Chapter 28
I know you remember me!
The night was bitterly cold, with great purple swathes of cloud scarring the starry sky overhead.
The intermittent moonlight shone through columns of diamond-dust snow, illuminating patches of deep indigo-ink sea.
Wavelets caught the moon like sickly green froths of lace, and except for the frantic ringing of the harbour bell, silence gripped the once busy harbour.
Gwen kicked up angry clouds of powder with each step, her body shaking as if she were already in the thick of battle.
She had not a single coherent thought until she reached the docks, where Henry was ringing the bell as if the brassy clanging was all that was keeping him safe from certain doom.
Gwen had to cover the boy’s hands with hers and speak to him – rather more sharply than she’d meant to – before he stopped, staring at her with wide eyes.
‘We can do this,’ Gwen told him quietly. ‘Let’s go.’
‘But … but we can’t, Sir Gwen.’
Gwen looked up at the moon, which had slid behind one of those puffy scar-tissue clouds. ‘You told me once you could navigate this harbour with your eyes closed – are you telling me you can’t do it in the dark?’
Henry shook his head and raised a single trembling hand to point. Gwen followed the length of his arm until she saw it – part of a ship’s hull and a broken mast, jutting out at a sharp angle to the level dock, the rest of it submerged in the inky water.
The Elizabeth.
It was the only ship that had been destroyed.
Gwen stared at it, waiting for the swell of sympathy for the boy’s loss, for that ship was his livelihood as well as their only way of bringing the fight to the monster.
But she felt only emptiness. She knew she ought to find that terrifying; what good was a knight without compassion?
Instead, she felt only a deep but distant ache of confusion.
It’s over, rang Isobelle’s words in her ear.
Gwen had no feeling left. If she had any at all, she’d be in a heap on the ground, or running back to Isobelle to beg her to reconsider. But it was just … gone.
No fear, either – she noted that with a grim, bitter satisfaction. What a gift, to be able to fight, for once, without terror solidifying like lead in her veins.
‘Take someone else’s ship,’ Gwen said, scanning the harbour. ‘We’ll apologise later.’
Henry clenched his jaw, squaring it, his youthful face hardening into the lines and strong planes of the man he’d grow into in a few years. ‘No, lady.’
‘No?’ Gwen stared at him.
‘An unfamiliar ship, at night, with another ship out there – they’ve only one lantern lit. I might as well take an axe to someone’s ship right here, and doom the one out there to boot.’
‘But the monster, Henry – the ship is doomed anyway – where is the monster?’
The boy’s face tightened. ‘You won’t be able to miss it, lady.’
And with that, he fled. Gwen felt only the mildest surge of irritation.
He was only a kid, after all – he’d shown the courage of a dozen kings sailing out with her every day, long past the point where most of the townsfolk had barricaded themselves inside their homes.
She couldn’t blame him for giving in now, when everyone else around her had gone too.
The whole town. Tabitha. Hilde, Jane and Sylvie. Orson.
Isobelle.
A frothy, moonlit swell caught at Gwen’s attention – not a wavelet like the others, for it was moving perpendicular to them, against the winds and tide. And the moon was still behind its veil of cloud.
Then what is that light …?
The bluish-green glow beneath the ripple of wave was making its way straight out to sea. In the distance, Gwen could see the tiniest pinprick of light: a ship’s lantern, marking the prow as it cut swiftly through the waves towards the harbour.
Gwen’s sword leapt into her hand as she broke into a run towards the long pier that jutted out into the harbour for the larger ships to moor at.
But she could not match the creature’s speed.
She caught at the thick pylon to stop her forward momentum from launching her into the water, and her breath burst out of her in a hoarse, desperate scream.
‘Remember me, arsehole?’ She flung the words at the ripple of glowing water as it sped away from her. ‘Come back and fight me! I’m the one you want.’ She slammed the flat of her sword against the dock, making the water tremble with the reverberation.
The ripple of water, a hundred yards away now, zigged to the side and kept on.
‘I know you remember me!’ Gwen screamed, thinking of the thorough destruction of her little ship. ‘I know you see me! I’m the one who keeps killing you!’
The ripple on the surface of the water vanished.
Gwen stood, eyes straining. The only sound was that of her harsh breathing, steaming the air as it mingled with the dust-fine particles of ice in the air.
She saw nothing, but she knew the beast was coming; she could feel it in the throb of her feet in her boots, the tingle in her palm where she held her sword.
She backed up a pace, then two, then three.
The water at the end of the pier lightened, as if another moon were rising from the depths. Though this luminescence was blue-green, in her mind Gwen saw the sullen orange glow of dragonsfire blossoming in the pitch-black of a mining tunnel. A strange, alien sound tore its way out of her throat.
The thing came out of the water.
Half a dozen tentacles erupted at once, their bright coral colour leached away by the moonlight so that all Gwen could see was a dizzying flurry of blue light.
The creature was glowing like it had slid straight out of some abyssal realm of dark magic, so dazzling she could not move.
Then one of the tentacles came swinging at her, and her instincts took over, and she dived for safety.
Rolling back up onto her feet, she swung for the creature only to dodge again as it wrapped several of its tentacles around the pylons of the dock.
Yes, thought Gwen fiercely. That’s it – focus on me.
Here, on land, she had the advantage. She could retreat whenever she needed to, back down the dock, and it could only come after her so fast.
The beast’s arms came thrashing down, just missing her as she leapt back, and splintering one of the wooden planks – the others held, though Gwen’s feet ached with the vibration against her soles.
She swung out with her sword, and a spatter of blood and a chunk of glowing flesh landed on the dock.
It kept squirming, its sucker grasping, for several awful seconds after it had been severed.
The monster shrieked and retracted its tentacles, and Gwen stood panting, uncertain, turning this way and that in search of that telltale blue light beneath the water.
Then, from behind her, came a terrible sound. A deep, harsh groaning of wet wood and nails, along with the dripping, sloshing of disturbed water.
Gwen turned in time to see the sea monster finish pulling itself out of the water, its tentacles wrapping around the dock, its massive body hulking in the darkness.
Blue light outlined every arm and tentacle, and ran in dazzling, shifting patterns through its flesh.
It had placed itself between Gwen and land. There was nowhere, now, to go.
For a moment, they stood in relative stillness – as though the beast was taunting her, daring her to decide what to do next. Finally, Gwen’s emotional paralysis snapped, and anger flooded her body, like some terrible creature caged far too long.
She rushed the monster. She could hear herself yelling something, screaming it, as she ran and swung.
The creature’s legs flexed, quivered and squeezed – the dock erupted into splinters, and Gwen managed to leap just before the planks beneath her feet shattered.
Her sword went flying, to land with a despairing splash in the black water.
She collided with the monster, scrabbling until she found a piece of debris from the dock and rammed it into its fleshy body.
For a heartbeat, Gwen’s entire weight dangled from her makeshift spear.
Then a horrible squirming thing wrapped itself around her midsection, squeezing until she gasped in agony, for it held her where she’d tied the rope earlier that day – and then the monster plucked her up into the air, and pulled her out to sea.
Gwen’s entire world narrowed into a spinning blur of moon and sea, of blue luminescence and utter darkness.
She hit the water twice, and twice was flung back up.
She could feel the thing moving, jetting along the surface, though she could scarcely tell what direction was up.
She caught a glimpse, once, of the lights of the town.
Tiny, twinkling. And very, very far away.
The tentacle wrapped around her ribs slammed her against the water and then back up.
An unyielding edge jabbed into Gwen’s left arm hard enough to numb it to the fingertips – instinctively, her other arm reached for the thing, and she felt her hand wrap around the splintered plank still buried an arm’s length in the creature’s body.
Below her, the open mouth of the creature gaped, waiting.
With one last scream of effort, Gwen braced her feet against the soft, gelatinous flesh and yanked. The spike of wood came free, and as she began to fall, she twisted her body until she had the jagged end pointed down into the monster’s maw.
And then a blue-green glow swept out of the darkness, collided with her body, and sent her slamming into the water so hard it felt like a wall of stone.
The last thing Gwen saw, as her vision narrowed and blackness overcame her, was the dim blue glow of the monster, rising up above her as she sank into the depths.
Tell me, reader: have you ever seen a damsel charge a sea monster to rescue a knight? I am sure you have not. Though I suppose you have seen a damsel charge a dragon, given the time you’ve spent following the tale of Gwen and Isobelle’s deeds.
At any rate – forgive me my talk of brave attacks on ravening beasts – all this is by way of saying: brace yourselves.
What’s that? Have I interrupted at a particularly tense moment, dear reader? I’m afraid I am about to do much worse, and prolong your suspense even further.
Let us wind back the clock a few minutes, and see where Isobelle has been all this time. The magic of storytelling allows us to do such things, and we might as well take advantage of all a scribe’s tricks of the trade. So, Lady Isobelle?
There she is, running full tilt towards the harbour. And there too is the strange ship, desperately reefing its sails to slow its trajectory towards the death match currently taking place in the waters off Galanty-Uponne-the-Sea.
Will Isobelle reach the harbour in time?
What could she do, even if she managed it?
And who, pray tell, is that mysterious figure standing at the prow of the strange ship?