Kwailoon was sinking. It wouldn’t go under just yet, but it would not remain seaworthy for long. The sea fire had done hideous damage to the hull, and the hole that had opened up there would only get larger. Makani saw it only in glimpses as she watched the flame retardant drip down the sides to consume the blaze. It looked like a ragged, toothless mouth opening in a scream.
She couldn’t second guess the warchief’s decision. She saw the logic in it. The truth was, they couldn’t fight for long, and the ma’hanu would be doing everything they could to sink the warjunk. Makani had to make certain they couldn’t. If the warjunk went down, that was the end. Those few mariners who survived the sinking would envy those who didn’t.
A splash of movement pulled her attention to the deck of the ship. A tribal, caught in the middle of charging, paused when he truly beheld her. His face was locked in confusion, his toothed club raised high over his head for a killing blow.
Makani shucked aside her cloak. The chilling atmosphere imprisoned inside was suddenly free. The tribal’s breath misted. His gaze crept downward. The reflection now dancing over his face was a deep, dark blue, dark as a starless night. His eyes grew, and grew. His mouth opened in a horrified scream. Sanity fled him quickly. Makani left the unfortunate to gibber on the deck; none of her crew would approach while her cloak was open.
She planted her feet, pulling the force from the gods slumbering below the waves. Her motions were ritualized, both hands together, pushing outward, and spreading, a stomp forward, then repeated. She felt the god stir, the distant caress of his thousand arms against her spine, the back of her knees, her ankles. Arms like the tendrils of seaweed, reaching blindly for some kind of prey. A sleeping god can still hunger.
Makani pulled from its cataclysmic strength. She would be the only one taking from this god; all the other ma’hanu would reach across distance to take from their personal totem. It would make them weaker than she. That the tribals couldn’t even understand the uses of their greatest power was more evidence that they didn’t deserve it.
The magic of the gods flowed through water with preternatural ease. She pushed it aside, creating a current of its own. Gradually, she hollowed out a bowl, bit by bit, next to the ship. The warjunk listed, but didn’t go down. Makani pushed the water away. The ship wouldn’t sink today.
She allowed the spell to take root in her belly, stomping a rhythm to keep the new maelstrom spinning. She parted her hands, bringing them outward in graceful steps, funneling more of the god’s power upward. She felt the creature inside her limbs now, a constant, frigid writhing. It was at the edge of sleep, every ma’hanu coming close to tipping the leviathan over the edge. If it woke, they would all die.
Makani wondered, in the space between seconds, if that would be so bad.
The ocean spewed forth two great geysers of seawater, one fore and one aft. The excited shrieks of the men penetrated her concentration for only a moment. They knew their quartermaster was going to save them with her tribal witchcraft. And save them she would.
The geysers now mirroring her movements, Makani brought them down. They bent at a nearly right angle, and suddenly they were no longer geysers but colossal tentacles of seawater, sweeping low over the deck. Her men dove aside, covering their heads and necks. The tentacles were too high for them anyway, hunting in the rarefied air the tribals breathed.
The water smashed into the first of the tribals, and she was engulfed in the shimmering blue and white, the surface tossed about like an angry sea. The tribal was visible only as a limb, sometimes an arm, sometimes a leg, flailing outside of the tentacle for seconds before being sucked back under. She zipped upward on the line of water, then downward. Makani could feel the passage of her prey, flung into the water with the force of a catapult.
The tentacles continued their sweep, devouring the tribals from the deck and returning them to the deep. She felt the god stirring more forcefully inside her. The tentacles having done their work, Makani dismissed them. They shot upward, then collapsed in two powerful claps.
Her warchief strode up the deck, wiping the blade of his shortsword on his breeches. He gave her a curt nod, more recognition than she wanted or needed, but her heart still leapt.
“Kwandok! Come about! Man the port catapults!”
The remainder of the catapult crews scurried over a deck now soaked with water, fire retardant, and blood. Kwandok gave the wheel a brutal spin, and the warjunk once again came about.
“Canvas to the breach!” Makani called.
The bosun was on land and would not be pleased with the hole in his ship, but some of his carpenters were aboard. These men heard the order and scrambled belowdecks, where the bulk of the hole yawned. Moments later, they were hammering nails through slick canvas, closing the breach as best they could. It wouldn’t hold much, and they’d be bailing water out of the hold for days, but it would keep them alive for a little while longer.
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Makani went to the port side gunwale. The men around her loaded their catapult, gingerly setting the clay pot in the cradle, then manning the lever that would send the arm straight, and hungry fire outward.
The straightened out, and Makani saw what she was facing.
The fleet was pitiful in individual parts, but there were so many of the tribals out there, spotting the ocean like flotsam after a storm. She glanced behind her, seeing some of the warriors making landfall, and beginning to battle with the crew she’d left behind. There was no way to help them now.
Anhchoi’s hubris had doomed them. When they came down to the tribes for quick raids, there was little the savages could do. They could only brace themselves and pray to their uncaring gods that not too much was taken. To stay in one place, be seduced by the ease of tribal life, was to invite calamity. The warchief, as great a man as he undeniably was, had fallen prey to the oldest siren song among the sailors of the nations. He had waited for the tribal counterattack, and it would be their undoing.
Her duty was not to curse the warchief’s name nor question his orders. Her sole duty was to see that what he wished to happen would happen.
She faced out over the fleet. Dotting the boats were the ma’hanu. Some were alone on their small vessels, others still traveled with a complement of warriors. All were standing. In the narrow canoes, they stood with grace, one foot in front of the other. On the rafts mounted above outriggers, their feet were shoulder-width apart, as though ready to wrestle. Their brown skins were intricately marked with their arcane geometries. All were casting a spell, most, she imagined, were still robbing the of its wind. Perhaps others were creating currents.
They faced her. They knew she was on the ship. They would be able to feel her, through their connections to the gods. They would call her traitor, and a hundred other names besides. Each one of them was working their magic, and they would all fight against her. They would bring the ship down; it was their only purpose. It was hers to keep the ship afloat and destroy them.
The warchief would never order them to flee, and Makani would make certain he didn’t have to.
The god tickled over her skin. It was waking. Its presence was an earthquake rattling her from the inside out, a greasy tickle on her skin, the hum of unshed lightning in the air. It would not come to consciousness today, not without prodding, but the veil was thin. The god would feel them on the other side, jabbing with demands, or even just washed with the currents of other magic.
Makani planted her feet. Being on the warjunk was far from ideal; she was some distance from the surface of the water. Still, she could feel it beneath her feet, like the skin of a drum. First, it was the tapping of fingers. One, two, five, ten, twenty. The drumming grew more insistent, the taps closer together. The other ma’hanu were finding one another, their magic joining, entwining. She could see it out on the boats, their movements gradually synchronizing across the fleet, like the swell of water. Soon, it wasn’t fingers tapping, but a mallet pounding out a tattoo.
There was still a weakness: they were flinging their entreaties across the ocean. She was reaching to the monster them. She would use that proximity.
The catapults flung another payload of sea fire. A geyser broke up and smashed one in the air, orange fire raining in caustic clumps onto the ocean. The others shattered on the surface, one breaking apart on a boat. Makani lost sight of the ma’hanu who had been working his magic on that vessel; whether he was consumed in flame or escaped to the deep she would never know.
A wave rose up on the port side, threatening the hastily-applied bandage. It started as an oval in the water, churning a bit more violently than the rest. Then it began to rise, lifting up out of the blue like the sinuous head and neck of a sea serpent.
Makani fought back. With her mind, she reached into the fluttering strands of her cloak. She found the core of ice within, and called to it. The strands of the creature were barely there, having pulled back in the moments between her spells. The god was as close to waking as it was before, and she felt it, reaching out, trying to touch the other ma’hanu above. It delved into the currents of magic, hunting for that little nudge that would push it to wakefulness. The gods to awaken. They would find a way. One careless ma’hanu near a god that was close to rising was all it would take.
She pulled the creature’s tendrils back to her with her entreaty. She pushed the wave back down, forcing it to duck under the water. The fleet of ma’hanu were arrayed against her, all working in unison. They didn’t understand as she did. They had wasted their existences at the tribes when they could have been learning the discipline of the nations. She would defeat them.
She concentrated on her movements, the precision of them flooding her with the power she needed. She spoke only the minimum of words in the black language of the gods, those to focus her mind on the task at hand. With the strength of the god, she hollowed out the water beneath the wave. It shuddered, partially collapsing. Still, it continued to rise. It was a broken, shambling thing, but the wave was not balked. The ma’hanu were strong, united.
Makani put more power into her motions, as though ritually fighting invisible opponents, her words coming out in short, breathless grunts. Bits of the wave fell off, like a cliff steadily crumbling into the sea.
Yet it also still rose.
Soon, it was over the side of the ship, partly blocking the sun. Makani dug into her spell, but it was a wasted effort. No one could face that many ma’hanu at once and triumph.
Far away, she heard the warchief bellow an order, this time to steer hard away from the wave. It was too late. The reins of magic stretching across the water thrummed like the strands of a spider’s web in the wind. Those reins were quivering, ready to fall. Makani desperately chipped away at the structure, but it wasn’t enough. In a breathtaking act of unified will, the ma’hanu cracked the reins, and the wave crashed into the side of the
