Dectra Chain

by James Axler

  Ryan had never traveled in such a bizarre way before—with his back to where they were going, unable to see what was happening. Only Donfil in the triangular bow section and Ogg at the tiller in the stern could judge what should be done.

  Walsh in the second whaleboat and a grizzled veteran named Piper Fairman in the third were only a dozen yards behind them. Ryan had heard that Captain Quadde sometimes took an iron herself if a whole school of whales was spotted. But here, with only a single beast marked down for the hunt, she was content to remain on board the Salvation and shadow the trio of small dories.

  Because of the height of the long ocean waves, it was often impossible for the oarsmen to even glimpse the Salvation. Most of the time Ryan could see the three masts, and occasionally the whole white and black hull. The lookout at the top of the mainmast was still pointing dead ahead of them, to where Ryan figured he could see the birds waiting for the reappearance of the monster.

  "Steady and together, my stout boys, with an in and an out, an in and an out. Any roan stops rowing, and he'll be tied to the grating and I'll flog the skin from his back. Next I'll flog the muscles and flesh away from his back. Then the gleaming ivory of his spine shall feel the kiss of the metal-tipped lash. I'll whip that man so hard his liver and lights'll be shredded and flensed and pulverized and torn so that they can be served over the side as bait for the sharks."

  The world was shrinking around Ryan. Though there were few men fitter in all of the Deathlands, the endless heaving at the clumsy oar, sometimes deep in the water and sometimes kicking the empty air, was taking its toll on him. He fought for breath, feeling soreness across the tops of his thighs from the pressure and the movement against the seat.

  "I'll press thine eyes in and then out of thy skull and drive a white-hot awl in and then out of thine ears and hammer hook-end nails in and then out of thy nostrils." Each repetition of "in" and "out" was accompanied by a barely audible change in the pitch of the mate's voice.

  "She blows!" Donfil yelled from the bow.

  Ryan wasn't able to stop himself from turning on the planking seat, seeing the most amazing sight, catching the scent of old, old earth, ripped from the belly of the Lantic.

  It was as though someone had thrown up a great wall of wrinkled, blue-gray stone across their course. Rearing it, dripping and gleaming, streaked with shards of green weed, unimaginably huge.

  "Turn thy face to me, outlander, and bend thy back. Or we all perish."

  Cyrus Ogg nodded at him like a friendly schoolmaster, mentioning some tiny error in his tables of multiplication.

  Ryan bent again to the oar, hearing a deep, sonorous roaring, which seemed as if it were vibrating the very marrow of his bones, shaking the core of his being.

  "She blows, she blows!" the Apache repeated. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan could see that his companion had taken up one of the long harpoons and was hefting it in his right hand, just as he'd done on the quayside of Claggartville, aeons ago.

  But now his target was not a daub of white paint upon an old door. It was Behemoth itself, the lord over all deep waters.

  "Hold oars," the first mate called, raising his voice for the first time, forced to raise it over the caldron of boiling foam and spray that seethed around them. "Now, Master Ten-from-Ten! Here be thy chance. Strike!"

  Ryan was able, now they had no further need of rowing, to glance over his shoulder once more and witness the next—and most dramatic act—of the murderous play.

  The towering bastion of living flesh had hardly moved. Its skin was dappled with small shellfish and crusted with strange cancerlike growths. Near the crest of the blunt head Ryan could see the tiny eye—not dead like that of the great shark that had attacked them on their raft. This eye twinkled with life and with curiosity. The jaws were only just ajar, the sea swilling in and out between the fronds of its teeth. They were nearly close enough to touch it.

  "In with the lance, outlander!" one of the rowers yelled.

  "Aye," called another, voice cracking with tension. "Before he sinks us with his fucking tail!"

  "Thanks for the meeting!" Donfil cried, casting the harpoon with all of his power, driving it deep into the whale, by the great hump of muscle behind the head.

  "Clear of the line, lads," Ogg ordered, keeping one hand on the tiller, using the other to fill a metal dipper with seawater.

  The thin rope that was attached to the harpoon ran through a notch in the bow of the whaleboat, under the seats of the oarsmen and around the stubby wooden post, called the loggerhead, between the feet of the first mate. The line was controllable there, running back into one of the two kegs of coiled rope. Hundreds of feet in all, ready to be linked together if the whale should run and run. And in the bow, clipped to a bracket, was a small honed ax. The other task of Donfil was to cut the line if the wounded monster should suddenly decide to dive deep. The ocean thereabouts was of a depth that could lose a thousand whales.

  Walsh's harpooneer also managed to strike his iron from the other side. Provoked by the stinging pain, the whale exhaled in a gust of noisome air and mist. It began to move, towing the two dories behind it. The third whaleboat hadn't managed to pull in close enough and was soon left behind.

  "Ship your oars, or they'll go over the side," Ogg ordered. "Quick, Master Deadman, and hold on tight for the devil's surf ride."

  The rope ran out unchecked for the first hundred feet, to give a safer distance between boat and whale. It hissed along, whining as it smoked around the loggerhead, so that Ogg had to cool it with a pan of water.

  The vast tail of the creature waved in the air, darkening the day, coming down with a cracking sound that hurt the ears, casting a welter of green water over the pursuing boats.

  Ryan laughed aloud for the sheer animal pleasure and exhilaration of the chase. The whale was gathering speed, and the Salvation was disappearing fast behind them. Spray danced, and the sun dazzled through it in a burst of prismed colors.

  "How far will he run?" he shouted to Ogg.

  "How's that, Master Deadman? How far will the beast pull us?"

  "Yeah. What if dark comes before it tires?"

  "We will have it afore night come, outlander. But I have known a chase with a truly big whale to take a day and a night and half of the following day. But there was many a barrel of fine oil in that one, I tell thee."

  "It dives!"Donfil yelled,

  "Ready to cut. Not until my order or I'll have thy cock and balls for clock chimes."

  As the whale plunged beneath the surface, the day was instantly silent. The rushing, roaring noise of their mad progress was stopped, and the two whaleboats floated serenely, only a few yards away from each other, while gulls cried out above their heads.

  "How deep, Mr. Ogg?" the second mate called, standing in the stern, watching the line as it continued to race out over the bow.

  "Our iron went deep and true, Mr. Walsh. How went thine?"

  "Deep and true."

  "Then I think we shall see him again shortly as he tries to rid himself of the pesty barbs that hold him to us."

  Cyrus Ogg poured more water over the smoldering line as it continued to race out around the loggerhead and beneath the sea.

  "He's diving more shallow," Donfil called, leaning far out, shading his eyes against the reflection of the sun on the water.

  "Shows he'd tiring fast. Ready to haul in the line, lads, soon as he broaches again. Outlander, thou must coil it as it comes, to keep all neat and unclogged in the keg there."

  "Aye," Ryan said.

  "Quiet and silent. Soundless it is. No sound. No noise. Still as death. Still as snow. Still as sleep and still as dark."

  "Still as Jehu," Cyrus Ogg warned the gibbering crazie, "or you can swim back to the ship."

  "Here he comes…" said Walsh. "The birds know it."

  "Haul in," the First Mate ordered, voice betraying the excitement. "Where away, Ten-from-Ten? Tell me that."

  "Close," Donfil said. "The rope's gone slack
, but I can't… Ysun! It's right—"

  The world exploded.

  Ryan was hanging on to the side of the boat and the whale surfaced so near that its skin grazed his knuckles. It erupted clear into the air, hanging for an unbelievable, impossible moment of frozen time. Then it crashed down, its tail catching the other whaleboat a glancing blow as it dived again. The frail little craft was overturned, spilling men and oars and line into the sea.

  "Cut thy line and save the boat, Walsh!" Ogg shouted.

  Once again they were off in a flurry of white spray. But this time Ryan could detect a slowing in the exertions of the great creature. Then their forward motion stopped once more, and Donfil again peered over the bow.

  "Going back beneath us!" he yelled.

  "Out oars and spin her on a nailhead," Ogg snapped. "Quick for our lives."

  Ryan grabbed at his oar, fumbling it into position and obeying the order to back water while the men on the other side tugged with all their strength. The tiller went hard over and the cockleshell darted around like a mayfly. Once they were facing in the right direction, Ogg ordered them to ship oars again, and pull in the slack line, so that they would be close in to the whale when next it surfaced.

  "Heading for the men in the water!" Ogg muttered.

  The rolling mountain of the beast's hump broke the surface about fifty feet in front of them, jerking them onward. As the first mate had said, the whale was making for the other boat. Walsh and two other crewmen had clambered back into it and were now bailing it empty. But the other five men were still floundering some distance away.

  The sun was bright, showing the streams of crimson blood that flowed down the sides of the whale, spouting from the two irons in its flanks.

  And the Salvation, all sail crowded on, was bearing down on them.

  Ryan watched as the beast came closer, picking Jacob Lusk, one of the fattest members of the crew, building up more speed. Its jaws were open, funneling the Lantic between the rows of teeth. Above the sound of the rushing waters, Ryan and the others heard with an awful clarity the last scream of despair from the sailor as he vanished into the gaping suction of the jaws.

  "Widowed wife and fatherless children," Ogg said quietly.

  As though its spasm of savage revenge had exhausted it, the whale slowed down once more, half turning so that it presented its side to Donfil's harpoon. The Indian had taken out a longer lance, ready for the killing lunge.

  Once again, sitting still in the gently rocking boat, Ryan glimpsed the whale's little eye, rolling toward him. It was shot with blood, seeming both resigned and fearful. For a fraction of eternity it locked onto Ryan's own eye.

  He couldn't say what it was that he saw in that eye, but it made him gasp and shudder.

  "Deep as the deepest well," Cyrus Ogg said, his voice caressingly soft.

  Donfil stood poised like a statue, the harpoon gripped in both hands. Then he drove it at the whale's skin. The razored head and the first 2 1/2 feet of the shaft vanished, and more blood jetted out, pattering on the cold water. Some of it splashed on Ryan's arm and neck, startling him by its heat.

  "Again, again, again, again," crooned the first mate.

  Donfil, lips pulled off his strong white teeth in a ferocious vulpine snarl, stabbed the iron in again and again, twisting it around to deepen the wound.

  Ryan saw the light go out in the whale's eye as its life slipped away. Suddenly it was no more than a floating carcass.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ALL RYAN WANTED TO DO was to claw his way up the rope ladder dangling from the side of the Salvation, stagger to his bunk, strip off his sodden clothes and climb between the thin, gray blankets and sleep for a week.

  But there was much to be done, miles of work to put behind him before he could rest.

  The survivors of Walsh's boat had to be helped to safety, and then lines had to be made fast to the body of the whale. Johnny Flynn had told Ryan that speed was essential after the kill had been completed, for two reasons. The body would not float for very long, so it had to be tied alongside the mother ship. Also, the voracious predators that roamed the deep oceans would scent blood at a dozen miles or more, catch the sound signals of distress from the dying leviathan at ten times that range. They'd come to try to rend their own share of the spoils before the seamen could break down the carcass to blubber and oil.

  "What of Jacob Lusk?" Walsh shouted.

  "Flense it open and the wretch might still be living," Ogg replied. "I've heard of such happening. Years back in Nantucket, so they used to say."

  "He could be alive!" Ryan exclaimed.

  "If we're right quick in gutting the beast, then he might yet live."

  The Salvation was heaving to, only a stone's cast away from the boats. Captain Quadde was leaning over the bow, the telescope in her fist.

  "It took a man!" she bellowed.

  "Seaman Jacob Lusk," Ogg replied warily.

  "Clean swallowed?"

  "Aye, ma'am."

  "Fix lines and we'll haul it alongside. Got a man on the windlass. Sling the boats to the davits sharp as new paint, Mr. Ogg. Then all hands to flense and render down."

  "Aye, ma'am." The first mate turned to his crew. "I'll drive a spike through your knees if ye dawdle and lollygag around, my hearties. Let's to it."

  IT WAS CHAOS on a grandly, bloodily organized scale.

  Ryan had been on hunts before, after the mutie deer and moose in the foothills of the ranging snow-tipped Darks. He'd seen the excitement of the ville when the carcasses were brought home on the backs of the cat wags, but he'd never seen anything like the activity on board the Salvation.

  As soon as the whaleboats were hoisted on the deck, the men tumbled out and ran to their appointed places. Ryan and Donfil hadn't received any orders and stood, confused amid the scurrying, bellowing bedlam.

  Ryan never heard the woman come up behind him. Most of the time the rapping of the cane located her position on the ship. But when she wanted, Pyra Quadde could move as quietly as a tracking tiger.

  The first warning Ryan Cawdor had was a cracking buffet to the side of his head that deafened him and made him stagger, nearly falling into the scuppers from the shock and force of the blow. Donfil began to turn, but he was too slow. The woman grabbed him by the front of his soaking shirt with one hand, then tugged his head lower so that she could slap him across the face with the other hand. The Apache was unable to move with surprise.

  "Get with Mr. Ogg's crew and do what thou art blazing told, thou scum ballast!"

  She raised her stick as though she were going to lash out at the tall Mescalero, but hesitated a wary moment at the look of scarlet murder that blazed in his eyes. With a gruff laugh she turned away from them and walked to the port side of the ship, to watch the attempts to rescue the vanished seaman from the belly of the whale.

  "By Ysun," said Donfil softly, rubbing at his face with a wondering hand. "No woman born of man has ever… can ever… If any of the people of my… my tribe had seen that, then the shame would mean I'd need to chill her. Tear the heart still beating from her body and devour it. Then—and only then—I could take my own life with some shred of honor."

  "Thought you wanted to stick around and give the life of a whaler a tryout?" Ryan said, leading the way to where Johnny Flynn and the others from their boat's crew were working.

  "It was a good day for the hunt, my brother. And as I took the life of that monster of dark water I felt his spirit flow to mine. Yeah, Ryan Cawdor. The job of harpooneer could be wonderful. But only when that daughter of cold fire has quit life."

  Captain Pyra Quadde was back on the quarterdeck, watching as the two mates led the rest of the men. Once the dead whale was tied alongside, a half dozen of the most experienced and nimble hands swarmed down lines and began to hack their way into the creature. Blood flooded out, crimsoning the sea for a hundred paces around. Captain Quadde had ordered the yards backed so that the Salvation only crept forward slowly, avoiding too much pi
tching and rolling. The men worked with special butchering tools, such as knives with blades three feet long, lethally sharp, fixed into wooden hafts another four feet in length. They cut great hunks of meat from the animal, attaching iron hooks to it, while the men on board ran and scurried like monkeys, pulling and stacking the blubber, slicing it into smaller pieces ready for the try-pots. The cooks were loading hunks of the meat into the smoking ovens, ready to begin the stinking process of rendering it down to fine oil.

  "Cut deep for Jacob Lusk's sake!" the skipper called, cupping her hands to her mouth to make sure her orders were heard.

  Ryan and Donfil took their places on the lines, pulling up the dripping haunches of meat and carrying them to the growing pile on the main deck, then throwing the hooked cords down to the furiously hacking men. Ryan found himself standing next to Jehu, both of them waiting a moment for more blubber to be attached to their ropes.

  "Can that poor bastard live?" Ryan asked.

  "Jacob?"

  "Yeah."

  The round little head shook and nodded at the same time, so that Ryan couldn't tell whether he was saying yes or no. Other than the clatter of the cleated seaboots and the screaming of a flock of gulls, the only sound was the clean thunking of steel blades biting into the quivering flesh of the harpooned whale.

  "Well, Jehu? Can he still be alive? He'll have choked to death!"

  "Jacob might have climbed the ladder to the peace that passeth all understanding. Now he sitteth at the right hand of all good…and bad and different and all for rent and rent his garments on the road to Bozra where…"

  "Forget it, you double-crazy stupe," Ryan said disgustedly.

  But Jehu, little eyes fixed on Pyra Quadde, who stood to their left, plucked at his sleeve.

  "What is it?"

  "Master Ten-from-Ten, thy pagan friend."