Vulcan's Fury: The Dark Lands (39 page)

“Hold on!” Paulus screamed in her ear over the horrific din of wind, rain, and the roar of the impossible wave. The boat creaked and groaned as it was flipped like a child’s toy.
 

Of course, she hadn’t needed his warning. She was already holding onto Hercules with all her strength. The big cat quivered beneath her, his brain no doubt unable to grasp what was happening. He roared in fear of what he did not understand, in anger at what he could not control.

At the stern, Haakon clung to the rudder with one hand and held on to a rope tied about Pelonius’s waist with the other. The big man’s mouth was open in a scream that was lost to the storm.

Then they were cast into the water as the boat capsized. All was swirling darkness, confusion, and terror.
 

Hercules, afraid and confused as he was, reacted instinctively: being in water, even swimming entirely below the surface, was something with which he was well acquainted. Yanking his claws from the wooden deck, he pushed away and began paddling out from under the boat. Valeria continued to cling to him, her hands clenched around fistfuls of his fur. A sudden tightness gripped her around the stomach, and she almost screamed before she remembered that it was Paulus, holding on to her by a rope he had somehow managed to tie around her waist. Luckily, he had not had time to secure the other end of the rope to the ship, or they both would have drowned.
 

The hexatiger swam for the surface, and Valeria gasped with relief as her head emerged into the spray-filled air. Releasing one hand, she pulled on the rope which bound her to Paulus, and after a moment his head, too, burst from the water. Taking a gasping breath, he swam the few feet to her and took a grip in Hercules’s fur.
 

A dark mound rose and fell nearby: the capsized hull of the boat. Again, instinct drove Hercules forward, and he paddled toward it. It took three attempts before the big cat was able to haul himself up from the water and scrabble onto the curved hull, clinging for dear life with his claws as the boat was tossed amidst the waves.

“Marcus!” Paulus shouted. “Septimus!”

“Here!”

They looked up to see the two older men peering down at them from over the keel. “Princess,” Marcus called. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, Paulus and I are fine.” Marcus made to come over from the far side of the keel, but was nearly washed away by a wave. “No, stay there! Stay wherever you can hold on! We’re fine here with Hercules.”

Marcus made no objection. “What about the others?” he called. “Have you seen them?”

“Here!” Haakon’s voice boomed from somewhere aft, and she saw an arm wave from near the rudder.
 

“Pelonius?” she shouted.

“I have him. He’s alive.”

Valeria’s heart sank, for she heard the unspoken words
for now
.
 

“What about Karan?” Paulus asked her.

She shook her head, her tears lost to the sea. “He’s gone.”

He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. “I’m sorry. I know I was jealous of him, but I truly did like him. Very much.”

“I know.” Pushing away the memory of Karan’s death, she said, “What do we do now?”

“What else can we do, but try and wait out the storm?”

She looked at the dark and angry world that surrounded them, the sky split occasionally by bolts of lightning hurled by Jupiter, the thunder exploding over their heads as the rain poured down in sheets driven by the wind. Closing her eyes, she pressed herself tighter against Hercules, who shivered and whimpered in misery.

***

Valeria must have somehow fallen asleep, dragged into unconsciousness by sheer exhaustion and unending terror as the storm raged. She dreamed of her father and mother, of all the others who had died, burned or put to the sword. Of her proud legion, the legion that had flown a banner in her name and honor, of the men who had served in it. All of them murdered. And Karan. Poor Karan, who had in his quiet way stolen her heart. In her dream she watched him over and over as the giant wave took him and swept him under. She saw his face beneath the water, his mouth open in a silent scream as he was dragged into Neptune’s Deep.

But it wasn’t Karan’s mouth that was full of water, it was her own. Valeria snapped awake to find herself submerged in the churning sea. Biting back a scream, she kicked in the direction that she prayed was up, following a swirl of bubbles. As she did so, she sensed more than saw something glide by her in the water, something huge, malevolent, and her heart hammered in terror.
 

Then it was gone.

Knowing that she must have just imagined the underwater leviathan, she kicked harder. As her head broke the surface, she coughed out the water she had almost inhaled, then nearly breathed in more as a wave crashed over her. “Paulus!” she cried.
 

She thought she heard a voice somewhere to her left and began to swim in that direction, but could see nothing in the darkness.
 

A flash of lightning illuminated the scene, and confirmed her worst fears: the boat was gone. She could not long have been in the water or she would simply have drowned. But there was no sign of the others, or of Hercules. She wanted to scream in rage and frustration, and considered just letting the water take her down.
 

“No,” she told herself through the driving spray. “They could be out there, I just can’t see them. Please, by all the gods, let them still be alive.” She felt guilty at the thought, but of all her companions, the one for whom she prayed the hardest was Hercules. She could not imagine life without him, or the terror he must feel now, if he was still alive, paddling frantically through the water trying to find her. Drawing in a deep breath, she shouted, “Hercules, to me!
Hercules!
”

Nothing.

Something bumped into her. She latched onto it before it could get away. Anything that could float offered the promise of salvation. After a moment, she realized it was the mast they had cut away earlier in the night, the ropes and fabric of the sail trailing away like the tentacles of some undersea beast.

She kept calling for Hercules, for the others, but no one answered. Or, if they did, she couldn’t hear their voices above the storm. More than once did she nearly drown when a wave from the darkness drove her under as she was calling for the others, but she kept calling.
 

At last, her voice gave out. Completely spent, she laid her head against the shattered mast and wept, adding more tears to the angry waters.
 

How long she drifted, clinging to the mast, she did not know, for mere seconds upon the wave-tossed ocean seemed to her like hours. She thrust her hands under one of the ropes that was still wrapped around the mast, binding herself to its fate.
 

Later, the mast shuddered as the tip slammed into something. A wave broke it free of whatever it had hit, but then it hit something else. She could feel the vibration through the wood as the far end of the mast was dragged along…

The bottom!
The thought sent an electric current of hope through her body. Peering through the darkness, she thought she saw something darker than the sky looming ahead, framed by a brighter gray that must be the surf.
 

Another wave drove her and her makeshift raft forward, and one of her feet hit the sharp edge of something below. She quickly shimmied onto the mast and pulled her legs up. The last thing she needed now was to have her feet or legs torn to shreds by sharp rocks or coral.
 

A much larger wave arose from the sea, its peak rolling over into a cap of churning white foam. Caught in its grip, the mast was launched forward with such force that Valeria nearly lost her grip. When the water began to recede, Valeria found that she was no longer floating upon the water, but resting upon the sand of a beach.

“Praise the gods,” she cried, pulling her hands from beneath the rope that bound her to the mast. Another wave came up the beach, and she was sent tumbling along the sand toward the ocean as the waters withdrew, as if the sea did not want her to get away.
 

Getting to her hands and knees, she crawled from the surf as quickly as she could before Neptune had his way and swept her back to his watery lair.
 

After resting for a while, she forced herself to her feet. The rain was beginning to taper off and the winds, as well as the waves, were beginning to ease. While it was still dark, everything now was more of a dark gray than black, which allowed her to make out nearby shapes and shadows.

Not sure which way to go, she shrugged and began to stagger off to the right, moving along the edge of the surf, following the foam that glowed dimly in the darkness.

She came across bits and pieces of the boat, including curved planks that had been part of the hull. There was no question now that the poor craft had broken up and sank, that Valeria hadn’t simply slipped free and the boat had just floated off into the night, bearing her companions with it.

Despondent, she continued her search, staggering along the sand at the best pace her exhausted body could take her. But she saw no sign of her companions.
 

The sand of the beach finally ended in a field of slippery rocks. Her one and only attempt to make her way through and continue her search came to an abrupt halt when she lost her footing and nearly broke her ankle.
 

“No,” she whimpered as she carefully retraced the few steps back to the safety of the sand, the wind howling in mockery. Reluctantly admitting defeat, she moved away from the pounding surf toward the dark mass of the unknown that awaited her inland. Twisted shadows emerged from the darkness, setting her heart pounding with momentary terror until she realized they were trees. They were unlike any tree she had ever before seen, with long, twisting, spiraling branches and densely packed leaf-covered tendrils that hung like whips. But they were still trees, and would provide some small shelter against what might remain of Neptune’s stormy tantrum.

Carefully, she pushed through the tendrils and entered the almost pitch dark of the tree’s heart. Happily, the tendrils formed an effective screen against the elements. The ground was still wet, but she was no longer pelted by rain or battered by wind.
 

Curling up against the trunk, which was as big around as Haakon’s chest, she finally gave in to exhaustion and fell into a deep sleep.

***

Karan blinked his eyes open just before he retched. Sea water spilled from his mouth as he rolled from his side onto his stomach, then forced himself to his knees upon wet sand. His stomach unleashed its anger once more, forcing up yet more salty water. Once that was finished, Karan coughed on more water that had found its way into his lungs. He went to wipe his mouth with his right hand, and was shocked to find that he still held his sword. How that had happened, he had no idea. His hand must have simply clenched itself around the weapon out of reflex as he fought to keep from drowning. Blinking his eyes clear of the spray whipped by the wind across the beach, he secured the weapon in his belt and propped himself up on his knees. He remembered little of his confrontation with the sea after being taken by the huge wave that swept him from the boat. He knew from experience that there is little enough difference between one terrifying moment in dark, roiling water, and another.

The important thing was that he was alive and, as best he could tell, without injury other than a long, jagged scrape on one of his legs. He ignored it for the moment, although he knew he could not let it go untreated or it would fester.
 

Getting to his feet, he took a long look around.
You are home
, he told himself.
Home
. He shivered, but it had nothing to do with the chill of the wind across his wet body. He could make out little beyond the beach, only a dark expanse that rose high above him. He frowned. Being as well-traveled as any of his kind among the Masters, who sent their Swords from place to place to compete, he had to confess that he had no idea where he was. It clearly was not the great hunting grounds from which he had escaped across the sea bridge. He had seen other places along the sea in his travels, but none that rose so high as to blot out the heavens.
 

Worrying about where he had landed could wait. A far more important task was before him: finding Valeria and Hercules. He hoped the others had survived, too, of course, but the fate of Valeria and the great hexatiger were at the heart of his fears.

And so he set forth, scouring the beach for any sign of the others. Every hundred yards he made a pile of rocks, which were plentiful, to mark his journey.

He had gone nearly a league, perhaps a bit more, and had seen no sign of his companions. He found no bodies, no debris from the boat, nothing.
That only means you haven’t found them yet
, he consoled himself over and over.

Karan had not gone ten steps after he had made the last marker when he saw a strange sea creature emerging from the water. He gripped his sword, in case the spawn of the water god should wish to vent its anger upon him.
 

But the creature now desperately struggling ashore was no child of the sea god, but was a god himself.

“Hercules!” Karan sprinted toward the great beast.

The hexatiger, who had been crawling on his belly from the surf, snapped his head toward Karan and gave out a pitiful mewling sound that tore at Karan’s heart.

Karan went to the great beast’s side and did what he could to help Hercules from the clutches of the sea. Hercules staggered and fell several times, but Karan refused to let him give in to exhaustion.
 

“You may not yet rest,” Karan gasped as he got behind Hercules, set his shoulder against the hexatiger’s rump, and pushed.
 

Hercules arose on quaking legs and took two steps forward before collapsing. Twice more did Karan get Hercules to take another step or two. But the final time the beast collapsed, he refused to get up. Instead, he laid his great head in the sand, panting with exhaustion.