Asunder: A Gathering of Chaos by Cameron Hopkin (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

the captain dragged himself upright from where he lay, one leg bloody and mangled, and looked after it. A trail in the water showed the great beast making its retreat. “Up and to stations!” he howled, “Everyone that can still stand, get the polyps flushed and fed to full speed and head us south in pursuit! Now! Now! Up!”

Gamarron was dumbfounded. Pursuit? They had been on the brink of death mere seconds before, and now he wanted to chase the thing? It was unthinkable. Even worse, the serpent was headed due south, back toward the Beast Isles – away from the Mainland. The sailors were stirring to the best of their abilities, though nearly a third of the crew lay unmoving on the deck after the blessedly brief battle. A totally uncharacteristic panic filled his breast. I must get to the Mainland. I must! He hurried to where the captain was dragging himself up the ladder to the pilot’s station on the forecastle deck. “Captain! Yari, my friend, what are you doing?”

The barrel-chested man gave him a sour glance from where he sat on one of the rungs of the ladder – he was hauling himself up step by step, bleeding as he went. “I’m goin’ dancing, northerner. What’s it look like?”

“That thing will be the death of us, Captain. Why chase it?” He tried to sound calm, reasonable.

The bald man had succeeded in reaching the forecastle deck, and he dragged himself to the pilot’s station, wrapping the steering tentacle around his third arm. “Why?” he laughed, obviously in pain. “I’m a Seafarer. The serpents are ours.”

Try as he might, Gamarron could make no sense of that. He’d never heard the Seafarers refer to the great hunters of the sea as anything other than something to be avoided. There was the great skeleton of the Coliseum in the Seafarer city of Megalith, of course, but that was a thing of antiquity. “I don’t understand, my friend. You’re hurt. The ship needs repairs. Why are you doing this?” The captain had dragged himself to his feet, and the monk busied himself by tearing strips from the man’s already-shredded pants to stanch the blood flowing from his torn thigh.

The shorter man nodded his thanks with a grimace. “Did you see that odd spear of Danica’s? The one she used on that great devil?” He was turning the wheel as he spoke. The ship was still cutting a path through the water just as it had done throughout the entire attack, its means of propulsion still entirely invisible. “Right through the skull it went. There’s no danger from that beast anymore – it’s dead already and just hasn’t figured it out yet.” He fixed the kneeling monk with a beady eye. “Did you see anything else make so much as a mark on that thing?”

Gamarron shook his head. He had been so caught up in the battle that he hadn’t stopped to question its outcome. The captain nodded knowingly and continued, “It was a sea serpent tooth on the tip of that pike. They’ll cut through near anything, won’t snap for nothing, easy to fix on a pole or a hilt. Best weapons in the world. Sell ‘em for just about any price we ask.”

The black-robed monk blinked. He had never heard of such a thing. It was exactly what he had wished for in the heat of battle. “You’re going to collect its teeth?”

“Aye, and bones too, if we can manage. Just have to follow it long enough to mark where it goes down. They keep to the surface when they’re wounded, but it’ll sink when it dies. I mean to be there when it does. It’s the haul you wait a lifetime for, unless it kills you. Me and my lads’ll never work again, and neither will our children.” He grinned to himself, seeming to forget his wounds. “Guess I’d better have some children!” He laughed gleefully, pain putting a manic glint in his eye. “Always wanted a serpent tooth sword. Gonna get me one now!”

Gamarron stood, trying to rein in unreasoning panic. “But Yari… you were to take me back to Megalith. We were contracted. I already paid you.” Seafarers held a shipping contract sacred; everyone knew it. “I cannot spend the days or weeks this will take. I need to get there now.” The last word came out with a bite. He took a slow breath. Control. You’re slipping.

The captain gave him a pained glance. “I know it, Gamarron. And I am sorry. It’s wrong, I know it is. We have a contract. If you were to tell the Consortium in Megalith about it, they’d put me on the blacklist. But I have to. This is the one we all wait for. I can’t let it go just for a contract.”

The monk felt that urgency, that desperation well in his chest. “I will give you anything. Anything. I’ll take you to the Black Island and show you the demons. How we harvest our silks. Anything. Please. I have to get back to Megalith now.”

Peering at him curiously, the captain said, “What’s this about, then? Why the almighty rush?”

Gamarron opened his mouth and shut it again. In truth, he didn’t know. He knew where they were going and what needed to be done next, and of course the longer he took the greater the damage would be to his homeland – but he could not explain this irrational need that grew within him with each passing day. He had an important appointment in Megalith in eight days, but that wasn’t really it. He simply knew that he needed to be moving. He had to be ashore on the Mainland as soon as humanly possible, if not sooner. If he were not… his mind could not calculate that hypothetical. He had to be there. He had no words to express it, and that disconcerted him nearly as much as the feeling itself. “My errand cannot wait. I will jump ship and