House of Chains
Movement in the water, a gleaming black hump, spike-finned, rising into view then vanishing again. All at once, more appeared, and the surface of the water between the ships was suddenly aswirl. There was life in this sea after all, and it had come to feed.
The platform lurched beneath Karsa, throwing him off balance. His left arm shot out to take his weight as he began toppling. A jarring impact, excruciating pain-but the arm held.
He saw a bloated corpse roll up into view alongside the raft, then a black shape, a broad, toothless mouth, gaping wide, sweeping up and around the corpse, swallowing it whole. A small grey eye behind a spiny whisker flashed into sight as the huge fish swept past. The eye swivelled to track him, then the creature was gone.
Karsa had not seen enough of the corpse to judge whether it was a match to him in size, or to the Daru, Torvald Nom. But the fish could have taken Karsa as easily as it had the corpse.
He needed to stand. Then, to climb.
And-as he watched another massive black shape break the surface alongside another ship, a shape almost as long as the ship itself-he would have to do it quickly.
He heard footsteps from above, then Torvald Nom was at the gunnel beside the prow. ‘We’ve got to-oh, Beru bless you, Karsa! Can you stand up? You’ve no choice-these catfish are bigger than sharks and likely just as nasty. There’s one-just rolled up behind you-it’s circling, it knows you’re there! Stand up, use the ropes!’
An explosion of water behind him. The platform shuddered, wood splintering-Torvald screamed a warning-and Karsa knew without looking back over his shoulder that one of the creatures had just risen up, had just thrown itself bodily onto the raft, splitting it in two.
The rope was in his hand. He gripped hard as the sloshing surface beneath him seemed to vanish. A flood of water around his legs, rising to his hips. Karsa closed his other hand on the same rope.
‘Urugal! Witness!’
He drew his legs from the foaming water, then, hand over hand, climbed upward. The rope swung free of the platform’s fragments, threw him against the ship’s hull. He grunted at the impact, yet would not let go.
‘Karsa! Your legs!’
The Teblor looked down, saw nothing but a massive mouth, opened impossibly wide, rising up beneath him.
The mouth snapped shut in a spray of milky water.
Knees cracking against the gunnel, Karsa scrambled wildly for a moment, then managed to shift his weight over the rail, drawing his legs behind him, to sprawl with a heavy thump on the deck.
Torvald’s shrieks continued unabated, forcing the Teblor to roll over-to see the Daru fighting to hold on to what appeared to be some kind of harpoon. Torvald’s shouts, barely comprehensible, seemed to be referring to a line. Karsa glanced about, until he saw that the harpoon’s butt-end held a thin rope, which trailed down to a coiled pile almost within the Teblor’s reach. Groaning, he scrabbled towards it. He found the end, began dragging it towards the prow.
He pulled himself up beside it, looped the line over and around, once, twice-then there was a loud curse from Torvald, and the coil began playing out. Karsa threw the line around one more time, then managed something like a half-hitch.
He did not expect the thin rope to hold. He ducked down beneath it as the last of the coil was snatched from his hands, thrumming taut.
The galley creaked, the prow visibly bending, then the ship lurched into motion, shuddering as it was dragged along the sandy bottom.
Karsa rose.
The harpoon’s end was visible directly ahead, cutting a V through the choppy waves-heading directly for one of the larger, three-masted ships. The grinding sound suddenly ceased beneath the raider, and the craft surged forward.
‘To the stern, Karsa! To the stern!’
Torvald made a brief effort to drag Karsa, then gave up with a curse, running full tilt for the galley’s stern.
Weaving, fighting waves of blackness, the Teblor staggered after the Daru. ‘Could you not have speared a smaller one?’
The impact sent them both sprawling. A terrible splitting sound reverberated down the galley’s spine, and all at once there was water everywhere, foaming up from the hatches, sweeping in from the sides. Planks from the hull on both sides parted like groping fingers.