he let the pole drop slightly. The great old master lunged forward, only to be brought to a halt as the lanky yeoman snapped the tip up in its path. Quivering with rage, the creature heaved back toward its wall and renewed its lunges and feints with increased intensity, gurgling in frustration. Teldin kept toying with it, driving the beast to even more frantic attempts.
Suddenly the distended creature lunged forward in earnest. Teldin was not ready to put his plan into action, but when he thrust the pole, the great old master was not deterred. The beast hit the shaft squarely; the wood pierced the fleshy body with a squishy pop. The pole was torn from Teldin’s grasp and skidded across the deck until it jammed against the wall. The great old master bore down upon the spar, forcing the wood to twist and bend. The beast’s pallid, baggy skin tore open in a great rent, oozing yellowish ichor. Squealing and grunting in half-formed speech, the swollen freak flailed madly, crashing against the pen. The farmer dodged aside, narrowly avoiding pole and flesh as the enraged monster slammed from wall to wall. Abruptly the great old master sagged in a quivering heap, mouthing whimpering moans as its body gurgled and heaved.
“My unborn kin-slaves! My children you hurt, human meat!” the overmaster screamed from overhead. The golden-skinned neogi scrambled forward and peered over the edge, looking down at its freakish progenitor, then glared at the stumbling human. “You great old master slowly eats! Look what you have done.” The malevolent spider-eel waved a claw toward the injured grotesquery.
Teldin turned to look, attracted by a sucking, tearing noise that came from the beast. This was not the monster’s mewling, but the sound of flesh slowly pulling apart. In the dim light, the human saw the oozing wound from his spear heave, wiggle, then part. A squirming, wormlike shape, about as thick as the farmer’s muscular thigh, protruded from the gash. It thrust about, then fell to the deck with a soft, wet plop. Another followed, then a third; on the floor they looked like segmented and slime-covered maggots of obscene size. Even in this larval stage, Teldin could see the needlelike teeth and snakelike heads of tiny neogi. The worms writhed and weakly bit anything their blind faces touched, in venomous imitation of their elders. Repulsed, Teldin watched in unmoving horror. The deformed parent, perhaps sensing the man’s shock, sprang forward at the farmer, launching its bloated body with astounding might. At first unaware of the attack, Teldin barely tore his attention from the vile offspring in time. The farmer pitched to the deck, and the flaccid mass brushed over his back. Ichor from the wound dribbled across him and Teldin barely rolled clear of the crushing weight.
There was a shearing crack mixed with a shrill scream as the bloated neogi rammed into the splintered wall, sending a shock wave through the corpulent mass. The creature’s head and tiny chest were mashed to a pulp, mingled with the shattered boards. The cage wall buckled outward, and the braces snapped with thunder-clap cracks. The balcony swayed and crashed to the deck in a rain of wood, followed by the boards of the walls.
The
Fortunately for Teldin, there was no time to stop and think. The parent monster had stopped its writhing, though the body was still shaken by convulsions. “Meat! My kin-slaves meat kill!” shrilled the overmaster as it clung to its swaying perch on the opposite wall. Teldin didn’t wait to hear more. Invigorated by the chance for freedom, he leaped over the old master’s shuddering corpse.
He landed on the deck outside the pen, but slipped in a jumble of broken wood and sticky ichor and skidded across the floor, adding just one more agony to his throbbing body. The bloodied human regained his balance, snatched up a fallen lantern, and ran toward what he hoped was the companionway to the ship’s upper deck.
There was a crashing noise behind Teldin, a grinding of wood and metal. He risked a glance over his shoulder to see the lantern lights over the pen bob, wave, then sink toward the floor. With one wall collapsed, the whole structure leisurely fell in upon itself. Teldin couldn’t tell if the neogi overmaster rode his perch to destruction or if the hateful little creature had managed to escape. He was not about to go back and check.
The doors to the ship’s hold loomed ahead. Teldin stopped, afraid to go forward but knowing there was nothing but pain behind him. The air in the gloomy chamber felt stifling and close while the noise of the collapse echoed furiously in the cavernous hold. The farmer was certain the racket could be heard throughout the ship, certain it would put the neogi on alert.
The hollow grating of claws against metal roused the numbed fugitive to action. The overmaster’s sibilant voice whispered in the distance. The words were unclear, but the relentless tread of the neogi’s lordservant was perfectly heard. Teldin shuttered his lantern so that only a little glow appeared, then he plunged through the doorway and into the hall. He headed left and broke into a loping run, ignoring the pain in his legs and the blood running down his sides. Incongruously, the cloak fluttered out behind him. Teldin cursed it as he ran; it had done nothing to save him and, instead, had brought him closer to death.
The cloakmaster rounded a bend in the corridor and was rewarded with the sight of a ladder leading to an upper deck. He blindly grasped it and clambered up. Below, the umber hulk’s clicking toenails faded in the distance.
At the top of the ladder, Teldin poked his head through the hatch. The next deck was dark, so the human hung on the rungs, listening as long as he dared, but there was no sound from the blackness. He hoisted the lantern up and carefully opened a shutter to let a beam of light play over the floor. The landing was empty, so Teldin sprawled on the cold metal deck, waiting to catch his breath.
It was only after he had stopped panting that the cloakmaster was ready to move again. The overmaster's umber hulk would soon regain the trail, and the longer Teldin stayed here, the sooner it, or another, would find him. Still, he was puzzled by the fact that he had not met another neogi during his flight. It seemed all the more surprising after the pandemonium his escape had created. The ship was too quiet, as if it had been deserted. Partly curious-but mostly running on survival instincts-Teldin took up his lantern and cautiously began exploring again.
The farmer left the landing and was struck by a feeling of familiarity. He checked one of the rooms by pulling open the heavy metal portal and letting the lantern shine in. The beam played over a blood-crusted table.
Panic rose from Teldin ‘s core and grabbed hold of his gut. He slammed the door shut and fell against it, his body seized by uncontrollable shivers so strong that the lantern jiggled and wavered, throwing wild, leaping shadows all around. The farmer-turned-cloakmaster fought to drive away the fear that transformed the leaping shapes into hideous tormenters.
A deep boom, followed by a shudder through the deck, passed unnoticed by Teldin. A second explosion and a third caused no more reaction from the human, but the noises had not gone unnoticed elsewhere. Voices and the hammering of running feet came from the aft, and Teldin realized with apprehension that the ship was not deserted.
The need to act once again drove away his demons, and Teldin headed away from all the noise. Whatever was happening aft meant neogi were there, the fugitive reasoned, and he did not want to run into them. With wavering footsteps, the farmer ducked down a long, gray hallway lined with doors and stopped at each long enough to peer in. The first few he checked contained nothing but junk-old sails, spools of cable, buckets, and spare blocks. Just as he was closing the door on the third, a glint of metal caught his attention. Teldin looked closer and found that it was Eversharp, his spear, shoved into a pile of ethereal sailcloth. Eagerly, the farmer pulled the slender spear from the mass, working it free from a tangle of netting. Tapping the butt against the deck with a solid wooden thump made Teldin feel much better.
The ship shuddered with another explosion. Aware and alert once again, the farmer speculated about the cause. It was either outside or inside, and he guessed inside, probably caused by his escape. Perhaps the
The yeoman pressed on, steadying himself with one hand on the bulkheads at all times. The blasts became more violent, causing the ship to lurch with each thundering roar. “I must have done better than I thought,” mumbled Teldin in a daze. He continued the fruitless room-to-room search. While he found no one, nor, more importantly, an exit, each room was more imposing than the last.
