Queen of the Sky Frontier - Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Azrael was not sure exactly what she had expected, but after three days aboard the riverboat she was almost settling into a routine. Still disguised as a boy, with the half-dozen crew paying little attention to her, she spent half the time rather idly, lounging on deck among the bales of whatever the ship was carrying. The rest of the time she stood at the bow of the ship and learned from the channel-caller, who bellowed directions to the pilot in an almost incomprehensible argot that seemed half profanity.

The city was far behind them, and they had left the Mississippi almost two days before, wending their way up narrow and brackish backwater channels with hardly a soul in sight. There were a few rowboats to be seen, crewed by wary-eyed fishermen and other such country types. They passed ramshackle houses seemingly built of clapboard and moss set right down upon the water's edge, slumped in the shade like sleeping old men.

Azrael had expected the ship to be carrying passengers, but she found the tattered old saloon room inside piled with boxes and crates, the chandeliers drooping and unlit. It was the second day when she put together the piled goods and furtive route and decided she must be aboard a smuggler's ship. It seemed rather obvious when she deduced it and she felt foolish.

This was like no country she had ever seen. It was warm and muggy down close to the water, even in January. The river was at low ebb, and the caller was kept busy, as the old ship chugged back and forth to evade mud slicks and sandbars. Cypress trees grew right down into the channel, both live and dead ones standing just as unmoved by time or season. Heavy branches hung low over the water, draped with thick moss. Dragonflies hummed over the smooth water, and alligators lounged on the muddy banks.

The caller was named Grute, though she was not certain what language it was intended to be. He had a singsong, often indecipherable accent and swore almost continuously. As they swung out into a wider channel, he stood up and kept his eyes on the water more diligently than before.

Azrael glanced from shore to shore. This was a wider, deeper channel, with a swifter current, and she could feel the ship's engine rumble aft as it struggled to maintain speed. The already-familiar slap of gators flopping into the water echoed through the evening light. The air was thick with mosquitoes that feasted on her shipmates but had no interest in her, it seemed.

"Anow yoo godda watchem cloase 'ere," Grute said. "You watchem for de gators, you seeum?" He spat overboard. "Cunts."

"I see them," she answered, remembering to keep her voice low to sound more boyish. "Will they attack us?"

"Oyeh, ifyoo is inna water, shits'll ripyafukin armsoffayoo. Suck it downlayk a hooer gulpin' afteryacock." He spat again. "But da not whyoo watchem now." He pointed at the dozen gators lounging on the muddy bank. "Youseeum dere? Good. You noseeum? Bad, mebbe ver bad. Shit eater fuck shits."

"So it's bad if there are no gators?" She looked around, wondering.

"Payup attend! We inna deeper way now. Shit out 'ere worse anna belly-fuck skeetos orra shiteat gatorfuck." He pointed at the water. "Deeper get, worse get. Some stuff innere now. Fucks make gator lookalike bebbe minno. Come down fra fuckin' Texas. Cuuuunts!" He bellowed the last, then hawked and spat copiously over the rail. Azrael winced at the gob plopped in the water.

Azrael didn't know what to say to that, really, so she just kept quiet. It was getting dark, and the lights came on all over the ship, illuminating the whole deck and the water around them in a golden glow. The strings of lights on the boat reflected in the still water below, making it seem as if some magical land was shining just below them.

"Where are we going?" Azrael said, unsure if it was something she was not supposed to ask. Grute shrugged as if he didn't care.

"Wego here, wego dere. Doan madder much tome. I git pay and drink the same me." He laughed. "Rinow wego to Karnak uppa disriver. Weget tomorrow, mebbe, and den I get some rum, anna somefucken coffin varnish, anna I getta whore with two legs anna fucker untilla my dick is numb. I donna care offa she hasa cunt bigger 'an my haid me, I gonna screwer good me!"

"Two - two legs?" Azrael said, cringing a bit.

"Ayah! Me scrood a hooer onetime who hadda one leg, and den me screw one who hadda nolegs. One wid nolegs okay, but one leg not so good, she keepon kicking alla time." He punched the side of his head. "Like dat dere. Pow! Imma try two-legged hooer dis time. Fuck I say yes me!"

There was a chorus of splashes off to the right and Grute shut up, grabbed for his lantern and held it up. He kept a hand on the gun belted at his waist, squinted off into the dark. "Gators is gone," he said tightly.

Azrael staggered a bit as the ship lifted slightly in the water, like a wave was passing under her, only there were no waves on the still, muddy river. Grute stood still, his legs placed wide for balance, and drew his pistol. "Eeehhhh fuck."

There was a sloshing in the water on the right side and he turned that way, squinting through the dark. His thumb snapped back the hammer of his pistol and he fired into the dark. "Caaaaaaap'nnnnn! Wegotta snatcher out 'ere I'm thinkin'!"

Azrael was not sure what she should be looking for as she looked around. She had slightly better night vision than most, she was learning, but all she could see in the rapidly failing light was the small pool of electric illumination around the riverboat. Water dripped on her cheek and she wiped at it, then frowned. Was it raining?

She looked straight up and for a moment was not really certain what she was seeing. Something loomed over her, not rearing up, but reaching down out of the dark into the light from the fitful bulbs. It was grey and slick-looking and it dripped with smelly river water. It moved and she suddenly realized she was looking at a head nearly as long as she was, flat and serpent-like, with a festoon of bristling, curved teeth jutting from the closed jaws like ill-fitted jackstraws. Its skin was mottled and smooth, and two little, piggy eyes were set far back on the skull. It turned to point one of them at her more fully and she saw a slick black membrane peel back to reveal a golden eye with a shrinking dark pupil.

Azrael tried to make a noise and found she could only wheeze. She tried again and made a thin, breathy sound. She tingled all over, and then she staggered back three steps and fell on her ass on the deck. The massive head twitched and she saw the nostrils set slightly on top of the snout flare and snort, smelled hot fishy breath.

Grute whirled around and his eyes bulged when he saw it. His hand came up, thumb slipping on the hammer of the pistol so when he pulled the trigger it was only half-cocked and snapped down without firing. Azrael saw the neck muscles of the beast twitch and then the head flashed forward like a striking adder, a furious surge of speed that snapped the jaws closed on Grute's body and crunched. She found her breath and screamed as blood rained down and her erstwhile companion was ripped off the deck and shaken like a rat overhead.

He didn't make a sound, and Azrael covered her head as blood splattered over her. Grute's pistol clattered to the deck beside her and she grabbed it, crawled backward as the monster noisily swallowed its prey. Shouting came from belowdecks and aft as men came running to the sound of her scream.

Azrael got the pistol in a proper grip, snapped the hammer all the way back and aimed at the looming water monster. It didn't seem to have really noticed her, and she wavered for a moment between the desire to shoot and the fear that it would only draw attention to her. She was shaking, her teeth actually chattering together in complete terror in a way she had always imagined to be purely fictional.

One of Grute's legs thudded to the deck not six feet from her and she yelped in surprise. The sound made the beast twitch, and it turned to look at her with one gold eye. Even now she was only getting an impression of how large it must be, because the enormous neck - big around as a small horse's body - stretched away into the dark to an unseen body somewhere beneath the water.

The gold eye twitched and it sniffed hard at the air, then struck. Azrael rolled aside desperately as the beast slammed its jaws shut on a strapped-down wooden crate, disintegrating it into a spray of splinters and smaller boxes full of bottles that smashed and shattered on the decking. The smell of alcohol assaulted her nose, and the creature's as well, because it whipped back, shaking its head savagely and making a kind of wheezing, trumpeting noise.

Men ran onto the deck just as the thing heaved its body against the side of the boat and made the deck pitch violently. Two men yelled and fell into the water, the others staggered sideways and fell into each other. The river monster again thrashed against the gunwales and the ship was shoved sideways through the water. Bulbs fell from the light strings and shattered, spitting sparks.

The thing lunged low again, gnashing its teeth with blood dripping, and Azrael felt that strange thing happen again. There was a cold tingle on her belly, more defined and deliberate than before. She felt a burning bloom on either side of her back, but inside her, and then course down as if something was fueling her blood like a fire.

She leaped to her feet, feeling like she weighed nothing. The monster turned toward her, slamming its monstrous head sideways into a crate and sending it flying into her. She batted it aside with one hand and was amazed to see the wood shatter and come apart under her blow. She brought up the pistol, seeming to have all the time on earth, and then she fired three times into the massive skull as it closed on her.

Two bullets gouged into the grey flesh, tearing open wounds and loosing gouts of black blood, while the third bullet went wide and then the hammer snapped down on a dead chamber with a dry click.

The click was like the snap of a mesmerist's fingers and she came awake, of a kind, the gun suddenly heavy in her fist, her left hand aching from striking the crate. Everything went faster as the beast reared back, then heaved part of its hidden body up out of the water and crashed down on the side of the ship. The weight of it shoved the deck down on one side and lifted the other under Azrael's feet so violently she was hurled through the air.

She tumbled, lost the gun, and screamed once before she smacked into the brackish water, came up flailing for breath. The water heaved around her and she felt panic give her strength, if only ordinary strength. Once glance showed her the monster looming over the boat, neck arched, bloodied head moving this way and that as it searched for her.

Something moved in the water with her and the belly-loosening fear that it was not alone got her moving. Desperate, she shrugged off the heavy jacket and swam for the shore. Water filled her boots but she resisted kicking them loose, knowing she would need them if she survived the swim.

There was a hissing sound and the lights on the boat went out behind her. She heard shouts and gunshots, more screams and the bellows of the enraged river beast. She didn't look back. At least she could be relatively sure there were no alligators nearby, or so she might hope.

She swam desperately until she felt mud under her fingertips, and then she kept swimming until she dragged herself up onto a muddy bank. It might just be a sandbar, and so she kept crawling until she felt grass under her hands, then the thick bole of a tree. Completely lost in the dark, unsure of even which way she was going, all she could think of was getting far enough away from the water to escape that long-necked thing.

Azrael staggered to her feet, water squelching in her boots as she tripped and stumbled through the undergrowth. Something thrashed through the weeds ahead of her and she flinched back, held still for a moment and then more shots and a deep-boned crack from the boat got her moving again. She couldn't go that way, and she didn't know what other kinds of horrors might lurk in this knotted forestland.

She knew the waterways snaked and coiled around, branched and rejoined. If she kept moving blindly in the dark she might blunder right back into the water. Even if it was water with no monster, it would be thick with alligators who would gladly tear her limb from limb in the blackness.

She stumbled into another treetrunk and made her decision. She gripped the rough bark and struggled upward, digging her bootheels in sideways to give her a drip. She fought up until she found a branch, then dragged herself up onto it. The tree forked extensively after that, and she found it relatively easy to keep climbing until the limbs started growing too thin to support her weight without bowing.

Azrael fitted herself into the fork, her back to the thicker trunk, and tried to make herself comfortable. She pulled off her boots and poured the water out, wedged them in a forked branch to dry overnight. Somewhere the water monster made a bellowing sound and she hunkered down in her hiding place. In the morning she might be able to find her way out of this place. She knew there was a town somewhere upriver, and any number of shacks along the bayou where she might find shelter and even help.

She told herself she would be all right, curled up into the smallest shape she could make as the night sounds resumed around her. Wet to the bone, she was cold, and she shivered as the droning of cicadas and of frogs filled the darkness. She bit her lips and refused to cry, abandoned as she was in this unhallowed land.

Continued in Chapter 11

---