Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1)

by Craig Schaefer

  She lunged at him and knocked the platter from his hands. It clanged to the deck, hardtack scattering, as she grabbed Felix by the scruff of the neck and dragged him to the side of the ship. He was still trying to protest when she bent him over the railing and rammed two of her fingers down his throat. His guts lurched and he vomited, spewing what little he’d eaten down into the black waters. She held him there, her grip merciless and hard as iron, until nothing was left in his stomach but a trickle of bile.

  He wheezed for breath when she finally pulled her fingers out, and she turned to flick the slimy filth from her hand.

  Felix looked up toward the helm and shouted, just in time to see Captain Iona slump against the ship’s wheel. The weight of his corpse spun the wheel hard to starboard and held it there, his arm tangled. The Fairwind Muse groaned and keeled hard, sailing straight for the coastline.

  “Someone poisoned the ship’s mess,” Felix gasped, his throat burning. “What kind of crazy bastard would—”

  “Survive now, talk later.” Mari dropped into a crouch and looked in all directions, as if expecting an attack.

  Felix felt icy hands squeezing his heart as a sailor, tossed by the sudden keel and losing his grip, tumbled from the rigging twenty feet above. The man landed hard and cracked his skull open on the icy deck, twitching and releasing his last rattling breath mere feet from where they stood. Shouts rose up from the lower decks, mingled with terrible choking sounds. The crewmen who hadn’t eaten yet were running around in a blind panic, trying to help the fallen.

  Then they hit the Jailer’s Teeth.

  The ship slammed into the rocks. Timbers buckled and snapped under the force of the waves, and the ocean roared as a hatchway below the waterline caved in. Suddenly Felix was off his feet and sliding, tumbling toward the railing while the Fairwind Muse listed violently to one side. Mari caught his hand and pulled him up, both of them barely keeping their footing on the tilting deck.

  “The skiffs,” Felix said, pointing. “We’ll get off that way!”

  They found Anakoni at the bow, working to loose one of the bound skiffs from its ropes. The long rowboat swayed dangerously off the edge of the ship, high above the water and ice. He waved them over.

  “Flywheel’s jammed,” he shouted. “Help me!”

  Across the deck, another trio of survivors worked to lower a second skiff. The Muse continued its slow list, taking on water and bound for its grave beneath the black ocean. Felix looked up and saw a few men still clinging to the masts, struggling to chop through the sail lines and keep the wind from pushing the ship any farther onto the treacherous rocks. They couldn’t save the Muse from going down, but they could stave off its death long enough to get another few survivors off the boat.

  Mari and Anakoni gave the ropes one desperate yank, and the flywheel spun free. They watched as the skiff slid down the side of the ship and landed with a splash in the water below. Felix unfurled a rolled-up rope ladder, just long enough to reach the waiting boat.

  Werner fought his way up from belowdecks, climbing over corpses and leaning against the tilting walls. He ran to join them, eyes wide with horror.

  “Thank the Gardener I was too sick to eat,” he gasped. “It’s madness down there. Half the crew dead or dying.”

  Felix clambered down the rope ladder, trying to ignore the ship’s groaning and the splintering cracks of its wooden bones. The skiff wobbled under his feet, but he held on to the ladder and kept the boat from drifting away from the Muse. Mari was next, gripping the sides of the rope ladder and half sliding her way down, skinning her palms raw but saving a few precious seconds. One of the other three skiffs had already hit the water, and a couple sailors were paddling toward shore with all their might.

  As Anakoni and Werner climbed down to join them, the sea began to boil. Not with heat but with raw movement, as if a fistful of worms had woken up at the bottom of a water glass, churning and straining toward the surface.

  The first mate landed in the skiff, and his eyes went wide with terror. “Elder!” he screamed up to the other survivors. “Elder! Abandon ship now!”

  Something rumbled up from beneath the waves. It was a sound like nothing Felix had heard before, like a single droning note being played underwater on some massive instrument. Anakoni took up one set of oars and thrust the other at Felix.

  “Row, damn you!” Anakoni shouted. “Row or we’re all dead!”

  Felix didn’t need the prompting. He shoved the oars into the water and threw his back into it, struggling to keep up with the first mate’s frantic paddling.

  Icy water sprayed across Felix’s face as the sea erupted. A black, rubbery tentacle, at least thirty feet long and thick as a tree trunk, soared up from under the waves and lashed at the Muse’s railing. More tentacles, more than he could count, bubbled and boiled up to latch onto the dying ship and dig into every seam and broken plank, tugging viciously. One of the men still clinging to the ship’s mast fell free, plummeting down to the water. He surfaced long enough to take a single sputtering breath—and then a tentacle whipped around his head and hauled him under.

  One of the skiffs, laden with twelve men and barely floating above the waterline, was a good twenty feet closer to shore. A gasp caught in Felix’s throat as a fat tentacle slashed up from the waves and came down across the middle of the skiff, crushing a sailor’s spine and tearing the boat in half.

  “Steer that way!” Felix said. “We can pick up the survivors!”

  “They’re already lost,” Anakoni said, shaking his head. “Just keep going for shore.”

  In the blink of an eye, Mari drew one of her fighting batons and swung it at his windpipe, stopping a quarter inch from impact. Anakoni flinched.

  “We have to try,” she said through gritted teeth. “Steer.”

  Men clung to the wreckage, kicking and batting with their oars at the questing tentacles. Felix immediately recognized Simon. The blond Murgardt was still alive and fighting, clutching a chunk of driftwood and slapping a curling tentacle back down under the water.

  “My ankle!” one of the sailors screamed. “It’s got my—” And then he was gone, hauled into the black. Felix’s skiff closed in, passing a struggling man who’d been knocked from the wreckage. Mari and Werner quickly reached over the side and hauled him in. It was Kimo, soaking wet and cold as the grave.

  Another sailor went down as the sea sprouted one blubbery black tendril after another. They brought the skiff as close as they dared, and Felix cupped his hands and shouted out.

  “Simon! Over here! Jump!”

  Simon steeled himself and took a deep breath, leaping from the floating wreckage and hurling himself over a tentacle as it whipped furiously at the frigid air. He landed five feet from the skiff, plunging into the water, and swam hard and fast. They dragged him in, resting him on his back inside the rocking boat as he gasped for air.

  Out of twelve men, only Kimo and Simon had survived. The rest were lost beneath the waves and the tentacles hammered the floating debris looking for more, trying to sate their endless hunger.

  As they rowed for shore, Felix looked back. He wished he hadn’t. Nothing was left of the Fairwind Muse but its bow and masthead, slowly dragged inch by inch under the merciless waters. Some sixty feet back, the third skiff followed in their wake, its crew paddling as fast as they could to catch up. The fourth was nowhere to be seen.

  The sea boiled around the third skiff, even more ferociously than before. Waves buffeted the craft, and Felix fought to keep their own boat steady. A rumbling sound filled the air, mingled with that distant and horrible trumpeting.

  “Something’s coming,” Mari whispered.

  Then the sea exploded, and Felix learned what a god’s nightmares looked like.

  A beak rose up from the water in a tidal eruption of sea spray and thunder. It was at least fifty feet across, gaping wide and swallowing the third skiff whole. Scab-like barnacles and white fungus covered its cracked chitin. The beak reared up, triump
hant, and at its apex it unleashed a deafening, screeching cry to the heavens.

  His muscles strained and his breath was raw, but he couldn’t stop rowing. Not now, not with that horror still hunting and hungry.

  How much of it is still under the water, he thought. Oh Gardener, how big IS it?

  The rocky shoreline was twenty feet away and closing fast. Then fifteen, then ten, and blood roared in Felix’s ears as he shut his eyes and poured his last reserves of strength into paddling, pushing past his breaking point. The skiff bumped against the shore, and Mari put her hands under his arms, dragging him up and away from the boat as Anakoni and Werner did the same for Kimo and Simon.

  The shore was a rocky bramble glistening with ice, barren and cold. Fifteen feet inland they all tumbled to the frost, sitting sprawled on the stony ground, watching as the tentacles dragged the last few feet of the Muse to its doom. Then the sea was quiet once more, glowing black in the setting sun.

  No one said a word. One hundred and twenty-two men had put out to sea on the Fairwind Muse. Only six people made it back to shore. A moment of silence felt like the right thing to do.

  “When we dropped the skiffs,” Kimo breathed, his voice a whisper, “the Elder thought we were making an offering. We called it.”

  Anakoni glared at the water. His one good eye narrowed to a razor slit.

  “We wouldn’t have had to, if some bastard hadn’t tried to murder us all. Why would he do that?” He looked to Felix, Werner, and Mari, furious. “Was it you? Or you? Nobody had any reason to hurt our ship. The only thing different about this voyage was the three of you. One of you is responsible for this!”

  “Easy,” Mari said, a gentle edge of warning in her voice.

  “Don’t tell me easy! Don’t tell me—” Anakoni froze, pressing his hand to his face, letting out a choking sob. When he spoke again, he’d lost all of his fight. “My captain is dead. My friends are dead. I just want to know why.”

  “We survived,” Simon said vacantly, giving Felix a lingering and empty-eyed gaze. “That’s the important thing.”

  He’s in shock, Felix thought. I guess we all are.

  “Anakoni,” Mari said, “how far are we from Winter’s Reach?”

  “By foot? A day’s hard hiking, if we’re lucky and find the forest road.”

  She nodded over at Kimo, who trembled and stared at the sea, clutching his knees to his chest.

  “He’s cold-sick and soaking wet, and Simon is almost as bad. They won’t make it, not like this. We need to build a camp and get a fire started.”

  Felix pushed himself to his feet and staggered off into the tree line with the other survivors, looking for a clearing and some tinder to burn. The arctic night was coming fast, and he could feel the cold sinking into his bones.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The architect of Lerautia’s White Cathedral had a dream of a great dove descending to land upon the Holy City. Vast alabaster curves formed the building’s outstretched wings, “feathered” with scalloped tiles, and a smooth arc stretching out over the columned doors symbolized its craning neck. Long overdue renovations were underway inside, with scaffolding filling the basilica from the mosaic-tiled floor to the long stained-glass windows that loomed fifty feet above the congregation’s heads. Still, services went on, and the workmen dutifully shuffled out most nights and mornings so the banging of hammers and the rattling of saws could yield to the exquisite song of the castrati choir.

  Tonight, the lilting hymns couldn’t move Amadeo’s heart. Standing behind a pulpit draped in green velvet, he went through the motions, offering the bread and proclaiming the virtues—all the ritual gestures he’d made a thousand times before, but he didn’t feel them. Still, as always, a crowd of upturned faces awaited him on the cathedral steps long after the service had ended.

  “Father!” one of the congregants called out. A farmer, by the cut of his ragged clothes, clutching a fat-cheeked baby in his outstretched arms. “Bless our son? He’s had the croup.”

  Amadeo smiled and fished a slim flask of oil from his cassock. He unscrewed it and waved the man over.

  “Of course, of course,” he said, dabbing a dot of oil on the child’s head and murmuring a quick prayer. He leaned in and kissed the baby’s brow on the spot he’d anointed. “If he doesn’t get better soon, take him to Dr. D’Antonio on the Via del Popolo. Tell him I sent you.”

  A plump woman in a well-worn apron bustled up and pressed a round tin into his hands.

  “Father,” she said, “last apple pie of the season, and I had to bring it to you. I remembered how much you loved them last year.”

  Amadeo grinned. “Ah, Luisa, you are an angel. Take note, everyone: the Gardener provides. And when the Gardener needs a little extra help, he calls on Luisa’s bakery.”

  “Father?” piped up a young boy of twelve or so, barely audible over a chorus of polite chuckles. Amadeo got down on one knee to talk to him eye to eye.

  “Yes, son?”

  “Is the pope really dying?”

  The chuckles faded. Amadeo took a moment to consider his response and nodded. He reached out and gently held the boy’s shoulder.

  “Yes, son, he is. Everyone has their time. That will be a long time coming for you, but Pope Benignus has spent many good decades tilling the earth here, and he’s getting tired. For now, just celebrate the days he has left with us. That’s what he wants.”

  “Who do you think is going to be next on the throne?” called out a man from the back of the crowd. “They’re saying the College of Cardinals doesn’t want Carlo. They say he’s not fit.”

  Amadeo patted the boy’s shoulder and stood. A faint murmur went up around him, and he waved his hands to quiet it down.

  “Please, everyone. Times like this are uncertain. I can’t know the future any more than you do, but rumors don’t help anyone. All I can ask is that you trust the Church, and trust me. The right candidate, whoever it is, will surely be—”

  His voice trailed off as the crowd turned, looking to the left. A thunderous tramping sound, iron marching on stone, echoed toward them. Two horsemen rounded the corner, then another pair, then another, the procession continuing without end. The riders wore fluted plate, and blankets in black and gold draped their stallions, the colors of the Holy Murgardt Empire.

  It was a military procession. As they tromped past the cathedral steps in perfect unison, Amadeo counted perhaps fifty riders in all. Veteran knights, with eyes of ice. They’re headed toward the papal mansion, he realized.

  All eyes were back on him, and every one of them carried an unspoken question.

  “Perhaps an ambassador from the west,” Amadeo said, “coming to pay his respects. If you’ll pardon me, I should go and see if they need any help.”

  The scene at the estate, once he finally extricated himself from the crowd and set off, was chaos. Horses milled across the lawns and stamped through flowerbeds while the frantic servants tried to find a place to put them. Soldiers from the papal guard were enmeshed in arm-flailing shouting matches with the estate clerks, the Murgardt newcomers, and anyone else who would listen.

  “Father! Father Lagorio!” a voice boomed. Amadeo turned to see Gallo Parri, captain of the guard, descending on him like a maddened bull. The man’s whiskers twitched, and he clutched a sheaf of papers in one hand, crumpling them in his fist. “Father, you have to talk to these people! You have to bring them to reason—”

  “Wait! Gallo, wait. Slow down. What’s going on?”

  Gallo loomed over him. He unfurled the rumpled papers and held them up so Amadeo could read.

  “We’re being reassigned,” Gallo said.

  “Who is?”

  “All of us! The entire papal guard! Look at this,” he said, ruffling the papers. “Me and three of my best men? Being dispatched to guard a monastery in the Carcannan Mountains. Why does a monastery in the mountains need a four-man security team? Are bandits coming to steal their hymnals? Another one of my men is being sent to
a nunnery four hundred miles away. He’s supposed to guard a building he can’t set foot inside!”

  “Wait,” Amadeo said, “the entire papal guard? Who is going to watch the estate? Not the city constabulary.”

  Gallo pointed toward a pack of knights hovering by the estate doors and wearing grim faces.

  “Those Murgardt pissants. The high and mighty emperor wants to pay a visit, and he only trusts his own men. So we’re being replaced until he goes home, which could be months if he decides to stay the winter.”

  Amadeo shook his head. “That’s insane. The emperor doesn’t get to make those decisions. Look, Gallo…I’ll do what I can. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to leave town, all right? See if you can hold your men back for a day or two, just in case I can fix this.”

  “Oh,” Gallo said, glowering, “and here I was with my bags all packed and eager to go. But if you’re going to insist, I suppose I can drag my heels a bit.”

  Amadeo strode toward the front doors of the mansion. He was almost to the steps when a pike chopped the air just in front of his face, blocking his way. He could see his startled reflection in the finely polished steel.

  “Identify yourself,” a Murgardt said. Two others lingered nearby, eying Amadeo with barely concealed disdain.

  “Father Amadeo Lagorio, the papal confessor. Identify yourself.”

  The pike slowly slid back as the soldier stood it upright at his side.

  “Kappel, of the Holy Order of St. Friedrich. Sir.”

  “Who is your commanding officer and where can I find him?”

  “That would be Knight-Captain Weiss,” the soldier said. “He’s inside.”

  “Then so am I,” Amadeo said, walking past him and pulling open the great double doors. It took him a moment to recognize the strange heat simmering in the pit of his stomach. Anger.

  More arguments inside, more frantic servants trying to find quarters for fifty unexpected guests, more furious guards stomping out with sacks slung over their shoulders. Amadeo didn’t find the mysterious Knight-Captain Weiss, but he did find Carlo, sitting alone in the dining room and giving bedroom eyes to a glass of wine.