In the Ruins

Page 10

His men, creeping back, wept to witness the sea’s fury. As the wave receded, the ruins of the town emerged from the water. The stone walls were shattered at a dozen places. Seen through those gaps, the buildings looked like piles of sticks.
“Ai, God!” cried Duke Burchard. “Queen Adelheid must surely be dead! No one could have survived such a deluge!” He glanced at Sanglant and wiped his brow nervously. “Surely she had a reason for the terrible course she took, Your Majesty. Surely she did not wish to harm the king. She loved him. She is a good woman.”
“Let us hope we do not have to make decisions as cruel as the one she felt herself forced to make,” replied Sanglant.
“I think it most prudent if we retreat,” said Fulk. “We have seen that these unnatural tides are not yet faded. Look how the water sucks back out again. What if a larger surge comes?”
“Look,” said Lewenhardt. “Something is moving out there!”
Sanglant dismounted.
“Your Majesty!” protested Captain Fulk
“I’ll walk. The footing looks too tricky for horses.”
“Why go at all? If you’re swept away—”
“I think we have time. The second wave did not approach until we had walked all the way from the old fort. If you have ever sat upon the sea’s shore and watched the waves, Captain, you will have seen they have a rhythm of their own. These great waves need time to approach.”
Fulk had stood firm through many terrible events when others quailed and faltered, and although the prospect of drowning clearly horrified him, he did not fail Sanglant now. “Very well. I’ll come with you, Your Majesty.”
Sanglant grinned and strode forward. The ground was not hopelessly muddy because the tide had come up and receded too swiftly to soak in, but damp ash made the ground slick and debris from the forest caught about their ankles and snagged in their leggings. It was not silent but uncannily still, with no sign of life but their own soft footsteps. The hissing fall of ash serenaded them. Maybe it would never stop raining down. Perhaps the heavens themselves had burned and now shed the soot of their destruction over the earth. The throttling gurgle of the sea faded in the distance as the tide receded back and back beyond the tidal flats, although it was difficult to see anything clearly through the haze. Now and again they caught the scent of rot.
They walked out onto the plain, glancing back at intervals to see the forest, farther away each time, and the troop clustered at the fringe of the trees, obscured by falling ash.
“Are you sure Lewenhardt saw anything, Your Majesty?” Fulk asked at last. “It could have been the wind. It’s hard to see anything with all this cloud and ash.”
“Hush.” Sanglant held up a hand, and Fulk fell silent, not moving, chin lifted as he, too, strove to hear. But few men had the unnaturally keen hearing that Sanglant possessed, and Fulk could not hear the faint sounds of splashing. “It sounds like a fish flopping half out of water. There!”
A ditch had captured something living that now thrashed in a remnant of seawater. They came cautiously to the edge and stared down into a pit filled with a murky blend of mud, water, and scraps of vegetation. A corpse was fixed between the axles of a shattered wagon, face mercifully hidden by one wheel, legs gray where they stuck out of the scummy surface.
“Ai, God!” cried Fulk, stepping back in horror.
The tide had trapped a monster from the deeps. Sensing them, it heaved its body fully back into the water with a splash, but it had nowhere to hide. They could distinguish its huge tail sluicing back and forth. At last it reared up out of the mud defiantly, whipping its head side to side and spraying mud and flecks of grass and leaves everywhere. Its hair hissed and snapped at them, each strand like an eyeless eel seeking a meal out of the air. It had a man’s torso, lean and powerful, shimmering with scales. It had a face, of a kind: flat eyes, slits where a nose should otherwise grow, a lipless mouth, and scaly hands webbed between its clawed fingers.
“It’s a man-fish,” whispered Fulk. “That kind we saw on the river!”
It was trapped and therefore doomed, washed in and stranded by the tide, but a fearsome beast nevertheless and therefore not worthy of mercy. Yet Sanglant frowned as Fulk drew his sword. The creature stared boldly at them. Sharp teeth gleamed as it opened its mouth. And spoke.
“Prinss Ssanglant. Cap’tin Fulk.”
Fulk jumped backward. “How can this beast know our names!”
“Prinss Ssanglant,” it repeated. The eels that were its hair hissed and writhed as though they, too, voiced a message, one he could not understand.