Neri nodded, giving Jagga an odd half smile. The lowering sun set her eyes aglow, and Jagga caught herself staring again. When the sun dropped below the horizon, Neri simply turned and headed toward Jagga’s quarters. Jagga followed and found her waiting there. She locked the door and pushed Neri onto the bed, kissing her with a hunger and need that was both welcomed and returned.
Entwined, they slept little, Neri’s body flowing like a river goddess, Jagga’s muscles tensing and releasing. But Neri would not remove the amulet, and even at the height of passion, Jagga found it disquieting.
Later, unable to sleep, Jagga dressed and slipped out of bed to walk the deck. A lantern, turned low, hung aft, though the silver moon did more to banish the darkness. She stood still, looking over the ship, letting her eyes adjust. A sound came from the bow, clear and cold in the silence of the night watch. It was both familiar and wrong, like a long blade drawn across a leather strap, oily and slithering in a way that made Jagga grind her teeth unconsciously. Then there was a wet tearing noise and the low sound of a man moaning.
Jagga fell into a fighting stance, but she’d left her blades in her quarters. Empty-handed, she ran across the deck and found Plagg lying in a pool of his own blood, his throat torn open. Before she could cry out an alarm, a man-shaped figure emerged from the shadows by the bow rail, thin and wiry, cast in jet and shrouded in churning shreds of smoke, backlit by the moon. From its face shone malevolent yellow eyes, and when its mouth fell gaping open, there was nothing inside but a vast and starless void.
“Murder!” Jagga shouted. “We’re boarded!”
The night watch, up in the rigging, had not even been aware that anything was aboard. Jagga’s call was echoed across the ship, but before anyone could reach her, the creature lunged. Black claws like needles slashed, Jagga leaning back just enough to avoid getting her throat sliced open. She was filled with a malignant feeling, but far stronger now, stronger even than what she’d felt on the beach.
Behind her, Jagga heard a voice cry, “No!” The creature looked past her, then darted across the deck. Jagga turned to see it striding straight at Neri, who’d emerged from the sterncastle clutching a sheet around her body. The crew was rushing onto the deck, armed and confused. The cloud of shadow and smoke that shrouded the thing made it hard for anyone to take aim. Jagga alone gave chase.
Neri stumbled backward, the sheet falling away. The creature pounced, and as Jagga ran, she could see the ochre glow of its eyes bathing Neri’s terrified face.
But it didn’t attack. As Jagga sprinted, she saw that it held the amulet in its vicious claws, gazing at it with eyes wide, slitted pupils flaring with lust. Neri arched her body away, the rope on the amulet taut around her neck.
“It must not have it,” Neri said, gasping.
Jagga tucked her shoulder down and slammed into the creature at a full run, knocking it off of Neri as she tumbled after it. Its body was disconcertingly soft and when she touched it, Jagga was wracked with nausea, her throat clenching against the sudden urge to vomit.
She staggered to her feet. It hissed at her, flexing its claws. There was the crack of a pistol, and the creature gave a short shriek as it dissolved into a small mote of shadow that vanished into the night air.
“Cold iron shot,” Tripton said. Smoke rose from the barrel of his gun.
Jagga watched Neri retrieve her sheet. She reached down to touch the amulet, but Neri turned away. “Explain this to me.”
Neri’s eyes dropped. She huddled under the sheet. “I found it in the temple.”
“But you know something about it. You knew that that thing shouldn’t get its claws on it. Why?”
“The amulet is the Black Key. That was a...a god, I think. Its name is Erum Vahl. If it holds the Key, the world unravels. It’s hard for me to say. I saw a vision when I first held the Key. That is how I know.”
“And it’s been chasing you ever since?”
Neri’s eyes were dark pools, tears cascading from them to splash her cheeks. “Yes. It came to my town. It kills and kills. I fled to save the others there, to save anyone else I know from this fate. But each time I escape, each time anyone injures it, it returns.”
As Jagga stood thinking, from the forecastle came a despairing cry. “Oi, it’s done for poor Plagg, what a bloody crime this is.” As the crew gathered up Plagg’s remains, Jagga felt their fear turning to anger.
“I’m bound to protect you, Neri. I have that much honor, at least. Give me the amulet.”
Neri wiped her face, her expression growing stern. “Never. It is my burden. I would flee my entire life to save anyone else from this endless tragedy.”
“Ah,” Jagga said softly. She sank to one knee, her face close to Neri’s. “But I don’t think you’re the wandering kind, sweet one.” She kissed Neri’s face, salty from the sea and tears. They returned to the captain’s quarters. Myelle gave quiet orders to the crew, who obeyed him in sullen silence.
The creature came again the next night, but they were ready, lanterns on every mast to dispel its foul shadows, each crew member armed with cold iron shot. When it returned two nights later, Jagga took a wound in her shoulder, her skin shredded by its vile claws. She spent the following day clammy and heaving, wracked by a ceaseless ache that left her arm nearly useless.
On the fourth night the shadow god manifested in the bilge and crept through the bowels of the ship, murdering seven of the crew before Myelle drove it off with an iron sword. The crew seethed with anger and Jagga knew it. Still she spent hours with Neri, talking and caressing. She didn’t have the words in any language to describe her feelings. But she knew something had to change.
“Why not throw it into the deeps and be done with the damned amulet?” asked Old Jonn, the ship’s cook. His tone suggested he wouldn’t bother removing the amulet from Neri before casting it overboard.
“It would find it,” Neri said. “It will find it anywhere. And then all this,” she waved her hand as if to encompass the entire world, “Will become ash.”
“Tripton, bring her about and tack into the wind. Head back north,” Jagga said.
He tilted his head in confusion.
“We’re taking Neri home.”
The crew muttered, but Neri only sighed. Later, Jagga found her weeping in their quarters.
“Please don’t,” she whispered. “Please do not send everyone I know and love in this world to their deaths.”
“I’m not.” Jagga coiled her body around Neri, running her rough hands over Neri’s skin. As Neri relaxed into Jagga’s arms, Jagga deftly gripped the amulet and snapped the rope that held it. “Just me.”
It took a week running against the wind to get back to the black temple, battling the creature each night. Wearing the amulet now, Jagga caught a glimpse of the visions Neri spoke of: a sky blackened by ash, the ocean boiling, and the name etched in her mind—Erum Vahl. They traveled another day past the temple to get closer to Neri’s town, though as they passed the glittering black pyramid, she felt it pulling at her like the tongue of a great beast drawing her into its mouth. That final night, with the ship at anchor and the shadow god temporarily banished after a hard battle, Jagga sent the crew below. She and Neri slept at the bow, lying naked in each other’s arms under the slowly turning stars and the soft touch of the sea breeze. Jagga found herself kissing tears from Neri’s face again, mingled with her own this time.
In the morning, Jagga rowed Neri to shore alone, and they embraced on the beach.
“Be safe, sweet one. Return to your home and live and love for all your days.”
Neri kissed Jagga hard, then turned and ran into the trees.
When Jagga returned to The Hammer of Triel, her face was grim. “I am Jagga the Accursed, now. Jagga the Hunted. Jagga, of Neri’s Heart.” Her voice grew coarse with emotion. “We head back north, then west past Ulsh. From there, I don’t know. I’ll keep moving as I always have, and battle Erum Vahl every night. You can stay with me or not, but you’ve all ta
sted the shadow god’s breath. You know what it means to carry this.”
She held the Black Key up, the iron oily and hot in her fingers.
“You can try to take my ship from me if you choose.” The blades at her hips glimmered darkly in the low morning sun. “But I’ve fought worse.”
Jagga’s gaze fell on the empty beach, and she felt an ache she couldn’t name.
“When night falls, I’ll be waiting.”
Serpent’s Tail
By Mharie West
* * *
Thorgest Ketilson woke badly since he had entered his forty-fourth year. Each day, he felt like there was wool between his ears. This time was no different.
“Up, Ref.” Makarios’ voice had that particular snap which meant weapons were out, and so Thorgest was scrabbling for his sword, even as he got out of his blanket and to his feet as best he could. His long plaited hair swung behind him as he steadied himself. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he saw with dismay that the rowing had stopped and every man was on his feet. Ulf had his sword out and something hot and out of control shone in his eyes.
“You jump when your harlot asks, hey, Ref?”
Thorgest’s mind raced. He thought that the inn door had creaked too loudly the night before they left port. He kept his sword low, but poised and ready nonetheless.
“I jump for no one.”
Ulf sneered. “Then does he jump for you, your foreign boy?” He pointed his sword straight at Makarios, which was a threat and an insult combined. Thorgest ransacked his mouth and spat hard on the deck at Ulf’s feet.
“We’re in the middle of the fucking sea, Ulf. What do you think you can do here?” He brought his sword up and ready. Makarios moved to his flank, sword out too.
“Do you do it because you’re too old to have kids anymore, she-fox?” Ulf taunted Thorgest with the feminine version of his nickname, Ref.
Thorgest gave an exaggerated sigh. “Really? How are such serious insults coming from a puppy-boy straight off his mother’s tit?”
He saw the killing rage flare in Ulf’s eyes then, which confirmed it hadn’t been there before. Still, the young man hesitated.
Thorgest could understand why. No one else was making a move to help either of them, so all of a sudden Ulf was facing two seasoned, experienced fighters alone, on a trading ship in the middle of the ocean.
Ah, the boy was too young for trading. Barely older than Thorgest’s oldest son. He needed a few more raids under his belt to get that fire out.
“I should kill you for what you’ve said,” Thorgest said clearly. They all knew it was true. The right to kill after that sort of insult was enshrined in law. “I could kill you. But it would be dangerous for everyone else involved, so I’ll see you when we’ve both got feet on dry land again.”
“Coward!” Ulf snarled, looking a little like his lupine namesake. More quickly than Thorgest had expected, Ulf took the three short steps separating them and lunged.
It was a clumsy, showy blow, and for someone like Thorgest who’d been paid to kill in the great city Miklagard, it was child’s play. He swept the point aside with the pommel of his sword then put all of his weight into shoving Ulf, chest to chest.
Ulf staggered backwards and fell. He kept the sword in his hand as he went down, and accidentally nicked his bench partner. The other man swore and punched Ulf in the side of the head.
Thorgest extended his sword and took half a step forwards, just to prove that he could finish it if he wanted, then stepped back. He looked at his crew…the crew he had thought was his. Several of them wouldn’t meet his eye. It was a painful thing to see.
He wondered whether any of them were truly offended by the public unveiling that he and Makarios were lovers (a secret most of them had known at least something of previously), and which of them were simply excited by the idea of getting his ship if he was killed or outlawed. Or just at seeing him taken down a peg or two.
“I’ll see you’re all paid your share when we get in,” he said at last, before sitting down on his bench and picking up his oar.
The result, once they pulled into home, was worse than Thorgest had feared. He had expected Ulf and maybe one other youngster to jump off the ship and try to stab him from the shallows. What he hadn’t expected was an almost equal split of the crew of ten, eyeing each other warily as they stood in the foam.
“What are you doing?” he shouted. He pointed at Ulf, who was in the middle of his little group and looking much more confidant now. “He wants to kill me. I have every right to kill him. The rest of you shouldn’t be involved, unless you really want to start blood-feuds for your children and their children.” Without taking his eyes off Ulf’s “crew,” he pointed to the men who had gathered behind him and said, “You too. Don’t you think I could handle this sapling with one hand tied behind my back? Go.”
There was some mumbling. A familiar bulk settled at his side and Makarios whispered, “Never.”
As everyone knew it would, that act of intimacy made the others charge.
It was four on two, but within the first frantic few strokes, two of them fell away. One had a slashed arm spouting blood, and Thorgest had simply clubbed the other one on the head and kicked him away. Now it was only Ulf and his benchmate. You bonded to your benchmate, it was a hard thing to turn away from, but Thorgest could see the doubt forming in the man’s eyes.
Still, in they came again. He and Makarios were trying to not do real damage, and that was always a problem in a fight. Ulf feinted for Thorgest and let the deflection carry his blade straight into Makarios’ face. His instant of satisfaction faded when Makarios stabbed him in his sword arm. Thorgest took the opportunity and made the split-second decision. The law was on his side. His sword pierced into Ulf’s stomach, and he angled it as high as he could to try and find the heart and cause a quick death.
“Nithing!” came a shout from where the rest of Ulf’s supporters had run to the crowds on shore. Thorgest stared at them in disbelief and pointed at Ulf, who was gurgling and turning the wet sand brown.
“He’s dead because he called me that.”
“You can’t kill us all!” Under the hostile eyes of his former friends and neighbours, who crowded close to let him know he wasn’t allowed any of the cargo, Thorgest did the only thing he could. He and Makarios emptied their ship chests into their sacks and prepared to leave. “Look at me, Maka,” Thorgest muttered as they lifted their spare clothes and a few days of uneaten rations.
“I’ll live, Ref.” Makarios’ olive skin was slick and red from cheek to collar.
“I can see your cheekbone.” It glinted like moonlight in the gaping red flesh.
“And you’ve seen it before.”
They trudged away from the ship. The hostility from the crowd was now palpable. They might have killed their accuser but they hadn’t denied anything, which was basically the same as admitting everything, and it was probably only a matter of moments before someone started spinning the tale that Ulf hadn’t deserved to die.
But after an hour or two, they felt fairly certain no one was following them. Thorgest turned to Makarios and scraped some dried blood from his lip away with his fingernail. “I’ll get to Kupsi if I can and we’ll round up some of the old crew and meet you at the cove where I’ve kept the Serpent.” He hadn’t rowed in the Serpent for years. It was a light, fast ship, which had been perfect, back in the day, for raiding round coastlines.
“But—”
Good, he was glad that Makarios was uncomfortable about going back to activities best suited to hot-headed youths like Ulf. “Get home, Maka.” It was a journey of several hours and doubtless some hotheads would now have a head start. “Sewenna knows what to do if anything happens,” he said, more to convince himself than anything else.
“More than both of us put together,” Makarios agreed, then leaned in and gave Thorgest the bloodiest kiss they’d shared since Thorgest has lost most of his nose in a battle fifteen years ago. “Meet you at the
Serpent.”
Sewenna the Blind, they called her in the village, along with a number of unflattering things: nag, leech, English. That last one was true, though she hadn’t set foot on her homeland since Ref had snatched her away twenty years ago. The other two might be true, too. People could think what they liked. But ‘blind’ wasn’t true. At least, not how everybody thought.
True, she couldn’t see facial expressions and couldn’t see when the ground rose or fell, and certainly couldn’t see her neighbour’s fine stitch-work. But none of that was really necessary. She could see shapes, colours and movement, she could hear well, and her children joked that she had magic fingers due to their sensitivity.
That night, she was grateful they thought her black-bound and helpless.
She woke with a start. There was nothing unusual in this; it was the price she paid for paying more attention to sounds than most. Still, there was something about the silence this time that scared her. She concentrated into the quiet, letting it fill her while she waited for it to be disturbed again.
A clink.
A weapon.
There was absolutely no good reason for someone to be trying to silently move a weapon right outside their house.
As quietly as she possibly could, she rose from the bench she slept on and walked slowly and carefully around the fire to where her sons slept on benches on the other side.
“Ssh,” she whispered into their ears even as she shook them back and forth to rouse them. When they were younger, she had taught them to write runes by tracing them on sand, mud, and their skin. She did this now, urgently, aware that every second she was spending was a waste: úr for iron, madr for man.
Her younger son, Godgest went straight for his belt knife and was half upright by the time she pinched him, hard. For once in her life, she was glad for the elder boy, Thorkell, who thought and moved more slowly. Silence was ringing in her ears like a bell. She whispered to each boy, her words soft and gastlike on the air. They had an escape route, though it had been created when the children were too young to remember, and if they took that path rather than make a stupid heroic stand in the house, then they might all survive.
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