For a moment, Criston could not speak, could not breathe. He found his voice and bellowed with all his strength and all his
soul, projecting his voice with enough power to call the attention of the sailors on deck.
“Leviathan!”
Alongside the
Luminara,
the Leviathan rode the waves as though they were mere ripples. Lightning lanced out, flashing an otherworldly white glow
upon its scales. The monstrous tentacles smashed into the foremast, breaking away the yardarms with unreal ease, plucking
the white canvas sail like a petal from a flower before casting it into the water. The tentacles’ fanged mouths snapped down,
splintering the ship’s rail. Two snakelike appendages snatched hapless crewmen and tossed them into the Leviathan’s maw.
Captain Shay charged to the prow and grabbed a harpoon from its hooks. While other sailors were screaming, Shay stared at
the monster as though mentally cataloguing its interesting aspects, then hurled the harpoon directly at its single eye. Criston
had seen him throw a harpoon many months ago, skewering the Uraban pirate Fillok, but because of the ship’s lurching, his
aim was not true. The harpoon’s jagged iron tip struck the side of the milky eye and glanced off, skittering along the scales
with a flash of unexpected sparks. Captain Shay cursed the beast, raising his fists in the air.
The Leviathan reared high, opened its great mouth, and bit down, splintering wood, taking the
Luminara
’s bow—and swallowing Captain Shay along with it.
Fighting for balance, desperate not to lose his grip, Criston struggled down the mast. Belatedly, sailors on deck sprang back
into action. They ran to the other harpoons to attack the Leviathan. The monster’s fanged tentacles lifted crew members into
the rain-whipped air and tore them apart.
When a hastily thrown harpoon stuck in one of the Leviathan’s heaving gill slits, the creature let out an unholy roar, halfway
between the sound of thunder and the bellow of a hundred dying whales. It submerged, but it did not go away. After a few tense
seconds, it rose again, this time smashing the
Luminara
from below, fatally breaking her keel and lifting the entire hull from the water. Planks sheared off like chaff in a thresher.
Crewmen screamed. Many fell overboard, while others, still struggling up through the hatches to join the fight, were smashed
or seized by tentacles. First Mate Willin finally made it to the deck, only to be crushed by a falling yardarm.
Criston could barely hold on. He grabbed a rope, still trying to make his way down to the deck, while the monster continued
its attack.
Water poured into the large holes in the hull. The ship’s foremast was uprooted like a weed. The Leviathan broke the deck
and folded the mortally wounded
Luminara
in half. The great sailing ship fell into pieces on the sea.
Finally losing his grip on the rain-slick rope, Criston was thrown into the churning waves, which lifted him high and pounded
him back down again. Choking, spitting water, he struggled to the surface, but the rushing sea whisked him far from the wreck.
He could still hear the other crewmen screaming.
A yardarm floated by, tangled with thick rope and a scrap of sail. Criston clung to the wood, holding on with the desperate
instinct of survival, but he knew he would be dead soon. As the
Luminara
sank and the Leviathan hunted the last few screaming, struggling sailors, the currents and the storm swept him away.
With sixteen armored war galleys and hundreds of angry warriors at his command, Zarif Omra launched the raiding party from
the docks in Khenara. All sails were set to show the vengeful Eye of Urec. Their journey past the blackened scar of Ishalem
only served to motivate the fighters further. When they entered Tierran waters, the fighters continued up the coast in search
of Aidenist fishing villages. They attacked every one they found.
With such an overwhelming force against undefended towns, each Urecari strike was more a massacre than a military engagement.
Their scimitars were invincible and their victories dramatic, and the zarif learned that his most effective weapon was despair.
The Aidenists could not deny that the followers of Urec were far stronger, that their faith was an anchor that held Omra and
his men, while the rival religion was cast adrift.
After two easy conquests that left smoking towns and destroyed harbors behind them, Omra had lost only five fighters, and
their bodies had been wrapped up and cast overboard with proper ceremony. The murdered villagers were simply left behind to
rot. Captive Tierran children already filled the hold of one of the war galleys. The crew of that ship complained about babysitting
when they should have been fighting, but a stern reprimand from Omra silenced their talk.
Gliding farther up the coast, the war galleys encountered and attacked two fishing boats. Omra put every Aidenist crew member
to the sword, then scuttled the boats before sailing onward. He left no one alive to spread a warning as his fleet moved along
like hunting sharks.
Omra spied an opening in the coastline guarded by a low wall of rock that formed a small natural harbor. With the breeze in
his face, the zarif could smell the lingering stench of rotting seaweed. As he stared at the village nestled within the cove,
he ordered the war ships to blockade the harbor. According to the questionable maps Uraban traders had provided, the name
of this place was Windcatch.
From the broad open windows of his kirk, which sat on a small rise on the outskirts of the village, Prester Fennan spotted
the approach of foreign war galleys. He grasped the rope and furiously clanged the bronze bell normally used to call worshippers
to his dawn services.
Urecari attack boats swarmed into the harbor, and raiders disembarked at the town docks or sloshed onto the shingle beach.
The men set fire to overturned dinghies, slashed fishing nets hung out to dry, then surged into the small village.
Fennan continued to ring the bell, hoping that some of the people would stand and fight, knowing that others would flee into
the hills. Either way, he had raised the alarm.
That morning, Ciarlo had been studying with the prester inside the kirk, helping him prepare for the next dawn’s prayers.
Immediately upon seeing the sign of Urec on the raiders’ bright sails, however, they both knew the Aidenist kirk would be
a target. Fires had already been started down by the wharves, and black smoke rose from boathouses and the harbormaster’s
office shanty.
From the hill, Ciarlo watched dock workers grabbing boat poles or oars to defend themselves, but the attackers struck them
down with scimitars and moved onward, attacking everyone from old women to overweight shopkeepers.
“They are coming here, Prester. We have to fight for the kirk!”
“The Urecari will not respect the fishhook, boy. They’ll burn this place down,” Fennan said, still panting from his bell ringing.
“You have to survive. We can rebuild the kirk, but they can’t destroy our faith.”
Frustrated, Ciarlo moved away from the altar with an exaggerated limp. “I’m not going to be running very far.”
“Go into my office. Look for a trapdoor beneath my writing table. We keep our service wine there and some precious artifacts
down in the root cellar. You will be safe enough.”
“No—I will fight with you!”
“This is not a fight we can win, boy. And you”—Fennan glanced at Ciarlo’s damaged leg—“you are not a warrior.”
“You aren’t a warrior, either—you’re a prester! I’ll stand with you and die with you, if we both must die.”
“But we both don’t have to die. Go and take shelter.”
“You don’t have to die either.”
Loud shouts rang out in the yard in front of the kirk. Fennan ran to the wooden main door and pressed his shoulder against
it just as heavy fists began pounding. He threw his weight to stop the raiders from crashing inside, but it wouldn’t hold
long. As a kirk, it did not have a crossbar to lock the door.
“Go! Ciarlo, go now—I can’t delay them more than a few minutes.” Wrestling with his thoughts, Ciarlo lurched toward the door
to help Fennan, but the prester roared at him. “Do as I say! I am giving you a chance.”
“No!”
Fennan strained against the door that rattled and shuddered as the Urecari men threw themselves against it. One of the planks
cracked. “I command it! You are my acolyte—obey me!”
Biting back a useless response, Ciarlo staggered off, still defiantly trying to show that he could run, but failing miserably.
Prester Fennan was right. He got to the back room, found the hidden trapdoor underneath the table, and used the fingerholes
to lift it.
The Urecari raiders hammered the door with the hilts of their scimitars and smashed the colored windows, hurling curses in
their looping, glottal language. Prester Fennan yelled as the kirk doors splintered open, and a swarm of Urecari men rushed
inside, bowling him over. Terrified, Ciarlo ducked into the back room just in time, as a freezing chill washed through his
bones. Those men would murder Prester Fennan, and they would destroy the kirk.
We can rebuild the kirk, but we can’t rebuild our faith.
Fennan was still trying to buy him time, knowing that Ciarlo could not move swiftly. In the back room, struggling to get into
the hiding place, the young man cursed himself, cursed his old injury.
Backing to the altar, the village prester seized his thick Book of Aiden and lifted it as a shield, but one of the foreign
invaders struck him down with two brutal blows of a scimitar. Then they began to ransack the kirk.
Terrified, Ciarlo understood now that fighting the Urecari here could serve no purpose and would only get him killed. He dropped
into the dark root cellar beneath the kirk and pulled the trapdoor shut, praying he wouldn’t be found.
He heard battering sounds above, the clomp of booted feet, shouts, smashing glass and splintering wood. After a long moment,
they fell silent.
Then Ciarlo smelled smoke.
* * *
Running through the streets of Windcatch, Adrea pulled Criston’s mother with her toward their home, hoping to barricade themselves
inside. The raiders were smashing into shops, setting roofs on fire, seizing screaming children and dragging them back to
their boats, killing virtually everyone else.
Her pregnancy was showing now. It would be another two months or more before Adrea delivered her baby, and her swollen belly
made it difficult to run or fight. Telha was a scrappy woman, yes, but she would be easy prey for these awful men—Adrea had
just seen well-muscled fishermen and strong dockworkers fall under a flurry of flashing swords. She and the old woman had
no chance.
And the invaders kept coming. Another boatload of raiders landed on the beach, and large warships bottled up the harbor.
Ciarlo was with Prester Fennan, and the kirk was one of the sturdiest buildings in Windcatch, but as she reached the house,
Adrea looked up the hill and saw the kirk burning. She felt a stabbing pain in her heart, knowing her brother was probably
trapped, and he might already be dead. Telha abruptly pushed her daughter-in-law into the shelter of their house. “Whether
he’s alive or dead, you can’t do anything for Ciarlo now.” She slammed the door, and Adrea helped pile furniture against it.
They built additional barricades by the windows, breathing heavily, listening to the sounds outside, looking at each other’s
fearful eyes.
Summoning her determination and hatred against these strangers who had come like a storm to her village, Adrea took up a heavy
cast-iron pan and a long gutting knife. Telha grabbed another pan and a broomstick that she could wield as a club.
They waited together, praying that the raiders would lose interest and return to their ships. But parties of men were systematically
going through the streets of Windcatch, smashing doors and murdering everyone they found. At the beginning of the raid, Adrea
had seen villagers abandon their homes and flee into the hills; now she wished that she and Telha had done the same, for the
raiders were on all sides.
Adrea brandished her makeshift weapons as men hammered on the plank door, shouting in a language she didn’t understand. Hearing
no answer, the raiders crashed through, splitting the hinges and pushing their way inside.
Telha thrust her broomstick into the gut of the first one, knocking the wind out of him. As he staggered forward, she used
the heavy pan to split his skull, and he dropped to the floor. Three more men surged in, raising their scimitars. Emboldened
by her first victory, Telha let out a yell and swung the pan at another man’s face.
But this seasoned warrior had no compunction about killing an old woman. He thrust the sword point directly into her chest,
just below the heart, paused, then rammed the blade all the way through, up to the hilt. He jerked the sword free and let
Telha drop to the floor.
Adrea let out an animalistic scream, vowing to sell her life dearly. She flailed with the pan, slashed with the gutting knife,
and cut a severe gash in a man’s arm. A fighter wrenched the pan out of her hand, and she whirled to cut him as well.
Another Urecari man entered, and she saw he was dressed in the finery of a prince, but he too was spattered in blood —
Windcatch blood. Blinded by her rage and despair, Adrea thought only of killing him.
Omra had witnessed enough death and destruction in one day to make him stop seeing it all. He had decreed that these people
must die, and he moved methodically to witness the purge of this Aidenist village. He didn’t count the deaths; instead, he
counted the number of children taken away as trophies, but he felt only a faint glimmer of satisfaction. It had been a long
time since he’d felt any real passion. Not since the death of Istar.
As his fighters burst into one particular home, he saw a young woman, her old mother killed before her eyes. She fought like
a desert cougar, her fear abandoned. His soldiers overwhelmed her, wrested the cast-iron pan from her hand, and ducked her
slashing knife (though two men were cut).