Chapter 348: Poseidon’s Leviathan [2]

Kane’s eyes met the leviathan’s.

The skin around the great eye folded back in a deliberate motion.

A black vertical slit opened in a field of deep red, ancient and flat, and for a fraction of a second the thing under the water looked at him the way a craftsman looks at a tool that has wandered into the wrong workshop.

Then the head plunged.

The ridge of scales vanished as the pressure under the hull changed.

"FUCK—FUCK—"

Pain wasn’t the right word.

Recognition was.

The same cold arithmetic that had hit him under the serpent’s gaze and in Grathak’s arena: this was not a random sea beast.

This was a domain tool, and the domain had already decided the boat was inside it.

"Move—move!"

Thora stared at him from the stay, bracelet still ticking against her ankle.

"I have never seen you so—"

"I’m not scared," Kane cut in.

"I am counting how many ways this ends with us in the water. Helmsman—full canvas, any line that still has wind!"

The boat didn’t answer the helm.

Canvas strained.

The tiller fought.

Elven crew threw their weight into braces and sheets.

Kessa slammed both gauntlets onto a stay and hauled with a snarl, tiger strength pouring into wood that refused to advance.

"It’s... not moving."

The hull shuddered in place.

Five hundred meters of dark water still lay between them and the island’s cut.

The forty-foot corpse on the sand didn’t move.

Kane ran to the bow.

Below the stem, something held them, not a current, not a snag.

A length of the leviathan’s body had come up under the keel and simply stopped being water.

Mass against mass.

The boat was a toy on a muscle that didn’t care about sails.

"It’s under us!" he shouted.

"Full length along the keel—don’t give it a clean lift!"

The muscle moved, making the boat jerk backward.

Distance to the island opened in a sick slide.

Everyone on deck stumbled.

Firlia went to one knee and held a crate by pure stubbornness.

One of the elven warriors recovered first, ripped a spear from the rack, and drove it down over the rail into the dark shape under the surface.

The point hit scaled hide and skipped as if it had struck wet stone.

"It’s strong," the elf got out, already reaching for another shaft.

"Spears will not hurt it," Kane said.

’Rage is useless in open water. I cannot stand on what I need to kill.’

Misha’s face was white under the salt spray, but her voice stayed level.

"What do you suggest?"

"Leave."

"How?"

Before he could answer, the water ahead of the bow rose.

Not the full leviathan.

A lesser head, or a projection of the same will, broke the surface in a column of scale and muscle two and a third meters high.

Dragon-like in the structure of the face, no wings, no forelimbs, body continuing down into the dark in a single thick rope of strength.

It looked down at the deck.

At the household.

At the elves.

Breath caught across the boat in a shared, involuntary silence.

Thora’s jaw locked.

Misha’s hand found the rail hard enough to hurt.

Kessa’s ears were flat, and her lips were peeled back from her teeth in a snarl that had no target she could reach.

The head’s eyes found Kane.

Its mouth opened.

Light in the color of deep water under storm began to gather along the palate and tongue.

A beam or a cone or a simple erasure aimed at the place where the small wooden thing and the red-haired man still insisted on existing.

Kane didn’t swing at it.

He did three things in the order the system and the boat would allow.

"Griselda—flare, now, in its eyes, not the body! Misha—signal the cliffs, any fire, any flag, guest right or help, I do not care which! Helmsman, when the weight under the keel slips, you run for the cut, and you do not look back!"

Griselda, still fighting the wrong air above the mast line, folded her wings once and dumped a searing double cast straight into the risen head’s eyes.

The working in its mouth stuttered.

Its head reared, vision burned white, and the muscle under the boat reacted on pure reflex: tightening, then shifting to protect the blinded end.

The keel came free for a heartbeat.

"NOW!"

Canvas took the wind.

The boat surged forward as if released from a hand.

The risen head slammed sideways, still half-blind, and the main bulk under the surface rolled to follow.

Kane was already at the rail with Mjoldr reversed.

He didn’t try to kill what could not be killed from a deck.

He slammed the axe spike into the only part of the lesser head still in range, the softer hinge where jaw met neck column, and put a single, ugly, structural wound into the joint.

Black-tinged fluid sprayed.

The head screamed in a register that made the bracelet on Thora’s ankle shriek in answer and then pulled under hard enough to rock the hull again.

"Don’t celebrate!" Kane snarled.

"It will come back along the stern. Kessa, watch the wake! Firlia, if anything comes over the rail, you cut the line, and you let the cargo go!"

"I am not losing the medical wraps!" Firlia shot back, already re-lashing with bleeding fingers.

"You will lose the wraps, or you will lose the people who need them. Choose fast."

The island’s cut was closing: four hundred meters, three-fifty.

On the cliffs, the watching Giants had finally moved.

One of them was descending a path that had not been visible from the water, spear in hand, soot still on its face.

The tired voice from before didn’t call down.

It only came, as if the sea’s hunger had finally crossed some line the stone was willing to answer.

Thora dragged herself along the stay until she was level with Kane, ribs screaming, bracelet frantic.

"You said you were not scared."

"I am not. I didn’t want to start a losing battle."

"Was that just a sea monster?"

"No."

Kane looked around to see the Leviathan not moving anymore under the water.

"It’s a familiar. Of the gods."