shipbuilder, a captain, or a seamage. And now he had been ruthlessly, senselessly murdered by a slip of a girl with a grudge and a knife. Her despair held her frozen, unable to respond in word or deed.

  Feldrin, however, reacted instantly. He charged the girl, a boarding axe in each hand and murder on his face. But Sam once again did the one thing that nobody expected her to do; she cocked her arm, took careful aim, and threw her cutlass with all her strength.

  Right at Cynthia.

  Cynthia saw the spinning steel glint in the wan light, heard Mouse shriek in her ear as he launched himself toward the blade. She stood transfixed as Feldrin swung wildly with one of his axes, trying to knock the deadly missile aside; he missed by a hairbreadth. Mouse shot toward the spinning blade, his wings a silver blur. He parried with his tiny rapier, but the heaver weapon snapped his blade at the hilt and the deadly miss
ile kept coming. Cynthia’s only reaction came by sheer instinct.

  She turned away from the blade to shield her baby.

  The cold steel pierced her flesh with sickening, stunning force, and she felt herself falling. She twisted to avoid landing on her son, and hit the dais step with her shoulder hard enough to jar her to the bone. But a sharper pain demanded her attention. Blinking to clear her suddenly blurred vision, she gaped down at the bloody steel that protruded from under her breast. The tip had passed perilously close to her child, but had neither pierced nor cut him. Gently, she moved the babe away from the blade, awash with relief that he had not been harmed.

  Darkness closed in, blunting the pain, but as she fell toward unconsciousness, a troubling sound reached her ears: the sound of rushing water.

  The sea was reclaiming the Chamber of Life.

  ≈

  “Ready! Fire!”

  At Horace’s command the hardwood bolt shot straight down into the water. Precariously balanced, the ballista jumped back in response. The weapon hung over the side of the ship, supported by a halyard, with several sailors steadying it. The water flushed pink with blood, and the sailors manhandling the heavy weapon cheered. They’d hit something.

  “Haul it inboard and reload! Double quick!” As the sailors complied, Horace leaned over the side, looked down into the water, and dismayed.

  The mass of writhing, eel-like creatures remained undaunted; their number appeared not even to have been thinned. An archer fired from aft, but the bow had insufficient power to reach the creatures and the arrow floated back up to the surface. The ballistae were working, but each had to be hoisted inboard, reloaded and hoisted back out again for every shot, and the pace was too slow. There were sailors stationed belowdecks, ready with pikes, planks and braces to plug any hull breaches, though Horace was doubtful that they could patch a hole and fend off attackers at the same time. He had to find a way to kill these beasts, or at least drive them off the hull.

  “Where’s a bloody seamage when ya need one?” he muttered. The thought almost made him laugh; no doubt Cynthia Flaxal could kill all the creatures with a wave of her hand. But at the moment, she was off with the captain, along with his boatswain and carpenter—two experienced men whose help he could use right now—and that firebug, Edan, to boot.

  Fire… He didn’t need a wizard to conjure fire; he had it bottled up and ready right under the boards of the fo’c’sle. Of course, he might just burn Orin’s Pride to the waterline, but the only other option was to let these beasties chew her so full of holes that she sank.

  “Break out the fire casks, lads!” he bellowed. “We’ll burn these buggers out!”

  A cry of assent rang out, and a squad of sailors charged forward to the fo’c’sle hatch. Two men jumped down and started handing up the precious, deadly cargo. Each five-gallon cask, rigged with its own trigger cord, was enough to burn an entire ship. The chemicals within—Edan had said that they were just chemicals, not magic, though Horace still had his suspicions—mixed when the cord was pulled, and the resulting fire would burn anything; wood, metal, flesh. It would even burn underwater. But he only had eight fire casks, so he had to make them count.

  ≈

  “Whassat?” Cookie asked, glaring down at the crunching noise coming from the storage lockers below the galley. She stood with a cleaver in hand, loathe to relinquish her galley to the sailors Chula had ordered to keep watch below. Word had come down that they were under attack from some kind of sea creatures, but even so, the last thing she wanted in her galley was a bunch of clumsy sailors wielding cutlasses. They’d already made a shambles of the mess hall, overthrowing benches and lifting up hatches to the lower compartments. But that sound worried her.

  Cookie lifted the hatch to the storage compartment below the cabin sole and looked down into the dark compartment. The space was dry, neat and orderly, as always. No rats on this ship, by Odea, she thought, but the scratching was even louder here, coming from behind the curved shelves that were mounted on the ship’s frames. There was space behind the shelves for air to circulate, of course, but there was nothing beyond that but the hull.

  Shouts rang out from the deck, something about firing and loading, but Cookie wasn’t listening. She hefted her cleaver and eased down the steps into the compartment, squinting into the darkness between neat rows of beans, potatoes, rice and blackbrew. She reached past the bags and put her hand against the hull. She could feel the vibrations, like a heavy rasp was being applied to the other side.

  Then she heard another sound, and her blood ran cold: the trickle of water.

  She knelt down and looked under the lowest shelf, shifting a small barrel of suet out of the way. There, a stream of water ran down the hull into the bilge below.

  “Hey up dere! We got wata comin’ in here!” She traced the trickle up the side of the ship, unsure if anyone had heard her call. Well, if there was a leak, she had enough bags and barrels to stem the flow until help arrived. She moved a few packages out of the way, and traced the flow up higher. Finally, behind a bag of flour, she found the source. A seam between two hull planks was leaking, and the rasping sound was louder than ever. She placed her palm against the boards and could feel the rhythmic grinding vibrations. The leak wasn’t bad, but that grinding…

  She cleared the shelf, wedged a thirty-pound bag of porridge meal between the shelf and the hull, and looked around for something to brace it with. She was about to call for help again when the grinding sound stopped.

  She looked back at the bag of meal. The leak had stopped as well.

  “Well, I guess dey…” She fell silent as a new sound interrupted her thoughts; a ripping sound, as if…

  The bag of meal quivered, and Cookie raised her cleaver.

  The material of the bag darkened with moisture, then something grasped the inside of the sack, and a circular row of teeth protruded through the linen. Cookie swung the heavy cleaver with expert skill and the strength of panic surging through her veins. The blade clove the sack and sank into flesh. Thin pink blood and a viscous slime poured out as the thing thrashed, four barbed tentacles and circular rows of teeth gnashing at the tattered bag, struggling to get at her.

  She hacked again, her voice rising in a feral cry as the finely honed steel slit its head open. She heard voices from above, but she was too busy to look. The creature still struggled, so she struck at it again, cleaving the soft, slimy flesh deeply. She had no idea how big it was—the mouth was as wide as her outstretched hand—but it appeared to be stuck in the hole it had gnawed in the hull, and didn’t seem to have any bones at all. It sagged and twitched, vomiting up a noisome mass of slimy mucus.

  Cookie stepped back and swallowed, forcing down a surge of nausea. “Bloody disgustin’ critters,” she said, but then the whole thing jerked, bag and all, and was suddenly dragged out through the hole.

  Water fountained in, but before she could cry out or reach for something to stem the flow, another writhing shape squirmed through the aperture, forcing its body through. She swung her cleaver, but the head bobbed and weaved so frantically that she missed. Once it got its small arms through the gap, the rest of it jetted through. Cookie hacked again as water flooded the compartment, and this time her cleaver struck. The beast writhed and gnashed at her, catching her apron with its hooked tentacles. She hacked again, trying to push the thing away with her free hand, but it was too slimy to grasp. Another creature wormed through the hole, then another, and there were too many of them to fight. Slimy water swirled around her knees as she turned to flee, and a long body coiled around her legs. She clawed at the steps, screaming as rows of teeth latched onto her, and barbed tentacles hooked into her flesh. She hacked with her cleaver, but couldn’t cut them all free.

  Someone shouted from above and thrust an arm down to her. She reached for it, climbing desperately, but her hand, coated in the
viscous slime of her attackers, slipped from the grasp. She fell back into the rising water, creatures writhing all around her, too many to fight. Cookie screamed as their teeth and tentacles tore mercilessly at her flesh, and their ravenous mouths bored into her.

  ≈

  Four crews stood ready with their fire casks, one each at the foremast and mainmast shrouds on the both sides of the ship. Each fire cask was bound with a length of chain, enough to make it sink, and the strongest sailors were ready to chuck them out as far as they could. The sailors holding the trigger cords had orders to wait until the casks sank down about ten feet, then pull. Horace was heartened by the crew’s quick action; directed by the veteran privateers, they had prepared the deadly missiles in the span of only a few minutes, even as the ballistae crews fought to slow the onslaught below the waterline.

  “Ready!” Horace raised his hand, drawing all eyes toward him, and muttered a short apology to his captain; if this went awry, Orin’s Pride would burn. “On three, lads! One, two, three!”

  Four casks arched into the air and splashed into the water about fifteen feet from the hull. He watched them sink.

  “Pull your cords and duck for cover on my mark! Ready…” he watched the squirming shapes move around the sinking barrels, curious about their contents, no doubt. Well, the casks were filled with hell itself, and they were about to find out. “Mark!”

  The four sailors yanked their cords, and the sea around Orin’s Pride erupted in a boiling hell of fire and steam. The hull shook, but there wasn’t much concussion in the explosions, only fire. Burning streamers of white lit the sea brighter than daylight, bubbling and frothing. Dozens of the eel-like creatures floated up, dead or writhing in agony, burning and thrashing. More retreated from the burning streamers that hovered in the water before sinking slowly. Horace peered down through the haze of bubbles, blood, floating corpses and burning motes of white, but he could not tell if all of the creatures had been driven off.