A Secret Atlas (43 page)

She sighed heavily. “I don’t know.” She turned and barked an order. “Lieutenant Minan,

lower my boat. Master Anturasi and I will be crossing to the
Moondragon
. Give us a squad of soldiers and send over another boat with a crew that can get her cleaned up.”

Minan started barking orders. By the time they crossed to midship, the captain’s boat had

already been lowered. Anaeda descended the netting first, then Jorim followed, with

Shimik scrambling down headfirst after them like a squirrel. Anaeda noticed the Fennych’s

presence but did not comment on it, and Shimik remained quiet as the soldiers boarded

and sailors began rowing them to the
Moondragon
.

Jorim saw no other significant damage to the smaller vessel as they approached. Anaeda

had the sailors take them around the ship once, then come in close to where the boarding

net hung on the ship’s port side. Soldiers went up first, and once the nine of them signaled

all was clear, Anaeda ascended. Shimik clung to Jorim’s back for the trip, then leaped off

and scampered across the deck and down into the bowels of the ship.

Captain Gryst strode across the deck and back into the cabin that belonged to Captain

Calon, with Jorim only a step behind her. The cabin looked to be in order, showing no

storm damage. “They got through the weather and were able to reorganize.”

She went to the small desk against the port bulkhead and opened the logbook to the last

page. “Heading, estimated speed, and continued damage reports on the morning of the

twenty-fourth. Calon had the boats out, but only two of them. No indication the other two

were lost in the storm. No sign of panic, and she’d not have left this log on board if she

abandoned the ship.”

Jorim glanced at the oil lamp swinging from a slender chain next to the captain’s bunk.

“The oil’s all gone. It’s cold, but probably was burning since yesterday.”

“Yes, you can’t get much more than a day’s worth of oil in one of those, and it would have

been filled in the morning watch.” Anaeda closed the logbook and tucked it under her arm.

“Let’s go forward and check the galley.”

Lieutenant Minan and the crew arrived as they were making their way to the galley.

Captain Gryst assigned them to clearing the deck of debris and getting ready to hoist

sails. They fell to the tasks with some muttering. Jorim gathered, based on half-heard

comments and wide-eyed glances, that none of the sailors liked being on a ship where not

one of their comrades remained.

“Captain, this ship had how big a crew?”

“Two hundred.” She ducked her head and descended steps to the galley. The cooking

fires had died, and a huge black kettle contained a congealed mass of rice with a wooden

spoon stuck into it. She grabbed it and tried to wrench it free, but only managed to snap it

in half.

She stared at the broken handle for a moment. “Whatever happened, it happened

yesterday morning. Let’s keep looking.”

Jorim turned and moved past the stairs into the long area below the main deck. A hundred

empty hammocks swayed there, as gently as they would have with sailors occupying

them. Blankets hung from some; others had fallen to the floor. At first glance it looked as if

the sailors had just been called to their stations and would soon be back to stow their

bedding, set up tables, and enjoy a hot breakfast.

Jorim toed one of the blankets, but the fabric moved stiffly and clung to the floor. “I don’t

like this.”

Anaeda turned. “Blood?”

“I think so.”

She nodded. “I agree. You can smell it.”

Anaeda threaded her way through the hammocks to the ship’s aft. There she looked into

one cabin after another. The wooden latches and doorjambs had splintered, and the

cabins showed signs of a fierce struggle. The junior officers’ cabins were liberally

splashed with blood. The one that had been home to a priest of Wentiko had a bloody

robe on the floor that had been clawed to pieces.

She crouched beside the robe and Jorim examined the hatch. “Look, right here about

where a shoulder would hit if someone was forcing the door . . .” He reached up and

tugged off a scale the size of his little finger’s fingernail. “It’s from a fish, but no fish I’ve ever seen.”

Anaeda stood. “Not many fish I know of with claws. Let’s keep looking.”

The hatch to the ship’s sick bay remained intact, but also had scales at about shoulder

height. Anaeda slipped a knife from her belt and slid it between door slats, flipping the

latch. They forced the hatch open, sliding a trunk away from behind it, and slipped in

through the narrow opening.

The sick bay had been a fairly good-sized cabin, large enough for two patient bunks and a

third for the physician. Chests of various sizes were stacked against the interior wall, and

the doctor’s desk was jammed back into the corner. The two far bunks remained

unoccupied, but not so the physician’s bed.

It had a body in it—the body of a corpulent man. His swollen tongue protruded from his

mouth, and dried white traces of spittle foam flecked his lips. The remains of a small

ceramic cup lay beside the bed, and a dark stain colored the deck amid the fragments.

Anaeda touched the back of her hand to his cheek. “Dead.”

“By his own hand, it would seem.”

She picked up a paper packet from his desk and read the characters inscribed on it.

“Heartblossom.”

“That could have been used for seasickness. That’s what Iesol has been taking.”

“Yes, but severely diluted. Half this packet is gone. He wanted to make sure he died, and

quickly, too.” She leafed open his medical log, then snapped it shut and growled. “He was

terrified enough to kill himself, but recorded nothing.”

A rapid drumbeat sounded outside the room, then Shimik leaped and caught the edge of

the hatchway. His claws gouged curled splinters from the wood as he rooted himself

there. “Comma comma, cappatana naeda comma. Jrima comma.” He sprang away,

twisting in midair, and scrabbled across the deck back toward the bow.

Jorim and Anaeda followed him as quickly as they could, but the hammocks slowed them.

Shimik waited at the stairs heading down to the next deck and crouched there, watching

them, then peered down. As they cleared the last hammock, the Fenn darted down the

stairs and they thundered down after him. Casting one last glance at them, he bolted for

the open armory hatch.

Anaeda reached it first and stopped in the hatchway. Shimik squatted at her feet, so that

she would have tripped over him had she advanced. But she seemed quite content to

grab the hatchway and hang on. She leaned slightly forward, then turned and looked at

Jorim.

“I believe, Master Anturasi, you may have the advantage of me in explaining this.”

She moved aside and he looked in. The only illumination came from a shaft of light poking

through an open port. It clearly let him see two bodies stretched out on the floor. One, a

bald man in a sailor’s robe, had a smith’s hammer clutched in his right hand. Most of his

face had been slashed to ribbons and his left eye dangled from its stalk. Similarly his robe

had been torn at the neck, and the congealed pool of blood in which he lay had pumped

out through a torn carotid artery.

But it was the thing that killed him that stopped Jorim from going any further into the room.

The creature appeared vaguely humanoid in that it had arms and legs, though they were

more lozenge-shaped in cross section than rounded like a man’s limbs. This also held true

for the long tail and the body, which narrowed through the chest. The head’s exact shape

was difficult to discern because the hammer had clearly dented it. A number of the silvery

scales that covered the creature’s body had been knocked loose and flashed in the

sunshine.

The creature’s hands had webbing between its fingers. They ended in sharp claws, which

had obviously killed the ship’s smith. Also visible were sharp triangular teeth, a few of

which had been scattered by a hammerblow.

Jorim pointed at the creature. “Scales match. It has characteristics of a fish. I think those

are gill slits.”

“I concur. So, what is it?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea. I don’t even recall this from folktales or legends.

They’re suited to life in the sea, whatever they are. Could they be why ships that head

south seldom make it back? Possibly, but I doubt it.”

“Why would that be, Master Anturasi?”

He stood and met her stare very frankly. “If we’re going to assume that a school of these

sharkmen are what killed the crew and took their bodies away, we are required to make a

few other assumptions. One is that for their hunt to go as successfully as it did, they’ve

had practice. That means they’ve taken human prey before. They found harvesting ships

an efficient and rewarding way to hunt.”

Anaeda nodded. “Sound reasoning.”

“So, if they’ve been doing this for a long time, they would have expanded their range.

Taking a settlement like the one on Ethgi would be fairly simple. We would have seen

them move into deltas in populated areas. We would have had stories and evidence of

their existence before this.”

“That could be, Master Anturasi, but perhaps they can only exist in cooler waters?”

“It was once said the Turasynd could only exist in their cold and dry plain, but when

population pressures pushed them to expand, they did.” Jorim shook his head. “It may

well be we’ve never heard of these things before, but I’m willing to bet we’ll be seeing a lot

more of them in the future.”

Anaeda rubbed a hand over her forehead. “Two hundred souls gone and we killed only

one of them?”

Jorim shook his head. “We might have killed more, but they took the bodies.”

“So they’re cannibals, too?”

“I don’t know. If we dissect the one left here, we might find out.”

The captain posted her fists on her narrow hips. Her eyes narrowed. “Do it. I want to know

what they are and what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

Shimik, rising from his crouch, aped her stance. He looked up at her, at the bodies, then

shook his head. “Dungga. Bad Dungga.”

17th day, Month of the Bear, Year of the Dog

9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

162nd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

736th year since the Cataclysm

Dolosan

In the five and a half weeks since they killed the maned snake and its brood at Telarunde,

the group made slow progress west. Keles Anturasi accepted full responsibility for their

torpid pace, because he was unable to move very fast. Haste would have made his survey

less than complete. Moraven agreed that while his mission to locate the source of trade in

ancient weapons was urgent, the survey would be the key to his success. His agreement

only slightly mollified Ciras, who clearly was in pain, but steadfastly refused to admit it.

The simple fact had been that after the battle, the six of them had needed time to recover.

Though he had been physically unhurt, Borosan seemed to come out the worst. He

mourned the
thanaton
’s destruction as if it had been a family dog. What hurt him most was that the
gyanrigot
had failed in its mission, and he apologized for the predicament its failure had created for everyone else. Even Moraven’s suggestion that it might not have

struck because the snake and brood constituted a multitude of targets and confused it did

little to mollify him. He vowed he could make a better
thanaton
—and while the rest of them humored him, they hoped they’d not find another maned snake to test it on.

Also, the survey necessitated several steps that kept them moving very slowly. The first

was to visit settlements in western Solaeth and Dolosan. They talked to the locals and

gathered information about the surrounding area. If they were able, they engaged

someone as a guide to the next settlement or other points of interest. As they traveled

west, the settlements became fewer, and the points of interest greater, which cut their

progress yet again.

Once they’d gathered some preliminary data about the area, they explored it carefully.

Keles made best-guess estimates about rates of travel and distances covered. With a

practiced eye, he could measure distance just by having Tyressa ride out ahead and

seeing how much smaller she got. Every scrap of information, from the location of streams

and caves to the sorts of fish to be found and estimates of lumber yield per acre got jotted

down in Keles’ books.

When Borosan Gryst came out of his funk, he made himself very useful in the survey. He

tinkered with his mouser and put together a second, smaller
thanaton
about the size of a wolf. He measured their paces exactly, then would send them out to certain points and

back, giving very precise measurements of distance. The
gyanrigot
could even scale trees and cliff faces, providing data on height.

Even the Viruk helped him. Rekarafi gave him names in Viruka of mountains and rivers.

He pointed out places where what appeared to be piles of rocks had once been Viruk

strongholds. He was even able to show how forests had been harvested and regrown

after Viruk and human occupations of the area.

When Keles had first seen him rise over the maned snake’s corpse—Rekarafi said the