The Hollow: At The Edge (4 page)

Serrel caught sight of
the harpoon, still lodged in its body. He pointed his staff at it,
and pictured in his mind a fist, no, a hammer, slamming down on the
end of its shaft like it was a nail, and he thought,
Soa
.

The wave of force he
cast struck the harpoon and cracked the shaft in two, but pushed
the barbed tip deeper into the kraken’s body, and by luck severed
something important. Its tentacles continued to writhe and thrash
even as it died, until one of the creature’s brethren, perhaps
sensing its sudden end, grasped it in its own tentacles and dragged
it deeper into the sea.

Caellix jumped down
from the rail. “Throw the ropes! Quickly, before-”

The ship rocked again,
and this time Serrel stumbled and fell on one knee. He saw a flash
of red, and threw up his shield, just a pair of tentacles slithered
over the side of the ship and struck at him. One tentacle hit his
shield and bounced off, giving Serrel a close up view he wasn’t
really looking for. It was as thick as his leg, its lower surface
covered with huge suckers, each one with a vicious curved hook in
its center.

He pointed his staff
and said, “
Fieren
.”

A gout of fire shot
from the end of his staff, and burned the creatures flesh, giving
off a foul chemical smell that made him light headed. He pushed
himself upright, and weaved fire again. The tentacle jerked away,
and retreated quickly back into the water.

He looked to his left
in time to see Caellix hacking at the second tentacle with an axe
until it fell in half and lay coiling on itself on the deck. Then
he heard the ship’s captain screaming, and spun around.

A second kraken was
attacking from the port side. Gigantic tentacles were rising from
the water, straight up into the air. They were almost as tall as
the ship’s mast. Then they dropped, landing on the deck hard enough
to break several planks, and causing the ship to bob up and
down.

As they slid backwards
to the sea, one brushed against the Captain, and sensing him,
quickly wrapped itself around his body and pulled him along with
it. He screamed in terror as the Hounds and his crew hacked
frantically at it, but he was soon lifted from the deck, and
carried away.

Serrel ran across the
deck, and reignited the flame from his staff. He weaved the fire
into a form hotter and fiercer than before, and turned it on the
next tentacle. Its flesh blackened and burned in seconds, causing
it to lash out in pain. The Hounds hacked and slashed at it, filled
it with arrows, until it slid from the deck and disappeared.

When they turned back
to the sinking ship, it was gone. On a few pieces of flotsam
drifting on the surface and just over a dozen survivors flailing
frantically in the water. The Hounds and the crew pulled them out
as fast as they could, but could only watch as a red shadow rose
beneath the final man and dragged him under.

Serrel looked out
across the flotilla, and saw that they were not alone in their
battle. Kraken had attacked half the ships, damaging several.
Before his eyes, the largest tentacles yet wrapped themselves
around one ship and crushed it in half.

Slowly the fight wound
down, as the Legion fought off the attacking monsters, and the rest
of the creatures set off after the fleeing whales or settled for a
meal of their injured or dying brethren. Eventually, the sea was
calm again, disturbed only by the wreckage of broken ships.
Anything remotely edible was taken.

“Gods,” Holly breathed.
She was deathly pale.

Caellix shook her head
rapidly, and drenched Serrel for the third time. “I. Hate. The
sea.”

“Yes,” said Serrel.
“You mentioned.”

Snow was barking
orders, “Get those men someplace warm and dry. You,” he pointed at
one sailor who blanched. “You’re the captain now, correct?”

“I... I don’t
know...”

“No? Fine. You,” he
pointed to the next man. “I hereby dub thee captain of the good
ship
Dragonfly
. Congratulations.”

“Yes, Sir,” the man
could only stutter.

“Good man. I know
nothing about boats and ship building, so perhaps you would like to
take a gander below and make sure we’re still water tight and so
forth. See about patching whatever damage you can. And take a look
at this deck, it would be rather embarrassing if it were to
collapse on us now, wouldn’t it? Make us look like a right bunch of
ninnies.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Off you go. You lot.
Might as well make ourselves useful. Set course for that vessel
there. See if we can’t drag any other poor souls from the sea. The
rest of you, try to look busy.”

“Sir, I can help with
the repairs,” Serrel said.

“Ship builder, were
you?”

“Carpenter.”

“Works for me. Good
lad, down you go.”

“What’s that?” said a
voice.

Everyone turned to look
at Holly, who was staring at the sky. They followed her gaze.

The sun was dazzling,
but Serrel thought he could just make out something in the sky,
flying high above them.

“It’s just a bird,”
said Brant.

“It’s... big...” said a
sailor.

“Is that a tail?”

It didn’t look like a
bird, at least not like any bird Serrel had ever seen. It circled
overhead, around and around, then suddenly broke away and flew off,
heading east.

To the Faelands.

“I love bird watching
as much as the next man,” said Snow. “But I don’t feel like getting
wet again today. Everyone knows what they should be doing, hop to
it, chaps.”

Serrel made his way
below-deck, looking for something, anything to do that could take
his mind off the previous moments of his life.

In the end, the
flotilla lost three ships, and many more were damaged. The exact
number of dead was still being determined. But the flotilla sailed
onwards.

Dinner was a somber
affair. No one was in the mood for small talk. Even Brant was
silent.

Serrel sat at the small
table and stared at the fish stew in front of him. He had no
appetite. In fact, he was off seafood for life.

“That wasn’t natural,”
said one of the sailors.

“Isn’t it your lot that
always goes on and on about how the sea is a cruel and malevolent
mistress?” said Brant.

“Cruel and malevolent,
but that was bloody impossible. Kraken don’t attack like that,
‘cept in stories. They aren’t even suppose to live in these
waters.”

“Maybe they’re on
holiday,” suggested Brant.

“I’m sayin’ they
attacked us on purpose. Somethin’ made them do it.”

There was silence.

“They’re all staring at
me, aren’t they?” asked Serrel.

“Not all of them,”
replied Brant.

“We’re all thinkin’
it,” said the sailor. “Magic attracts things, like moths to a
flame.”

“Things?”

“Things,” the sailor
said ominously. “Bad things. Old things. Things that shouldn’t
be.”

“Really?” said Serrel
sarcastically. “I didn’t know that. Did you know that?” he asked
Brant.

“Might’ve heard it in
passing. Sounds a bit daft, really.”

“You play around with
things you don’t understand, boy, bad things will find you,” the
sailor went on.

“Oh, of course,” Serrel
turned in his seat. “How silly of me. This is all my fault. How
could I have forgotten...? Yes, I remember now. I summoned a load
of tentacled monsters from the depths with the express purpose of
eating me
. I distinctly remember now, writing in my journal:
“Today I shall be eaten by
creepy, evil, squid-things
”. Sod
off!”

“Not saying you did it
on purpose, boy,” said the sailor. “But-”

“You,” came Caellix’s
voice. “Shut it.”

The sailors all fell
silent, and turned back to their meals despondently.

Caellix placed her food
on the table, and slid onto the bench opposite Serrel. He
suppressed a groan.

“Eat up, Fresh Meat,”
Caellix told him. “When we get to the Faelands good meals will be
few and far between.”

Serrel ignored her.

She glanced at his
bowl. “I thought mages were eaters? Double rations and all.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“First time, was
it?”

He looked up at
her.

“That you’ve seen
someone die,” she said.

Serrel shook his head.
“I was there when my grandfather died. That was bad. Today was the
first time I’d ever seen someone get
eaten by a bloody sea
monster
.”

Just saying it made his
hands shake.

“Me too,” said Caellix.
“But you know, Fresh Meat. Today was bad. But it is far from the
worst thing you are going to see.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. I
am
so
glad you’re here to make me feel better.”

“Was that what I was
doing? I doubt it. But for what it’s worth, Fresh Meat, you didn’t
do too bad out there.”

Serrel wasn’t expecting
that. “You mean... when you tried to kill me, or with the
tentacles?”

“Tentacles,” Caellix
clarified, chewing a mouthful of stew. “I could have stuck you like
a roast pig a dozen times this morning.”

“Only a dozen? Look,
Sergeant,” Serrel said wearily. “I know you don’t like me-”

“It isn’t a matter of
like
, Hawthorne. This is the Legion. We are warriors,
fighters. And if you aren’t, then you’re a liability. If you can’t
even defend yourself, then what good are you to us.”

“I wasn’t sent here
to... to swing a bloody sword. I know how to weave. I am very good
at it. I can pull my weight, just not in the same way as you.”

Caellix sniffed. She
picked a lump of fish from her bowl and threw it to the ground,
where a large dog, Ripper or Vost, Serrel didn’t know which,
devoured it.

“
Magic
,” she
said derisively. “
Weaving the ether
. Will magic make you
invisible? Take away your scent? Make your footsteps as light as a
shadow?”

Serrel thought about
that. “Well... yes.”

“Until your magic runs
out,” Caellix said. “And you get that thing mages complain about.
The hole.”

“The Hollow.”

“That. When you deplete
yourself so badly you can’t even find the will to keep breathing.
Where will you be then?”

“I’ve dragged myself
out of the Hollow before-”

“Unless someone does
cut off your head, before you can. My point, Fresh Meat, is that
you can’t rely on magic. It is fleeting. Untouchable, like smoke.
It will only take you so far. If you want to survive in the
Faelands, you need to depend on yourself, and only on yourself. Not
this
.” She stretched her leg under the table and bumped his
staff with her foot. “You can’t rely on that thing forever.
Otherwise you end up like that fool Morton, who sat in the hold the
entire time we were attacked. Or Barnaby.”

She stood up. “But for
your first fight, you didn’t do bad,” she said again. “I’ve seen
bigger men turn and run for far less than what we went through
today.”

“I don’t run,
Sergeant,” Serrel said with feeling. “Not anymore. And anyway,
where exactly would I run? I’m in the middle of the bloody Dividing
Sea.”

“Some men, they would
have run regardless.” Unexpectedly, she leaned across the table and
dumped the remaining contents of her bowl into his own. “Double
ration,” she said. “Eat up. You’re going to need your
strength.”

With that she left,
leaving Serrel sitting by himself to wallow in misery.

“I think she’s starting
to warm to you,” said Brant brightly.

Serrel ate a mouthful
of now cold stew, but despite the exertions of the day, he just
wasn’t hungry. He made to leave, but found a large dog sitting on
the floor next to him. It stared at him expectantly.

“You aren’t allowed to
eat me,” he told it. “But if you’re planning to try anyway, you’re
going to have to get in line.”

The dog yawned, then
continued to stare.

Serrel sighed, and put
his bowl on the floor. The dog attacked it enthusiastically as he
walked back to his hammock.

Morton was again
sitting cross legged on his chest next to Serrel’s spot in the
hold. Serrel tried to think of a time he’d seen the man anywhere
else in the ship, and came up blank. He wondered how long he had
been sitting there in that position.

“Morton?” he asked.

“Mmm?” Morton didn’t
bother to open his eyes.

“Have you been here all
this time?”

“I’ve been here. I’ve
been there. Why? Did I miss something?”

“Miss something? Well,
not much. We were only attacked by krakens.”

“Krakens? Indeed. That
must have been interesting. I trust if I was needed, someone would
have asked for me.”

Serrel stared at him.
He had the overwhelming urge to hit him, repeatedly. Perhaps Morton
sensed this, because he finally opened his eyes, and looked at
Serrel.

“Is there something you
want, Mister Hawthorne?”

“Caster Hawthorne,”
Serrel told him. “I am in the Legion.”

“Oh yes?” A glint of
amusement lit Morton’s face. “Bronze coin around your neck like a
good little tin soldier? And there I was thinking you were a real
mage.”

The urge to hit him
wasn’t going away.

“I am a real mage,”
said Serrel angrily.

Morton snorted in
disgust. “You are just another tool of the Empire. Using the ether
to wage war. To set things on fire and scare the small and
unimportant into submission. You are to a mage as a pebble is to a
mountain, Hawthorne. Just a small and insignificant cast off.” He
closed his eyes and resumed his meditation.

“So what does that make
you?” Serrel pressed. “Just an Elixir addict who can’t even weave
anymore?”

Morton’s eyes slammed
open, and this time there was actually feeling in his eyes when he
glared at Serrel. “You know nothing, little tin soldier. I have
spent my entire life devoted to the study of the ether. I have
mastered powers you can only dream of. The Elixir is just a means
to an end.”