Blood Runner: Book Three of the Empress Saga

CHAPTER TWENTY

     "So that's a seawolf," Enfri murmured.

    She took a step closer to the edge of the wharf and gawked at the sea monster being hoisted out of the water by an iron hook. The beast was enormous, ten paces at least. Its thick body was covered in fine scales, gray for the most part and white along the belly. Broad fins hung limp at its side, and its thick tail gave one last spasm before it died. But it was the face— winds, but that horrific, lifeless face— that would haunt Enfri's nightmares for the next few weeks. Soulless, black eyes and a gaping maw ringed with rows and rows of jagged teeth.

    Seawolves were supposedly the apex predators of the Southern Sea. Enfri imagined this creature overtaking and devouring a fierce kraken and had no difficulty doing so.

    The sun was nearing its zenith, banishing a small part of the cold. Snow no longer fell from the sky, and the weather was turning warm enough that patches of snow on the cobblestone streets were starting to thaw. Every now and then, a loud crack of ice sheets breaking off from the shoreline echoed through the air. Altier Nashal's weather was actually beginning to feel like spring. Two months late, of course, but a welcome change from the constant snowfall.

    "Seawolf?" Trent asked. "Oh no. This be a glacier shark. Bit surlier than the great whites up past the Gulf of Teularon, but this no be a seawolf. He be a baby next to them."

    Enfri turned away from the harbor's fishing operation in shock and pulled her thick fur coat tighter around herself. She looked the knight-lieutenant up and down, wondering if he was having a little amusement at her expense. The group of six Lost Company soldiers accompanying them watched the shark being hoisted onto the wharf by a steam-powered winch.

    Trent bellowed a deep and booming laugh as he noted Enfri's reaction. He traced a finger down the deep scar down his nose as he explained himself. "Seawolf be looking much the same, Majesty. Face be a bit flatter, I suppose. The size, though. Great buggers be four times as big."

    Enfri gasped. "Four times?"

    Trent laughed again and pointed at a sailing ship moored just inside the harbor. It was an Irdish trade frigate, three decks and three masts. Gray-skinned men with white hair clambered along the rigging and transferred crates of relief supplies to House Romov's cargo ferries.

    "Seawolf might swim alongside this old girl," he said. "If they be nose and nose, the dorsal fin be popping out of the water between the mainmast and the mizzen. You be seeing his tail breaking the surface just past the poop."

    Enfri wrinkled her nose. "The what?"

    "The..." He hesitated, then shook his head. "Seawolf be a bit longer than that there ship, Majesty. His jaws be wide enough that a man can pass right into his gullet without ever touching teeth."

    Nearby, a man with white skin and green geometric patterns across his face nodded along with Trent's description. "True enough. Horrid things, seawolves. They instill a primal sort of dread. I once had the displeasure of seeing one in the distance as I explored the shoals outside Irdruin. Haven't taken to the water since out of fear of the monsters, and that was ninety years ago."

    Enfri regarded the dragon that had accompanied her onto the wharf. Nooka had a pinched and pointed face, having the appearance of a man nearing his sixties. He walked with a slouch, his head bowed, and his well-made clothes were a riot of many different colors. Irdish dress, Enfri had learned, tended towards the colorful, perhaps to make up for the Irdish people's monochromatic pigmentation.

    Of all the dragons that arrived the previous night, Nooka the Artificer was the only one that Enfri had yet to see in his truest form. Deebee made mention that Nooka had lived in Irdruin as a human for the last hundred years, his neighbors none the wiser. By Nooka's own admission, he hadn't assumed his true form in all that time.