The Blacktongue Thief

25 The Kraken

The first order of business was righting the turned boat, which we managed with lines and hooks and another cantrip from the mariner-mage, whose magic I now had to allow might be a bit stronger than mine. But he was going bald, so I had that over him.

Now came the hard, long business of rowing the dead whale back toward the Suepka, which was tacking against the wind to meet us. But the good news, and the bad news, the mixed gift of my mischievous god, was that we wouldn’t have to row this particular whale all the way back to the ship. Another player was about to enter the game.

“Row!… Row!… Row!” Malk Na Brannyck called mostly to me, angrier than he’d started for the loss of his harpooner, and he’d started pretty angry. The ship was getting closer, smoke from the fires under the render-pots further darkening the mizzen sails. Then the prow of our boat raised up as we came to a stop—the dead whale was dragging us. Malk Na Brannyck said, “Moch!” and he had good reason to. “Watch! Watch!” he said, hoping what he suspected wasn’t true. There was a word he needed to yell, but it couldn’t be yelled falsely. He had to be sure.

“Watch, hands, watch!”

All were quiet now, the only sound the water lapping and gurgling on the boats.

“Tentacle!” a woman from the other boat said, pointing now where a black, oily rope of suckered muscle had wrapped itself around the red’s tail. It yanked the tail, and we were all pulled backward, which was the way we faced, anyway.

“Moch!” I said, and then, as if I had to translate for my oarmates, “Shyte! Shyte! What the sixteen ways to fuck a fuck is that?”

But I knew.

Malk yelled it now in his rich Galtish baritone.

“Kraken!”

Now it showed itself to us, raising its mantle out of the sea and rolling one big weird plate-sized eye at us.

It did that to frighten us.

And it worked.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of meeting a kraken, I’ll tell you that they’re not squids, and that can be confusing because most people call both beasties krakens. They are to squids what kynd are to monkeys. They’re bigger than most squids, they’re smarter than all squids, and they eat squids for supper. They are, in short, the emperors of the sea, and if we had met a mature one instead of a juvenile, you never would have learned my name.

After I realized I’d shat myself, I had a moment to feel bad for Malk. Sure, he’s a proper bastard, but he had a horrible choice now. Did he turn the whale loose, a whale with a head full of fatty white gold, and save his sailors? Or did he fight the clever beast and spill our blood for the fortune we had in tow, a fortune any captain would be willing to sacrifice a hand or three to get? Malk loved his crew. Malk was loyal. Part of the reason he hated me so much was because he’d watched friends die in what he saw as my place. Also, he was scared. I could see Malk had no fear for man or whale, and he’d gotten through it with the goblins, but a kraken? You’ll no doubt think less of me for soiling myself, but until you see one from a small boat in the middle of the sea and keep your linens fresh, I suggest you reserve judgment.

The Spanth leaned to the woman in front of her, an old Holter, and said, “This kraken, how do you fight it?”

“Stab its brains to kill it, cut its arms to chase it off. Neither’s easy.”

“Harder to kill than a whale?”

“Some. And it’s much better at killing us.”

Malk now looked back to the Suepka Buryey, hoping to see some sign from his captain that he might release the whale, but the captain pointed his finger at the big, red carcass so that it was clear he meant to have it, whatever the cost in our lives.

“Bring us up!” Malk said, and gods help us, we rowed closer to the whale and the thing that meant to poach it. “Blades!” he said. “And watch for its arms, they’ll come up on all sides!” So saying, he drew his cutlass and aimed a hard chop at the tentacle around the whale’s tail. A great gash in it split, and the beast loosed the whale, the tentacle slithering down into the brine.

Now the kraken’s head, visible under just a yard or so of water, puffed up, then threw itself, arms trailing, just past our rowboat. Its arms were longer than the body and seemed to go forever as it rushed by, and it put itself behind us, between us and the ship, the way the oarsmen were facing. Now the sea seemed to boil as three, four, five tentacles climbed into the sky, raining water. “Brace!” Malk said, but he didn’t have to tell me. My hands were white on my oar from holding it.

The tentacles fell like whips, and we in the boat gave a common shout. The boat didn’t break, but it was a near thing. The shout turned to a mix of yelps and screams as more than one rower was ruined by the great, falling arms—leg bones or necks broken just by the weight of them, among them the balding magicker who’d sent the whale to sleep. The Untherdam near me got caught under one of these falling black treelike arms, and though it didn’t crush her, it latched onto her and sucker-bit her, then ripped away, opening great holes in her. She screamed and launched herself off her bench, landing on my legs and pinning me with her yelling, bleeding bulk. Now the Spanth and Malk were up, side by side, and started in chopping at the arms as they fell. They managed to cut one off the thing, but the other arms were doing bloody work on the oarsmen, who were mostly too close pressed to swing such blades as they had, which were too few regardless.

A huge tentacle darkened the sky as it fell toward me, and I got under the Untherdam, who’d stopped her yelling, and I squealed as it latched her. The suckers bit her, lifted her up off me, then dropped her heavily on me again. I had a weird moment of feeling at least I wasn’t cold, but that’s because the poor half-skinned woman had bled all over me. I got Palthra out and waited to feel the thing’s arm chop again. When it did, I curled around from under the Untherdam and gave it three hard, deep cuts, but I couldn’t help thinking I was a kitten pawing at a wolf.

The woman was suckered up into the air and dropped on me again, knocking the breath from me. The noise from the injured and dying was awful. The stink was awful. Feeling helpless was worst of all, so as soon as I could suck enough air into me to move, I quit the shelter of the Untherdam and squirmed in the blood-slick boat to get to my feet.

The fight had shifted now. The other boat had rowed up to one side of the sea-beast, and the harpooners were trying for its brains. They heaved and threw, and stuck it, but not deep enough; the creature plucked the spears from itself then lashed out at that boat, giving them what it had just given us. The Suepka Buryey was closer now, close enough for the ballistas to shoot, and so they did, the great sharp bolts flying up and then plunging down, the lines of them uncoiling behind. One missed entirely, one stabbed deep into the awful fish and hooked it with its rearward barbs, and the last one crunched through the hull of the other boat, bringing a fresh yell from some unlucky salt. The kraken was hurt, and the Suepka was about to use her cruelest arts.

A clay pot the size of a head arced into the sky and fell on the water near the thing, breaking open with a pop and a flash like a piece of the sun had found its way to the sea. I thought it would dive away from the hurtful fire spreading on the water and catching on it, but what it did was to run a tentacle up the rope attaching a ballista harpoon to it, a rope now hot with flames, to get the measure of where the threat was coming from. It gave the other rowboat one more thrash, then puffed and rushed under the surface toward the Suepka. Cries went up in Molrovan. It closed distance fast. I had heard tales of krakens wrapping up whole ships and dragging them under, but this one had no hope of doing that; it wasn’t a fifth the size of the big, piggy whale-taking ship.

What it did was to sucker-climb its way up the starboard side of her and spill itself onto the deck, where it became a typhoon of whipping arms, catching sailors and sending them off into the water. It was very hard to see exactly what was going on, but one thing I’ll never forget; it overturned one of the render pots and used a tentacle to beat at the hot coals beneath, spraying them on its adversaries like, “Burn me, will you, you cunny-monkeys? Have some of your own.”

Now the mighty ballistas had been recharged; one of them shot, caught a glancing blow, cutting a groove in the monster before impaling a short sailor against the mizzenmast. I liked that girl. She spoke not a word of Holtish, but she told Molrovan jokes in the hold to make the others laugh in their hammocks before sleep. Before the other great bows could shoot, the thing must have decided it was pushing its luck.

It grabbed the biggest sailor in one horrid arm and then spun like a wheel across the deck, diving off the side of the ship and out of my sight. The ballistas fired after it uselessly, sailors yelled at it and discharged their bows, the ones on the ship around me moaned and writhed. Malk said, “Those who can still pull an oar, to me!” The other whale boat was sinking now, its hull pierced by the ballistas and cracked by the terrible fish. The dead were pushed over to make room for the living from the other boat, and we started toward the Suepka. Galva, bending at her oar, saw the Untherdam’s blood all over me and said, “Are you hurt?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t think so.”

Her talking turned to hissing now. “Then where were you while we fought that thing? Did you hide?”

“No,” I said, “I…” But I didn’t have anything else to say, and I felt her anger smoking under her skin.

This sea voyage was turning into utter shyte, and fast. The captain came to the rails then and glared down at Malk. Malk took a breath and then said, with no small bitterness, “All right, hands, let’s go get the captain his redfish.”