'It won't be back!' crowed Simone through gritted teeth.
'Neither will Jedit!' Unable to savor victory or trouble, Adira looked west, east, high, low. Booming spume at the east made cold terror squirm in her belly. The half-hidden rocks were perilously close. The sky westward boiled blacker than ever, as if clouds sought to crush them. Wind and rain lashed like whips. Everyone's teeth chattered. Fearing for her crew, Adira despaired. They'd never escape the eastern shore. Perhaps she should run close to shore and abandon ship. Small boats and even flotsam and hatches might survive the grinding surf, though any survivors would likely die of chill.
'Dira, look!' Simone's shout broke the captain's glum thoughts.
An orange-black arm curled over the port gunwale. Slowly, as if carrying the world on his back, Jedit Ojanen crawled over the side and collapsed in a sodden matted heap. Snorting water from his black nostrils, streaming water, the tiger-man looked up as his comrades surrounded him. Amber-green eyes were lit by fiery anger.
He growled above the roar of wind and wave, 'Where is it?'
Before anyone could answer, the serpent reared like a waterspout on the opposite beam. Still jigging its head, flinching from pain, the dim-witted sea monster nevertheless recognized the assailant who'd half-blinded it. Hissing, with jaws gaping wide enough to swallow a cow, the serpent launched like a missile for the tiger-man. Jedit too gave in to savage nature and leaped six feet off the deck to claw and rend.
Adira and her pirates goggled at the strangest arid fiercest clash ever witnessed. Half-flying across the cramped tilted deck, the enraged sea serpent sliced ratlines, shrouds, and furled sails with wicked teeth in a frenzy to snap Jedit in half. Yet the ship wore a thousand such lines, and with a hideous strangling gasp the sea serpent entangled itself in a giant net. Thrashing only hooked the beast deeper, for its iron scutes snagged a hundred spots and wedged it tighter. Before anyone could blink, thirty feet of furious sea creature was enmeshed in the rigging of the Conch of Cam's. Snapping, twisting, hissing, the beast gnashed its dagger teeth against a pine mast.
Jedit pounced.
Yowling, coughing, roaring, the man-tiger landed astride the serpent's twisted neck and sought to rip snaky head from squirming body. Blood geysered and was whipped to froth by storm wind. Jedit gouged a hole big as his arm in the serpent's neck, a gory portal gleaming white with bone, while the bloody head snapped and jigged to catch the tiger's legs. All the while, the berserk tiger roared an ear-wracking caterwaul.
Adira cursed anew at Jedit's battle madness, for endless yards of the serpent's thick body still kicked in the water alongside Conch. The wild struggling made the balky caravel impossible to steer. At the tiller, Virgil couldn't keep his feet on the deck. Stays and rigging were sheared anew so sails billowed and flapped.
The pirate captain gasped to Simone, 'Fetch axes! Hack that beast through the body before it drags us under.'
With a heart-stopping jolt, the Conch of Cortis beached.
Adira and her crew were flung on their faces like drops of water as the ship snagged on rocks. Virgil fared worst. Trapped between tiller arm and taffrail, he was swatted as if by a sledgehammer across the ribs. The tiller yawed, setting him free, but swung and whacked him again as he fell. Crumpling to the wet deck, Virgil didn't even wrap his arms in pain, but fell like the dead.
Upperworks snapped like twigs. Masts, spars, and yards whipped once and broke. Lines parted like arrow strings. Tangled wood and cordage rained from the skies and made a shambles of the deck. A corsair was flicked into the sea like a fly. Heath and Wilemina were hurled together so hard one's arm was broken. Simone slid into the quarterdeck railing, broke through, and tumbled into the waist. Even Jedit Ojanen, busy rending the dying serpent, was knocked off by a mass of falling cordage.
The ship careened as if kicked in the stern, then bobbed on the tide, shifted, dropped, and spun free. Blinded by brutal pain in her hands and knees, Adira sensed instinctively they'd grazed a hidden rock and bounced off. Yet the damage was done. The Conch listed to port. Half her bottom must have torn out, Adira knew, and she took on water.
'Abandon ship!' Adira tried to shout, but only wheezed, winded. Grabbing drunkenly for support, she again spilled to the deck, slicing her hand on a jagged splinter. Cold spume scoured her wound and made her whimper in pain. Fear for her crew clutched her guts. This was it, she thought wildly. They'd feed the fish, and none would mark their graves except gulls.
Dizzy and sad, Adira crawled on bruised knees to help Virgil, but bumped into jagged stiles, all that remained of the quarterdeck railing. She'd gone the wrong way. Where was she, anyway? To her blurry rain-swept vision, this queer place resembled a jungle with a giant snake wrapped in tangles like vines. Crabbing around, she reached Virgil and tried to lift him, but her bleeding right hand lacked strength. Chestnut hair soaked by rain and blood stung her eyes.
'Virgil, brace up! Damn you, we need-'
With a horrendous jolt, the ship struck again. This time it stuck fast, but Adira Strongheart didn't know that. She skidded headlong over the shattered rail into the waist. A storm giant clouted her head with a mast, or else she banged her skull. She lay staring at black clouds with rain dappling her eyes, unmoving. Perhaps her back was broken. Under her aching spine she felt the ship grind on rocks, lift, slam again, grind, lift, smash down. A few minutes, she thought, and they'd swim. Drown.
'Adira.' The roiling sky was eclipsed by a face of orange, black, and white stripes all dripping crimson blood. Jedit's whiskers were broken on one side. She started to giggle, for the cat man looked so serious.
In his odd antique accent, he purred, 'Hold still. Your head is bleeding.'
'Leave me alone.' Adira croaked. 'Help Virgil. I couldn't wake him. Peregrine can't swim. Where's Simone? And Hazezon?'
'Safe, all safe.' Shifting a fallen spar, Jedit hooked a brawny arm around Adira's back and lifted her gently, though it still hurt. Even the tiger stumbled as the ship smashed to bits on unforgiving granite. Detached from her body, Adira watched swirls of gray go past.
Distantly she heard Jedit say, 'Adira's dazed. Her last command was to abandon ship.'
Someone answered. Another argued. Adira didn't care. She tried to say, 'Get Virgil,' but ran out of air. Cradled in the tiger's mighty arms, with his wet-cat stink filling her nostrils and his body heat glorious as a campfire, Adira listened to people talk, call names, babble. Jedit gave orders in Adira's name to hurl flotsam overside. The tiger was oddly calm, given his berserker rage to kill the sea serpent a few moments ago. But he could swim like a tiger shark, thought the captain idly. He needn't worry.
'Heath! Heath, swim to that hatch!' The tiger yowled through a fog in Adira's mind. 'To your left! Left! Keep Wilemina's head above water! Good thing Adira wrapped you in wool, eh, Simone? We'll float. Yes, go. I'll follow. Does anyone see Peregrine? Whistledove, cleave to Jas-'
Wood splintered like a forest rent by a hurricane. Or were such storms called cyclones on this coast, wondered Adira? Someone screamed the ship was giving up the ghost. Adira felt like a ghost herself, airy and floating, beyond pain and care.
'Brace, all!' warned the tiger. Adira's stomach lurched as the cat jumped high and far overside. Water crashed over her: in the face, nose, mouth, ears. She gargled and strangled and sucked down an ocean's worth of water. It filled her lungs, she was certain. There was no air anywhere. Her mind flickered like a dying coal.
So this is drowning, she marveled, then thought no more.
Chapter 14
Johan had glimpsed the fabled castle of Shauku in a vision in the Western Wastes. Granted, he'd been exhausted at the time, perhaps delusional, but the blurry image had shimmered and soared into the desert skies, truly impressive. Such an ancient and revered queen of sorcery could only occupy a shining palace.
What he found proved a shock.
For a fortnight Johan's sedan train had trekked into the forest called Arboria by the natives. Never had Johan seen any people of the pines, though his huntsman reported traces. The forest was a gloomy place, dim under towering trees rearing straight to a dense interwoven canopy. Pine needles carpeted the ground so thickly even footfalls were muffled. Often his party heard their own breath as the only sound. Yet Johan's party was never molested, though they sensed native eyes witnessed every move. The Emperor of Tirras assumed his destruction of
