Ten heartbeats. Fifteen. Afsan looked left and right. Those who had surmised the same thing he had were similarly bracing themselves for impact. Dybo hugged the foremast. Dath-Katood grabbed the climbing web at the base of that same mast. Bog-Tardlo simply fell prone to the deck.
Twenty heartbeats. Twenty-five.
Keenir was leaning against the railing, too, his extended claws digging into the wood.
Thirty. Thirty-five.
Where was the creature? Where was it?
Keenir let go of the railing, swung around. "It’s trying to get away!" he shouted into the wind. "Paldook, bring us about…"
But then Afsan felt the Dasheter rising as if on the swell of a huge wave. The upward movement continued, higher, uglier still, the ship leaning wildly to port, the side railing dipping beneath the water. It was like being in a landquake, above and below no longer the same as up and down. Afsan saw one crewmember go flying, saw a passenger sliding across the deck, sliding toward the submerged side of the boat.
And then the lifting stopped. The Dasheter rocked back in the other direction, water washing across the deck, spilling against Afsan’s legs. The ship crashed down, and, on the port side, rising out of the churning water like a vision from a nightmare, was the great gray neck, water rolling off it. It rose up and up until it stretched half as high as the Dasheter’s own masts, the mouth now opened wide, screaming a slick and wet reptilian scream, the razor teeth jutting out in all directions.
And then the neck lashed out like a whip, moving with blinding speed, and Tardlo was gone, scooped from the deck. Afsan briefly saw her bloodied form in the thing’s mouth, limbs and tail as askew as the creature’s pointed dentition. The serpent turned its head up toward the sky, tossed the body into the air with a snap of its neck, then caught it again, this time headfirst. The jaw labored, chomping and biting, and Afsan felt his stomach turn as he saw a thick bulge work its way down the serpent’s elongated neck.
Everybody scrambled to the opposite side of the deck, out of the thing’s whiplash reach.
Afsan thought how useful it would be to have a long pointed shaft of wood, or some other implement that could be used to ward off the creature. But such tools had been forbidden by the cult of the Five Hunters, and even in these enlightened days of the prophet, that stricture remained.
A Quintaglio kills with tooth and claw, said the First Edict of Lubal. Only such killing makes us strong and pure.
And, Afsan thought, not for the first time, only such killing releases our inner furies, keeps us from killing each other…
The ship rocked as it hit the waves made by Kal-ta-goot’s flippers slapping the water. The beast maneuvered toward the bow, rushing around in front of the ship, trying to make it to the starboard side where ten tasty Quintaglios were lined up against the railing.
As Kal-ta-goot hurried along, the passengers and crew ran to the port side, their feet and tails slapping the deck in unison like a roll of thunder.
It seemed to be gadkortakdt, the point in a game of lastoon-tal in which neither player can force a win. But then something happened to destabilize the situation. Captain Keenir let out a massive roar and charged across the deck. Without a tail to balance his torso, he could not lean forward into the horizontal running posture, but still, with the aid of his cane, he managed a respectable clip. Shouts went up from the rest of the crew, begging him to stop, but to no avail. Kal began to swing its long neck around to face the captain, mouth open.
Loyalty runs deep aboard a sailing ship. Simultaneously two crewmembers, Paldook and Nor-Gampar, ran out onto the deck, jumping up and down, waving their arms, hoping to make a more tempting target than their captain did. They succeeded in getting Kal’s attention, for the long tubular neck started to swing toward them.
Afsan turned to look at Dybo, but his vision quickly focused on what was going on farther along the deck. Katood and another mate, Biltog, were madly working the ropes that tied off the boom of the foresail. Afsan caught sight of them just in time to see them finish loosening the knots, and suddenly the great corded lines were flying freely through the pulleys, the boom swinging around and across. Passengers and crew hit the deck to avoid the massive log swiveling through the air.
Afsan snapped his eyes back to Kal. The serpent was drawing its neck into a tight curve as if ready to strike. But the boom, barreling with great speed, slammed into the side of Kal’s neck. The beast, taken by surprise, made a sound like "oomph" as its neck bent against the impact. The creature seemed momentarily stunned, and Afsan hoped the crew would somehow get the ship moving again.
But no! Before anyone could react, Keenir leapt over the gunwale onto the creature’s shoulders. Immediately, the old captain brought his jaws to bear, chomping into the thing’s flesh.
Kal’s neck swung as far as it could to the right and tried to curve back upon itself so that its horribly toothed mouth could reach Keenir, but its anatomy wouldn’t allow such a tight coiling of the neck. As Afsan watched, three other sailors ieapt over the side of the boat into the water. They swam toward Kal with powerful side-to-side strokes of their long tails.
All of the action was taking place on the side of the ship opposite Afsan. He wanted to better see what was going on, but wasn’t foolish enough to rush out into the open, making himself an easy target for that dexterous neck. Instead, he hurried to the base of the mast, where the climbing web began. He fought to keep his claws shielded: they would hinder climbing. Afsan scrambled up the webbing, its interlocking network of ropes between him and Kal. The ropes didn’t provide much protection but he doubted that even Kal could bite through them, and the little open squares formed by their crisscrossing were much too small for Kal’s massive head to poke through.
By the time Afsan had climbed high enough to see clearly what was going on over on the far side of the boat, the three sailors who had followed Keenir overboard had reached Kal. Two were clawing their way into the beast’s flank just above its right front flipper. The third had his jaws dug into the trailing edge of that same diamond-shaped fin. Kal began to flap it against the surface in an effort to dislodge the sailor, and Afsan tried to imagine the body slams the Quintaglio must be enduring.
And then Kal dived. Its sleek form cut through the water so smoothly that it was gone beneath the waves in the blink of an outer eyelid, the choppy surface leaving no sign that the beast had ever been there.
Gone, too, were Keenir and his three sailors.
Afsan fought down a wave of panic. Kal was a reptile like himself — an air-breathing creature. It would have to come up for air soon…
Indeed, although Afsan expected that the great and hideous beast could dive for long periods when it had prepared to do so, perhaps by hyperventilating first, perhaps by simply gulping massive amounts of air, this dive had not been premeditated. Rather, it had been a desperate attempt to dislodge the puny creatures clawing and biting into its hide.
Afsan thought he could make out the outline of the beast just beneath the surface, but the bluish-white light from the sun and the red and orange reflection of the crescent Face of God to the stern cast odd tones across the wave caps, making it difficult to be sure.
After a few heartbeats, there was a commotion in the water. Irb-Hadzig, the sailor who had chomped onto Kal’s nipper, had broken to the surface, and was now swimming toward the boat. Afsan, with his vantage point high on the climbing web, realized that he was probably the only one except the lookout at the top of the mast who could see Hadzig, a female perhaps twice Afsan’s age, as she approached the hull. Afsan tried to call out to the sailors below, but there was too much of a ruckus on deck, too much shouting going on. He scrambled down the webbing and, grabbing a lifeline, hurried to the railing around the boat’s edge. Hadzig was still twelve of her body-lengths away from the ship when Afsan tossed the line toward her.