Leviathan's Huntress, Ch. XI: The Keener

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They loosed the bull — scant enough remained after the orca attack. Lanterns were struck and they raised them to the blue and choking gloom. Cold mist ran about the amber light as it spilled over their faces.

“Raifin,” someone said.

Iona touched the bloody gash upon her brow again. Her gut felt like the salty ocean sloshing on the kalpa, but she gritted her teeth. “Here, give me that.” She took a paddle from the fellow beside her. This was not her kalpa — ‘twas only polite that she help paddle.

Then they set out, following the partly submerged line.

On and on and on it ran into the endless murk. They paddled for what seemed hours. Thank God the waters were calm. “How far have we gone?”

“Nigh three miles?”

“Three miles…” said Oxara. “What if it’s taking us further from the Embanesa?”

Fose answered. “Which be the likelier: that the Embanesa finds us in this, or that she spies the wreck and meets us there? Nay, we follow the hair to the body.”

Paddlework and gentle slap of water, then Oxara again: “And what if the body is the Embanesa?”

None would answer.

The firmament was all shut out. Night fully settled and their meager lanterns made a cavern of it. The line now took them to fields of debris and useless detritus carried hither by the currents. The line grew from a single unspooled rope into a vast snarl of cordage and spar and canvas. No man’s mind wandered toward sleep this time. Fear and cold kept them lucid.

Motza’s kalpa was at the van, and a man now cried out, “I see something!”

They raised their lanterns, and through the murk spied the wreck’s horrid shape.

A whaling galleon, lying portside in the water rolled far upon her beam-ends, her deck canted steeply down and half submerged with her masts pointing out nigh horizontal like a landslide-flattened copse, canvas drooping into the ocean. Dozens of barrels of whale oil had escaped her hold and now floated everywhere and huddled around the wreck.

The kalpas stood silent for a time, staring on this scene with faces froze.

“Sir,” said a stroke-oarsman, “look there!”

On the ship’s starboard side, lifted out of the ocean as she had heeled, was a whale carcass only half-processed.

“And look toward the masthead,” observed Gogor.

Between the masts and just below the surface dangled a mighty metal hook.

“The clevis is rigged. And there’s the windlass on deck.”

“We finished trying out ours and cut it free.”

“So this isn’t ours. Not the Embanesa.”

Collective relief, but as they sat the relief curdled into questions and cold dread. “Look at their canvas in the water,” said Fose. “Unfurled. Their sails are set.”

“They were in the midst of cutting in,” said Oxara. “Why would they set sail with a whale half-flensed?”

“They didn’t set sail with the half-flensed whale,” said Motza. “They set sail in spite of it.”

“Wait, look!”

Past the clevis and billowing sails drooped a yellow flag with green patterning depicting a porpoise.

“The Mazabina. This is the Mazabina.”

“The Mazabina,” the whalers echoed.

“We gammed with her last week!”

A black quietus followed.

“Hoy!” Gogor called. “Hoy! Any aboard?”

Atop the whale carcass, a bird fluttered and settled. The sound made a few men shudder.

“We have to get closer,” said Motza. “I see the forecastle’s lifted. There might be men trapped within and unconscious.”

They paddled ‘round her perimeter, looking for an inlet among the debris to reach the ship. Gogor called out periodically. No reply.

“Mind your paddles,” warned Motza. “I see shark fins.”

“There are no kalpas on deck,” observed Oxara. “Mayhap some managed to flee!”

“Ass!” Fose burst. “Mark this constellation of splinters ‘round us. Think you it’s oaken?”

Oxara reached into the waters, took a woodchip, smelled its sweetness. “Cedar,” he said, then glanced down at his kalpa, which like all kalpas was also cedar. “God damn it…”

Every answer worse than its question.

They paddled further. Light played over the hull gleaming with barnacles. Motza was pushing aside oil casks with a lance to get them closer. “Hold the lamp higher. Higher.”

Along a length of wales near the transom the seams were stoven in.

“... as if she struck something,” the fourth mate said to himself.

“But here’s the deeps. Naught to strike.”

Motza waved the lantern up, and reaching into the breach grabbed a canvas plug. “Mates, see ye this sail?”

They did.

“They fothered her from within. And she looks clean. Yet she sank.”

“You mean there’s another wound,” said Fose.

“Aye.” Motza looked down and away in a strange gesture — exhaustion, fear, or some other disturbance warped his countenance. “Methinks we can scale her here… hand me that line.”

In a minute or two they’d roped the Mazabina’s starboard gunwale and were ready to climb. Motza hooked the kalpa’s hatchet into his belt, grasped the rope, and placed his foot against the hull. “Mind your steps. The barnacles are sharp.”

The others followed. Iona came behind. Her leaden head burned and her stomach turned and as she climbed she saw the dark shape of a shark below, but up she went onto the Mazabina’s tilted side and crept to the gunwale, lying like a horizontal ladder twenty feet above the black water.

Motza took the lantern and put the handle in his mouth like a dog and led his men crawling toward the dead whale on the way to the forecastle, aft to fore, negotiating around the tangle of stays and shrouds. Iona fell in behind.

“Fourth mate!” called Fose. “Take care with that lantern! The water’s slick with oil — drop that light and half the ocean will burn and we with it!”

Motza and a few others had made it to the whale amidship where the gunwale had been removed for cutting in. There Motza paused and inspected the corpse by lanternlight.

“How long since they slew her?” Gogor called to him.

“Not more than a day.”

“Fie, then this occurred recently!”

“Aye.”

Gogor nodded, but could see the fourth mate still paused, transfixed. “Aught else?”

Motza reached out to touch the strange serrated marks along the blubber, punctuations like a toothed chain. In another place a massive chunk of flesh was gone — larger than any shark could tear away — as though bitten off even after the ship had fatally heeled.

No time for theorizing. Motza tightened his eyes and moved along.

Fose’s kalpa fell in behind Motza’s and he and his members began the climb, but Motza’s complement had passed the carcass and now scaled the forecastle. There they paused in a row, perched along the flattest, highest prominence. Not unlike birds upon a slain cetacean. Some were panting. Others shivering. The night was still and cold and the dead ship was rolling slightly in the current, back and forth, back and forth. Iona’s head was bursting and she thought she might vomit.

Motza brandished the hatchet, turned it backwards, and hammered on the hull. “Hoy! Anyone there?”

No answer. Somewhere in the Mazabina’s bowels they could hear and feel the water sucking and gurgling in sequence with her tips.

Fose was approaching from behind. “No answer?”

“They could be unconscious.”

“Or dead.”

Motza flipped the hatchet around and struck the hull. Bright splinters flew. Fose’s crew brought their own and the night was marked by their persistent thunk and rip, thunk and rip. Gogor and Oxara paddled the peripheries, searching for survivors. Fourth and first mate spent their energy and passed the hatchets to fresher men to continue the work. Thunk and rip. Thunk and rip. Time passed. The darkness stood still. Thunk and rip.

Iona’s turn came but Saustiz saw the blood caking her face and hesitated. “Lad… your head…”

She tore the hatchet away from him and took his place. Warm liquid ran near her armpits. Her bindings, chafed to bleeding. More warm liquid at her breeches. She’d not made water in over a day.

Thunk and rip. The boards were almost clear. Her hatchet dug in and stuck and she fought to pull it free without falling and the other hatcheteer grabbed hold to help her pry. Up, up, up, and the beam popped free revealing a two-foot opening into the forecastle.

Iona looked inside. The light was not above but by its glow she could see the forecastle was filled with water, its surface rendering her black and disturbed silhouette. The cap covered her head but her hair had grown out in the past month. She almost looked like a woman.

“Aiert, raise that lamp!”

Others came to peer through the hole as the lantern hovered directly above, and as it pierced the water her shadow turned into the face of a drowned corpse.

“Lord and Creator…”

Bodies submerged. Dead eyes on pale faces staring up at them. Masks of agony. Hair and clothes undulating. Hands still locked upon ladders, beams, and one another, frozen in their scrabble for the last pocket of air.

Minutes they stared down into the Mazabina’s womb and drowned unborn.

“What do you see?” called Oxara, but Gogor chid him. They knew. They all knew.

“We have to get them out.”

“Aye. Take out this beam. Let’s haul them.”

Adjacent timbers were hacked and an ingress made. With a line ‘round his waist Motza descended into the water and began removing the dead. They laid the slippery things in a row along the hull nearby the whale. Iona was pulling one into place when she looked at the old man’s face in the transient light.

Empty eyesocket. Missing teeth.

“Port Syrrac,” she said. “Next year. Halloc.”

Suddenly by the forecastle hole Fose let out a cry. “Hold… I see something. I see something!”

A splash followed as he leaped inside among the corpses.

“Where did he go?” cried Zitis.

“Sir! Sir!”

Iona’s gaze did not swerve. In another time and place it might have, but now she was moving away from the old man and down the row of bodies, stopping at another. “Syrla in Azketa,” she recited. “With child, and sick.”

Now a second set of shouts, coming from Oxara’s kalpa: “Lo, something comes! Out of the fog!”

Another splash as Fose resurfaced. His men hauled him up gasping and dripping, but Iona was looking at neither the first mate nor the kalpas. “Sloop with a red-striped jib. Tell its master… that he’s drowned…”

The object loomed and cut a chalk-white wake and collected out of the dark when a lantern appeared above it and a familiar voice called, “Mates? Be that ye?”

“It’s the Embanesa!” Oxara exclaimed. “She’s found us!”

Fose stood and raised his trophy overhead, pulled from the wreck. “Master, I’ve got it! I’ve got the bomb harpoon!”

Men were whooping with joy, praising God, embracing. But Iona was still moving down the line until her tar-stained fingers found the fourth. She touched his cold, doughy skin and hair.

“Lepio. Gaffer on the mainland. Tell him this shall be his son’s last hunt. Tell him…”

While the rest of them cheered, her armor fell and she wept and wept and wept.

***

It took time to get the haggard crew aboard. Hartz offered cider but Iona foregoed it, shambling belowdecks to her berth and falling instantly into deep, oppressive sleep.

She woke not five minutes later to men seizing her and pulling her to the floor. She turned feral. “No… no! No! No!”

“Steady! Steady!” shouted Zitis. “Lay hold!”

Saustiz was there, too. “Stop convulsing! Iurdan, grab that leg afore—!”

Iona’s hand found a knife at Saustiz’s belt, and her teeth found Saustiz’s hand. She drew and bit.

Saustiz howled and let go. Five men recoiled.

Iona skittered backwards crabwise.

“Fiend take you, Raifin! You almost ate my whole thumb!” Blood dribbled steadily in the lamplight.

“Raifin,” said Master-Surgeon Gartzela, stepping forward.

Iona’s back was now to the wall. Knife raised. Panting. Old blood on her forehead and fresh blood in her mouth. Teeth bared.

“Raifin, lad, hear reason! That’s a foul wound against your crown, and I’ve seen men perish from lesser injuries. I’ve laudanum and bandages in my office. We must clean it, lest it’s fatal.”

Her head crushed from within and without, vision swaying. The fear of death rose in her breast and throat, but the risk of discovery was too great so she kept the knife brandished and spat. “I’d rather die.”

“Then contend you with death alone,” dismissed the Master-Surgeon.

He left, and the rest went to their berths and settled down to sleep around her.

***

Too afeared to fall back asleep, she went on deck and watched the sun rise with her feet dangling over the ship’s edge and her chin and arms propped on the gunwale. The fog had left and the world was open. Blue light. Gentle waves. The Mazabina was before her, forty yards out, lying on her side. Gulls shrieked upon the half-peeled whale. Mastheads brought down to water-level fell up and down, raising their canvas out of the sea and dipping it back again. The breeze was most pleasant and the clouds reminded Iona of home. Behind her lining the deck lay the sodden dead all painted in pallid greens and vein-blue lips. The Embanesa rocked and a corpse’s head rocked with it between his mates as though stirring from troubled dreams.

Footsteps behind her. Motza alighted on the gunwale with avian alacrity as his pale eyes made solemn discourse with wreck and horizon.

He waited.

It took her many tries. The tears were unwilling and then they were hot and her jaw ached with the effort, but minutes later she spoke: “The leviathan took someone I love. I want to kill it. I need to kill it.”

Minutes more until he answered: “Then I’ll train you.”

***

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