James Enge: The Wolf Age

That was unfortunate; they could have used the arms. And Morlock wished he had arrived early enough to give them some advice on boat building. (He was no sailor, but he knew something about shipmaking.) The boats were all flatbed rafts-none of them seemed to have keels. They would fare badly on the rough waves of the Bitter Water.

It was bad at first, but no worse than Morlock expected. The flat bottom of the boat hit each wave on the rough gray waters like a broadhead hammer. Morlock's mouth filled with a greasy fluid. He was near vomiting, but struggled against it. He didn't know how soon he would eat again, and he couldn't afford to lose a scrap of food to the cold dark sea.

The waves kept pushing the flatboats backward even as they struggled forward-and the boats slid sideways as often as they made any progress. When they had been paddling for more than an hour, Morlock looked backward. The shore was still in sight, terribly near for all their efforts. In the chill light of the minor moons, he saw that the smooth beach bristled with the forms of men and wolves.

He turned back to plying his oar. He met the eye of the old woman rowing in front of him: she too had been looking back.

"There's no going back," he said.

She grunted and said something he didn't understand. They bent themselves to their rowing. The night was still strangely warm for winter, but a cold wind came off the gray gleaming water; no one was sweating much.

Presently it grew still worse. There was a shout from one of the other boats, and everyone turned their eyes to the east. Morlock followed their gaze, but at first he wasn't sure what he was seeing. He had never seen anything like this before.

Emerging from the blue broken clouds, high above the moonslit eastern edge of the Bitter Water, were gray shapes like teardrops, riding through the sky like ships. Their prows were pointed; their sterns were wide and rounded. Under each midsection hung chains suspending a long black craft, snakelike in form.

"What are they?" he wondered. "Are they alive?"

No one answered. No one understood him. But the townsfolk knew something about them. Some turned back to their oars with renewed panicky energy; others put their hands over their faces, resigning themselves to their fate.

Morlock was not the resigned type. He struck out at the water savagely with his oar, but turned often to watch the approach of the airships. At first they were headed toward the center of the Bitter Water, but then they turned their prows slightly to intercept the flatboats. The sharp ends of the airships tilted slightly forward, and the snakelike gondolas slid forward on their chains.

The old woman in front of him said something and he turned to look at her. She said it again. He shrugged and opened his free hand.

She grunted and gestured impatiently back toward the shore. Then Morlock did understand: the airships had something to do with the werewolves.

Morlock was impressed. He also felt a savage covetous longing to know how the things were made, how they worked. But the main thing at the moment was to survive, and that looked increasingly unlikely.

The airships were clearly coming in to attack the flatboats. They were close enough now that he could see the windows lining the snakelike gondolas. And in many of the windows a warm, welcoming red light shone.

"We're done," he remarked grimly, and turned back to his oar. He still wasn't the resigned type.

Soon the airships were nearly overhead, and he could see the bowmen in the windows, their arrows alive with red light.

"Ware fire!" he shouted, though he knew no one could understand him.

The bowmen shot, and burning arrows struck all around them, in the water and on the decks. Few seemed to have been wounded, a fact that struck Morlock as ominous. The arrows largely fell in the center of the boats, on open planking.

Morlock reached under his bench for his nearly empty backpack. He swung it over the rail and passed it through the water. Then he ran with it, still soaking, to the nearest arrow burning on the deck and tried to douse the flame. But he managed to do nothing except set the soaked backpack alight: the burning arrows were treated with some agent that burned even in water. And it burned fast and fierce: he tossed the backpack off the boat, but it was already half consumed, and the fires were chewing deep holes in the flatboats. As he watched bemusedly, boiling water began to bubble upward amidst the spreading flame. This boat was sinking, and a glance around showed him that the other flatboats were as well. People were abandoning them on every side.

Now was the time for the crews of the airships to attack again, if they were seeking to kill the refugees. But they didn't. In fact, Morlock saw that they were lowering something from the airship gondolas on long chains. Nets. They were nets. As they hit the water, people already adrift on the waves started to crawl into them.

Morlock could not imagine what use the werewolves could have for humans except as meat animals or slaves. He expected his fiery blood would keep him off the menu card, so he wasn't concerned about that. But he had never been a slave. He had no interest in trying the profession.

He turned back to his bench and grabbed Tyrfing from its sheath. He struck with the dark glittering blade, severing the bench from the deck. He tossed the bench into the water and jumped in after it, sword still in hand.

He flipped the bench on its back and lay Tyrfing across its underside. The bench seemed buoyant enough to carry him and his sword, at least until it absorbed some water. Looking back, he saw the old woman who had been rowing in front of him. She was sinking under the silver surface of the Bitter Water. He reached out with one hand to rescue her, but she scornfully struck it aside and let herself sink. Soon she passed from sight: a gray shape lost in the gray moonslit water.

Morlock looked up. One net full of dripping refugees was already being drawn up toward the gondola of an airship. The others were still gathering willing victims.

Maybe they were right, Morlock realized. It was a warm night for winter, but it was still a winter night on the Bitter Water. Death was there, in the chill of the water if nothing else. He might live longer if he resigned himself to his fate, as they were doing.

But he wasn't the resigned type. And he had never been a slave. "Eh," he said, and paddled grimly away into the night.

His plan was to swim westward and then turn south toward the shoreline, hopefully landing at a place not thick with angry werewolves.

He hadn't much hope. The weather was warm, perhaps, by the frosty standards of the north, but the Bitter Water was cold-far colder than his blood. There was a fire in him, but he knew that water quenches fire. Still, he would not surrender. Death was in the water. He knew it; he felt it. But he would fend it off as long as possible.

A current, even colder than the other water, caught him and dragged him off the course he thought he was taking. Soon he couldn't even remember where he had thought land was. If he could hold out until dawn…

He did not hold out. The cold sank deep teeth into his aching limbs. His mind began to fog. He forgot to raise his head occasionally to look for signs of land. He found himself drifting occasionally, his feet motionless in the killing water, loosely grasping the bench, his eyes closed. Every time it happened it was harder to kick his feet into motion. And eventually the time came when he found himself adrift half submerged in the water, the wooden waterlogged bench lost on the dark sea. He kept his limbs moving as long as he could, but eventually the darkness in the cold water entered his mind and he sank, already dying, into the killing water.