Leviathan's Huntress, Ch. X: The Lancer

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In the oceans around Azketa, the months of Eptimus into Ferrarus are given to sudden fog. Whalers there speak of it as a living thing for the way it smothers the sun and diminishes sight to a few dozen feet. The shifts in temperature toy with sounds — this boatman’s cry may refract and be trapped in a silent zone, while a ship’s bell within sight might carry for miles but seemingly twist upon a listener from the wrong direction. Voices deaden. Bearings fail. Presence turns amiss. Here is leviathan country.

On the eve of the previous day, they’d slain a blackfish, then spent all night and half the next day at the tryworks. Ere noon they cut the corpse free into the bloodstained ocean, but before they’d even trudged to the companionway they heard another blow.

“What species?”

“Spout’s forward and to larboard — sperm whales!”

The pod was nigh three miles away. The intervening waters were calm but uncannily so, like a predator settling for an ambush. Mists touched the bloody crests as they slapped against the hull. The air was colder these days, and colder still this noontide.

“What say you, Master?” asked Fose, and anyone could see that even his avarice was dulled by fatigue.

Master-Surgeon Gartzela wiped his mouth. “Mayhap fifty barrels under that jacket. We’re out here to hunt whales, Mister Fose.”

A few men cursed. Errolan spat. But the kalpas lowered and the rowing began.

Out of the red waters and into the blue and nigh another hour to the pod, but their quarry ‘gallied’ — meaning, fled — and sounded. The whalers waited.

Ten minutes later the pod rose a half-mile to windward. The whalers got near and Jula stuck a young bull. Down went the drogue, then up fifteen minutes later. The bull fought and kicked, but Oxara took it head and head and churned it with the lance before it ran the water.

Iona immediately smelled the fetor and knew that something was wrong.

“Those cuts were too far aftward, Oxara!” shouted Gogor.

Now the others smelled it too. The third mate had missed ‘the life’ — the lungs residing just behind the pectoral fins — and had instead churned the bull’s digestive organs. Nameless white bits of sperm whale meal floated everywhere.

“God’s blood, you know where the lungs are, aye?”

Oxara lost all composure. “Damn your legs and leviathan take you old man!”

The entire company went silent. The third mate had invoked the creature that was heavy on all their minds. The taboo seemed to possess the waves and clinging mist. Men peeked overboard toward the endless deep, watching for a shadow.

“Third mate,” intoned Motza, “watch that tongue ere it’s plucked.”

Despite Oxara’s error, the bull was now in ‘the flurry,’ swimming wide circles around them, though since his lungs had mostly been missed then bleeding out would take time. “How long?” Iona asked.

“A century,” grumbled Saustiz, the stroke-oarsman who sat next to her, lay one one-hunded-and-tenth.

Iona put her hand to her armpit. She’d been wearing these chest bindings over a month, but rather than growing used to them her skin had become more sensitive, requiring more care. It had been nearly two days now since she’d last adjusted them — if she didn’t soon then the skin would break.

Ten minutes. A half-hour. Forty-five. Suppertime approached and their exhaustion rose. The western horizon was smudging gray and the world was slipping toward a listless chill but even after an hour the bull swam on and his blood chimneyed out his blowhole.

From four miles off the toy ship called the Embanesa raised a signal flag, seeing the impending fog and asking if she should approach.

Gogor stepped his spritsail and signaled: nay, for the Embanesa may gally the bull and then they’d never catch him. He’d die somewhere out in the ocean unprocessed.

The chimneying continued, but the blows came lower and lower and darker and thicker, just like the sunlight. The air grew colder still and men were kicking one another to stay awake. Finally the bull slowed, lifted his head as though to say something and expelled from his throat slabs of giant squid — ghost white flesh, tentacles, suction cups, ghastly stench. Then he finned out and rolled onto his side in defeat.

Motza paddled up and gave him the last rite of clean water from his pouch. Reaching with a lance, he touched the small black eye.

The whale blinked.

Thirty more seconds of churn did the trick. Motza leaned on his lance panting as warm blood spilled over his tattoos. “Where’s the Embanesa?” he asked.

The fog was all ‘round them now. Sun fading. But to their southwest was a tenuous amber light. “I see her!”

They lined their kalpas in tandem — Motza at the front, then Fose, then Gogor, then Oxara, then the whale — and rowed.

The mist scudded further. The sun was drowning in it. Facing aftward to row, Iona could still see the last two kalpas, but the slain bull’s raised fin looked like a horrible beast stalking them from behind.

“Sharks already?” asked someone in Oxara’s boat.

“I see none.”

“I felt one with the oar.”

They rowed farther.

“Fourth mate,” Fose called to Motza, “where’s the ship?”

Motza did not answer.

“Fourth mate!”

“‘Twas this way! I saw it!”

“We should be there by now!”

“Who’s got a compass?”

None of them.

“How long until dark?”

“An hour maybe.”

Iona felt her oar touch something soft and jumped. “I felt something! Saustiz, Zitis… I felt something!”

Saustiz turned to look at her when behind him a black fin cut out of the water and lowered.

A scream flew up from Gogor’s kalpa as of one shaken awake from a nightmare. “My oar’s gone! It grabbed my oar!”

“What did?”

Behind them, the bull’s fin was turning as though something were pushing it.

Iona looked at Motza. Their eyes met briefly, then a black and white head the size of a large shark emerged momentarily and bit the tow line connecting their kalpas, setting them adrift.

Orcas. A whole pod.

“Grampuses!” Oxara cried.

“They’re after the kill!” Motza shouted and took up a dart.

Jula stood but something thunked against the kalpa and threw him to the thwarts. Another orca struck Gogor’s hard and his began to swamp.

“Take up iron!” rallied Motza. “On your feet, Fose!”

The first mate’s eyes went red with exhaustion or fury. “Unhitch us! Half of you grab paddles! The rest take the lances!”

Saustiz and Iona stood in the kalpa’s waist brandishing irons. “Where are they?”

“There’s one, starboard broadside… it’s sounding! Your side!”

It struck again. She was knocked off her feet and tumbled into the ocean.

Cold waters coiled ‘round her — colder than what she’d fallen into the day they’d slain the khahal — and her clothes billowed and hampered her. She flailed and turned and panicked but found no purchase and descended toward the abyss like an insect into a pitcher trap while all around her the entire orchestra of cetaceans sang in squeals and whines and brays and clicks.

But under those clicks, somewhere ‘twixt the ocean fathoms, was a deeper clicking. That of a spermaceti whale…

Terror beset and unmade her. None would hear her scream.

An orca rushed from nowhere and struck her with the force of a running horse. Any remaining air left her and her chest reflexively opened and gulped water when someone grabbed her from above and hauled her into the frigid air.

Motza lifted her into his kalpa. “Stand!” he commanded. “They won’t stop ‘til we’ve surrendered the kill!”

The orcas were now everywhere, appearing and disappearing in the mist, sounding then rising just beneath the kalpas with uncanny coordination. Gogor was bailing and Oxara was struggling and Fose was collecting his command.

“Unto the bull!” Motza shouted and his men obeyed. Iona was still retching saltwater when she watched Motza plant his bare foot into the bow cleat and loose an iron that struck an orca and protruded from the waters, turning and emerging hither thither. “Row! Unto the bull! That’s what they’re after!”

The slain bull’s fin had now rotated fully athwart their tandem line. The orcas were pushing it away and Iona marveled at what strength these creatures must possess. The tow line connecting it to Oxara’s kalpa was taut. “Help!” the third mate cried. “Help us!”

Motza’s kalpa passed right by them.

“Here, lad! Take an iron!” said a stroke-oarsman, pulling Iona to her feet and putting a lance in her hand. Motza was still at the bow, dart hovering in his hand and the fingers of his throwing arm dancing on the wood like a musician. Then he loosed it into the water and its drogue line writhed behind.

“One comes! Larboard quarter!” cried another. “Nay, she’s sounded! Rising starboard bow! Your side!”

Iona — dripping wet and freezing and exhausted — watched the black body pass below the kalpa and jabbed at it with her lance. A miss.

The oarsmen were still paddling and they were passing around the back of the carcass where the fluke lay submerged like a massive manta ray. About the whale’s abdomen floated large white chunks of blubber that the orcas were despoiling.

Iona watched another approaching directly from below. “Broad on starboard!”

But it was a feint. A second orca struck their larboard side and knocked the lancers off their feet. Iona fell to her knees just as the first cetacean grabbed a nearby paddle and wrenched it. Its handle flew and smote Iona across the forehead. Her vision dissolved and fatigue beset her like an iron net. The dream-state rapped upon her crown and as her sight reconstituted she looked into the orca’s eyes hovering two feet away above the foamy red waters and returning her a tooth-studded grin.

She took her lance and drove it into the orca’s head where it caught in the cetacean’s skull and was taken under.

The splashing subsided all across the battlefield. It took a few breathless moments to realize.

“Where did they go?”

The waters settled. The kalpas were in disarray and the carcass was askew.

“They’ve swum away!” cried Oxara.

The sun was now fully drowned in thickening fog. Visibility had fallen to a few dozen feet. From Iona’s seat, Fose’s kalpa was scarcely a tarnish out there in the gloom. Men everywhere were wetted and shivering but Iona looked toward the fore where the shirtless Motza was panting. Sweat, blood, or mist sheened his supple frame as he bent over the kalpa’s bow to inspect the bull. “They ate the tongue,” he said. “And tore apart the underside. The kill’s spoiled.”

Iona did not hear his words. Her face felt strangely warm.

“Lad?” the man next to her addressed, and now more were looking at her.

She didn’t understand, but her hand went to her forehead where the paddle had struck her and she felt the wet warmth of running blood.

Her lids fell and her eyeballs danced and fluttered and her wits slipped right through the kalpa’s floor and into the dark waters.

The orcas’ squeals were dissipating. All that remained were the baleful clicks she’d sensed before. But in this subliminal state she heard them with piercing clarity.

Who are you? a different song, a familiar one, sang across the expanse.

I know not, was Iona’s immediate answer this time. You’re the gray whale?

I am.

The clicking continued. A grating thing, burning with unquenchable enmity.

The leviathan, Iona sang.

Aye.

It’s coming for us.

The leviathan? Nay, friend. It’s already come.

Iona felt herself shaken awake and a hand slapped across her face.

“Awake! Awake!” shouted Motza, grabbing her.

A skin of cider was against her lips. She hated cider. “God’s blood, I’m here!”

“You’re injured! Lie back!”

“I’m well! I’m…”

But she looked over the rail and saw something long and slender trailing sinuously across the water.

The others followed her vision and saw it too. “A tentacle! Oh God, a tentacle! Look how long it is!”

“‘Tisn’t a tentacle, man!... It’s ship’s riggings!”

And so it was. A long rope running on and on and out of sight into the mist.

“Shipwreck… a shipwreck. It must be!”

“Follow it!” ordered Motza.

“Is that wise?” asked Gogor. “We don’t know where our own galleon floats!”

“Nor will we with this fog! But we must help these ones. There could be survivors.”

“There are no survivors,” mumbled Iona, but she said it in Weslish and nobody heard her.

***

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