The serpent was so fast he knew he would have to lead the shot. In one smooth motion, praying for success, Dion drew and released.
The arrow jutted an instant later from the water, and this time the shaft was buried in reptilian flesh. The head rose to the surface, and he saw that the arrow had struck a soft part on the side of its head. The scaled body lying across the ship trembled again.
His chest heaving, Dion didn’t take his eyes off the serpent. But the creature stayed motionless.
Dion turned to Cob. ‘I think—’
Something smashed into the bottom of the boat, so hard that it knocked Dion clear off the vessel and tumbling into the water headfirst. He managed to keep hold of his bow as he fell, but holding onto his weapon made it difficult to swim. When he finally surfaced and looked back at the boat he felt the blood drain from his face.
The creature he had killed was only a serpent. This was a true leviathan.
Its head was as big as the boat, large enough to swallow the vessel in a couple of mouthfuls. It raised itself slowly out of the water, slippery and scaled, the crest behind the triangular head fully erect. The wildran fixed a baleful stare on the boat’s two occupants.
The leviathan opened its jaws and roared.
The deafening noise was the most terrifying sound Dion had ever heard. The teeth revealed in the open maw were the size of swords. Before Sal could react the creature arched its neck and shot down from the sky, snapping him in half with a single bite, spraying the wooden planking with blood.
Cob stood tall and held his axe in both hands. When the leviathan came for him he swung at the monstrous jaw but the creature dodged out of the way, faster than Dion would have thought it could move. Cob’s return swing never came.
The serpent’s huge mouth opened wide as it plummeted, swallowing the old sailor whole, together with a mouthful of splintered timber and surging water. The creature continued the movement to crash through the hull of the broken sailboat. The force of its passage created a swirling vortex of planks and rope as the vessel disintegrated.
Dion was sucked into the water behind its passage, together with the boat’s remains. The paddle-like tail of the leviathan grew ever more distant. He clutched at anything his fingers could find.
22
Dion woke and saw scales.
He had arms wrapped around him, arms that kept his head above water and pulled him through the water with the smooth passage of a creature born to the sea.
His mind clouded and eyes stinging, recollections came back to him in a series of flashing images. The last thing he could remember was grabbing hold of a plank as his body was dragged down deep underwater. At some stage he’d risen to the surface and thrown his body on top of the wood, draping himself over it like seaweed on a rock. Exhaustion overcame him.
Sadness took hold of his heart when he remembered the deaths of his crew, eaten by wildren. Cob was gone. Dion was alone.
Now he was being carried in a strange embrace. He was on his back, head carefully raised out of the water. His body was angled so that he was looking at his feet, which were beneath the surface. Below his legs he could see scales.
The long tapering body under his own terminated in a fish-like tail. But the arms that held him had soft white skin and feminine hands. The tail swept at the water; the arms held him tightly.
Ever so slowly, Dion rotated his head.
Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of silky silver hair and pale brown eyes, a heart-shaped face with a small chin and pert nose. He tried to turn still further but her pink lips parted and she made a strange shushing noise, her placid face creasing slightly in a frown before returning to an expression of animal-like contentment.
Dion was in the arms of one of the merfolk.
He had heard tales of men being rescued like this, but never believed a word of them. It was always the female wildren – mermaids – who saved drowning sailors, taking them to land and safety. Even now Dion couldn’t believe what was happening.
She swam on her back, holding him to her chest. Despite being so close to a wildran, rather than try to move, he was suddenly afraid that if he struggled she would leave him to die in the open sea, which was calm but showed a flat horizon with no sign of land in any direction. He hoped she knew where she was going; she seemed to have a plan.
He couldn’t help but wonder what was going on inside her head. Did she think that perhaps he was one of her male kin, wounded and no longer able to swim? Was she intelligent enough to think of it as a good deed?
Feeling something entangled with his upper arm he stared dully at a length of curved wood, finally realizing it was his bow; he’d somehow managed to keep hold of it.
Dion laid his head back on her breasts and stared up at the bright blue sky.
Once more, weariness overcame him.
‘What do we do with him?’
‘You ask the wrong question, brother. How did he get here?’
‘He could have swum here.’
‘From where?’