10. A DAMNED MIRACLE
A damned miracle
A tentacle swung out of the depths and slammed into Gwen, lifting her from the deck of the ship and tightening until her ribs creaked. She desperately missed her armour, though it would’ve been supreme idiocy to fight on the water wearing fifty pounds of steel.
She’d already severed one of the monster’s arms, and she tried to shift her grip on her sword to do it again.
Before she could, the creature rose from the water, a great dome of coral red, blinding and gleaming wetly in the sun.
It was on its side, tentacles writhing, tearing chunks out of the railing of the ship, then its mouth opened, a great, yawning maw lined with teeth, directly below Gwen.
Okay, let’s not cut off its arm, she thought frantically, clutching with her free hand at the awful, quivering band of flesh wrapped around her.
Then it opened its eye.
An alien, horizontal slit of a pupil cut through an orb of gold, fixing on Gwen.
She froze.
Horror swept through her, a despair so deep she couldn’t remember who she was or why she was there. It was like the dragon, this monster. It could petrify her, strip away her hope, like the dragon had done. She was lost, dead – worse than dead, obliterated.
Her body couldn’t move. Her muscles went lax.
Her sword fell from her nerveless hand.
Gwen watched it as it fell with a strange detachment – she was already nothing but despair. The loss of her weapon hardly mattered.
But there was something about how the sword fell, straight down, like an arrow …
Her vision dimmed, and then a shudder ran through the beast, vibrating along the tentacle holding her up. It gave a horrible scream, a noise unlike anything Gwen had ever heard, and it dropped her.
She hit the deck of the ship, stunned, and managed to lift her head, scrambling towards the railing to look down into the water. The waves were crimson, churned into a pink foaming sludge as the beast thrashed and rolled, and then vanished from sight.
Gwen heard Isobelle’s steps running towards her, distantly felt the other girl throw herself down beside her.
‘Oh my god, Gwen, that was amazing!’ she gasped, her arms going around Gwen tightly. ‘What a throw! I didn’t know you could do that!’
Gwen blinked at Isobelle, still too wrapped in shock and adrenalin to understand her properly. ‘Do what?’
Isobelle’s eyes were glowing with pride. ‘Throw your sword like that – you got it right in the mouth, exactly where the scroll said you should strike.’ A shadow clouded her bright expression. ‘But … your beautiful sword. It’s … gone, with the monster.’
Gwen glanced back at the surface of the water, still a muddy red-brown, though the currents were quickly erasing all sign that a battle had taken place.
Her sword would be at the bottom of the sea now, embedded in the throat of the dead monster.
The sword she’d made after her mother died, the sword she’d made with her own hands as she first began dreaming of masquerading as a knight.
The sword that Isobelle had recognised when Gwen rode out as Gawain – that had started them both down this path together.
What kind of knight had no sword?
Gwen swallowed and pushed down the flare of fear at that thought, and with it the grief of loss. ‘I can make another,’ she murmured.
Isobelle hesitated, too sensitive to Gwen’s moods to miss that dodge. But then she gave her a little shake and hugged her again. ‘You’re remarkable, Gwen. I wish you could’ve seen it from my vantage point. I knew you would do it.’
Gwen bit her tongue, surrendering to the comfort of Isobelle’s tight embrace, not so different from the way she used to squeeze her after a nightmare. And she let Isobelle distract her, take her thoughts from her lost sword.
And how it had somehow fallen straight down the monster’s throat.
It was an accident, her mind was screaming. I didn’t do this – it was luck. Beyond luck, it was a damned miracle.
Henry emerged hesitantly from behind the ship’s wheel, his curly hair standing up, his face a sickly shade of brown, but his eyes as wide and glowing as Isobelle’s.
He spoke, but Gwen’s ears were ringing and she couldn’t make out his words.
Isobelle replied, laughing, her own tension fading.
Gwen made no effort to understand them, her mind going back to that moment when the beast’s eye had frozen her.
The sea monster had not possessed the same power as the dragon – it was her own mind that had believed it could carve out her soul the way the dragon’s gaze had. It was Gwen’s failing courage that had rendered her helpless.
Her cowardice.
But that realisation wasn’t what made her replay the scene in her mind, as Henry turned the ship back towards port.
When she had let go of the sword, Gwen could have sworn she wasn’t directly over the monster’s gaping mouth – indeed, when it let her go, she’d been over the deck of the ship.
She’d watched the sword fall, like an arrow …
and she could’ve sworn, as it fell, that it had moved in mid-air to deliver the killing blow.