On his belly, Alos slithered through putrid bilge water across ballast stones, groaning and crawling toward the bow, away from the trapdoor aft, his breath coming in harsh gasps, whines and grunts and moans leaking from his lips. At last he fetched up against a thwart and could crawl no farther.
Panting, hissing, lying in water sloshing over the round rocks, still he heard the sound of chaos adeck. Then footsteps clattered down from above as someone else fled into the hold. "Don'tcomehere, don'tcomehere, don'tcomehere," Alos gibbered and hissed through clenched teeth, trying to remain silent, emitting tiny squeaks instead. Then a ripping and rending of timber sounded, followed by a hideous roar, and a voice in the hold shrieked in terror, panicked footsteps running along the plank walkway. There came a massive thud, as if something had dropped into the hold from the deck above, followed by the sound of ponderous footfalls overtaking the ones fleeing.
"Ygahhh!" shrilled the man, and his footsteps ceased, then he howled and howled and howled, as if in the clutches of a monster who lifted him up.
The massive thumping treads came back along the walkway, bringing the screaming along with it. Yet, suddenly, there was a horrid roar and the snapping of metal. Then there sounded a hideous cracking of bones, and the screaming stopped, followed by a sodden thud as something fell to the planks. Now there was a heavy, deep grunting and moaning as the ponderous footsteps began again, but this time unevenly, as of a monster limping.
Blue-green light leaked down through a chink in the planking above Alos's head, and puffing and sissing, clenching his fists and teeth, trembling uncontrollably, Alos raised up and peered with one eye through the gap overhead, trying to see.
There in the dimness above, down the walkway a monstrous bulky form loomed darkly, approaching, faltering, as if lame, groaning with every other step as it hobbled toward the witchfire light shining through the rent-open hatchway to the deck above. Alos could see it was a Troll, and he started to scream, but he clamped both hands across his mouth, stifling the sound. And then the monster's injured foot-the right foot, the foot that had stepped on a thrown-away falchion that had somehow become wedged in a crack in the dark, the foot that had borne the whole of the Troll's weight on the sharp point of the blade-that foot came down directly above Alos's upturned face, and a dark ichor that burned like fire plopped into one of Alos's fright-wide eyes.
His hands still pressed across his mouth, Alos shrilled through his nose in agony, and he pulled his right hand away and frantically clawed at the eye. Yet the caustic burning drove deeply into the socket, into his skull. In unbearable anguish, Alos jerked down and away, rolling over and plunging his face into bilgewater. And as he shrieked, bilgewater bubbling, and raked underwater at his eye, the groaning Troll above, unheeding, clambered back to the deck.
Time passed, and more time, and at last the shrieking above ceased, though there were yet moanings and weepings, as of men captured by Trolls.
Below in the bilge, Alos trembled and waited in silence, his right eye yet in torment, though the water had washed some of the fire away, and again and again he submerged his face in bilgewater to try to relieve the burn.
Finally, feet clattered down the ladderway-not the ponderous treadings of Trolls but lighter steps, instead- and he could hear voices speaking in a tongue he did not understand. Rutcha and Drokha? Are they looking for me? Again Alos clamped his hands across his mouth, sealing in his whimpers and whines, and he shrank back against the thwart, waiting for them to find him, waiting for his doom, wishing he had a weapon, wishing he now had his cast-off falchion, somewhere on the walkway above. If I had my falchion and someone came after me, I could kill them in silence and be safe. And he wept for his hurled-away blade. But the Foul Folk were not searching for Alos; they had come for the cargo instead. Grunting and swearing, they moved the barrels and crates toward the hatch, where Trolls lifted it to the deck above.
After a time, the Spawn left the hold behind, clambering up ladders and away. Alos could hear distant shouts and the beat of the drum, but these sounds, too, faded away, leaving silence after. Still Alos cowered in the bilge, trembling, weeping, moaning, his right eye filled with pain, and in the quiet the empty ship slowly rocked, swaying in the waves, the bilgewater sloshing to and fro across Alos.
But then he again heard the beat of a drum, drawing closer and closer still.
They're coming back to get me!
Alos whined and gibbered and wept into his hands.
Suddenly, with a horrendous crash, a great brass beak crashed through the side of the ship, timber splintering, water gushing inward after. Alos shrieked in fear, and tried to scramble hindward, but the thwart stopped him. Outside, the drum pounded and with a groaning and screeching the brass beak ponderously withdrew, the waters of the Boreal Sea thundering inward through the breech left behind.
Beneath the planking of the bottom deck Alos howled in terror, and choking, coughing, half strangling, he clawed his way across ballast rocks toward the distant stern, fighting through whelming torrents, attempting to reach the bilge trap. But the ship settled and Alos was plunged completely underwater, yet he clawed onward.
Again the brass ram crashed through the hull of the foundering Solstrale and judderingly withdrew, and more water thundered inward to flood the hold. The ship slowly canted sternward in prelude to its a final plunge downward.
Underwater, Alos finally reached the trap and was up and through, yet the hold was nearly full, but he swam straight up and into a trapped pocket of air. Coughing, gasping, he had only time for a breath or two before the pocket vanished under the rising brine. Now he swam toward where he thought the hatchway would be, and just as it seemed he could swim no more, he popped through. The canted decks were awash, the stern fully submerged, the Solstrale plunging fast. And as the ship went under, Alos was pulled down by the suck of the undertow. Down he was dragged and down, into the nightdark Boreal Sea, and though he tried to swim, he could not defeat the pull. And when the suck at last vanished, Alos drifted in the depths, spent, stunned, not knowing or caring which way the surface lay. But something slammed into him from below, and he was borne upward again. And tangled in wrack he came once more to the crest of the sea.
Overhead stars gleamed, remote and diamond cold, and of the black ship there was no sign.
Two days later a Fjordlander Dragonship fished Alos from the waters. They found him clinging to a shattered spar, nearly drowned and suffering from thirst, his right eye blind and burned and filmed over white. And he screamed when he saw the longship's oars and heard the stroke-drum sound. He gibbered for days, and spoke of a black ship, and shrieked in the night of Trolls. Yet all he would say when he seemed sane was that his ship had foundered.
They took him to Morkfjord and set him aland.
He began drinking that day-"To forget," he said-and he stayed that way for thirty-three years.
Mewling and gibbering and hissing of Trolls, Alos crawled backward from Arin.
Sailors came up behind. One shoved to the fore, a sandy-haired man, the Gyllen Flyndre's first mate. "What's all this houndin' one o' our passengers wi' swords and axes and knives, eh? We'll ha'e no murthers aboard this ship. Look at th' poor lubber; y' ha'e driven his wits away wi' fear."
Aiko growled and turned toward the mate, and he blenched but stood his ground.
Arin stepped between the two. " 'Tis not we who affright him so, but his own phantoms, deliriums."