The dragon hissed, and then the booming clicking noise hit me full force. It was loud, as loud as anything I’d ever heard, and it hurt—not only the sound but the physical impact of the sound waves as they slapped against my body. I shifted Krati to fire at the dragon’s eyes and brought up Kunknir.
The dragon shrieked as the hot lead from Krati ricocheted from the scales around its eyes. At that moment, the ship skipped off the last wave and skimmed a foot or two above the water. Without the friction of the water slowing it down, the ship accelerated away from the dragon at an increasing pace. The dragon hissed like a teapot about to burst, and, in an acrobatic feat, folded itself in half to dive back into the water. It dove deep until I could no longer see the sun glinting off its scales.
“Has it gone?” asked the captain.
“No idea. It’s too deep—invisible.” As soon as I’d finished, the deafening clicking hit us again, vibrating the entire ship with its intensity. “I guess that answers that question.”
“Dad!” yelled Sig.
I glanced at the mast where Veethar stood, arms still raised, concentrating on keeping the wind blowing, but Sig was not there. “Sig?”
“Oh my God!” cried Jane. “Sig! Get away from there!”
I followed her gaze to where our son stood—stood—on the gunnel. He was pointing at something straight below us. “Sig, get down from there!”
Jane was sprinting toward our son, maternal instincts in overdrive—or maybe she had a bit of what Frikka had. I followed her, putting fresh magazines into both pistols as I shuffled that direction.
The clicking was louder, making the entire deck jump and heave. As I reached the halfway point to where Sig stood on the rail, and as Jane stretched her arms out to grab him, the dragon slammed into the bottom of the ship between the bow and midships. The ship rolled to starboard as if it would capsize in midair, and the dragon executed another of its acrobatic folds and dove into the water again, its tail slamming into the port side. Jane screamed and leapt toward the port rail, fighting the momentum of the heaving deck plus gravity itself.
Her boots skidded against the wood planks, but she had no traction, and she began to slide back toward starboard. She uttered an unladylike curse and a set of black raven’s wings sprouted from her shoulders, emerging from the clever slits worked in her mail shirt for that purpose. Her wings beat once, twice, and she was away from the deck and rising toward the port rail where we’d last seen our son.
I slid toward the starboard gunnel, feet scrabbling against the rough wooden planks, as unable as Jane had been to defy gravity and reach the port side.
Meuhlnir stomped his heavy boot against the deck. “Stuthva!” he shouted, and the air crackled with power. The ship shuddered and stopped tipping to starboard. “Pletya oot!” The ship righted itself with a wobble toward port.
“Jane!” I shouted. I forgot my aching joints and ran toward the port rail. Beneath us, the dragon splashed and clicked. “Meuhlnir! Jane and Sig went over!” His heavy footfalls sounded behind me as Mothi raced past me. Mothi skidded to a halt at the rail, peering over the side.
“There,” he shouted, pointing behind us and port.
I turned and ran to the stern. Jane hovered six feet above the waves, holding Sig, who was soaked to the bone. She struggled to gain altitude and to lift our fourteen-year-old son out of the sea at the same time.
The water beneath them churned and boiled. “Jane! The dragon!” I waved Kunknir over my head, willing her to hear me, to notice me. Sig glanced at me, then down at the churning water below him. He looked up into his mother’s face and pulled her hands off his arms. “No!” I shouted and stumbled into the rail.
Jane shrieked as he fell and tucked her wings to dive after him. She shouted, her words lost in the wind and the incessant, infernal clicking.
The distance was a problem, and every second we moved away from them. “Turn the ship!” I yelled.
“Are you crazy?” shouted the captain. “It’s better that two should die so the rest of us can escape! I’ll not—” His words became an agonized wail, and he slid to the deck.
Althyof stood behind him, eyes blazing, the captain’s blood dripping from one of his polymorphic daggers. He was singing in that strange language he used during battle. “Better that one than two, fool.” He motioned at the great wheel on the bridge. “Someone drive this accursed floating trap!”
The first mate jumped to the wheel and spun it, but nothing happened. The rudder was out of the water, flapping free in the air.
“Snoothu vith!” yelled Veethar and the wind that had been blowing from behind us changed to blow from the bow in an instant. For a moment, the ship shuddered as the sails flapped, but then the wind began to turn the ship.
Jane hovered mere feet above the roiling white water. Sig had surfaced behind her.
“Jane!” I called. “He’s behind you!”
The ship was floundering around, spinning her out of my line of sight. I followed the rail as it spun, screaming at the top of my voice and waving my pistols above my head, but it was no use. She couldn’t hear me over the booming clicks coming from the dragon, and she didn’t notice the change in the wind. Sig started swimming toward her, and something inside me snapped. I swung my leg up and over the rail, meaning to get down there and help.
Mothi grabbed me from behind, using his immense strength to lift me off the rail and away. “No, Aylootr!”
It enraged me, and I turned on him. Kunknir and Krati were in my palms, and the urge to do battle sang in my veins. I shouldered past him, or tried to, but he looped an arm, thick with muscles, around me and spun me back.
“No!” he said. “You can’t help from the water! Aylootr! Hear sense!”
Yowtgayrr stumbled out of the stairwell that led to the sleeping deck. His eyes were glassy, and his bluish-ivory hair stood on end, but he held both of his blades naked and ready for battle. “What?” he demanded, gaze going first to Althyof and then finding Meuhlnir.
“Sea dragon,” Meuhlnir said as if it were nothing more exciting than a brisk wind. “Jane and Sig are overboard. The boy in the water, Jane flying on raven’s wings.”
Yowtgayrr’s eyes sought mine, noting the stand-off with Mothi. He reversed his grip on his blades and stabbed them into the wood. He pointed at me and glared. “You, Hank Jensen, do not leave this deck.” I opened my mouth to argue, but with staggering steps, Yowtgayrr ran toward the rail closest to Sig. He leapt from the rail and dove into the water.
“By the balls of all the Plauinn,” Althyof yelled. “No one else leave this damn boat!”
Mothi stared into my face. “Hank? Will you stop fighting me?”
I nodded and, when he released me, stepped past him. Yowtgayrr had covered half the distance to my son, his arms lifting and burying themselves in the waves at a rapid pace.
“What have I done to earn such loyalty?” I muttered.
“Well, for one thing, you do a good job of teasing Father,” said Mothi. His eyes never left Sig, but his hand found my shoulder and patted it. “Get those noise-makers ready. The beast comes.”
My eyes snapped to the seething white water, then to Jane, who hovered a few feet above it. Without giving myself time to think, I lifted Krati and put a round in front of her. She wore the ring Althyof had enchanted—she could heal herself if the bullet went awry. The same ring that let her fly on those beautiful sable wings.
The round splashed into the water in front of her, and her gaze snapped up and to me. I waved her away from the moiling water, and Mothi pointed at Sig. She got the message and veered away, just as the dragon broke the surface of the water.
Yowtgayrr reached my son and hooked an arm around the boy’s chest. Sig struggled as Yowtgayrr started to pull him away, back toward the ship.
“No, Sig! Go with him!” I yelled.
The dragon hissed at the ship, then saw Jane. It lunged at her, mouth open wide. Jane juked to the left and darted back, wings working hard. The b
east snapped at her again, and again Jane dodged away, flitting this way and that like a hummingbird on methamphetamines. The sea dragon emitted a long series of loud clicks, and Jane weltered in the shock wave that followed. When it saw her wallowing, moving like a drunk butterfly, it hissed and arched its neck while tilting its head to the side, preparing to strike at her and snap its jaws around her body.
Kunknir and Krati roared and boomed, and lead flew toward the dragon’s head and neck. The bullets might have hit Jane, but I didn’t know what else to do.
I kept firing until Kunknir’s slide locked back, and as I ejected the magazine and fed in a fresh one, the bullets from the gun rived through the dragon’s scales covering its jaws and the side of its neck. The dragon heaved its head away, ducking behind the bulk of its own neck. Jane cried out, and I cringed, wondering if one of the rounds from Krati had hit her.
The dragon emitted a string of pops and whumps in rapid succession, the clangor stunning Jane further, and she dipped close to the perilous waves. When it turned, the dragon hissed at me, its eyes gyrating like a Hollywood special effect. Yowtgayrr and Sig drew its attention, and it blasted them with a long volley of loud clicks that agitated the surrounding water, making the surface of the sea carom and dance with its intensity. The dragon lunged at them, mouth dripping a foul-looking arylide yellow, viscous fluid into the waves below it.
“Yowtgayrr! Poison!” I screamed it so loud that my voice cracked.
The Alf redoubled his efforts, using his free arm to scoop at the water. Sig had stopped fighting him and instead, kicked his feet and paddled in the water as if he were doing an upside-down butterfly stroke. Even with both of their efforts, they stood no chance of outpacing the behemoth beast.
Jane shook her head and beat her raven-black wings hard to gain altitude. She glanced around in time to catch the dragon preparing to strike, towering over Yowtgayrr and our son, jaws dripping acid. “No!” she screamed, and as she did, a bright carmine aura flashed around her and, a heartbeat later, around the sea dragon.
The clicking from the dragon ceased, and it spasmed and convulsed, its head flopping this way and that as its body performed a strange dance in the water. The beast’s entire body stiffened and fell to the side with a tremendous splash, reminding me of a tree felled into a lake.
After the booming clamor of the dragon’s clicking and hissing, the sound of the roaring wind seemed trivial, a welcome respite. Jane listed sideways, head lolling.
“What did she do?” murmured Mothi.
“Althyof,” I said.
“What?”
“The ring gives her the power to kill by a force of will alone. She said she’d never use it.”
“Her son had never stared into the jaws of an angry sea dragon when she said that.”
“No doubt,” I said.
Jane rolled her head to stare at the long, iridescent body of the beast, seeming to see nothing else—not Sig, not Yowtgayrr, not the ship. I thought she wallowed in remorse, that she was busy cursing herself for killing the beast, but it wasn’t that. Or at least not all of it was. Her magnificent black wings stopped beating the air and disappeared as her eyelids sank closed. She tilted to the side and fell into the sea as if dead.
“Get us down!” I shouted and ran toward the rail.
“You stay here!” Mothi yelled at me. With a running leap, he jumped to the gunnel and dove into the sea.
“Setyast til syowvar!” Meuhlnir commanded, and the ship sank to the surface of the water.
“Vinturidn er rowlegur,” said Veethar, and the sails slackened as the wind died away.
I twisted out of my belt and swept the cloak off my shoulders for the first time since I’d run out of my methotrexate. Caustic pain descended from my shoulders to my hips, ripping a harsh gasp out of me. I stripped off my armor, and let it fall to the deck. Tunnel vision swept in from nowhere and I staggered as the ship lurched through the waves.
“No,” said Meuhlnir in a calm voice. He wrapped the cloak around my shoulders and relief sang through me. “Mothi’s already there. He has her, Hank.”
I forced my eyes open and saw he was right. Mothi had his arm across her shoulder and was pulling her toward the boat with long, efficient strokes of his other arm. Yowtgayrr had Sig and was angling toward Mothi in case he needed help. I sagged against Meuhlnir, fighting the urge to vomit.
“Sif!” Meuhlnir called.
Veethar snapped his fingers at the first mate. “Get them all on board.”
The first mate glanced at Althyof, and the Tverkr gestured at the rail with impatience. “Don’t look to me every moment! Do your job!”
The first mate—now the new captain—yelled orders at his thrall crew and they hustled to get our four companions back on board. The ship maneuvered close, and the crew threw netting over the side to act as an impromptu ladder. Yowtgayrr set Sig to climbing the net and then took one of Jane’s arms so he and Mothi could bring her up the net.
My attention shifted back and forth between Jane and Sig. Jane’s head lolled from side to side with the movement of the waves. Her eyes were half-open but empty. “Jane!” I called. She gave a start and turned her head toward me, but she didn’t seem to recognize me.
Sif gave me a cursory look. “I’ll deal with you later,” she promised. “You made your own pain, you can live with it while I treat your wife.”
I nodded, eyes only for Jane.
Sig cleared the rail and ran over to me. “Daddy! What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know, Son.”
“Don’t worry, Sig. Auntie Sniffles is here.” She put her arm around Sig’s shoulders. “But don’t you think for a second I didn’t see the silly thing you did and won’t have words with you about it later.”
Mothi and Yowtgayrr reached the gunnel and handed Jane over the rail to Meuhlnir and Sif. They set her on the deck, and Sif examined her.
“What is it? Did the dragon—”
“No,” said Sif. She closed her eyes, lips moving. Jane’s body convulsed, and she regurgitated sea water all over the deck. Sif nodded and put her ear to Jane’s chest, expression tight, worried. Then, she smiled. “All is well. She’s in a kind of sleep. Whatever she did, it drained her body to dangerous levels. I cleared the water from her lungs, and she is breathing on her own.”
A sigh of relief gusted out of me. “When will she—”
“Telling the future is Frikka’s department, not mine,” said Sif. She glanced up at me, and her eyes softened. “But don’t worry, she will wake. For now, we make her comfortable.” She stood and began issuing orders to the thralls to bring up blankets and the rocks they used below deck for heating the cabins.
“Dad!” murmured Sig, and I tore my gaze away from Jane and put my arm around my son. “Is she going to be okay?”
“Yes, Son,” I said. “Auntie Sniffles is better than an emergency room any day of the week.”
“Did you see what Mom did to it? The dragon, I mean? It fell over dead!”
I flinched and put my arm around his shoulders. “Mommy will feel bad about that, I think, so maybe we shouldn’t make too much of it when she wakes up.”
Sig glanced around me at his mother and looked up at me. “Why? I don’t understand.”
“It’s no small thing to kill another living being, let alone one that might be intelligent. It affects almost everyone, but in different ways.”
“But, it was a dragon, and it was trying to kill me!” His whisper was fierce.
“Which is why your mother acted as she did. Her choice was between her beliefs and your life.”
He nodded after a moment of thought. “Oh.”
“Let’s tread carefully for a while, make things easy for her.”
“Yeah, Dad. I can get with that program.”
“Good. Now you’d better get out of those wet clothes before you turn into a Sigsicle.”
“It’s not that cold, Dad. I want to talk to Mommy when she wakes up. To thank her.”
>
“Get yourself changed, Sig, then we’ll see.”
I turned back to Yowtgayrr and Mothi. “Thank you, both of you. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve friends like the two of you.”
Mothi grinned at me, but Yowtgayrr shook his head. “Don’t be silly, Hank. The boy is a fine addition to the party, and it was my honor to help your family. As for thanking me, that is unnecessary. Recall my mission, recall my beliefs.”
I nodded but didn’t let go of his forearm. “Yes, that’s all well and good, but recall my beliefs and accept my gratitude.”
Yowtgayrr shrugged and smiled. “Fine. You’re welcome, Hank.” He squeezed my forearm for a moment, then broke away. “It’s very cold in this wind. I’ll go below and get warm.”
“Do that,” I said.
Mothi clapped Yowtgayrr on the shoulder and together the two men went below to get dried off and warm. The new captain was shouting more orders to the thrall crew, getting them underway again, but he wasn’t turning the ship back to their original course.
“Captain!” shouted Meuhlnir. “Our destination lies to the stern.”
The man shook his head and pointed back toward the port we’d sailed from. “You’ll have a refund minus expenses and a funeral, but I’ll not risk the ship.”
Meuhlnir turned to look at me and raised his eyebrow.
“Why is it at risk? The sea dragon’s dead.”
The captain nodded but didn’t spin the great wheel. “That one is dead, yes. But sea dragons hunt in pods.”
“Pods?” asked Meuhlnir.
“Groups,” I said. “I wouldn’t think they’d act that way. Aren’t they territorial?”
“To non-dragons, yes,” said the captain. “And to dragons outside their pod, but the dead sea dragon called his mates.”
“How do you know?”
“The other sound it made, not the clicking,” said the captain. “We’re in a race now, whether we like it or not. We need speed, now, or you will have to fight other dragons.”
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