Epilogue
Alone, Together
In the distance, through the spray of the ocean, a shape
began to appear.
At first, Isaac thought it was a kraken surfacing through
the waves. He started to panic. His mind grasped for his charter, all the
expedition logs bundled in his surgeon’s office, trying to remember everything
he had read about the tentacled dweller of the depths. Their bodies were
flaccid, their mouths capped with a beak of exceptional strength. Their ringed suckers were the size of bathtubs. A fusillade of
cannon fire would merely bounce off their barnacled armor. And if Isaac could
see the kraken now, it had certainly been following his vessel for quite some
time.
He adjusted the focus of the spyglass, fighting for balance
on the swaying, salty deck. Out in the distance, the shape only grew larger.
For the life of him, he could not identify the conical body, the red slitted
pupils, or the bristling colony of parasites growing along its mantle. Its
profile was too regular in appearance. There were tentacles rising very high in
the air, held in taut and rigid lines. . . .
It was not a kraken.
Isaac sighed with relief.
“Captain!” he shouted. “Privateers! Starboard!”
Behind him, the top deck of the Arms of Horn was in
full operation. Deckhands flittered along the planks, racing to stations. The
first lieutenant, a taciturn horse by the name of Welton, stood on the gunwale,
shouting to be heard above the snap of wave and canvas. Isaac could see seamen
rushing through the ventilation grills below, lugging cannonballs across the
gun deck. Welton led the drill with a fiery passion, as he did every day at an
hour before noon. Above, a collection of young leopard boys were climbing
through the rigging, trimming the sails and tossing fire onto the great,
glowing sigil of wind. The Arms of Horn drank the magical speed like a
drunkard to his wine.
Captain Vance made her way down from the helm, weaving a
path through the tide of bodies. The otter was as lithe and tall as an
afternoon shadow—when Isaac handed her the spyglass, his head barely reached
her elbow. The medals on her navy coat glinted as she made to confirm his
sighting.
“Aye,” Vance said, after a moment. “That’s so. Not flyin’
the black yet, but that’s expected.” She turned to her first lieutenant.
“Welton!”
Despite his shouting, the horse went quiet at once,
tottering along the gunwale. “Capt?”
“Stop the drills!” Vance shouted, pointing at the incoming
vessel. “Load the starboard cannons!”
Welton squinted towards the ship on the horizon. “What you
mean? What the bloody cunt we got a wizard for, then? Have him blast it off!”
“Why the hell you runnin’ drills, if you’ll just sod off about it?”
The horse took a swig of rum, his hooved feet clattering along
the rail. “Oh, I just miss the navy, love. Them were proper times. Now it’s all magic this and spell that
and, Ivtarr’s cock, them
wizards are just stealing all the—”
“Welton!” Vance replied. “Shut your hole! Load them cannons,
ya drunken bastard!”
The horse blew a whinny. “Aye, captain!”
“Presly!” Vance shouted, turning. “Ten degrees to port! Bare
it slow!”
Slumped over the helm, an elderly coyote raised a hand of
acknowledgement, using his other to dig biscuit crumbs from his chops. Presly
turned the large, spoked wheel with all the grace of a man walking in his
sleep.
Vance returned the spyglass to Isaac. “Just a warnin’ shot, sir mage. They’re privateers. Would not do
good to kill Giovanna’s pardoned pirates, despite the want.”
Isaac made a salute.
Vance frowned. “Don’t do that.”
He saluted again. “Aye, capt!”
The otter snorted, fairly amused. She clapped him on the
back as she passed towards the stern, expertly ducking beneath the swinging
wall of the foresail.
Isaac raised the spyglass again, trying to judge the
distance between the ships. It was obvious, even to an untrained eye, that the
privateer vessel was on a hard course of pursuit, banking to intercept them
between their stern and broadside, where they couldn’t easily return fire. They
might not even bother raising the black flag—currently, they had draped the
standard of the feline queen across their foresail, depicting the piercing
green eye of her royal majesty Giovanna IX, as well as a pedigree of snarling
griffins and tridents of arms. It was the same flag that the Arms of Horn
had raised herself. An inattentive observer might assume the interloper only
wanted to talk.
Isaac knew better by now. He judged the distance between the
two vessels, doing some mental trigonometry.
If he could angle the spell—
“Isaac! Assistance!”
He turned to the sound of Zaria’s voice, just in time to see
a rainbow of feathers rush towards his face. The tropical bird—a parrot, as he
had heard the name—barely avoided slashing him with its talons as it fluttered
and squawked back into the open air, quickly flying up to roost in the lookout
post above the back mast. Several leopard boys swung through the rigging,
attempting to grab the bird, but it repeatedly flew off to a new perch,
refusing to be caged. Isaac was horrified. It had taken him six days of hard
bushwacking to collect this specimen, the process of which had cost him untold
suffering in sweat, rashes, and bug bites, and he would not see the effort go
to waste.
“Grab it!” Isaac shouted to the leopards. “Grab the bird!”
Below, the top deck of the Arms of Horn had become a
chaos of fleeing animals, their shapes rushing headlong from the depths of the
hold. Fire-breathing rats rushed between the legs of the deckhands, singeing
the wet planks as they scattered. A pair of chelicerae appeared from the shadow
of the hold as a megaspider peered through the doorway, blinking a dozen
glittering eyes. At the helm, the elderly coyote—Presly—was trying to pet a
young cockatrice while it nibbled on his coat. He seemed to be succeeding.
Isaac saw more movement from the hold. Something large
slammed into the megaspider, nearly cracking its thorax. There was a flurry of
fur, spikes, and wings.
“Isaac!”
Zaria emerged onto the top deck while riding on the back of
a manticore. Neither of them were enjoying the experience. The human face
snarled, the lion body twisted, and the scorpion tail was flailing and stabbing
in equal measure, trying to wrest her from its spine. The hyena was wrapped
around its neck, trying to wrestle it down, but the chimera charged ahead,
slamming through a tangle of deckhands, unfurling a canvas of thorny wings. It
was trying to take flight, scattering the fiery rats with the wind of its
ascent.
“No!” the manticore screamed, in the pitch-perfect tone of a
human woman. “No, please, no!”
Isaac blasted the manticore with a gust of wind. He caught
the chimera on one of its wings, and the force of the spell sent it
corkscrewing through the air, tilted off-balance. Still wrapped tightly around
its neck, Zaria twisted, heaved with all her strength, and slammed it down into
the deck. The chimera thrashed, its lion body tearing through the planks. Zaria
regained her footing and wrenched its head back as far as it could go, trying
to reattach the muzzle to its human face. Its tail reared back for a strike.
“Give me some fuckin’ help, Isaac!”
Isaac decided not to care about the specimen. He sharpened
light into his palm and swiped it as a lance, slicing off the chimera’s tail.
The manticore screamed in a sickening facsimile of a human voice. In one last
burst, the chimera attempted to bolt across the top deck, but Zaria yanked it
down by the strap of its leather muzzle. She kicked one of its knees, heaved to
the side, and flipped the beast onto its back. Half the hands immediately piled
atop it.
After a few frantic screams, the manticore lay still on the
wet planks of the top deck, its human voice mewling in fear. Zaria locked an
arm around its throat, breathing raggedly. Isaac approached with a beam of
light still cocked in his hand.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, managing a smile. “Like a cunt in silk,
squire. You know that.”
“No,” the manticore whimpered. “No, please, no.”
At Isaac’s side, Captain Vance approached with a pistol, the
smooth bore aimed directly at the chimera’s face. “Step aside, boatswain.”
“Wait,” Isaac said, dropping his spell. “Don’t kill the
creature. The company charter—”
“It’s a danger,” the otter said, taking careful aim. “My
crew comes first.”
The manticore began to sob, trying to twist its head from
Zaria’s grip. Half the deckhands were keeping its body pinned to the planks.
The others watched, much of them clutching wounds from the slash of its tail
and claw.
“Either it’s our supper,” Vance said, “or it’s going to the
fish.”
Isaac looked into the human face. It was still whimpering
“no” between every gasp for air. He knew it was only mimicry—the local
villagers had made it clear that the chimera hunted by
ambush, luring travelers off the trail with a voice that begged for help. The
words it spoke now were likely the last ones of its previous victim.
He sighed, taking a step back.
Zaria looked to Vance. The otter nodded. In one quick
movement, she fell back, and the captain fired. Blood sprayed across the deck.
The manticore’s wings fell as flat as an unrigged sail. Vance blew smoke from
the barrel of her pistol, sheathed it back against her chest, and shouted:
“Fresh meat, lads!”
The crew cheered. Behind them, the cockatrice poked its head
through the crowd, curious about the noise. Presly managed to recapture its
attention with the promise of a biscuit.
Zaria rose back to her feet, adjusting her thin boatswain
jacket. “Fuckin’ thing chewed through its cage in the night. Would’ve got most
the others if I hadn’t caught it.”
Vance surveyed the crew. “All those cut or clawed, to the
sick bay. Full rations and two days rest.” She looked
down at Isaac, her short fur glistening with the spray of the sea. She was