Silver flickered overside.
"That's not-" Jasmine gulped air. "That's its tail!"
Indeed, the tail whisked alongside the ship like a misplaced palm tree. Whip-thin, the tail splayed spines almost like a porcupine's. The curious sight seemed to hypnotize the human Seveners. Yet the warrior Jedit Ojanen whirled and skipped on clicking claws for the opposite beam. He reached the gunwale just as the creature's head leaped over the rail like a horse jumping a fence.
Gaping jaws of razor teeth drove at the orange-black warrior. A man would have died, snapped in two, but Jedit was no man. With a coughing roar, he launched like a stork and landed square on the sea serpent's nose. Four clawed paws gripped tight. Jedit saw two long arrows smack into the scaly head just below his. The serpent pitched and thrashed on a rolling blowing sea to flick off the stinging insect. Jedit plucked free one brawny right arm and stabbed straight as a ballista bolt. Four black claws smashed into the serpent's tiny eye and pulped it like a jellyfish.
Gargling in pain, the serpent snapped its neck back in one gigantic flinch. That mighty whipcracking action even Jedit couldn't overcome. As if flung from a catapult, the tiger splashed in the dark drink a hundred yards from the ship.
"Jedit!" At the quarterdeck, cursing and weeping bitter tears, Adira Strongheart nevertheless tended her command. By shouting herself hoarse at topmen and tiliermen, she directed a new strategy to tack the ship. One by one, with heart-stopping thumps and slams, the sails shot home and bellied. Forced onto a new tack, the caravel's nose pointed southward. The wild gut-churning pitch smoothed. At the bow, the anchor had been let go, but there was no indication the iron caught bottom. Adira took small comfort that they rode deep water, yet she could hear surf burst on rocks, always a bad sign. Song of the Sea King, how could she be so thirsty with all this rain running down her bosom? She could have drunk the ocean dry! And how could Jedit be drowned? He'd seemed unkillable!
Sailors howled as the serpent again slung its sharp head over the prow. Water slung in silver wheels as the jaws waggled. The beast seemed torn between suffering a ruptured eye and an empty belly. Half-blind, the sea serpent stabbed at a sailor and missed, biting instead the oak capstan and chipping long teeth. Swinging, unable to gauge distances, it chased a woman with champing jaws but slammed into the foremast. By then Murdoch had crabbed forward to pink the beast with his boarding pike. Snapping in anger, the sea serpent yanked the spear from the sergeant's grasp, then bashed the butt on the deck and splintered the shaft. Murdoch raised both arms as the bloodied spear point barked off his hand. In diving, the addled serpent whacked the hull so hard that Adira felt the blow at the stern.
"It won't be back!" crowed Simone through gritted teeth.
"Neither will Jedit!" Unable to savor victory or trouble, Adira looked west, east, high, low. Booming spume at the east made cold terror squirm in her belly. The half-hidden rocks were perilously close. The sky westward boiled blacker than ever, as if clouds sought to crush them. Wind and rain lashed like whips. Everyone's teeth chattered. Fearing for her crew, Adira despaired. They'd never escape the eastern shore. Perhaps she should run close to shore and abandon ship. Small boats and even flotsam and hatches might survive the grinding surf, though any survivors would likely die of chill.
"Dira, look!" Simone's shout broke the captain's glum thoughts.
An orange-black arm curled over the port gunwale. Slowly, as if carrying the world on his back, Jedit Ojanen crawled over the side and collapsed in a sodden matted heap. Snorting water from his black nostrils, streaming water, the tiger-man looked up as his comrades surrounded him. Amber-green eyes were lit by fiery anger.
He growled above the roar of wind and wave, "Where is it?"
Before anyone could answer, the serpent reared like a waterspout on the opposite beam. Still jigging its head, flinching from pain, the dim-witted sea monster nevertheless recognized the assailant who'd half-blinded it. Hissing, with jaws gaping wide enough to swallow a cow, the serpent launched like a missile for the tiger-man. Jedit too gave in to savage nature and leaped six feet off the deck to claw and rend.
Adira and her pirates goggled at the strangest arid fiercest clash ever witnessed. Half-flying across the cramped tilted deck, the enraged sea serpent sliced ratlines, shrouds, and furled sails with wicked teeth in a frenzy to snap Jedit in half. Yet the ship wore a thousand such lines, and with a hideous strangling gasp the sea serpent entangled itself in a giant net. Thrashing only hooked the beast deeper, for its iron scutes snagged a hundred spots and wedged it tighter. Before anyone could blink, thirty feet of furious sea creature was enmeshed in the rigging of the Conch of Cam's. Snapping, twisting, hissing, the beast gnashed its dagger teeth against a pine mast.
Jedit pounced.
Yowling, coughing, roaring, the man-tiger landed astride the serpent's twisted neck and sought to rip snaky head from squirming body. Blood geysered and was whipped to froth by storm wind. Jedit gouged a hole big as his arm in the serpent's neck, a gory portal gleaming white with bone, while the bloody head snapped and jigged to catch the tiger's legs. All the while, the berserk tiger roared an ear-wracking caterwaul.
Adira cursed anew at Jedit's battle madness, for endless yards of the serpent's thick body still kicked in the water alongside Conch. The wild struggling made the balky caravel impossible to steer. At the tiller, Virgil couldn't keep his feet on the deck. Stays and rigging were sheared anew so sails billowed and flapped.
The pirate captain gasped to Simone, "Fetch axes! Hack that beast through the body before it drags us under."
With a heart-stopping jolt, the Conch of Cortis beached.
Adira and her crew were flung on their faces like drops of water as the ship snagged on rocks. Virgil fared worst. Trapped between tiller arm and taffrail, he was swatted as if by a sledgehammer across the ribs. The tiller yawed, setting him free, but swung and whacked him again as he fell. Crumpling to the wet deck, Virgil didn't even wrap his arms in pain, but fell like the dead.
Upperworks snapped like twigs. Masts, spars, and yards whipped once and broke. Lines parted like arrow strings. Tangled wood and cordage rained from the skies and made a shambles of the deck. A corsair was flicked into the sea like a fly. Heath and Wilemina were hurled together so hard one's arm was broken. Simone slid into the quarterdeck railing, broke through, and tumbled into the waist. Even Jedit Ojanen, busy rending the dying serpent, was knocked off by a mass of falling cordage.
The ship careened as if kicked in the stern, then bobbed on the tide, shifted, dropped, and spun free. Blinded by brutal pain in her hands and knees, Adira sensed instinctively they'd grazed a hidden rock and bounced off. Yet the damage was done. The Conch listed to port. Half her bottom must have torn out, Adira knew, and she took on water.
"Abandon ship!" Adira tried to shout, but only wheezed, winded. Grabbing drunkenly for support, she again spilled to the deck, slicing her hand on a jagged splinter. Cold spume scoured her wound and made her whimper in pain. Fear for her crew clutched her guts. This was it, she thought wildly. They'd feed the fish, and none would mark their graves except gulls.
Dizzy and sad, Adira crawled on bruised knees to help Virgil, but bumped into jagged stiles, all that remained of the quarterdeck railing. She'd gone the wrong way. Where was she, anyway? To her blurry rain-swept vision, this queer place resembled a jungle with a giant snake wrapped in tangles like vines. Crabbing around, she reached Virgil and tried to lift him, but her bleeding right hand lacked strength. Chestnut hair soaked by rain and blood stung her eyes.
"Virgil, brace up! Damn you, we need-"