“Jahalan?”
The only reply was the high wind whipping the tips of the cold white waves against his face.
“Jahalan, can you hear me?”
He wasn’t breathing.
A goodly portion of a mast lay nearby. Nikandr reached it, and although it was cracking and brittle, it held well enough for him to lay Jahalan over it. He squeezed Jahalan’s chest and forced the water from his lungs while trying to prevent him from slipping back beneath the waves.
“Jahalan, wake up!”
When no more water came up, he slapped Jahalan’s back, slapped his cheeks, while continuing to call to him.
Suddenly Jahalan coughed and shook his head violently, then sucked in a rasping lungful of air.
Nikandr held him tight to the wood lest he take in more water. “Calm down,” Nikandr said, “you’re fine.”
“I am”-he coughed for a long minute-“anything but fine.”
Nikandr could have laughed. It felt good, even among all this madness, to have his friend with him, alive. He guided Jahalan toward shore. The majority of the ship still lay on the surface behind them, but it was breaking apart from the action of the waves and the brittle nature of the wood.
What in the name of the ancients were they going to do now? Were Ashan and Nasim-
Suddenly Jahalan was pulled beneath the water. When he resurfaced, he let out an excited shout, and Nikandr felt something cold slide along his left leg. Nikandr kicked violently, hoping to scare the serpent away, at least for a time.
“My leg!” Jahalan screamed.
“I know.” Nikandr pulled his kindjal again and watched the water closely. “Just keep moving.”
“I can’t.”
“Keep moving or these waters will see the death of us.”
Jahalan moaned and grit his teeth, but he kicked, and with Nikandr’s help, they made progress against the incessant waves.
The head of the serpent glided through the water toward them. He dove below and stabbed, but the serpent broke off and swam away.
When he came up, however, the image in his mind made his breath come doubly fast.
“What?” Jahalan’s eyes were wide and frightened.
“Nothing,” Nikandr lied. In that brief moment, he’d seen three other serpents gliding through the water, waiting for their chance to come for blood.
CHAPTER 44
“Just keep moving,” Nikandr said.
They swam, Nikandr spending more time under the water than above. Jahalan knew what was happening-it was impossible not to-but he did not understand the full extent of it. There were no less than eight of them, Nikandr realized after a short while.
The waters around them were for the time being blessedly free of the serpents. He found out why only a short while later. He heard a panicked shout. Using his legs to kick as he crested a wave, he saw nearly a dozen survivors swimming together. A straggler was yanked downward. He didn’t even have time to scream, but a moment later he resurfaced and his shrieks rent the air. He was tugged downward two more times, and he screamed for help the entire time. Two crewmen swam toward him, but before they could come close the man who’d been singled out by the serpents was dragged under. He was not seen again.
They moved a few hundred yards, the spray from the waves pelting their faces, when the bone-white serpents returned. Two of them shot in toward Jahalan. Nikandr dove beneath the surface and stabbed one of them, but the other slithered to one side and lunged for his arm. He tried to pull it away, but wasn’t fast enough. He managed to avoid getting caught in the grips of the serpent’s jaws, but the small, sharp teeth grazed his forearm, leaving bloody gashes in its wake.
“Faster!” Nikandr shouted.
Jahalan tried, but his endurance was nearly at its limit. The same was true for Nikandr, but the soul-wracking fear of seeing the creatures face-to-face was enough to keep him going a while longer.
The group ahead had reached the shallows, and many of them had already stood and begun wading toward shore when Udra screamed and was pulled under. The men shot toward her, looking down through the water, but they could not find her.
Nikandr and Jahalan reached them soon after. The serpents tried to attack them again, but there were enough now that had knives, and they stayed between the rest of the group and the serpents, protecting them when the vicious creatures came close.
Everyone dragged themselves onto the black beach, which was blessedly warm after the frigid waves. Nikandr pulled off his shirt, cut it into strips, and had one of the crewmen wrap his arm as best he could. Then he moved to Jahalan, who lay on the beach, his face nearly as pale as the serpents.
Jahalan’s right leg was bleeding heavily, and Nikandr wondered how much he had lost in the water. Nikandr moved to his side, and held his arm while Pietr and Ervan worked diligently on his leg.
“It will be fine,” Nikandr said.
Jahalan’s eyes shut tight as the men used a belt to cut off the blood flow just below his knee. When he opened his eyes again, he was frightened, though much less than Nikandr would have been in his place. Seeming to overcome some of the pain and fear, he smiled. “My time may have come.”
Nikandr shook his head. “ Nyet. Not here, my friend. Not now.”
He fell unconscious moments later.
Ervan, a thin man with curly brown hair, held the belt in place and nodded toward Jahalan’s ankle. “We won’t be able to staunch this wound, Kapitan. He’ll die tonight if it isn’t cut and sewn properly.”
Nikandr swallowed. “We don’t have the equipment to amputate.”
“ Da. We have nothing proper, but we can get thread easy enough, and Pietr can fashion a needle from a buckle.”
“What good is a needle that large going to do him? He’ll be bleeding as badly from the puncture wounds as he is right now.”
Ervan shook his head violently. “ Nyet, Kapitan. We’ll need to bind it tightly for a time, but it will hold. Against this”-he tipped his head toward Jahalan’s ankle-“we have no chance.”
Pietr and Ervan watched him expectantly. The other men were nearby, waiting for his decision. “Do it quickly,” he said finally, “and by the ancients be careful.”
Nikandr was good at starting a fire without flint, but Pietr, a hard man with several deep scars running along the left side of his face, was even better. From the rough bark of the tall fern trees near the shore, he fashioned tinder and then made a bow drill from some branches and twine they liberated from some of the canvas that had washed ashore. Other men collected fresh water in huge conch shells from a tidal pool and placed it over the fire to boil. Soon they had purified water that they used to sterilize the thread and needle.
The surgery was not quick, at least not by Nikandr’s recollection. He stopped by from time to time, but it was difficult seeing Jahalan losing a limb like this. He didn’t know how he would tell him when he finally woke, but he knew he would be the one to do it. He owed him that much-to look at him in the face and tell him what this journey had done to him.
If only he could do the same for Udra and Viggen and the other men… But he could not, and he would have to live with the knowledge that their deaths lay at his feet.
At last the surgery was complete. Jahalan’s leg was bound with strips they had boiled and let dry in the strong wind. They would make more, and hopefully in a day or two the worst would be over-for Jahalan, at least.
Nikandr and Pietr sat near the fire late that night, neither of them able to sleep. Pietr had been second mate in his haphazardly chosen crew, but he’d proven himself to be a good man. Nikandr had sailed with him several
