“Oh,stars, no,” Maive whispered before bolting toward the dock.
Everyone followed, and I did too. I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like my presence was wanted by this infuriating woman, but now I was curious what acalroidwas and who Tregen was.
The harbor was indeed a sheltered spot, cut out like a gentle cup of land. Two docks made of wood and rock, jutted from it. One ship was in harbor, and it was clear that the Runams on it had just returned from a fishing expedition. They had crates and nets containing fish of various sorts, and everyone on the boat was either clustered on the deck or hanging over the rail, crying out in distress over a patch of churning water just off the end of one of the docks. There was blood, too, but no evidence of a creature or a man.
Maive gripped the railing of the dock and stared, stricken, at the sight. “You’re sure it was thecalroid?” she asked.
“Saw it just before it pulled him off the dock and under. Wretched thing must’ve followed us back.” It was a woman who spoke. She wore a leather vest and a belt with multiple pouches. “I had a sense that something was following us, but it stayed deep enough to avoid our view.”
“What is it?” I asked, peering over the railing.
Maive didn’t even bother showing her irritation now. “Calroids. Predators of the deep waters. They’ve got these tentacles that can grab a person off land or a boat. One in particular has taken to stalking our boats.” She covered her face with her hands. “Oh, poor Tregen. He’s a sweet boy. Didn’t deserve this fate.”
I don’t know whether it was the boy or Maive’s distress, or the fact that this Tregen was already given up for dead, but in an instant, I had shed the satchel, kicked off my boots, and pulled out the blade I’d been carrying in my pants. There were a few sharply indrawn breaths at the sight of it, which was about the length of my forearm. Not a small weapon, but also not a broadsword, forstars’sake. I dove in.
Cold water encased me, and my water senses snapped on. My gills took over, even though they were encumbered by my shirt. They ran along either side of my ribs, but the fabric was not so thick that I couldn’t breathe. My eyesight sharpened as my eyes changed shape slightly to adjust to the pressure of the water. I saw thecalroidimmediately. It was an absolutely lethal-looking beast. Roughly the size of myself, perhaps a little larger, with a long, spined fin and a set of tentacles extending out like a ring around its head. It had a mean, pointed face with a surprisingly small mouth filled with sharp teeth.
Tregen, to his credit, was fighting back admirably. He had managed to grip some of the spines on the creature’s back to avoid its mouth, but the tentacles would overpower him. Also, hewasbleeding from somewhere, and bleeding hard enough to be alarming.
The webbing that stayed folded tight inside my fingers and toes when I was on land spread out and tightened between those digits. I kicked forward, swimming hard and fast, glad I had swum enough in the past weeks to feel confident in my natural abilities in the water. It hadnothappened immediately.
With my blade, I sliced through the tentacle that had the strongest hold on Tregen. The sea beast had not seen me coming, and it jerked in both pain and surprise. I had not encountered this creature before in any of my swims. Other predators, yes, but not this one. It was quite a piece of work, and it immediately refocused on me. Luckily, my blade worked justas well underwater as it did on land. I deflected one strike of a tentacle and stabbed through the other that had a lighter hold on Tregen. My first objective was to free the boy and get him up to the surface, where his crew could haul him out. He saw me through the water but didn’t seem to know what to make of me. I saw a flash of confusion in his stricken eyes before his body went limp. He was out of air, strength, and, increasingly, blood. I maneuvered out of strike range of the creature, grabbed Tregen by the waistband of his pants, and propelled him upward toward the surface with all my strength.
Now it was just me and thecalroid. And I knew which one of us was going to win. I moved in fast, right into thecalroid’sface, and ended it quickly. The water turned opaque with the creature’s dark blood. I kept my knife in it and swam back to shore, dragging it through the water like meat on a skewer.
Sand touched my feet as I emerged from the sea with my kill. I carried it onto the beach, where Maive knelt surrounded by a cluster of Runams. Tregen lay semiconscious on Maive’s lap as she pressed a wadded-up cloth to a gash in his side.
All eyes turned to me again, but this time with less hostility. I dropped the deadcalroidin front of Maive and jerked my blade from it. I was vaguely aware this must have looked like some sort of weird ritualistic tribute. Maybe, in some odd way, it was. All I knew was that in that moment, I wanted her approval. I wanted her to look at me and not see a mercenary or a monster or a threat. I wanted her to see me as I was: a man trying to figure out the next phase of his life. Trying to make different decisions than the ones he’d made before.
I looked down at her, breathing heavily, and was rewarded with a smile laced with gratitude, and most satisfying, surprise.
“Gilrox.” Her voice was shaky. She was pressing that cloth to Tregen’s side with no tremble in her hands, but I could see the wild flutter in the hollow of her throat as her heart beat fast.Her gaze flickered to the deadcalroid, where she blinked rapidly before turning back to me. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” It wasn’t easy to talk yet, as my breathing was transitioning from gills back to lungs.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“No.” What a strange question.Iwasn’t the one lying there, bleeding.
She nodded and swallowed hard, then ordered some of the others to get a stretcher to carry Tregen back to the village where his wound could be cleaned and dressed.
I couldn’t tell how deep the wound was, but I knew that boy wasn’t going to be on a fishing boat for a while. “All right, then.” I wiped my blade off on one of the spines of thecalroid, then reached back and slid it into its sheath. “I’ll be going, then.”
I began to walk away, adrenaline draining, feeling weirdly elated and defeated at the same time.
“Gilrox, wait,” Maive called out to me.
I stopped and turned back. The Runams were lifting Tregen onto a simple stretcher of stretched cloth and wooden bars. “Yes?”
She got to her feet and cleared her throat. “Did you say you had something to trade?”
Chapter
Six
Keep your med kit charged
No one could tellme I hadn’t built a good deck. I’d removed the tall fin that had, until recently, been sticking out of the top of my ovalish-shaped ship, manipulated it into the flat surface on which I now sat. Also, I’d taken out one of the main cabin chairs, reworked it into a big, comfortable seat that reclined, and fashioned a small table to go with it. It made for a lovely and comfortable location from which to gaze at the ocean.
