She looked to the aft, saw Sigursson at the wheel, bellowing to his crew.
“Cut him loose, he’ll drag us under!” he bellowed.
A few of the braver salts drew their blades and started hacking at the beast, desperate and terrified. The men were mere gnats against the creature’s skin. But with Eclipse riding her shadow, Mia had no pause for fear,
Stepping
across the deck
in an instant
and bringing her longblade down in a scything, two-handed arc. The tentacle she struck was as broad as a barrel, tough as salted leather. But her gravebone sword sliced through it as if it were butter, severing it clean in two. Black blood sprayed, thick and salty, and Mia felt a shudder run through the Banshee’s length. The other tentacles went berserk, smashing, flailing, squeezing, splintering the railing and snapping the foremast off at the root with a deafening craaaack. The sailors howled as they fell, down into the thrashing waters and the mouths of the waiting whitedrakes. Lines snapped and shrouds toppled, a tangle of sails and mast crashing across the deck, Banshee listing hard to port as her crew’s cries rose above the storm.
A massive wave crashed across their flank as Mia Stepped
again
up to the
foredeck, where
Tric was hacking away with his own gravebone blades, the leviathan’s limbs writhing about him. The strength in him was astonishing, the power of the dark Goddess in him truly unleashed for the first time, and it took Mia’s breath away to see him, drenched in black blood and falling rain, muscle etched in pale stone. He spun on the spot, water spraying, saltlocks streaming behind him as he brought his blades down again, again, severing another tentacle and sending it over the side with a savage kick. Tons of seawater rushed across the decks, and only the grip of Mia’s shadows kept her from being swept over the side with three more of her crew, but Tric seemed immovable as a mountain. She split another tentacle in two as it rose up to grab her, rain and blood soaking her to the skin as she pressed her back against his.
“I really shouldn’t have called them bitches!” she roared.
“PERHAPS NOT!”
“Banshee can’t take much more of this! So much for your prayers!”
“ROW FOR SHORE, MIA!”
“Help me, then!”
“ALWAYS!”
Side by side. Back to back. The pair fought together, like in younger turns when they trained in the Hall of Songs. They were older now, harder, sadder, years and miles and the very walls of life and death between them. But still, they whirled and swayed like partners in some black and bloody waltz, and Mia was put in mind of the first time they danced together, years ago in Godsgrave. Swept up and cradled in his arms, spun and dipped and swayed as the music swelled and the world beyond became nothing. Their blades moved as one as they fought their way across the deck, hewing and slashing and spinning between the rain. The waters crashed down upon them and she leaned against him, the ship listed harder, and he pressed back against her. A pendulum in perfect balance, swinging back and forth in one shining, razored arc.
A tentacle came scything down from above, but Eclipse coalesced twenty feet across the ship, and, grabbing Tric’s hand, Mia
Stepped
the pair
of them
into the shadowwolf as twenty tons of muscle and bone hooks crashed into the deck where they’d stood a moment before. Tric’s eyes were alight with the frenzy of it all, and he stood tall at her back in the chaos, wild and strong and unconquered, even by the hands of death herself. The thunder was a pounding drum, and the storm about them an endless song. Blood and rain beading on his cheeks as he looked over his shoulder and smiled just for her. And a part of Mia could have lived in that moment forever.
Sigursson had come down from the aft, hacking with his own sword, surrounded by a cadre of wulfguard. Mia’s blade was quick as the lightning, Tric’s swords like cleavers in an abattoir, cutting a swath across the deck and leaving it drenched in black, quickly washed away by the rain and waves. White light and thunder, the bellow of the waters and the fury of the tempest, the power of two goddesses pressing down upon them and still, still, it wasn’t enough. And as Mia’s sword split a sixth tentacle in two, as blood fell harder than the rain, the leviathan