Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 47

The selka queen tore Chalk apart and discarded his body in a puddle of his internal organs.

King Grieve went berserk.

He became a glassy-eyed, rage-filled monster. He roared without words, a primal sound that would have made wolves shudder. Grieve swung his war axe in one hand and yanked out his gutting knife with the other. In one blow he cleaved the head of the nearest selka, and the queen sprang back like a graceful fish, splaying claws still dripping with Chalk’s blood. Her long hiss might have been taunting laughter.

She landed nimbly on soft webbed feet out of the weapon’s reach. Grieve charged at her like a mad bull, practically hurling the axe from side to side, but she dodged and slipped out of the way.

Bannon sometimes slipped into a red haze on the battlefield, which turned him into a fighting machine, a whirlwind of strength and sword. Afterward, he had no memory of what he had done, but when he did come back to himself he would see the bodies of his numerous victims, and he would be alive, although battered with a hundred injuries that he couldn’t recall.

Now Grieve was in the same kind of frenzy.

Three selka closed in on the king to take him down, but in a fury he chopped off their limbs or heads. Grieve flung his gutting knife directly at the queen, but she bent backward in a flash. The blade slipped past, barely nicking her scaled chest, and embedded itself in the broad back of a Norukai who was fighting another selka. The Norukai reached behind him, pawed at the dagger as if wondering how it could possibly have appeared there, and his selka opponent used the opportunity to tear out his throat.

Amid the shouts, screams, and clashing swords on the deck of the Norukai ship, Bannon now stood free, his wrists unbound and the leg-iron chain loose around his ankle. He was ready to fight to the death, knowing he would likely not survive this massacre.

Lila barely took a moment to catch her breath. Eager to fight, she snatched a curved sword from a severed arm on the deck, wrenching it free from clenched fingers. She kicked the flopping limb away and raised the blade. She snapped at Bannon, “Arm yourself, boy! Even if the selka queen doesn’t want to kill you, the Norukai do.”

With the chain scraping behind him on the deck boards, Bannon ran to another dead raider in a pool of blood and relieved him of his sword. He swung the weapon to get the feel of it. “It’s not Sturdy, but it’ll do.” He liked the weight of this steel in his hand, heard the swish of its edge cutting through the air.

Two hissing selka approached, ready to kill, but upon recognizing Bannon, they slunk away to attack different targets.

The other slaves whimpered, still tied to the deck and helpless. He made up his mind. “This isn’t our fight, Lila. Let the selka and Norukai slay each other. Guard me while I set the captives free so they can fight.”

She took up her position by the slaves, holding her sword ready to fight any enemy who came at them. Bannon bent down and used his blade to cut their wrists free. Lila handed the slaves stout knives she had retrieved from dead Norukai on the deck. “Use these to dig out the bolts. Chop at the wood if you need to.”

King Grieve’s jaw dropped open with a roar, and his tongue flapped about like a flag of meat. “Chalk! Chalk was my protector.” Even though the selka queen dodged among other fighters, Grieve closed in on her and raised his axe to hack down. “Chalk was my friend!” She dipped and dodged, and the axe blade only sliced her shoulder. The spotted frill on her head and back flared up like a saw blade, and blood oozed across her scaled skin.

He cornered the selka queen against the side of the serpent ship, but rather than let herself be trapped, she leaped over the side in a graceful arc down into the sea below, where the waves swallowed her. When the queen escaped, Grieve bellowed at the sky in a voice loud enough to crack the vault of heaven.

The sounds of fighting resonated from the other two ships nearby. Bannon knew that those slaves did not have his protection. As he swept his gaze across the deck, he guessed that at least fifty selka already lay dead, and many more hacked bodies had gone overboard along with Norukai victims. In the dark water below, countless selka swarmed in the waves. They feasted on the floating Norukai bodies, while others closed around the serpent ships and swarmed up the hull boards.

On the bloody deck, Lila turned from side to side, holding up her sword. Her face was drawn, not at all afraid, and Bannon thought she looked beautiful. Violence brought out the true nature of the morazeth. He said to her in a quiet, hoarse voice, “I’m glad you’re here.”

Several selka threw themselves upon Gara the shipwright, clawing at her ropy gray braids. She punched one with her massive fist, stabbed another with her sword, but two other creatures chomped on her shoulder and side, fastening their needle teeth like a vise. Gara kept fighting as they tore hunks of flesh from her body. She staggered backward over the rail, and all three fell into the water below, where more selka closed around them and stripped Gara to the bones. The bloody water looked like dark wine in the night.

Unexpectedly, the sea people began to thrash in terror. Their loud hissing became a frantic splashing. From the waves, the selka queen let out a grating cry of challenge.

Something huge moved beneath the surface, a shadow in the dark water. It curved from below, and a long jagged fin broke the surface between the two lagging serpent ships. It glided like a serrated blade through the swarming selka. Some darted away, and flashes of scaled bodies disappeared below.

“Sweet Sea Mother!” Bannon said.

A huge frilled serpent head rose up, snapping its jaws, blasting out water and steam. The sea serpent towered as high as the masts of the Norukai ships. Its gills flared, its spiny fins flashed. It let out a thunderous bellow, darted down like reptilian lightning, and snatched up four of the selka in the water.

“Serpent god!” The Norukai began to cheer. “Serpent god!”

On deck, the raiders redoubled their fighting with a sudden surge of enthusiasm, and the selka retreated in primal terror as the monster loomed above them. Bannon thought that all the spilled blood and froth in the water must have drawn the underwater predator. Or was the blood sacrifice of the slave at sunset responsible?

The serpent god thrashed after its prey like a fox in a henhouse, boiling through the selka. On deck, the raiders drove back the remaining sea people, hacking them to pieces with wild abandon. The selka could not escape by diving overboard, where the serpent god would devour them. The desperate creatures killed a few more Norukai before the last of them lay slain on the deck. In the sea, the other selka had scattered and streaked away in all directions, fleeing the outraged serpent god.

Still filled with their battle frenzy, the Norukai heaved selka bodies overboard, and the sea serpent feasted. The Norukai believed that their people were also part of the serpent god, and they shared their blood with the serpent’s blood. Without ceremony, they picked up their own dead and cast them into the waves to be devoured as well.

At the bow of the ship, near the carved figurehead, King Grieve ignored the victory. He dropped to his knees and picked up the gutted body of Chalk, holding the albino man against him as he sobbed, rocking back and forth. The blood smeared his muscular chest. “My Chalk, my friend!”

Whispering, the Norukai backed away in awe as the huge sea serpent rose above the bow, its giant head dripping water and blood. Its huge eyes fixed down on King Grieve, and the monster dropped open its jaws to show swordlike fangs interspersed with scraps of flesh from the bodies it had just eaten. Recognizing the king’s despair, it made a clear offer.

Grieve clutched the dead shaman to his chest, torn with indecision. He looked up and met the eyes of the serpent god, then slowly nodded. “He is yours. Chalk is a part of you. Chalk is a part of us.”

He gently laid the dead albino on the deck and stepped away. The serpent god bowed its flexible neck and dipped down to snatch Chalk’s body in its jaws, as if in reverence. With a graceful motion, the serpent tossed the broken body in the air, caught it in a yawning mouth, and swallowed the albino whole.

After a long moment, during which the serpent lorded over the three Norukai ships, the huge monster dropped beneath the waves and glided away, deep under the surface.

The night held a collective sigh of relief as the Norukai counted their dead and tended their wounds. Down in the water where many bodies floated, sharks appeared, drawn by the blood to clean up the remains, now that the serpent god had departed.

Bannon and Lila still gripped their swords among the other captives, ready to defend themselves. The slaves huddled, numb with terror, though some were ready to fight with confiscated weapons. They clearly had no chance, however. As Bannon and Lila watched, the Norukai closed in on them, battered and in no mood for further resistance. King Grieve pushed the other raiders aside and glowered at Bannon and Lila. Something inside Grieve seemed to have broken. His face twisted as he spoke to Bannon. “Chalk liked you.”

“I don’t know why,” Bannon said. “He told me about visions, but not what he saw.”

Wrestling with his agony, Grieve squeezed the handle of his war axe. Bannon looked at Lila and knew she was calculating whether they would let themselves be captured again or fight to the death here and now with a handful of frightened slaves as their only allies. Even with so many raiders killed during the selka attack, the Norukai still outnumbered them many times over. Lila was ready to die to defend him, to kill King Grieve, but Bannon couldn’t bear to see her throw her life away. He said in a harsh whisper, “Not now.”

Grieve growled at her. “I am in no mood for more fighting, but I will kill you and be done with it, if you give me any reason.”

Still tense, Lila looked at Bannon, then laid down her sword but without showing any hint of defeat. “I don’t want them to kill you, boy. There will be another time.”

As he surrendered his sword next to hers, shuddering with exhaustion and fear, Bannon hoped she was right.