“I’m fine,” he said.
She softened, touching his cheek.
He winced.
That made her lips curl in anger. “I’ll watch him if no one else does,” she said quietly. “One wrong move on his part, and I’ll shoot a poisoned arrow into his back.”
“Adah,” Joash said, outraged. He hated Auroch, but he wanted to slay him in fair combat.
She shook her head. “This is war, Joash, not a game of valor. You’d do well never to forget that.”
“I see him!” the lookout cried.
People craned to the west. There didn’t seem to be anything to see.
“There! Over there!” the lookout cried, pointing.
Joash saw it for just a moment. It seemed that a long neck rose in the distance, and then the neck disappeared. He shivered. Despite his boasts only a short time ago, a feeling of dread and doom worked down his spine. It knotted his guts with fear.
As Nidhogg closed, or what had to be Nidhogg, the
Tiras
moved ahead of the
Gisgo
. Captain Maharbal hadn’t ordered the lengthening of sail. Sailors had done that on their own accord. Now, though, it seemed that Maharbal didn’t have the will to order the sails shortened again. Perhaps he feared a mutiny if he gave such an order. Or perhaps he, too, was terrified of Nidhogg, and thought only of escaping the legendary monster.
Under the first mate’s orders, Huri ran to the stern. Each of them carried a heavy black bow and a quiver of their longest arrows.
“Pikemen, to me!” Herrek roared.
The catapult twanged, and from the forecastle hissed a long iron javelin. It sailed for a good two hundred feet before plopping into the water. Another two hundred feet behind them, the
Gisgo
struggled. The commander of the catapult shouted at the triggerman. The loader cranked the bow back to readiness.
“O Joash,” Adah said, hugging him tightly.
He wondered if this was the end. “No matter what happens....” he began to say.
She touched a fingertip to his lips. “Hush,” she said. “Don’t speak those words. They bring doom and separation. We’ll be together after this.”
There was desperation in her voice. So Joash smiled and kissed her on the cheek, even though his upper lip hurt. She took his chin, and turned his lips to hers. Then she kissed him.
“We have to turn back!” Zillith shouted to Maharbal.
Tense silence filled the ship. Sailors, free-fighters, pikemen and others waited to hear Captain Maharbal’s words.
“We have to fight
with
the
Gisgo
!” Zillith said in a stern voice. “Signal them that we’re slowing down, so they can catch up.”
“His spume!” the lookout roared into the silence. “I see Nidhogg’s spume!”
All heads turned to the west. They saw the spray of water and mist that jetted on the horizon.
“He’s closer,” Joash whispered.
“Captain Maharbal!” Zillith shouted.
“No!” the first mate screamed. “Flee the monster! Fly! Fly!”
Zillith tried to speak again, but a host of people shouted her down. Captain Maharbal didn’t utter a word, but steered the
Tiras
away from Nidhogg. Sailors scurried up the mast, and in a dangerous balancing act, they untied knots and let down every bit of sail to catch the wind. The big ship groaned and strained, spray shooting from the prow.
Adah let go of Joash, and held up her right hand. It shook. “I’m scared,” she said.
“So am I.”
She took her bow and one of her parrot-feathered arrows. “Wish me luck,” she said.
“Luck,” Joash said. “Now you do the same for me.”
She bit her lip, and looked to the west. It was devoid of spume or a long neck. “I’m afraid,” she said.
“So am I.”
Adah said as if he hadn’t spoken, “I’m afraid that we’ll never see each other again.” She peered into his eyes, “I wish you luck, dear Joash, the Slith-killer, and the Smasher of bewitching emeralds.”
“Nidhogg!” a man screamed.
Joash jerked as if slapped.
In the distance, swam a monstrous black shape. Water boiled before it in a white froth. The monster closed at an incredible rate, and they heard him roar. It was a gut-emptying sound. He was smaller than the
Gisgo
, maybe two-thirds its size, but that made him gigantic.
“He moves so fast,” a woman said, in terrified awe.
“We’re doomed!” a man cried.
“O merciful Elohim, save us!” cried another.
“Where’s the leviathan?”
Joash stared at his pike. It seemed like such a paltry weapon to pit against such a beast.
“I’m going to the stern,” Adah said. “I’ll help the Huri pepper him with arrows.”
“I’ll join Herrek and the pikemen,” Joash said.
Without another word, she ran to the stern. More slowly, Joash shuffled to where Herrek marshaled the pikemen. The warriors standing there were pale, but determined.
Nidhogg, who had submerged again, now rose once more, this time visible to everyone aboard ship.
Joash tried to study the monster. Nidhogg’s upper hide glistened with an oily black color. The skin looked rubbery and tough, and it covered an area nearly as large as the
Tiras’s
deck. Water continually slued off the back as it plunged lower and then higher. The beast had four flukes like land animals had four legs. The neck seemed thin and as supple as a giant python. The huge head possessed gleaming teeth the size of swords. Its orbs were the same yellow color as Auroch’s eyes, and they were in front of the creature like a wolf with its much smaller snout.
The ship-like size was terrifying. And its speed was incredible. Nothing in the water moved that fast. Not dolphins, not sharks, not even the flying fish that Joash had seen what seemed like weeks ago. The water churned white before Nidhogg’s bulk. He opened his jaws and roared.
“We’re doomed!” a warrior screamed beside Joash. “O Elohim, help us!”
“Quiet in the ranks!” Herrek shouted. “We’re not doomed until we’re dead.”
“Well spoken,” Auroch said. “Put some iron in their spines.”
The distance between the
Gisgo
and the
Tiras
had opened to thrice the range at which the catapult could hurl its missile. Nidhogg was almost upon the
Gisgo
.
“We have to help them fight Nidhogg,” Zillith shouted.
Joash wondered if she was right, or was it right that at least some of them survive the monster to tell others what the First Born planned? He watched Nidhogg rush upon the doomed ship. A feeling of guilt welled inside him. They should have fought the creature together. A glance at Herrek told Joash that the Champion was thinking the same thing.
The
Gisgo’s
catapult threw its iron javelin at Nidhogg two-hundred feet away. The huge beast shifted its long neck and avoided the shaft.
“Where’s the leviathan?” Joash asked.
“Don’t count on others to fight for you,” Herrek said. “Rather, gird your courage, and devise a method to defeat the enemy.”
Auroch laughed bitterly.
Nidhogg sped at the
Gisgo
. He closed rapidly to a hundred and fifty, then a hundred feet.
“Fire your arrows!” Joash whispered under his breath. “Why don’t you fire?”
“No,” Herrek said. “They wait until he’s almost upon them.”
“Then they’re fools,” Auroch said.
As Nidhogg closed to eighty feet, he submerged again. The water swirled, and boiled where he went down. Aboard the
Gisgo
, there were cries of dismay. Joash saw bowmen and others peer over the railing, hunting for signs of Nidhogg.
“What’s his plan?” Joash asked.
No one answered. Everyone aboard the
Tiras
watched, and waited in dreadful anticipation. Would Nidhogg lift the ship from underneath as a hippo does to a dugout?
The huge creature surfaced directly in front of the
Gisgo
. It seemed that the ship would ram him, but Nidhogg easily swam before it. He twisted his long neck, and with his double row of teeth like shark, he bit into the prow. He smashed wood and gained a firm hold. He heaved mightily, like a man who grapples a bull by the horns. The neck muscles bugled as he twisted the
Gisgo
and tilted the entire
ship. Sailors and archers tumbled into the water. Nidhogg twisted the other way, all the while slowing the ship. More people fell overboard, their screams barely heard.
The people aboard the
Tiras
, which moved away from the grim spectacle, watched in silence.
“How do you fight that?” Auroch asked Herrek.
Nidhogg yanked down as he submerged. The
Gisgo’s
prow sank into the sea as the stern reared up. Sick at witnessing such a sight, Joash saw people tumble into the water as the green Suttung Sea washed aboard the ship. Nidhogg surfaced, lifting the prow, and the now stationary ship. He twisted the ship. The mast hit the sea and then plunged underwater. The great keel heaved out of the water, showing its vast field of barnacles and seaweed on the dark hull. Nidhogg released his hold, and bellowed. Then he swam away from the ship, turned and swam at it. He heaved his bulk on the capsized
Gisgo.
With his huge forward flukes, he smashed the hull. Then he slid off the sinking ship, and paused to scoop swimming survivors, eating them in single gulps.
Several pikemen near Joash fainted. Others dropped their weapons, which clattered onto the deck.
“Pick those up!” Herrek shouted. “We must fight, and wound the monster.”
Nidhogg bellowed. He’d swallowed over twenty people. Now, he gave chase, speeding toward the
Tiras
.
“Leviathan!” the lookout screamed, and his voice cracked.
People looked about, Joash among them.
A gray sea-creature swam from the same direction the
Tiras
sailed toward. The new beast was more fishlike with a tube-shaped body and heavily-armored scales. When it surfaced, Joash spied a crocodilian snout. It was difficult to tell, but it didn’t seem as long as Nidhogg. The giant fish caused the water to churn and foam each time it rose into sight, and it left a ripping wake behind.
Joash could see no resemblance between the two creatures. Nor could he fathom how a
bene elohim
could have mated with a leviathan. If Nidhogg truly had been spawned from a leviathan spratling, then necromancy must have transformed it. Joash glanced back and forth. Leviathans could smash a fleet, Joash decided, by ramming the ships and knocking holes into them.
The leviathan whistled shrilly. It seemed clear that he issued a challenge to Nidhogg.
In dreadful anticipation, the people watched the monsters close toward them.
“The leviathan’s too far!” a man wailed.
Joash paled. Nidhogg rapidly closed. The creature’s vast lower bulk was encrusted with barnacles, just like a ship’s hull.
The catapult crew fired. The javelin almost hit, but Nidhogg was still too far out. Soon, as before, Nidhogg submerged.
“Abandon ship!” Captain Maharbal cried.
People scrambled everywhere, many diving overboard. Someone knocked Joash off his feet. Harn barred his fangs, and kept his master from being trampled. Herrek grabbed Joash, and yanked him upright.
“To the prow!” Herrek roared.
Joash and a few others followed.
The leviathan came on, but Nidhogg would reach them first. Suddenly, the terrible sea monster rose in front of them, water sluicing off his head. Joash could actually see into the monster’s maw, the teeth as long as swords, the black tongue and the throat like a wet cavern. Herrek threw his pike. It bit into the rubbery neck. A few others also threw, but apparently, without enough force. Their pikes bounced off the tough hide.
Nidhogg roared, reached down and bit into the hull with splintering sounds. The beast twisted.
Joash staggered to the left as he heard more splintering timbers. At the last moment, he grabbed a spar. Nidhogg twisted in the other direction. Joash clung with all his strength. As the
Tiras
slowed, Nidhogg yanked the prow toward the water. Joash lost his grip, went tumbling over the railing and into the cold Suttung Sea.
Joash plummeted into the dark. He held his breath, and thrashed to stop his downward descent. Saltwater shot up his nose. He opened his eyes in terror, and saw only blackness. Objects brushed him, and threatened to knock him into unconsciousness.
Am I dying
? he had time to wonder.
He chanced to look up, and saw faint green light. He kicked, and moved toward it. His lungs screamed for air as he thrashed. He saw the green getting lighter. His chest ached and it felt as if his ribs would crack if he didn’t breathe in. With a final convulsive effort, he kicked for the light. His head broke the surface, and he gasped mightily. The next moment he choked and coughed as a wave shot water into his mouth. Before he went back down, he grabbed onto a plank that surged up beside him and hit the water with splat.
No more than fifty feet from him the two beasts thrashed and fought, stirring the water into a frothing mass. The
Tiras
was a splintered wreck around them. The sound of their battle was deafening. Like a physical thing, the roars washed over Joash, and shook him like a rat in a dog’s mouth. He held onto the plank and he was lifted with the wave and drifted away.