levelled the head of a black fish upon the two shicts.
The Abysmyth stared at Kataria, its eyes wide, white and empty.
‘At the midpoint on the pilgrimage,’ it said, its voice choked with the voices of the drowned, ‘I looked upon the pristine creation and saw a floating blight. Mother bade me to act on her behalf, unable to bear the agony of the faithless longfaces upon her endless blue. And within the black boil, I found the lost and the lonely.’ It extended a great webbed hand, glistening with thick, viscous ooze. ‘Come to me, my children. I will take the agony of this waking nightmare from you.’
‘Run,’ Kataria said as much to herself as to Naxiaw, ‘run.’
‘What is it?’ the greenshict asked.
‘Salvation,’ the Abysmyth answered.
‘The Shepherd has come,’ a chorus of voices burbled on the rapidly rising water. ‘The faithless tremble. The fainthearted cower. Fear not, fear not …’
‘For I am here,’ the Abysmyth continued, ‘to ease your agony.’ It gestured to the wound. ‘Rejoice.’
And, as one, they came boiling through the hull like a brood of tadpoles. Glistening bodies, bereft of hair or pallor, rejected by the great blue body of the sea and vomited out in a mass of writhing flesh, gnashing needle teeth, colourless eyes. The frogmen came in numbers immeasurable, pulling themselves out of the rising water in a gasping, rasping choir.
‘We have come,’ the great black demon said, ‘to deliver. Messages. Sinners. Everyone.’
‘Run,’ Kataria said, grabbing Naxiaw by the arm. ‘
Naxiaw heard and did not question, following her as they sprinted for the stairs leading to the deck. Struck breathless from fear, they spoke in short gasps of air.
‘How do we escape?’ the greenshict asked.
‘The shore isn’t far from here,’ she said. ‘Shicts can swim.’
‘Those things … they came from the water. Is it wise to go in?’
‘We don’t have a whole lot of choice, do we? The ship will go down in a few moments and we’ll be drowning, anyway.’
‘Then we swim. I trust you, Sister.’
‘Wait!’ she cried as they neared the companionway. ‘I have to …’
He paused, looked at her curiously. What could she say? That she had to stay on this sinking tomb, now rife with demons as well as longfaces, for the sake of a human? The great disease? How could she tell him that? How could she tell herself that, after all the time she had yearned to feel this knowledge, hear this comfort, feel this lightness?
How could she ask herself why her heart beat different than his?
She could not say that, any of that.
‘I have to do what I must,’ she said instead, continuing up to the deck, ‘for my people.’
Someone’s words.
Not hers.
Thirty-Four
Gariath was not dead yet.
Not for lack of opportunity, of course. He darted through a web of iron and curses, batting away clumsy blades, suffering the blows of those too cunning or lucky for him to avoid. Every metal favour bestowed upon him he reciprocated with claws and teeth, forcing his assailants back.
He was vaguely surprised that he could feel the many cuts on his body. He didn’t remember the longfaces being quite so strong as they had been when he first encountered them. But Irontide, and the flesh he had rent in suicidal frenzy, had been many eternities ago.
He was less aware of death this time, and so was aware of many more things as he caught an errant blade in his hand and tore it free from the offending longface’s grasp.
Pain was among them, but so, too, were the humans.
What had began as a chaos of fire and thunder on the deck had since degenerated into a chaos of fire, thunder, steel, cursing, spitting and screaming.
Arrows fell from the sky in intermittent fiery drizzles, longfaces scrambling to seek cover from them or return fire with hasty shots. Those few who simply couldn’t be bothered to hide had either sought another target or clung by their master’s side, occasionally intervening between him and a lightning bolt thrown from the dark-skinned human.
Of their sacrifice, the longface with the burning eyes took no notice, consumed wholly with his target. Whatever bemusement had been present on his face had been consumed in the vivid anger with which his eyes flared. He was no longer even making an attempt at appearing as though he was swatting a gnat. Now, he displayed the anger appropriate to a man swatting at a gnat that spewed fire and frost at him.
Those netherlings that had decided to seek easier prey had found them in the leaking weaklings pressed against the deck. Lenk refused to move, clutching his shoulder and staring quietly into nothingness, murmuring something equally stupid. The squeaky little human seemed torn between uselessly trying to get him on his feet and uselessly trying to assist the flying human, apparently by squealing and occasionally hurling something limp- wristedly at the longface.
Impotent, drained, useless and otherwise weak; they deserved to die, he knew.
What he didn’t know was why the netherlings seeking to kill them found him imposed between them. Such a thought rose to him again as he caught a rampaging blade in his palm and snarled, shoving the wielder back and meeting her grin with a scowl. After all, it wasn’t as though there weren’t bigger problems to handle.
Bigger problems with tremendous teeth.
Such a problem made itself known in a shadow that blossomed like a flower over the netherling, blackness banished by the resounding thunder of blue jaws snapping, a scream leaking out between teeth, purple legs flailing wildly as a great serpentine head swept up and shook back and forth to silence its writhing, shrieking prisoner.
No guttural roar that boiled behind its teeth could drown out the noise of flesh rending as an errant leg went flying before the rest of the sinewy mass disappeared behind fangs and down a throat.
The Akaneed, far from sated, levelled its yellow stare at Gariath. The dragonman forgot his other foes in that instant, as the great serpent seemed to forget its other meals. Their gazes went deeper into each other, curiosity turning to respect turning to anger in an instant. In each other, they saw something familiar.
In the great serpent, Gariath saw sharp teeth stained with blood, narrowed yellow slits glowing in the night. He saw in them now what he had seen a week ago, upon a beach he had intended to be his grave: hunger, hatred, an end.
To everything.
In Gariath, the Akaneed saw something distinctly different.
This was made violently clear as its neck snapped, sending gaping jaws hurtling towards him. The dragonman lunged backwards as the serpent’s snout speared the deck, shattered the wood and scattered the living and the dead.
The ship shook and groaned as the serpent tried to pull its maw free from the ship’s hull, sending combatants rolling about the deck as they struggled to keep their footing. Gariath clung to the deck, his claws embedded in wood as he swept a fervent gaze about the deck.
