James Somers - The Order of Shaddai

A pair of strong hands reached under Matthew’s arms, hauling the boy to his feet. He could hardly stand. His head spun in a daze. “Matthew, are you all right?”

It was the voice of Arness, Sarah’s father. Her mother was crying next to him. “Matthew, where is Sarah?”

The boy tried to fix his eyes on Sarah’s parents. Blood dripped onto his shirt collar. “They took her,” he said, trying not to cry.

Sarah’s parents looked at one another. There could be only one reason why Mordred’s Wraith Riders would single out their daughter and abduct her. Somehow, Mordred knew about Sarah’s association to Gideon-knew she was his wife. And as Sarah had confided to her parents: Gideon was traveling with Shaddai’s Deliverer.

Since the time of their departure, Captain Bonifast’s crew had been working feverishly to keep the ship running hard toward the Isle of Macedon. Since the time daylight illuminated the sea around them, they had doubled those efforts because two of Mordred’s Man-O-War battleships had been spotted hot on their trail.

Cannon shot sailed toward the stern of the Trinity, then fell abruptly short, crashing into the sea, sending up plumes of spray. “It’s uncanny!” Levi complained as he watched them from the helm. “We should be outrunning them.”

Ethan and Gideon stood nearby. “How long before they get within firing range?” Ethan asked.

“My guess is they’ll be able to hit us within twenty minutes at the rate they’ve been gaining,” Gideon reported.

“Get those specials up here, boys!” Levi demanded. “I want two on the stern rail!”

Several men labored to bring two of Captain Bonifast’s special, long-barreled cannons up onto the poop deck in order to fire them off the rear of the ship. When they had fastened them into position, another man followed with powder and prepped them for firing.

“Ready, Captain!”

“Fire at will and get more ammo up here!”

A steady stream of sailors carried Levi’s specially cast shells, with the oblong bodies and pointed ends, up to where the cannons were positioned. The gunners ignited the cannons. One of the shells hit a Man-O-war high on the hull. A plume of wood chips erupted and was sucked away by the wind. The other shot fell into the sea between the two ships.

“Ah-ha! We hit ‘em!” Levi shouted proudly. “Let ‘em have it again, lads!”

The gun crews reloaded as the Man-o-wars fired another volley. They still fell short of the Trinity, but not as much as before. The gun crews readied, aimed and fired the two special, long-range cannons.

Ethan watched the shells hurtle through the air toward their targets-one several fractions of a second ahead of the other. He gasped as a demon shot away from the deck of one of the enemy ships. He appeared powerful, though not in the same league as Jericho.

The demon pulled his sword from his side and crossed into the path of the first shell from Captain Bonifast’s cannon. It all happened in the blink of an eye. The demon cleaved the metal slug in two, then hurled his weapon away toward the second inbound shot. The sword spun around like a boomerang, clipped the shell and then returned to the hand of its owner.

The precision was amazing, but to the eyes of Captain Bonifast and his crew, one shell had exploded in mid-air while the other seemed suddenly to veer off course to drown in the sea. “What happened?” Gideon asked. The surprised look on Ethan’s face was unmistakable. He had seen something more than the rest of them had.

“There’s a demon deflecting our rounds,” he said. Ethan expected the demon to rush ahead and board the Trinity. He prepared to launch into the spiritual realm in order to defend them, but the demon did not approach.

“What’s it doing now!” Gideon demanded.

Ethan concentrated upon the demon. “I’m not sure. It’s not coming any closer.”

Bonifast’s special cannons fired several more rounds, but each met with the same demise: deflection or destruction. Meanwhile the Man-O-wars still closed on the Trinity and their shots fell into the sea nearer to the stern than before. Soon they would be able to hit the Trinity while their rounds still had enough momentum to do real damage.

Ethan watched as the demon suddenly veered away from the entire exchange. It dove into the depths of the Azure Sea and Ethan lost sight of it. “It’s gone. I’m not sure where it’s going-into the sea for some reason,” he said.

“Why would it do that?”

But Ethan could only turn to his mentor and shrug. Gideon’s expression softened. Unfortunately none of them had long to wait on the answer to the question. Something breeched the water off the starboard side approximately five hundred yards away. A plume of water erupted skyward, giving birth to a nightmare of gigantic proportion.

Calls came from all over the ship. “Sea dragon!” they yelled.

“What?” Ethan couldn’t believe what he saw. “I thought they were only myths-stories told to children!”

“Get the cannons ready port and starboard!” Levi demanded.

“Have you ever seen one of these before, Levi?” Gideon asked. The look on his face gave the priest his answer-none of them had. “I’ve only heard tales,” he said. “But who ever pays any attention to those? They say the sea dragons only hunt large whales in the depths. People have claimed to see whale carcasses shredded to pieces or bitten in half, but I never believed them.”

The snake-like serpent had armor of richly colored blue scales, except on its white underbelly. This dragon possessed no wings or appendages of any land sort at all-a sea serpent. Great fins protruded from various places on its body, allowing it to navigate more efficiently in the depths of the Azure where it normally hunted.

The beast drew its body upward and threw its hydrodynamic head toward the Trinity as the ship passed by. The dragon produced a piercing, high-pitched screech. The dragon flashed row upon row of large, serrated teeth like a shark, then plunged back into the water, the entire body following the course of the head. A great lump of its body rolled just above the water ending when the tail finished the course and disappeared beneath the surface again.

“It’s coming!” Ethan shouted. His sight allowed him to penetrate the murk and see the massive creature swimming toward the Trinity.

“Ready the guns, men!” Levi commanded. He kept a white-knuckle grip on the helm, hoping the sea dragon would not emerge at the bow or stern where defenses were weakest. “When you get a shot, take it!” he shouted to the gunnery crews.

For what seemed like an age, everything remained still. Only the sound of the Trinity treading water was heard now as even the enemy ships had stopped firing-most likely curious as to the dragon’s appearance and its next move.

Ethan watched as it drew nearer. The beast swam incredibly fast. Then the great toothy head erupted from the Azure on the Trinity’s starboard side. Its head seemed even more massive close-up and its open maw could have swallowed an elephant whole. The huge serpent held its body aloft for a moment and then brought the head down to strike.

The mouth split into rows of jagged teeth and smashed into the deck. The strike caught three men. The deck boards buckled and cracked where the men had been standing. One sailor disappeared inside the mouth completely. Another dangled by one leg caught between the teeth. He screamed frantically as his tan trousers turned red. The third man fell away to the side sustaining scrapes, cuts, and probably broken bones.

What happened to the first man in the next flash of those teeth was too horrible to describe-rows of serrated knives transformed from bone white to crimson. The second man fell away as the head rose up, chewing, swallowing. His lower leg was gone. Some rushed to help him. They brandished blades, trying to hack at the sea serpent. Gideon ran among them.