cable's length behind. Yet the ship lost headway as the remaining tillerman deserted her post. Rudderless, pushed by the wind, with sails haphazardly trimmed, the bow came around, so the stern broached the half-gale. Immediately the ship's quivering roll degenerated into a slamming gait like a crippled horse. Men and women slid along wet decks to bang painfully into masts and rails and furniture. From long years of practice, Adira's pirates gripped something, but Jasmine, Peregrine, and Murdoch tumbled headlong until seasoned sailors nabbed them. Instinctively all scuttled toward their captain. Jedit Ojanen hunched as if ready to spring, snuffling the salt air with black nostrils.
Virgil fumbled his axe from his belt and held it up helplessly. 'How do we fight that beastie?'
'Don't they coil around ships and crush 'em?' asked Murdoch, totally out of his element.
'Hush! Heath, Wil, nock your bows!'
Adira's keen mind sifted standard defenses but came up short. She'd barely believed sea serpents existed. Squinting into eye-stinging rain, she said, 'If we batten the lubbers below-'
'It's back!' screamed Sister Wilemina and loosed a wild arrow into the sky.
Unexpectedly, the sea serpent flung its head above the port side, having swum or slithered under the ship like an eel. Water sluiced from its long green head in buckets. The mouth, a full six feet long, cracked to reveal rows of needle teeth. This time Adira saw the comb of tall spines that jutted from its head and stippled its spine. Shaking its head, perhaps to fling water from its eyes, the creature stabbed at the largest target-Adira's Circle of Seven.
'Back!' Adira slapped one arm wide to brush her crew out of harm's way. In her other fist sprouted her cutlass, though she didn't remember drawing it. Lurching against the unfamiliar lunging of the ship, she stabbed upward as the serpent drove down. A scaly head big as a coffin banged Adira's thigh as her cutlass pierced the thing's chin from underneath. The pirate queen felt the blade split skin like thin leather, then the point jammed in springy fish bone. The serpent waggled its head at the pinprick, ripping the cutlass from Adira's hand and almost breaking her fingers.
In that instant, Jedit Ojanen struck.
Unlike humans, the 'ship's cat' kept his footing on careening wet deck by digging claws into pine planks. As the tiger's comrades spilled and skidded and dived to avoid the onrushing serpent, Jedit was free to act. Slinging a long arm behind, he swiped a huge circle. Black claws struck the serpent's head. Four long weals of skin were peeled from the monster's muzzle to hang in shreds flapping in the wind. Surprised and hurt, the serpent whipped its head back and paused, so it was left behind as the Conch of Corn's raced on directly for surf-drenched rocks a half-mile distant.
'Bastards!' cursed Adira Strongheart at no one in particular. Her ample breasts heaved as she panted. 'Damnation and hellfire! Jedit, Heath, the rest, fight that thing! Simone, Virgil, come! We've got to claw off the rocks!'
Used to obeying blindly in crises, pirates fell to. Murdoch, Jasmine, and Peregrine crabbed to a mast and unlashed eight-foot boarding pikes. Heath and Wilemina nocked their favored weapons, bumped rump to rump, and tried to watch all sides at once.
Following Adira, Simone the Siren and Virgil pulled handover-hand across a sloped deck and up to the quarterdeck. It was deserted, the officers having fled below. The tiller snapped back and forth like a dragon's tail, making the ship veer sickeningly. Virgil jumped on the long wooden arm, taking a painful rap in the ribs. Simone dived in, and together they steadied the vessel.
Virgil called to his mate, 'What if that fish-beast attacks while we steer?'
'We die!' yelled Simone.
'Can't we just lash the tiller hard over?'
'No. There may be rocks! Belt up and bear down! Uh oh!'
Up the short ladder staggered Master Edsen and three officers. All carried cutlasses and murder in their eyes.
The master shouted, 'Strongheart! You've been a jinx since you first stepped aboard! I'm taking command, and I'll kill-'
Far overhead, Whistledove Kithkin keened like a tern. Her tiny finger pointed astern.
The serpent struck where it had found good hunting earlier. Virgil and Simone sprawled on their butts but never let go the tiller. Edsen's officers dived back down the short ladder, leaving the two captains gaping in the open. Adira acted. Heedless of how she landed, she vaulted the low railing overlooking the waist. As she soared, she snagged Edsen's tunic to drag him along to safety. Half-turned, Edsen failed to see the fearsome head swooping. As Adira yanked on his tunic, the serpent sank fangs into Edsen's shoulder. The master howled as cruel teeth sheared muscle and bone. Pulled between Adira and the monster, the captain split apart. Dragged from Adira's fist, what remained fell and flopped like a fish. Blood spurted in a surf-washed cascade across the quarterdeck. Edsen died as the sea serpent tossed its chin and gulped down the master's arm.
An errant gust shoved Conch onward as the beast slipped below the waves.
Adira Strongheart earned her name again by hooking her boot toes in the quarterdeck railing. Shouting orders, she seemed to move the ship by her voice alone.
'Simone, Virgil, on your feet! You three, get forward and let slip the capstan! It's shallow enough to drag anchor! Seveners, stand fast to fight the monster! The rest of you ignore it and get aloft to tack! No, I'm not mad! We save the ship or die on the rocks!'
Forward, a woman shrieked as the sea serpent reared again. Jedit, Wilemina, Heath, Jasmine, and Peregrine rushed that way as Sergeant Murdoch slipped and crashed on a coil of rope. Dusk had descended, and footing was tricky in semi-darkness. Rain stung faces. Jedit Ojanen slit his eyes and tiptoed on thorny claws to the bow, then waited, watching both ways.
Silver flickered overside.
'That's not-' Jasmine gulped air. 'That's its tail!'
Indeed, the tail whisked alongside the ship like a misplaced palm tree. Whip-thin, the tail splayed spines almost like a porcupine's. The curious sight seemed to hypnotize the human Seveners. Yet the warrior Jedit Ojanen whirled and skipped on clicking claws for the opposite beam. He reached the gunwale just as the creature's head leaped over the rail like a horse jumping a fence.
Gaping jaws of razor teeth drove at the orange-black warrior. A man would have died, snapped in two, but Jedit was no man. With a coughing roar, he launched like a stork and landed square on the sea serpent's nose. Four clawed paws gripped tight. Jedit saw two long arrows smack into the scaly head just below his. The serpent pitched and thrashed on a rolling blowing sea to flick off the stinging insect. Jedit plucked free one brawny right arm and stabbed straight as a ballista bolt. Four black claws smashed into the serpent's tiny eye and pulped it like a jellyfish.
Gargling in pain, the serpent snapped its neck back in one gigantic flinch. That mighty whipcracking action even Jedit couldn't overcome. As if flung from a catapult, the tiger splashed in the dark drink a hundred yards from the ship.
'Jedit!' At the quarterdeck, cursing and weeping bitter tears, Adira Strongheart nevertheless tended her command. By shouting herself hoarse at topmen and tiliermen, she directed a new strategy to tack the ship. One by one, with heart-stopping thumps and slams, the sails shot home and bellied. Forced onto a new tack, the caravel's nose pointed southward. The wild gut-churning pitch smoothed. At the bow, the anchor had been let go, but there was no indication the iron caught bottom. Adira took small comfort that they rode deep water, yet she could hear surf burst on rocks, always a bad sign. Song of the Sea King, how could she be so thirsty with all this rain running down her bosom? She could have drunk the ocean dry! And how could Jedit be drowned? He'd seemed unkillable!
Sailors howled as the serpent again slung its sharp head over the prow. Water slung in silver wheels as the jaws waggled. The beast seemed torn between suffering a ruptured eye and an empty belly. Half-blind, the sea serpent stabbed at a sailor and missed, biting instead the oak capstan and chipping long teeth. Swinging, unable to gauge distances, it chased a woman with champing jaws but slammed into the foremast. By then Murdoch had crabbed forward to pink the beast with his boarding pike. Snapping in anger, the sea serpent yanked the spear from the sergeant's grasp, then bashed the butt on the deck and splintered the shaft. Murdoch raised both arms as the bloodied spear point barked off his hand. In diving, the addled serpent whacked the hull so hard that Adira felt the blow at the stern.
