Episode 3:
The Beast From the Depths

STARING DOWN AT THE LITTLE BOAT, aware someone -- or something -- lurked beneath an old tarp draped across its bottom, Neekin said, "Someone should go down there. Perhaps he's hurt, unable to move much or shout out." 

"Aye," agreed Alombo doubtfully.

Neither moved.

For a long time they stood there, staring at the unruffled fabric. Behind them, the mournful creak of the mast lines was the only sound. The fabric stirred again as something moved beneath it, then was still again. Finally Neekin shook herself, as though from a dream. "I'll go down." She was surprised as Alombo grabbed her instinctively about the hips, pulling her to him.

"No," he said. "Gannah," he shouted. "Go down there and see what's what."

A wiry, scarred man leaned over the rail, clearly as uncomfortable as any about the prospect. Then he shot a dirty look at Neekin. "The girl wants to go -- why not let her?"

"Because I say otherwise."

"Just because you fancy her tits doesn't mean-" He stopped, his words frozen by the glare Alombo shot at him. Grumbling, he looped a rope about his waist, and a bigger man began lowering him over the side. 

For her part Neekin didn't know what to say. She suspected that the sailor was right -- that Alombo was attracted to her. Still, it was not for her to contradict his orders. The scarred man, Gannah, could do the job as well as she.

The crew watched as he nimbly rappled down the side of the ship, the big man feeding rope as Gannah went. He hovered momentarily over the derelict craft, then dropped down upon it with a hollow thud. The boat listed to one side, and the nimble sailor pinwheeled his arms for a moment, then steadied himself. He stood on one of the flat seats in the boat, looming over the tarp. "Hey?" he said, his voice drifting up to them. "Anyone there?" He kicked the fabric, and instantly there was a spasm of movement under it. Gannah reared back, nervously. Then the thing beneath the cover was still again. Gannah looked up, nervously. "Toss me a blade," he called.

Alombo drew his own blade and dropped it over the side. "I like this not," he muttered to Neekin.

Gannah caught the sword, then hesitated a moment longer. He looked up at the crew, then down at his feet, then up again. Then, stealing himself, he stepped down into the boat, straddling whatever was there, and pulled back on the cloth.

There was a sudden flury of movement, too fast for even Neekin to make out clearly. Something erupted from beneath the cover, but Gannah's body concealed its nature. They heard the sailor scream, saw a gout of crimson spurt into the air. Their eyes fixated on the seaman as he fell to his knees, only barely did they perceive a dark shape slip over the side and splash into the water.

"Hasih's Blood!" erupted Alombo.

Neekin was the first to react, leaping from the ship and grabbing the rope to swing nimbly down. She landed heavily beside Gannah, but it was already too late. His throat had been torn out.

"What was that--?" someone screamed.

Neekin picked up the dead man's sword and stood, legs braced in the boat, but whatever it was, it had fled.

"There!" someone shouted, pointing to the south.

Neekin looked, but from her low angle, and with the waves rolling, she could see nothing.

"It's swimming away...and...and...it almost looks like a man!"

                                 *     *     *

The bizarre figure made good time. Despite the fact that it looked like a man, at least at great distance, the steady, unflinching strokes, and the way it would dive beneath the brine and not be seen again for twenty minutes or more suggested otherwise. Of course, given the opaqueness of the water, and the chop of the waves, it was not impossible that the figure breeched the water at regular intervals, and the look out merely missed him.

No, that was not beyond the realm of possibility. 

The Falcon's Heart set off in pursuit, whether out of revenge, or curiosity, or in the hopes that the thing would provide some clue to the whereabouts of the black ship...no doubt depended on which crewman you asked.

Neekin, for her part, felt more as though she were caught up in something greater than herself, as though the currents of fate were dictating her
direction.

The wind had died down, and the man or thing was swimming into what breeze there was, which meant that the Falcon's Heart, though a mighty, powerful vessel, was making poor time and actually having trouble gaining on him. And the man had a head start as, before they set out after him, they had had to see to Gannah properly.

"He has to tire," Alombo hissed, appearing suddenly behind her, and startling her. "He has to." But he sounded more as though he were attempting to convince himself.

"Does our captain concur?" she asked pointedly.

He looked at her reprovingly. "He has been consulted, yes."

"He did not even come on deck to see to his dead man."

Alombo ben Fadahl looked away, jaw tight. "El-Antiaque is preoccupied with other matters."

Neekin looked back across the water.

                                 *     *     *

They gained on the mysterious swimmer slowly...but they gained nonetheless and confidence swelled among the crew. 

Until the look out screamed. 

The shriek was unintelligible.  Neekin peered up to see him jabbering incomprehensibly, a wild look on his face.  She followed the direction he indicated, across the fog-draped crests -- away from the swimming man.  At first she saw nothing.  Then a shape momentarily rose, then vanished again.  She frowned and rose on her tip toes.  A ship, rising and falling behind a great swell? she wondered.  But the deck rocked only gently beneath her soles, hardly suggestive of big waves.  She shaded her eyes with a hand.

The shape rose, glistening wetly, grey with flashes of bright red, then was gone.  Up, down.  Undulating, plunging then rising, coming closer, becoming clearer to the eye.  Neekin's heart froze. 

It was no man-made barque of wood and sail-cloth.  

The serpent exploded out of the water just off the port bow, a massive beast of oily grey with bright red scales around the fins, its gills rippling purple gashes stretching across its neck.  Its great maw yawned with a roar like the blare of an advancing army's trumpets.  Massive teeth jutted from its gums, green with moss from the ocean's unknown depths.  A hapless sailor perched on the bowsprit while securing the flying jib fell back in startled horror, plunging into the cold water.  With a bone rattling roar, the massive leviathan fell on him, great jaws closing about human flesh in a bloody display of raw power.  Then, with a flick of its grey and red tail, it vanished into the water, a great wave lifting the Falcon's Heart and dashing it down again, sending hardened seamen sprawling across the deck. 

Neekin kept her feet, as did Alombo who yelled, "She'll be back.  Man your posts.  Man your posts, damn your eyes!"

But the sailors were demoralized, having sailed with the ship to face human foes, not the monster of a thousand nightmares.  The door beneath the poop flew open and a man came running on deck, waving two swords gripped in either hand; a man Neekin had never seen by daylight.  The ship's reclusive captain. 

Then, with a crashing of waves, the serpent erupted from the sea almost against the hull of the ship, sending a wave of brine smashing across the deck.  Neekin was knocked from her feet, but caught a line wound about the mast with a desperate grab.  Another man was washed screaming over the larboard side. 

Alombo and the captain raced to meet the beast, a ludicrous sight given the disparate sizes; they were as a dolls before it.  Their swords slashed at a barnacle-encrusted snout, the beast seeming more amused than angered by this display.  A swipe of its head, and the mate went tumbling across the water-slicked deck, missing being crushed between those mammoth jaws by a hair's-width.  The captain watched him fall, then squared his shoulders and raised his swords again.

Neekin rose, her bare feet gaining better traction on the wet deck than the booted men.  She ran toward the conflict, snatching a sword from the belt of a man lying sprawled upon the deck.  The captain swung madly, the hot, fetid breath of the beast buffeting him, its crusted lips impervious to his blows.  He would be belly padding in moments, she knew, and mayhap the rest of them as well. 

Neekin leaped past him, catching the rail with one foot and launching herself into the air.  The beast barely had time to register her before she was sailing over its head to land upon the slimey back of its skull.  The surface was like polished glass and she almost skidded off, but with her left hand plunged her hunting knife into its flesh as an anchor.  The serpent, its skin thick as a castle wall, barely felt the penetration.  But it knew she was there.  It flung its head back and forth to dislodge her, bellowing its irritation.  Neekin was thrown one way, then whipped the other.  Her knife held, barely, but the muscles in her triceps flamed with agony and her stomach lurched. 

Ordering her mind, enforcing discipline on her rattled senses, she jabbed the sword into the folds of the beast's gills, the one spot she judged was vulnerable.  Its scream fluttered the  ship's sails and it snapped back and forth even harder.  Again and again she stabbed her sword into its soft flesh, blood trickling from a score of minor wounds.  Finally, screaming its rage, the beast reared and plunged back into the bracing waters. 

The waves hit Neekin like a wall, the impact knocking her almost senseless.  She broke away from the beast, swimming for the surface, but the leviathan's slipstream ensnared her, dragging her with it into the dark, all-embracing depths.  Frantic, lungs screaming for air, she gradually felt its hold dissipate and her body rise toward brightness.  With the strength of the truly-damned, she kicked upward.  She broke the surface with a final, superhuman effort, then sank once more into the foaming sea.

She would have no memory of being dragged from the water and onto the deck of the Falcon's Heart.

It would only be later that someone would realize they had lost track of the swimming man....

                                 *     *     *

Captain El-Antiague stared at her from across the table, one hand toying with a golden goblet.  His cabin had an aged feel to it; musty scented and worn.  The crimson porthole drapes were of fine thread, but frayed and moth-eaten in spots.  The walls were lined with shelves warped with the weight of ancient scrolls and sea charts strapped in against the tossing of the waves.  The bed too was an unusually rich sight on such a ship; a double with canopy, lace shams over the pillows.  But like the drapes, this equisite finery had been allowed to fade and fray.

Not unlike the master himself.  

Though spry, as his battle with the serpent demonstrated, El-Antiague had a sunken, hollow look to his cheeks -- cheeks unnaturally pale, particularly for a man who spent his time on ocean roads, but not so for one who rarely left his cabin in the daylight.  His eyes burned brightly as Neekin picked at her food; the gaze reminding her uncomfortably of a fanatic.  His movements were disconcertingly jagged and abrupt, like one in the grip of tiny seizures.

"Alombo tells me you're a hunting party," she said between bites, attempting to dispell the quiet.  Her reward for driving off the serpent was an audience with their captain; conversation, it seemed, was not guaranteed.  "Who do we seek?"

The captain looked into the bowl of his goblet, swirling the wine nervously, as if her words were unheard.  She glanced at her own goblet, the alcohol untouched. 

"We seek my wife."

She looked up, startled, scarcely hearing the muttered words.  He continued to stare at the goblet in his hands. 

"I once knew a man named Charwan Kan..."