The Grasping Coils
III
The scurrying rats fired a desperate plan in Tycho’s mind. Struggling over to the food left by the pirate, He grasped the cheese, and as best he could, smeared the pungent stuff on the ropes binding his wrists. His ankles were likewise bound and secured to an iron ring in the floor, but he felt if his hands were freed, he would be able to untie his feet.
Then a large rat, braver than his fellows, leapt up on the crate beside the candle. A great, gray creature, it rubbed its forepaws together as though in diabolical anticipation. It leapt down to the floor again, and in doing so, dislodged the candle and plunged the hold into darkness.
Mustering up every ounce of will at his disposal, Tycho lay totally still. He felt the rats swarm about him, and, drawn by the cheese, begin nibbling on the ropes. Inevitably the rodents little teeth would sink into his flesh. He shuddered at what foul diseases the little beasts might carry, but desire to be free crowded out any other considerations.
At last the rats damaged the ropes enough that they yielded to Tycho’s strength and he freed his arms. Striking out about him he cleared the rats away and went to work untying his legs. Intent on his work he did not notice the shadowy form that approached him in the dark until it loomed before him. Without conscious thought he struck out with his right fist at what he judged to be the shapes head, and felt the impact of his blow shiver up his arm and heard a satisfying thud.
Evidently the shape returned the blow, for there was a savage impact on his jaw and a shower of sparks before his eyes, and he found himself sprawled on his back.
Slowly he regained his senses and the power of movement, he saw the candle was re-lit. Shaking his head, he forced his eyes to focus on the outrageous figure that now squatted beside him. It was a tall, powerfully built woman, her long blonde hair and tattered gown of green silk sodden and dripping with seawater. Incongruously, she wore a broad leather belt strapped about her hips from which hung a great broadsword, and an ill-fitting chain mail shirt that was barely long enough to cover her breasts. The left side of her face bore a fresh laceration and was beginning to swell.
“You damn near took my head off with that blow, by Ymir!” she whispered.
Tycho gasped in horror at the thought he had dealt such a clout to a woman. “Mitra! I am sorry! I thought you one of Zarono’s curs come to torment me! I beg forgiveness milady!”
“Tis a small matter, twas mine own folly for sneaking up on you in the dark, besides, I walloped you shrewdly as well. Let’s call it even. You must be Tycho the masseur. I’m Sigyn.”
“The woman Zarono seeks! You must quit this place! He brought me here to lure you into his clutches.”
Sigyn drew a poniard from her belt and cut the bonds from Tycho’s feet. “He sent some of his minions to my house to tell me as much, and to make another attempt at taking me by force. They’ll not tread the planks of a ship again, by Ymir!”
“Why does he go to such lengths to have you?”
“He sought to bed me and I said him nay. He’s a handsome fellow to be sure, but I dislike pirates. They’re the same ilk as the Vanir raiders that plagued my tribe in my youth.”
Deducing Sigyn‘s race by her accent and the reference to the Vanir, Tycho inquired; “The Aesir are raiders as well, are they not?”
“Oh, yes, to be sure, but my people never were. It’s all to do with my raising, I warrant. At any rate, Zarono could not take no for an answer. It baffles me, there are plenty of wenches about who look just like me that he could have his pick of.”
“I find that unlikely.” chuckled Tycho.
“Zarono’s plagued me for weeks after our first meeting. I cannot dissuade him. You’re a man; you’d have better insight into his thinking than I.”
“I’ve no answer. No one enjoys being rejected,I suppose. but I always resigned myself to my fate and moved on. How did you get onboard undetected?”
“Swam out and climbed the anchor chain. I think the dogs expected me to arrive in a boat and present myself trussed up like a goose. They were shamefully unprepared. Now come, we may not have it as easy getting off the boat! Take this poniard.”
Tycho held his palms out and shook his head. “Nay girl! I will not use a blade. I’ll smite a man with my fists, but my days of spilling blood with steel are behind me.”
“That’s a peculiar viewpoint to hold in times such as these, masseur. Very well, ready your fists and follow.”
Sigyn turned and led the way to the stairs the led to the only egress from the hold. Tycho regarded her attire with a more skeptical eye;
“That mail shirt you wear will offer little protection.”
“True. I took it off one of the Zingaran guards the pirates slew when the entered the villa. These southern men are damned small of stature. Still, it may serve to keep an arrow out of my heart or turn an ill-aimed sword thrust.”
She swarmed up the steps to the hatch, her bare feet making no sound on the timbers. Carefully she peered out of the hatch and surveyed the deck. There were pirates along the rails and she could make out the form of Zarono standing on the quarterdeck.
“I hope you can swim, Tycho, it seems our choices are to either make a break for the rail and dive into the bay, or fight the whole damned crew.”
“I’m a strong swimmer, I vote for the former.”
“Good choice. No time like the present then.”
Sigyn pushed open the hatch and clambered out onto the deck. Followed by Tycho. The masseur looked out across the bay and suppressed a shudder; the lights of Kordava seemed hideously distant and tiny. He feared he was not so strong a swimmer as all that.
They had barely cleared the hatch when a guttural voice cried out from the rigging.
“Avast! Intruders! Intruders aboard ship!”
Buccaneers sprang into action and swarmed toward Sigyn and Tycho. The Aesir drew her sword and shouted.
“Get ye over the rail, masseur, I’ll delay these curs and follow.”
“No! We go together!”
“Why must you argue? Go!”
Tycho relented and raced for the rail. A hairy brute of a pirate reared up before him, an axe raised high to strike. Tycho’s fist lashed out and felled the man like a pole axed steer.
Zarono bellowed from the quarterdeck. “Capture the girl alive. Kill the red-bearded cur!”
“To hell with you, too!” yelled Tycho. He reached the railing and looked back.
Sigyn was ringed in by pirates, her broadsword licked out and a dark, Kushite buccaneer reeled back clutching his throat, vainly trying to stem the fountaining of blood from his severed jugular. Next a fair-haired pirate tried to tackle her as she recovered from striking the Kushite. But Sigyn wheeled away from his grasp with tigerish agility and struck off his head with a downward stroke. The head bounced of the deck and rolled in a welter of blood, coming to rest at the feet of Zarono, who was methodically making his way toward Sigyn. Cursing, he irritably kicked the head across the deck and continued along his way.
“Hold!” he bellowed. And the crew stepped back, still surrounding Sigyn, but staying out of reach of her bloodied sword.
Zarono grinned and twisted his moustache, and addressed the barbarian from behind the barrier of his minions.
“I am thrilled you accepted my invitation, Yellow-Hair, though I’d hoped to find you a more gracious guest. I will have to recruit more crewmen when this fiasco is over.”
Sigyn swung her sword about until the point of the crimsoned blade was pointed at the black-clad buccaneer. “When this is over, you’ll do your recruiting in hell, you foppish son of a whore!”
Zarono scowled. “Most unseemly behavior for a lady! And not anymore compliant than you were the night we met! It seems that fool Hapuseneb was a charlatan! No matter. Step aside me hearties, and I’ll show you how to tame a shrew!”
Laughing, the crewmen parted and allowed their captain to pass, then closed their ring again behind him. Zarono doffed his coat and drew his cutlass.
“Now we’ll… Mitra!”
Before he could issue any taunting statement, he was forced to defend himself as Sigyn attacked without warning. It took every scintilla of Zarono’s considerable skill to parry her brutal assault. Zarono now knew his attempts to subdue such a woman were foolhardy. His options had been reduced to two: kill or die.
Tycho, standing by the rail forgotten, had decided he would not stand by and allow Sigyn to contend with the crew by herself. No matter how strong or skilled she was, it rankled the masseur to see a woman so menaced by vile blackguards.
He busied himself freeing a belaying pin to use as a bludgeon, when something in the water alongside the ship caught his eye. There seemed to be a disturbance that churned and foamed the waves. There was an object there, or was it objects? A barrel? A discarded ship’s mast floating in the bay? As if by some previous cosmic arrangement the clouds parted and moonlight shown down upon the pirate vessel.
Tycho stared baffled, unable to process what his eyes told him. A colossal, serpentine object rose out of the bay, indeterminate of length. The part closest to him was as wide and thick as a whale, its rubbery surface encrusted with barnacles. It tapered along its length to a point, and along one side of it Tycho saw rows of great saucer-like suckers, big around as the wheels of an oxcart. With a blast of spray, another snakelike colossus, twin of the first, erupted from water.
“Here!” bellowed Tycho. “Behold! We are undone!”
Sigyn and Zarono disengaged from their duel and they, along with the observing pirates, turn their attention to the bellowings of the masseur.
Three of the massive things now reached up from the depths, taller than the galleys mainmast. They were joined by two more on the port side of the ship. With what looked like leisurely slowness one of the objects came crashing down on the Raven, crushing the forecastle.
“Stir yourselves, dogs” Howled Zarono, “Repel these things ere we lose the ship! To arms!”
The pirates swarmed into action, the fight with Sigyn forgotten. She stared up at the writhing, elephantine coils as they began to grasp at the pirate vessel. Tycho, gripping an ineffectual belaying pin raced to her side.
“What in Mitra’s name are those things?”
“Tentacles.” muttered Sigyn. “Always tentacles.”