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cape fluttered around her chubby form as she scampered across the wood planks and slipped under the
door.
One quiss? I thought they traveled in hordes. He pulled on his britches and stuck his feet in his boots.
I suppose it is possible a quiss could be this far inland. It could have become disoriented and
followed the river. But alone? I thought they came out of the ocean en masse every three years.
He buckled on his sword belt, stuck his hunting knife in its sheath, and grabbed a short quiver full of
darts. Don t quiss harass the northeast coast, not the southwest? He opened the door and entered
the dark hallway. Perhaps it isn t a quiss at all.
He crept up the ladder and surveyed the deck before stepping out of the open hatch.
How am I supposed to find a little minneken before I find this intruder?
A movement along the wall caught his eye. Jue Seeno emerged from the shadows, scurried across the
wood deck, and leapt for his leg. He found it disconcerting to have her scramble up the outer seam of his
britches, up the side of his shirt, and onto his shoulder.
She panted. Tiny puffs of hot air tickled his jaw line.
 One dead. Around the corner. Very unpleasant sight. She shuddered.  I believe the quiss has gone to
the stern, toward the quarterdeck. We must hurry if we are to save lives.
Bardon had never seen firsthand what the ocean creatures could do, but he d come across accounts in
books and heard tales from seasoned warriors. As one of the seven low races, quiss rivaled the blimmets
in their ability to quickly destroy a target. However, blimmets fought with more vicious, mad-animal vigor.
Quiss moved slowly. The danger lay in their numerous, boneless arms. Quiss encircled their victims with
these muscular appendages, each having three rows of suction cups running from shoulder to tip. In the
center of each cup, a sharp and hollow tongue the size of a large needle squirmed, tasting the air,
searching for flesh to penetrate.
Bardon edged to the corner and cautiously peered around. On the deck a heap of clothing marked the
spot where a seaman had gone down in the clutches of the intruder. Nothing moved in the area, so
Bardon crept toward the figure. At first sight of the dead man s face, he swallowed to keep the bile from
rising in his throat. He no longer doubted that a quiss lurked somewhere on the ship.
The victim s flesh and blood had been sucked from his body. An empty bag of skin draped the skeleton.
Pinpricks in the center of inch-wide, red circles lined the corpse wherever skin showed.
Bardon tried not to breathe. His ears strained to hear the slight swish of an almost entirely boneless body.
Only two appendages from the trunk of the body contained enough cartilage to be used as legs. He
remembered gruesome tales told in the dormitory. They usually ended with a quiss arm writhing out from
a dark corner and snatching a helpless boy.
Once a victim fell into the clutches of a quiss, the thousand tongues stabbed. Hopefully, the last thing the
unfortunate soul felt was the pricks of the beast s tongues. The quiss then injected its poisonous saliva,
which broke down flesh into a soft mush, and sucked all the soft tissue until the skin was nothing more
than a sack for the bones.
Each hair on Bardon s arms and the back of his neck stood on end as a tremor of horror ran across his
skin. He turned away from the sailor, blinked, swallowed, and took a deep breath.
 Which way did you say it went, Mistress Seeno?
 Look down, to your right.
In the eerie light of a half moon, he saw a dark, sketchy trail like a mass of inky lines entangling solid
footprints. The beast walked upright on two legs with its many arms trailing. With another shock of
revulsion, Bardon realized the dark lines would be red in the sunlight. The creature oozed the fluids of its
last meal.
 Don t touch that, warned Jue Seeno.
 I know. Bardon held his breath.  I know it s poisonous.
 Even the smell will become toxic soon.
 It ll smell worse than this?
 Definitely.
 Let s get rid of this creature. I m already tired of his company.
Bardon drew his sword and followed, careful not to step on the slimy trail. The sound of a man struggling
put an end to his caution. He ran from the shadows of the quarterdeck with his sword raised, ready to
strike. Jue Seeno squeaked and leapt from his shoulder, landing on a barrel and shouting a cheer,
 Skewer it through and through, young man! Don t let it get the best of you!
 To arms! Bardon shouted.  To arms!
He did not wait for an answer to his call for help but sprinted across the deck. The quiss, with its bulbous
head and flailing arms, all but covered a small, wiry man. With a downward swing, Bardon sliced open
the back of the creature. The ease with which his sword penetrated the body of the quiss surprised him.
I ll have to be careful not to cut through this beast and into the sailor.
A brief glimpse of the seaman s face as the quiss twirled toward its attacker told Bardon he need not [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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