Odon shuddered as if someone punched him awake and accidently swallowed a mouthful of seawater. A choking fit followed, and a wave almost battered him out of Zigana’s grip. She held on, fingers in agony.
“Papa!” she shouted right into his dazed face. “Climb on Gitta!”
“Ziga?” he said in a whisper ripped away by the surf’s roar.
“Get on the horse!”
The obluda, as if sensing its enchantment was broken and its victim threatening to slip away, shrieked its fury and leaped toward them like an angry spider.
Andras’s horse reared out of the water, coming down fast as Andras slammed the club he gripped onto the obluda’s bony shoulder. A brittle crack sounded, followed by a hissing cry as the obluda caved in on itself before sinking beneath the waves.
Zigana clawed at her father until he managed to heave himself behind her onto Gitta. “Papa, are you all right?”
“I think so,” he said in a dazed, reedy voice. “What are you doing with my spear?”
She didn’t answer, watching Andras as he peered into the surf beating against his mount’s belly, club raised in preparation to bludgeon his foe a second time. “Is it dead?” she called to him.
“I don’t know. I can’t see it.”
The bay hauled back with a panicked whinny when a skeletal arm snaked out of the water and snatched Andras off its back. The lord hit the water and went under, only to break the surface, still holding the club.
Zigana screamed and so did Gitta as the obluda raked a clawed hand across Andras’s torso, taking strips of clothing and skin with it. Andras bellowed in pain and smashed the club into the side of the creature’s bulbous head. The obluda wailed and threw Andras to the side. It clutched the wound on its head, thick yellow blood pouring between the monster’s fingers. The obluda howled and lunged for Andras who tread water, pale with pain and weakened from blood loss.
“Here, you nasty piece of fish shite!” Zigana called out. “There’s a lot more here to eat than that puny man!”
Dead black eyes swiveled in their sockets as they turned to her, Andras forgotten. It hissed, flaccid lips peeled back to expose jaws that unhinged and teeth long and sharp as spearheads. It clawed the water toward her, webbed fingers tipped in blood-stained shears that sliced the waves.
“Ziga!” Andras’s voice. Zigana almost sobbed her relief. He still lived. He called her name, and the sound seemed to come from far away as she rose first to her knees and then to her feet on Gitta’s broad back. Her balance wobbled, and she clicked a command she hoped the mare could hear.Steady, my girl. Be still; be steady.
The mare didn’t budge, even when the obluda climbed atop the waves again, not so steady itself this time, one bony shoulder shattered so that its skeletal arm dragged through the water. It lurched toward them.
All of Ziga’s senses narrowed on the monster as it closed in. She no longer heard Andras’s voice though she knew he still called to her. She hefted the harpoon, time slowing to a crawl as the obluda ate the distance.
Odon had taught her to spear-fish at a young age. She’d always been fascinated by the harpoon that hung above their hearth, a souvenir from his days as a deep ocean sailor, when he was a young man and before he married Frishi.
His long-ago instructions cascaded through her memory, every word as clear and sharp as a glass splinter. The obluda shrieked, lunging at her, and Zigana hurled the harpoon with all her strength.
The spear pierced the thing’s emaciated chest, punching it backwards with the force of impact. The shrieking cut off abruptly as the obluda sank, still clawing at the shaft and thrashing in the water. Zigana pitched into the surf on the other side of Gitta as the mare, no longer forced to hold still, threw her and Odon off with a fast pivot.
Water closed over Zigana’s head, and her bottom hit the seabed, swirling up sand to blind her completely. An arm wrapped around her middle and heaved her out of the water.
“Swim back,” Odon bellowed in her ear. “Swim back.”
An equine scream, unlike anything she’d ever heard before lanced Zigana’s eardrum. Gitta reared above her, a towering, one-ton mountain of enraged horse. Waterfalls cascaded off her fetlocks and hooves as they pawed the air before crashing down on the surfacing obluda. The harpoon’s shaft snapped like a piece of kindling. Gitta rose again, whinnying her challenge as she brought those huge feet down into the waves over and over. Another whinny matched hers—Andras’s bay calling encouragement as the furious trawler mare smashed the obluda until there was nothing left but teeth and bone fragments floating on a slick of yellow blood.
“Where is Andras?” Zigana cried, clutching her father as the waves tumbled around and over them. “Where is Lord Frantisek?”
“Here,” a voice answered. Andras leaned against his bay’s shoulder, blood streaming down his chest to be washed away by the sea, only to stream again. “I can’t mount Bui, but we have to get out of the water. Whatever hunters the obluda chased off before will return. Not only because it’s safe again but because they’re smelling a lot of blood.”
He was right, and a new panic set in as she sensed a different hunger surging around them, one familiar but no less dangerous than the obluda. She and Odon helped Andras mount his horse before retrieving Gitta.
Odon used the mare’s mane and the rise of the waves to swing onto her back and pulled Zigana up behind them. Like their human riders, the horses seemed to sense the predators headed their way and wasted no time trotting out of the surf for the safety of the shore.
People spilled over the dunes to greet them. Odon leapt off Gitta and braced to catch Frishi as she threw herself into his arms, laughing and crying at the same time. She dragged a dripping Zigana into her embrace as well, and the three held each other and cried. There was cheering and hugging and an inordinate number of women volunteering to take Lord Frantisek to their home and dress his wounds.
Zigana caught him before they dragged him off to the village. The blood from the slashes inflicted by the obluda had slowed to a trickle, but Andras’s face was still pale, and he swayed a little on his feet.
“You saved us,” she said, capturing one of his hands to bring it to her forehead in thanks. “Were it not for you, my father and I would have died out there. And Gitta also.”
