*
The following day, knowing the Norukai fleet was fast approaching, the kraken hunter sailed away from Serrimundi followed by four armored cargo ships. Serrimundi scout boats ranged farther south, prepared to light their signal rafts as soon as they spotted King Grieve and his raiders.
Left behind, Olgya watched them go, vowing to do her part to save the city.
Harborlord Otto had dispatched runners throughout the city, issuing a complete ban on fires, lanterns, not even a candle behind a shutter for the coming night. When darkness fell, Serrimundi had to be invisible, swallowed up in darkness and fog. Olgya had practiced her spell to call up the mists in the sea.
Near sunset, the lookout on the bluff spotted a curl of signal smoke to the south, which meant the raiders would be here within hours. Ready to intercept, the Chaser and the four sailing ships angled swiftly toward the smoke to provoke the oncoming Norukai fleet. They would taunt the serpent ships and bolt away, sailing north, leading them toward Tanimura for the final battle.
More than an hour later, near full darkness, the provocateurs sailed back past the harbor, pushed by magically enhanced winds. As deepening night blanketed the harbor and city with gloom, Olgya got to work before the Norukai could heave into view in hot pursuit. Waiting beneath the Sea Mother carving at the headlands, she used her gift to touch countless droplets of water, raising a mist from the calm waves beyond the mouth of the harbor. At first it was like faint steam rising from a pot of water about to boil, then it thickened into lacy wisps of fog that coalesced with other strands into a low-lying blanket.
The mist rolled up and into the harbor, blanketing the hills, flowing along the coast, and extending out to sea. Even as the darkness thickened, no lights twinkled from any homes in the crowded city. Olgya thought of families huddled together in the dark, comforting one another. The night had an unnatural hush.
Back at Ildakar, she had watched her glorious city vanish behind the shroud of eternity; now she had to make another city disappear, but in a different way. Olgya thickened the mist around the mouth of the harbor so the Norukai would see nothing but a blurred coastline, if they could make out anything in the darkness. As the last gloom faded into deep night, she spotted the blue sails of more than a hundred serpent ships racing after the Chaser and the four armored cargo ships. The enemy fleet was dizzying in its size, but Olgya had seen it before, at Renda Bay. She now saw the sense in Nicci’s plan; no matter how hard the people might fight back, these ships would have destroyed all of Serrimundi’s defenses, filled the harbor, and burned the city to the ground.
Even if the trick worked, however, Olgya intended to make her mark here.
As the thick fog spread and settled, Olgya took a dinghy and rowed out of the mouth of the harbor. The currents were erratic, but she used her gift to steady the boat as she made her way out to the long line of dangerous reefs beyond the harbor.
Rowing hard, she picked her way along the foamy line until she chose a place to lay down another deadly trap. She created a small shimmering ball of light, flickering cold flames that were tightly layered like the petals in a rosebud. She laid the glowing kernel among the reef rocks, ducking from the spray hitting the rocks. Her little spark glimmered there, immune to the water that tried to douse it. This wasn’t normal fire, but would become a beacon bright enough that she hoped it would lure some of the oncoming Norukai ships right to the Keeper.
Finished, she rowed back to the sheltered harbor, confident the trick would work.
Out on the reefs, her enigmatic light grew brighter in the fog.
*
Lars stood at the bow and howled into the night, shouting a challenge at the fleeing ships. The Chaser sailed ahead into the darkness.
He remembered Nicci from Ildakar. Now the blond sorceress kept provoking the raider fleet by lashing out at them with bolts of lightning. King Grieve drove his fleet after them in a headlong charge. Groaning at the benches, the muscular Norukai pulled on the oars, driving the serpent ships faster than any wind.
The small krakener and four large warships fled north with all possible speed, which told Lars that the sorceress could not sustain her attacks. She and other gifted provocateurs had struck and harassed the serpent ships at sunset, but then they turned and fled. Obviously, they feared King Grieve’s mighty navy! Nicci’s lightning had been nothing more than a sting to enrage the wild bear of the Norukai fleet, and the serpent ships swooped after her, closing in for the kill.
Lars commanded his crew, “Pull at the oars. You are not weaklings!” The muscular raiders, both men and women, sat at the benches and gritted their teeth, groaning with the effort. The oars dipped into the water, cut deep, and pulled back. He did not want his ships to lose their quarry in the darkness as thickening fog rose all around them.
While Grieve and his fleet sailed forward like a battering ram, Lars and his ten ships hugged closer to the shore. This was farther north than he had ever explored, even on their recent destructive raids. Just like his comrade Kor had been, Lars was under a death sentence, obligated to fight until he died. He would keep attacking these scared little people for as long as he could, but he didn’t expect they would manage to kill him anytime soon.
Now his raiding ships sailed through the black night and suffocating fog, but Lars could hear waves rushing against the nearby coast. “Row faster! The sorceress is out there somewhere. We must be the first to catch her.”
“Will King Grieve feed her to the serpent god?” asked one of the warriors.
“There is no serpent god,” said Ura, a muscular woman who was too ugly even for Lars. She’d shaved her head to make herself nearly indistinguishable from a male, although she could not hide her heavy breasts. “We are the serpent god, and we take the sacrifices ourselves.”
Lars said, “First we have to catch them.”
The oar master pounded on the drums, and the serpent ships plunged into the impenetrable fog. Near the serpent figurehead, one sailor cried out in surprise and pointed forward. “Lars, look! Some kind of beacon.”
A bright light sparked upward from the veils of white mist, like a full moon. It glowed and pulsed at the waterline, tempting, dazzling.
“What could it be?” asked Ura.
“It is magic,” one of the raiders muttered.
“Of course it is magic—we are hunting a sorceress!” Lars said. “That is where she must be! Adjust course. We will follow that light and run it down.”
The sailors pulled hard on the oars, and the serpent ships cut through the water like vipers ready to strike. The tantalizing beacon glowed through the fog, calling them. It lifted higher in the sky then dropped low again.
“Prepare your weapons,” Lars said.
The Norukai seized their assortment of blades and clubs and rushed to the front of the ship, ready to swing themselves overboard as soon as they cornered their prey. The glow brightened, and Lars had to shade his eyes. He still didn’t know what it was, but the beacon seemed to be retreating. “Faster!”
Just as the first serpent ships approached the dazzling orb, he heard the crash of breakers—far too close. He had only a moment to think before his ship ran aground.
“Reefs!” Ura screamed just before she was hurled overboard by the impact. Jagged rocks ripped open the lower hull, smashed the keel.
Lars slammed against the rail. Many of his sailors bowled into one another and tumbled over the side, yelling in rage. Hulls cracked and crunched as more of his serpent ships smashed against unseen reefs. The glowing beacon hovered mockingly overhead, brightened to a flare, then winked out, leaving them in mist-shrouded darkness.
Another serpent ship careened into Lars’s vessel from the starboard side, crushing the hull, snapping off the oars like twigs. The impact shattered his ribs and his left arm, and Lars fell over the side as his ship tilted. Water gushed into the open gap in its hull.
He plunged into the roiling water and flailed with his useless broken arm. His bare chest scrape
d against the sharp reef rocks. He saw dozens of his crew scrambling for purchase against the heavy waves, holding on to the wreckage.
At least seven of his vessels had run up onto the reefs, and Lars realized that the glowing orb had lured them into treacherous waters. A trick! Hundreds of wounded Norukai were swept out to sea or caught up in the churning foam and pulped against the rocks.
The fog grew even thicker, hiding them from the rest of the receding fleet. Lars could only hear the resounding crashes as more serpent ships plowed into the reefs and other vessels. When he tried to shout, a curl of seawater gushed into his mouth. He coughed, his shattered ribs stabbing like knives. He tried to pull himself onto the questionable safety of the reef.
