‘Something worse,’ he finished as he looked up … and up and up.
The great serpent rose over the boat, a column of sinew and sea. Its body, blue and deep, rippled with such vigour as to suggest the sea itself had come alive. Its swaying, trembling pillar came to a crown at a menacing, serpentine head, a long crested fin running from its skull to its back and frill-like whiskers swaying from its jowls.
The sound it emitted could not be described as a growl, but more like a purr that echoed off of nothing and caused the waters to quake. Its yellow eyes, bright and sinister as they might have appeared, did not look particularly malicious. As it loosed another throat-born, reverberating noise, Lenk was half-tempted to regard it as something like a very large kitten.
Right. A kitten, he told himself, a large kitten … with a head the size of the boat. Oh, Gods, we’re all going to die.
‘What is it?’ Asper asked, her whisper barely heard above its song-like noise.
‘Captain Argaol told us about it before, didn’t he?’ Denaos muttered, sinking low. ‘He gave it a name … told us something else about it. Damn, what did he say? What did he call it?’
‘An Akaneed,’ Dreadaeleon replied. ‘He called it an Akaneed …’
‘In mating season,’ Kataria finished, eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t make any sudden moves. Don’t make any loud noises.’ She turned her emerald scowl upward. ‘Gariath, get down or it’ll kill us all!’
‘What makes you so sure it won’t kill us now?’ Lenk asked.
‘Learn something about beasts, you nit,’ she hissed. ‘The little ones always want flesh. There’s not enough flesh around for this thing to get that big.’ She dared a bit of movement, pointing at its head. ‘Look. Do you see a mouth? It might not even have teeth.’
Apparently, Lenk thought, the Akaneed did have a sense of irony. For as it opened its rather prominent mouth to expose a rather sharp pair of needlelike teeth, the sound it emitted was nothing at all like any kitten should ever make.
‘Learn something about beasts,’ he muttered, ‘indeed. Or were you hoping it had teeth so it would kill me and save you the difficulty?’
Her hand flashed out and he cringed, his hand tightening on his sword in expectation of a blow. It was with nearly as much alarm, however, that he looked down to see her gloved hand clenching his own, wrapping her fingers about it. His confusion only deepened as he looked up and saw her staring at him, intently, emerald eyes glistening.
‘Not now,’ she whispered, ‘please not now.’
Baffled to the point of barely noticing the colossal shadow looming over him, Lenk’s attention was nevertheless drawn to the yellow eyes that regarded him curiously. It seemed, at that moment, that the creature’s stare was reserved specifically for him, its echoing keen directing incomprehensible queries to him alone.
Even as a distant rumble of thunder lit the skies with the echoes of lightning and split the sky open for a light rain to begin falling over the sea, the Akaneed remained unhurried. It continued to sway; its body rippled with the droplets that struck it, and its eyes glowed with increasing intensity through the haze of the shower.
‘It’s hesitating,’ Lenk whispered, unsure what to make of the creature’s swaying attentions.
‘It’ll stay that way,’ Kataria replied. ‘It’s curious, not hungry. If it wanted to kill us, it would have attacked already. Now all we need to do is wait and—’
The sound of wood splitting interrupted her. Eyes turned, horrified and befuddled at once, to see Gariath’s thick muscles tensing before the boat’s tiny mast. With a grunt and a sturdy kick, he snapped the long pole from its base and turned its splintered edge up. Balancing it on his shoulder, he walked casually to the side of the boat.
‘What are you doing?’ Lenk asked, barely mindful of his voice. ‘You can’t fight it!’
‘I’m not going to fight it,’ the dragonman replied simply. He affixed his black eyes upon Lenk, his expression grim for but a moment before he smiled. ‘A human with a name will always find his way back home, Lenk.’
‘Told you we should have left them,’ the voice chimed in.
The dragonman swept one cursory gaze over the others assembled, offering nothing in the rough clench of his jaw and the stern set of his scaly brow. No excuses, no apologies, nothing but acknowledgement.
And then, Gariath threw.
Their hands came too late to hold back his muscular arm.