James Axler - Dectra Chain

When they were a good two hundred yards off, Ryan took one last glance backward, over his friends' heads, and saw the very top of the Salvation's mainmast, with the ensign fluttering in the pallid silver glow. As it folded on itself, he saw the crimson shape against the darkness. Once more he was struck by how much like a bloody skull was Pyra Quadde's chosen flag.

"In and out and in and out. Try and keep it together, Doc," the Armorer moaned. "You'll have us crabbing around in circles."

The next time that Ryan looked astern, both ships had totally disappeared in the shifting murk. He turned and looked only ahead, watching for the first sign of the distant shore.

It wasn't as easy as Ryan had thought. The tide was turning, ebbing away from the invisible coast, bringing with it a powerful offshore current. It tugged at the whaleboat with its inexperienced crew, making forward progress difficult. The mist was dissipating, but hanging in pockets here and there. Ryan could sometimes see clearly ahead for close to a quarter of a mile. Then, without warning, the fog descended once more and he could hardly make out the hunched figure of J.B., gripping the carved tiller.

"Are we still moving forward?" Krysty called, panting as she rowed on the port side of the narrow dory.

"Yeah. Bend your backs, my hearties, and pull and pull," Ryan said, parodying the cries of the mates of the Salvation .

"Shut fuck up and come row yourself," Jak gasped.

"Least it'll be even harder for Pyra Quadde and Cyrus Ogg," Ryan replied. "Just two of them to row and no hand to steer. I reckon we could be closing in real fast on them."

"Dawn's coming," J.B. called, keeping his voice pitched low. "Times of poor seeing they could come up on us unseen. Like we did on the Phoenix . Better if Krysty takes lookout, Jak steers and watches from back. They got the best eyes of anyone here."

"I can see well," Lori complained. "And I'm the tiredest. Why can't I have some rests and watched out? It isn't fucking fair!"

Doc was too exhausted to reproach her for the bad language.

"Don't shout out like that!" Krysty admonished the angry girl. "If that woman's near ahead of us you'll warn her we're closing in. Sound carries a long way over water. Uncle Tyas McCann taught me that, back at the ville of Harmony. So everyone try to keep real quiet."

Dawn came, but the last, lingering tendrils of fog didn't clear. Visibility still varied between ten and one hundred feet. The sea remained completely calm. Once Krysty asked everyone to stop rowing, which they were happy to do, while she listened intently.

"Yeah. I can hear waves on rocks. Or shingle, mebbe. Difficult to tell. I guess it's within a quarter mile or so."

"Anything else?" Ryan asked. "Nothing like rowing or voices?"

Krysty shook her head. "Sorry, lover. Nothing at all."

"There's something dragging at oar," Jak said from the seat in the stern. "Saw it on Doc's oar. Like thick rope."

"I can feel it, my young colleague," the old-timer replied, "pulling at the stroke. Could be weed of some sort, I imagine."

"It's stopping my moving the rower," Lori protested.

They could all feel it now.

Ryan lifted the blade from the sea, peering into the dismal, murky light. Fronds of shining brown cord were draped over the oar. They were about the thickness of a man's thumb, and one end vanished beneath the flat waves. As he looked, there was a distinct tug, and he gripped the oar more tightly.

"Fireblast! It's trying to..."

"Pulling it away from me," Lori said. "Can't hanging on!"

There was a small splash, and the girl's oar was plucked from her hand, sliding out of sight as neatly as a magician's illusion.

"Lift them, quick," Ryan ordered.

The weed had a strength and purpose of its own, coiling its tendrils around the rowers' blades and trying to draw them away. Ryan reached for his panga, dragging his oar in nearer to the boat and slashing at the loops of the weed. They parted easily enough, giving out a stinking ichor, the color and texture of molasses.

The others used their knives to cut free, the severed ends of the weed falling limply into the ocean. Ryan glanced over the side of the boat and saw that they were trapped in a veritable pasture of the sentient plant. If plant it was.

"Gotta get out of here!" he yelled, the possibility of Pyra Quadde's hearing them forgotten in the urgency of the moment.

"It's on rudder," Jak called, drawing one of his throwing knives and hacking furiously at the slowly writhing cords.

As Ryan lowered his oar cautiously into the sea again, one of the pieces of weed looped lazily up, resting across his forearm, stinging him like a thousand tiny, fiery needles. With a shout of pain he wrenched himself free, examining his skin and seeing there were rows of neat little punctures, each one proudly showing its own speck of bright blood.

"Keep away from it." If any of them went into the water, they were dead. The weed was thick and voracious enough to destroy any of them before they could be pulled back into the whaleboat. "Row for our lives!"

For nearly a quarter of an hour it was a touch-and-go battle, one of the hardest that Ryan had ever been involved in. His panga was the best weapon they had for hacking away at the brown fronds, and he shipped his oar, leaving it to the others to carry on with the rowing.

Lori started to cry, slumping in the bottom of the boat, oblivious to the struggle of the others. Jak left the tiller and double-banked an oar with Doc. Steering was no longer important. All they had to do was break clear of the patch of killing weed.

Eventually, having lost another oar, they were in clear water. Doc was doubled up, fighting for breath, finally managing to pant, "At my age to fall victim to an aquatic herbaceous border!"

"I can smell land," Krysty said a few minutes later. "Earth and growing things."

Above the layer of mist they could all hear the lonely cry of swooping gulls, cut off from their food in the invisible ocean.

Doc called out that his oar blade had struck something. "Must be a rock. Must be closer in than we thought." He stopped rowing and leaned over the side of the boat, recoiling with a gasp and shifting to the center of the thwart. His lined face was as pale as a laundered sheet.

"Doc?" Ryan said. "What's wrong? Are we running aground?"

The old man managed a nervous laugh. "Run aground, my dear fellow? I think not. A blessing, that would be. No, I believe... yes, I am certain of it, that we would do well to bend our backs and hasten for the shore yonder."

"Doc," Ryan repeated, fighting for patience. "Just tell us what you saw."

"You recall, shortly after our arrival in this part of old New England, that we had something of a difficulty with a mutated killer whale and great white shark?"

"Yeah. Fireblast! You mean there's..."

The boat shifted uneasily as something grated along its keel. Doc waved his hand in the air as he struggled for expression. "The great-grandfather of all mutie sharks. Upon my soul, but it's so. Fifty feet if it's... I looked straight down into the grinning jaws and that devil's eye, empty and without soul. Oh, let us away, friends."

Nobody needed any further encouragement, bending to the remaining oars, propelling the little boat forward in a series of great rushes, the whirlpools from the blades vanishing swiftly behind them.

Krysty, in the bow, kept careful watch for any sharp-fanged rocks that might suddenly tear the bottom from the whaleboat and dump them all in the treacherous chill water.

"Left, Jak, left," she called, hearing the sucking noise of the sea, tangling around the gray boulders that marked the mixing of land and ocean.