He turned to look down the length of the warship. Forty dead bodies lay on the main deck in four neat rows of ten each. Just as she had said, the forty captains of the preselected ships had all arrived at dawn with their respective cargoes of death, each in a small skiff that the captain had piloted himself. The dead men had been hearty and strong; the women had been tall, young, and beautiful; the children were perfect miniatures of the adults. There seemed to be an approximately even number of men, women, and children. Handpicked, indeed, he thought.
The captains had sailed their individual skiffs back to their ships, and the entire armada had now taken the shape of a V, like a flock of geese, with the command warship in the lead. Whatever Succiu planned on encountering, it was plain that she wanted her ship to arrive first.
Kluge had already instructed each of his officers according to Succiu’s orders, telling them not to be surprised at whatever they witnessed this day, that all would happen as the Coven expected. He had felt more than a little foolish before his troops when he had not been able to tell them what was expected, however. Now, as he watched his men go about their morning tasks, Traax, his second in command, appeared before him. An unusually large and efficient officer, Traax had been appointed to the position immediately after Kluges promotion to commander by the Coven.
“Permission to speak, my lord,” he said simply, looking with clear, green eyes into the much darker eyes of his leader. Kluge nodded.
“A status report, my lord,” Traax began, standing stiffly at attention. “We make way unimpeded at approximately ten knots, the wind stays steady, and we are on the proper course. We make good progress. The warriors are interested in but not afraid of your warning of this morning. Minion warriors fear nothing, even the unknown.”
Kluge began to respond, but before he could speak the first word, he was interrupted by a voice from behind him.
“Thank you, Traax. That will be all,” Succiu said without emotion. She walked to the bow to stand with Kluge facing the west, the rising sun upon their backs.
“Yes, Mistress,” Traax said obediently. He bowed briefly and returned to his duties on the main deck.
This was the first time Kluge had seen her this morning, and as expected, there was no hint in her face whatsoever of what had passed between them last night. Such beauty, he thought. Beauty I am occasionally allowed to take, but never to possess.
She stood there next to him for some time without speaking, simply watching the waves as they splashed and divided against the prow of the ship. He could feel the sun beginning to warm the back of his neck… and then things began to change.
The balmy morning air turned chilly; it seemed to grow distinctly colder with each second that passed. Kluge turned around to look toward the stern of the boat, wondering if they were being engulfed by a sudden storm front, but the weather behind them remained as perfect as that which lay before them.
And then the wind stopped.
It didn’t just slow down, or start to give out in little gusts as would often be the case—it simply stopped. There was absolutely no breeze; the sea became as smooth as glass. The great warship slowly came to a stop. A deadly silence reigned over everything as Kluge looked down to see his warriors looking about in amazement, their breath streaming out in long, vaporous clouds because of the intense cold.
The second mistress of the Coven stepped before Kluge and looked into his dark eyes with a determination that he had never before seen there, despite his many dealings with her. “We have arrived,” she said to him, her voice almost a murmur. “Belay the sails, tie off the ship’s wheel, and be quick about it.” She inched her face even closer to his. “And remind those flying monkeys of yours that they are to take absolutely no action unless it is specifically ordered by me.” She turned away from him and began to cast her eyes slowly across the smooth, un-moving waters that surrounded the warship.
Kluge motioned to Traax, who was at his side in an instant. After giving his second in command the orders, Kluge watched as the sails came down and the wheel was tied off, making the ship entirely subject to the mercy of the waves. Except there were no waves, and the great ship now sat virtually motionless in the dark-blue water.
And then came the fog.
Unlike any he had ever seen, it rolled over them with great speed, seemingly from nowhere, engulfing them in its presence. Thick and gray, it seemed to have a life of its own and clung, cold and wet, to their clothes and skin. Reaching out into the air, he extended his fingers and rubbed them together. The fog seemed to have body to it, a silky texture that he could actually feel between his fingers. Turning toward Succiu, he could barely see her, even though they were less than three feet apart. How is fog able to have substance? his soldier’s mind shouted at him. Such a thing is not possible. And then the fog began to take shape.
Gradually, he began once again to be able to pick out Succiu in the gloom as the fog started to coalesce and take form around certain areas of the warship. From bow to stern, it gathered on either side of the ship in two distinct columns that seemed to rise up out of the ocean. Occasional glimpses through the fog showed him that the weather beyond was as clear as it had been, and that the fog was isolated only around the ship.
Then, as he turned his attention back to the two growing pillars of fog, his mouth dropped open.
The great columns of fog had taken the shape of human arms rising out of the depths of the ocean. At the end of each arm was a gigantic gray hand, with ancient, gnarled fingers that ended in long, cracked, and broken fingernails. The great gray arms began moving in different directions. One of them went forward to the bow, and the other went astern. Paralyzed by amazement, Kluge could barely move his head to watch them, and his ragged breath came faster, streaming out of his mouth in cloudy bursts as it struck the increasingly frigid air. He could not remember ever being so cold in his life.
It was then that the great gray hands grasped the ship. The forward hand and arm wrapped around the bow, and the arm and hand in the rear covered the stern of the warship in its grasp.
The ship sat in the ocean totally immobilized. The huge, gnarled hands, their grips firm, stopped moving, and all traces of fog except for that which made up the terrible arms and hands now vanished. The surrounding ocean was once again in clear view.
Succiu turned again to Kluge, the expression on her face nervous but not panic-stricken, as he had thought it might be. It was almost as if she had been expecting this.
“Follow me to the gunwale, Commander,” she said, apparently in complete control of her voice. She walked across the bow deck of the ship, Kluge following, and gestured for him to look down into the dark blue water of the ocean.
The water all around the ship had suddenly begun to bubble and roil, as if someone or something were either breathing beneath it or trying to come to the surface, or both. Kluge watched, transfixed, as the beginnings of oval shapes started to become visible just beneath the surface of the ocean. And then the bubbling and churning stopped, and what was left in the momentarily calm waters was the most hideous scene he had ever witnessed
They were faces, dozens of huge faces that were each at least ten feet across, lying flat in the ocean just a couple of feet below the surface, staring blankly up at the sky. Each of the faces was different, yet they were all somehow the same. They floated and bobbed without moving away from the ship, and simply lay there in ghostly silence. They were bodiless.