They call it a Raetian Sleigh Ride: apparently, one harpoons a whale and then secures the rope tight to the front of a rowboat. Then, you hold on, and pray to the Angelus the creature tires out before it thinks to dive and drag you under.
Personally, I think the cold winters so far north drive them all mad.
* François du Lutetia, A Geography of the World
☀
12th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC
Trist had stripped himself down to only a pair of breeches, and his toes dug into the cold sand. The rising sun had touched the morning clouds with a brush of red, orange, pink and purple shades. He watched the three small boats moving out across the harbor, and tried to hold his arm still while the old fisherman worked on it.
“You are certain that won’t slip?” Clarisant asked, for the third time, and the old man nodded.
“I know my knots, m’lady,” he grumbled, giving one last yank. Trist, on the other hand, did not, and couldn’t have named the particular twists of hemp cord if his life had depended on it. He’d ended up with something like a hemp bracelet, extending into a foot of cord that was then tied around his longsword, crossing diagonally around where the crossbars joined the hilt, in a figure eight pattern.
“Thank you,” Trist said to the old fisherman. “I will not need to worry about losing my sword, now.”
“Hook a big one,” the old man said, with a grin, then turned and began to pad his way back up the beach. Trist couldn’t blame him: they were close enough to the water that the leviathan could strike here, if it wanted to.
“It feels strange not to be wearing any armor,” Trist admitted to Claire, who remained next to him as they both watched for movement out on the bay. The sea breeze brushed the hairs of his forearms and his bare chest.
“It means you need to not get hit,” she pointed out.
Trist nodded. “You should get back to the north gate,” he suggested. “That will be well out of the daemon’s reach.”
His wife shook her head. “No. I’m going to stay right here on the beach. You’re going to need someone in order to use the Hunter’s Boon on the way back. I’ll be your beacon. Just run back to me when it’s all over.”
“You could get someone else to do that,” he pointed out. “And put yourself somewhere safe.”
“There isn’t anywhere safe in this entire city,” Claire reminded him. “Not until the siege is over.”
“True enough,” Trist admitted. “At least back up the beach a ways, when I go?”
“I can do that,” Claire said. Trist glanced to his side, to see her smiling, and couldn’t help smile in return. “Look!” she stretched out her arm, pointing at the skiff with the small sails, which had banked off to the right from the two rowboats. Trist followed her pointing finger, and saw the back of something massive break the waves.
“Forneus,” Trist whispered, and reached out, unspooling an orange thread from his core. Cast out by his intent, it latched onto the daemon in the sea, tightening into a burning line that linked the two of them. Trist shifted his longsword into a one handed grip, angled back and away from him, a modified Near Guard, and pushed off with his back foot. Next to him, Claire gasped, recoiling from the spray of sand he kicked up into the air, and then she was left somewhere far behind him.
Trist’s bare feet hit the breakers, moving faster than any mortal man, and he kicked up a near-constant spray of salt-water behind him, interrupted only when he needed to leap a wave. The Hunter’s Boon drew him forward like a lodestone, and he sprinted as fast as he could in a straight line. Turning would only slow him, and Trist couldn’t afford to slow down or he would sink. He closed rapidly on the sailing skiff, skimming across the morning waves, and was close enough to hear the fisherman’s scream of horror when Forneus finally rose from the depths.
The daemon’s head was a thing of horror: it reminded him of Sammāʾēl, the Sun Eater, only slightly smaller. Its fanged maw was unmistakably that of a predator, reeking of rotted fish, and sprays of horns swept back from its jaw and forehead into a kind of mane. With a sickening crunch, it bit down on the skiff, breaking the boat in half and sending splinters shooting off in every direction. Trist couldn’t see whether the sailor had jumped off in time, or not.
Before the leviathan could sink back beneath the surface of the bay, Trist was on it, reaching his left hand over to get a grip on his hilt, then swinging the blade up in a rising cut as he ran up the waves and onto the monster’s body. The tip of the longsword dragged along Forneus’ body, leaving a line of blackened and twisted scales as Trist’s Daemon Bane Boon did its work.
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With a roar, the sea-monster recoiled, rearing back its head. Now that he’d arrived at his prey, Trist lost the extra boost of speed from the Hunter’s Boon - which meant that he wouldn’t be able to run over the water any longer, not unless he was willing to set Clarisant as a target and run back to her. For the rest of this fight, he needed to use the beast's own body as his ground.
It rolled onto its back, shifting underneath him, so that Trist had to scramble along with it to stay on, rather than be dumped off to one side. It was like trying to walk sideways on a rolling barrel, but his perception of the world had already shifted like it always did once a fight began, allowing him to make full use of the increased speed and reflexes granted by his Fae Touched Boon. To make certain that he wouldn’t be thrown off, Trist lifted his sword up, reversed his grip, and stabbed it directly down into the exposed belly of the daemon, where it sank nearly the length of his arm. That kept him secure in place, like an anchor, for the moment, which meant he wasn’t thrown off into the sea, but it also left him exposed.
Forneus’ head lashed forward, jaws open, teeth the size of arming swords glinting in the early morning sun. If Trist remained where he was any longer, he would be bitten in half, so he set his bare foot against the daemon’s belly, and with a heave, yanked his sword out of it in a spurt of black ichor that was uncomfortably hot where it hit his bare skin. No longer anchored in one place, and moving so fast that he doubted whether the daemon could even track him accurately, Trist ran forward, ducked the incoming jaws, and then continued up and around the coil of his enemy’s neck.
With a final leap, he landed behind its head, and stabbed his sword down again, seeking the brain with the tip of his sword. Another spurt of black ichor sprayed up into his face, and Trist recoiled from it, closing his eyes for a moment out of instinct. Situated here, Forneus wouldn’t be able to breathe fire on him.
“Get your sword out!” Acrasia screamed in his ear.
Trist opened his eyes, only to see the water of the bay rushing up at him. He hit so hard that it felt like being thrown from a horse, and then he was being dragged behind the daemon in a spray of water that hit him in the face. Trist couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. He’d lost hold of his longsword, which was still stabbed a foot and a half deep into the back of Forneus’ neck, but was being dragged by the rope attached to his hand. He skipped and bounced over the water, snatching half a breath once when he was up in the air, but couldn’t do anything.
The monster didn’t need to fight him, Trist realized. It didn’t need to bite him in half, or even to dash him against rocks. All it needed to do was drag him around the bay until he drowned. Neither his skill with a sword, nor his Boons, would do him a bit of good: he was tied to a sea-monster, and couldn’t get free.
With a desperate heave, Trist threw his left arm forward and caught both his hands together. Desperately, he felt for the hemp bracelet and the attached cord. Once he’d found them, he grasped the cord tightly in both hands. If he didn’t do something to change things, he would die here, and the city would fall. What would happen to all of the people depending on him, then? Claire would either die or be captured, and her whole family, as well. Their child might not ever be born - or, perhaps worse, would grow up in a kingdom ruled by daemons. He couldn’t allow that to happen.
Choking on salt water, Trist pulled himself forward, hand over hand. He could never have done it without the Fae Touched Boon, blazing the bright yellow of a lemon all around the edges of his darkening vision as he drew upon it to fuel his exhausted and battered arms. Three pulls forward, and then the monster bounced him off the waves again, and he slipped, hands skidding back along the wet cord painfully. He caught himself, and kept going, one hand over the other, advancing along the cord bit by bit.
When the fisherman had tied the cord just moments before, Trist had worried that it might be too short a length to allow for the movement he needed in order to fight; now, the cord seemed a mile long. Finally, he reached forward with his right hand and found the hilt and crossbars of his longsword.
Fueled by a sudden exhilaration, Trist got both hands onto the hilt of the sword. Now, if he could get his feet onto the monster’s neck…
Forneus surged up and out of the sea, raising its head high into the air. Trist was out of the water, now, above the bay, and able to suck in his first full breath since the daemon had begun dragging him. Unfortunately, he didn’t have long to savor the relief to his lungs.
The leviathan tucked its head down, diving straight at the waves. It was heading to the bottom of the bay, and unless Trist could get free, he was going with it.
With a shout, Trist yanked himself forward with all his strength, and got a bare foot onto the monster’s back. It gave him just enough leverage to yank the blade free before the impact. An explosion of seawater rose around Trist, and he hit the ocean with a slap. For the first time in the fight, he went under completely, into the cold and the dark. His cheeks puffed out as he tried to hold his breath, sucked lower and lower by the force of the great serpent’s passing body. It went on and on, scaled and spined, dragging him deeper and deeper.
Letting go of his sword, Trist reached up with cupped hands and stroked against the ocean. He’d learned to swim in the Rea, but that river was never as deep as this, even when he and Percy had jumped off the bridge. “Come on,” he could hear his dead brother urging him. “I’m right here, Trist! I won’t let you drown.”
His vision dimmed, but he kicked and swam upward until his lungs felt about to burst. Just when he thought he couldn’t swim another stroke, Trist burst up into the air, gasping for breath. The waves tossed him back and forth, and the longsword tied to his wrist dragged at him like an anchor on a chain, but he was alive.
Once he had his breath, Trist looked around, trying to catch sight of the beach, but he couldn’t see it. Clarisant, he thought, his will activating the Hunter’s Boon once again, and an orange line stretched out behind him and to his left. He’d gotten well and truly turned about.
Without any way to get his feet under him, or to build up speed, there would be no running back, so Trist set himself to it, and began to swim back toward shore. It left him exposed: Forneus could come up beneath him at any moment, jaws wide, and catch him without any more way to defend himself than the broken skiff.
He must have hurt the daemon grievously, however, for as the moments stretched on, no attack came. Perhaps the fight had exhausted it, and it could risk no further conflict without losing its monstrous form.
“Sir Trist!” a man called, and he turned his head to catch sight of one of the two rowboats. The fisherman threw him a rope, and a moment later, he’d dragged himself up into the boat.
“Back to shore,” Trist gasped, and allowed his eyes to close in exhaustion.