Sea of Revenants (Nysta Book 6) Read online

  Nysta #6: Sea of Revenants

  LATERAL BOOKS

  First Digital Edition Revised

  published in August 2016

  Copyright © Lucas Thorn 2016

  ASIN: B01JP8ASA4

  www.lucasthorn.com

  For my friends at Facebook.com/swordpunk

  Thank you for all your comments and encouragement.

  Also, to Shintaro Kastsu

  No greater action hero ever reached such a level of character.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  When I was in High School, I thought I was a great writer already. When you’re a teen, that’s the kind of thing you think about yourself. If anyone doesn’t like it, you dial up your angst and argue they just don’t understand anymore because they’re old. They’re not living on the edge.

  Despite my ragged home life, the one subject I always felt I could succeed in was English. Creative writing. I didn’t much care about the rest of my schooling. But I was comfortable with that. Until one of my teachers began giving me D-grades on my creative writing.

  That was a first.

  Stunned, I spent half that semester wondering what I was doing wrong. Then, one day I read our school paper and there was an interview with him. One of the questions was the obligatory “who’s your favourite author?”

  He’d chosen Stephen King.

  At this point, I was writing scifi comedy. That was my thing. I wanted to write the next Stainless Steel Rat. But when I read that, I resolved to give the man what he wanted.

  I wrote a story about a comet crashing and a bog-standard black monster rising up and killing half the town.

  And I got an A.

  That was the most important lesson I ever learned at High School, and one I didn’t fully appreciate for many years. Often, the art of a writer is considered a selfish one. That the writer is writing to please themselves. That ultimately a story is a finely honest work of art made solely for the writer’s entertainment and readers are just a by-product of the industry.

  This isn’t true. Writing is entertainment via storytelling. If you want to be popular, you need to give people what they want. And the only real difficulty is finding out what they want.

  I’m still searching for that part.

  For this book, I wanted to continue Nysta’s exploits, but I also wanted to entertain my readers with a new flavour if I could. Something to keep it fresh.

  Sea of Revenants was originally one of my first drafts. I had originally thought to start the series in the Crossbones, with Nysta coming ashore in a similar manner as Captain Sparrow. There, she’d meet up with goblin pirates and all sorts of zany locals. But a lot has changed since then. I decided to go further back into Nysta’s past for my first book and subsequent changes meant changing the nature of her adventure in the Crossbones.

  I had, however, always meant to work a deep and heartfelt homage to Lovecraft into this novel. Despite his many failings in terms of his opinions of women and indigenous peoples, his horror imagery is second to none and has that unique ability to tap into our most primal fears. His stories have inspired countless writers and artists of other mediums. In my opinion, we should celebrate his legacy if not his work.

  That, then, is the spirit in which I reference him here. It is for Cthulhu and Dagon, for Yog-Sothoth and the many more Great Old Ones his work has gifted the world.

  Ultimately, however, this is not a Lovecraft novel. It is a Nysta novel. And as such she’s influenced by a wide and varied list of popular entertainment. I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t give a special mention to one of my alltime favourite Zatoichi movies, Zatoichi in Desperation. This book is as much a product of my love of Zatoichi as it is for Lovecraft.

  I encourage you all to chase these references down. Consume them in the way an Old One would consume his followers.

  They’re there for you.

  Let them entertain you.

  Ask a Crossbones feller what he believes in and he’ll smile and ask you what day it is.

  - from A Soldier’s Memories of Godsfall by Scorn Darkbreath.

  PROLOGUE

  Ozric lay in the back of the longboat, sheet of thick oilskin covering his torn body.

  He could feel his blood seeping into the ribs of the vessel. Ribs which were almost as damaged as his own. His head was cradled against the open chest of the ork who’d served him for more than twenty years.

  A long time, he thought, for a servant.

  The ork’s final task had been to kneel before Ozric. To lift the crimson-hilted blade and plunge it deep into his ribs. Then the old ork had fallen back, blood splashing the lips of the wounded Vampire Lord.

  Ozric had sucked at the red flow. Drank deep of the ork’s dying blood before burrowing inside in search of the warm dead heart.

  The Vampire Lord’s eyes stared past the heavy corpse which he’d lapped at with desperation. He’d waited as long as he could before demanding the ork’s sacrifice. Had already consumed the reluctant crew. Crew who’d squabbled and fought amongst themselves as they sought to avoid their fate.

  In the end, none escaped without sacrifice.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  Fury and fear competed inside him, warring to see which would burn first.

  Frustratingly, his wounds refused to knit. Ozric couldn’t feel anything below his neck, and only his left arm would move on his command. Dark meat glistened in the moonlight which kissed wide cuts rent into his body by the kraken’s titanic limbs and teeth. Bones, splintered, floated like driftwood inside his flesh.

  The beast attacked more than a week before. Its huge body bigger than the boat and its arms thicker than the mast. They’d struggled, his magic against its bestial fury.

  And he’d wounded it. Badly. But it kept coming back. Time and time again until, enraged, he’d dived into the sea to wrestle its tremendous form with the dark magic of his touch. A fight which had left him like this. Too broken to move.

  He still wasn’t sure he’d killed it. Sometimes the crew reported shadows deep beneath the vessel. Shadows which reached but didn’t quite pierce the surface.

  He needed blood. More than could be found on the becalmed waters ironically named the Sea of Blood. The captain promised they’d make the icelocked shores of Sengiria by the next morning.

  Had sworn it.

  That was five days ago, and the captain was dead. Strangled by Ozric’s ork to feed the Vampire Lord’s insatiable need.

  Moaning wordless, he endured the soft roll of the ship as it drifted on glassy water. The wood creaked, bearing its own wounds with agonised acceptance. Wounds which allowed a slow dribble of saltwater to slither into the boat. A dribble which caressed his shoulders with frigid tongues.

  What he didn’t know, was the boat was listing. That the surface of the sea was yearning to haul itself inside and drag the boat to its depths with one final lunge. If he could have known, he’d have wept for the first time since childhood. Instead, he turned his face from the rancid ork flesh beneath his cheek and aimed his gaze to the relentless void behind the stars.

  Raised his left arm, nervelessly pointing to the moon. Its pale belly hung bloated and full within a bed of stars.

  “I must live.” He murmured to it as though it were a god. In that moment, perhaps it was. “This is not where I will fall.”

  The flesh of his forearm had been stripped back. Bones, pale in the moonlight, glinted as the first pinpoints of magic glowed. Sick and yellow, they burst from his body like pus from sores. He worked them free, not quite sure what he was doing.

  Working on instinct. On desperation.

  And a fear he couldn’t bear to acknowledge.

  He let the lights hover in
front of him, echoing the stars above. Then began to pull the plasmic energy which formed the universe at its heart. Dragged it from the void like a fisherman hauling nets. Nets too vast for his current state to control.

  He arched his back as weakness threatened to steal his power from him.

  Grit his teeth and roared against it.

  “I must live!”

  Water pushed at the boat, nosing it around in a half-circle.

  Trying to roll the splintered craft over.

  Lights expanded from dust, like the birth of dozens of minute stars. They twinkled, choking in the cold night air. Then brightened, growing larger. Swirling above his shattered body in a heated mass which gorged on itself as they multiplied.

  He moved his fingers, twitching to guide the flow. Sliced through the river of light with symbols so ancient that even the eldest of Vampire Lords didn’t know their origin. The symbols burned into existence and spun among the yellow orbs, humming in the air.

  In his ears, the rushing sound of power fed his hope.

  Words of power, clean and pure, left his swollen lips. Each word soothing his pain. It was a spell of complexity. One he doubted any other could cast even if they were mad enough to try.

  How mad was he? Had agony driven his sanity into the dark recess of his soul?

  Snarling at thoughts which threatened to break his concentration, he glared into the whirling fury of his spell as it ignited air, setting fire to the woollen sails.

  He coughed thick black lumps of gore as his body shuddered and began to die. He could feel the necrotic touch climbing his torso, quickened by the casting of magic which took so much effort.

  But he was close.

  Too close to pause.

  So close he could taste rivers of blood gushing down his throat.

  The glittering orbs of light clattered against each other. Rattled like bones. Flickering with electricity which lit his fevered face. He drew his lips back into a snarl. Squeezed his ruined hand into a defiant fist and shrieked the last few words of his spell.

  Felt the molten chaos churn and spit.

  Tried to hold it just a little longer as the yellow lights flared brighter than the newly risen sun.

  They breathed with him, inhaling his dreams.

  Then burst, sickly globes splashing into calm water and sinking beneath the dark waves as Ozric closed his tattered eyelids. A defeated whine escaped his lips on the heels of his final breath. He didn’t see the tentacles, thick and laced with gelatinous ooze, rise up over the edge of the boat and curl like snakes.

  Didn’t feel a thing as they slithered across the bottom of the boat to taste his feet.

  Legs.

  As his life sparked to a close, he was suddenly and uncharacteristically troubled that he didn’t know the ork’s name.

  Flames, done with the sails, raced down the mast seeking more fuel.

  Found none.

  Fire and sea had already claimed most of the boat already when, with a titanic exhale and bestial spasm of limb, the kraken took the rest. The broken vessel didn’t fight to stay afloat. It had already lost the will to resist.

  Three days later, a crimson-handled knife washed up on a beach whose shores were only just emerging from melting ice. A confused troll found it and claimed it as his own. Whooped with delight, then was silent as his fingers tightened around the gleaming hilt.

  The troll worked tirelessly for weeks, carving stone with crude chisel and hammer. He muttered as he built. Words which didn’t belong to his mouth.

  Next full moon, the troll was dead.

  But there was still more stone yet to be carved.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Blue Ox was wide of belly and with a long curved keel rising to an elegant dragon figurehead at the prow. A single mast bore the wide square sail straining to cling to the wind and propel the vessel through wave and spray with urgency.

  Large enough to crew roughly thirty Fnordic raiders, it now carried twelve.

  And one elf.

  Its guts were relatively full, though most of the cargo had been dumped a day before in an effort to coax more speed from the frightened ship. Half the raiders were fighting their fear in search of sleep, buried beneath woollen blankets and curled between the thwarts. The rest lined the rails, watching sea and sail with equal anxiety.

  Pressed against the prow, the elf called Nysta was wrapped in wool and cloaked in an oilskin coat she’d taken from the personal chest of a dead man.

  Bad luck, the men said. To take the belongings of a dead man.

  “Bad for him,” she’d returned, teeth chattering with cold. “Not for me.”

  Wind snapped at her cheeks as she slowly lifted her hooded head to peer across the length of the longboat. An impassive stare which revealed nothing of her thoughts.

  She was small for an elf, though more tightly-muscled than most. Where the crew wore thick wool tunics and jerkins of bright colour, her clothes were more suited to the streets of a city. Once, the pants and jacket she wore had been the uniform of a guild of royal assassins. However, it’d been patched and repaired too many times since she’d left Lostlight and was now barely recognisable as such.

  Covering the battered uniform were dozens of pouches and sheaths. While some were empty, many were not. The number of knives she carried had, at first, amused the crew.

  But not anymore. They’d seen her use them.

  Sheltered beneath the hood, her hair was twisted into gnarled locks of black through which many strips of cloth were knotted. Trophies of battles she’d survived and lessons she wanted to remember.

  Face marred by a scar which began at the corner of her mouth and tore up to a point just below her eye before jagging out toward her ear. Another lesson. One which left her smile, when she smiled, looking like a cruel grin.

  Whether she was beautiful or ugly, many of the crew had been unable to decide. But they’d discovered the cruelty in her smile held no empty threats when she severed the fingers of the first who’d moved too close after being told she didn’t like being touched.

  He’d lost his fingers, but it wasn’t Nysta who killed him a few nights later. It was them.

  The Madman’s draug.

  First sign of trouble came when the yellow lights bubbled on the horizon some time before dawn. Not the kind of lights which come with the rising sun. Sickening to look at, they reminded her of the orbs Chukshene cast for light. But they were hovering below the waves, floating beneath like massive glowing eyeballs. A dozen or so at a time, winding through the water. Threading the current.

  Watching.

  They’d followed the longboat for hours, accumulating a dense yellow fog above the surface. A fog which didn’t move with the wind.

  “They’re our guardians,” the captain told her. “Keep us safe from any Caspie bastards stupid enough to sail the Sea of Blood.”

  The first draug attacked in the steel grey light of dawn. Clawed over the edge without warning. Grabbed one of the crew and bit into his throat. Tore it wide open with a wet snarl and then dragged the screaming raider back into the sea, where waves foamed crimson and bubbled gore.

  In the silent shock, two more were taken.

  Then the elf was moving. She moved through the boat, A Flaw in the Glass in one hand, Beyond the Wall of Sleep in the other. The venomously enchanted blade tore draug to pieces. But it wasn’t easy. You couldn’t really kill draug. They were dead already. You could just pull them apart and throw their pieces overboard before they had time to pull themselves back together again.

  The crew, mostly seasoned raiders, fought well once they started. Axes and swords quickly cut the first wave of draug apart, but not without a cost.

  Four more. Dead or dying.

  And the floor of the boat slippery with blood and bodyparts.

  The fog moving just out of reach of the longboat, its yellow threads reaching but not quite touching. She watched it as it slithered across the waves. Thought she could hear it whispering.


  Whispering with many voices.

  Frightened voices.

  I’m dead! They’ve killed me!

  “I don’t understand,” the captain said, worry gnawing at his face. “They never attack our ships. Never.”

  They came again a few hours later.

  Again that night.

  Now, five days into their voyage, the glowing fog seemed to cover the sea as far back as the horizon in the small boat’s wake. Yellow orbs lunged from the dark beneath, closer every time.

  The whispers, too, were louder in her ears. No one else had mentioned them, though, so she didn’t say anything.

  Didn’t want to ask.

  “One more night,” she heard Hapi say. Young, red-haired and eager. Not as afraid of the draug as the other. “Just gotta make it one more night.”

  “Won’t happen.” One-eyed man with heavy knuckles and a face looking like it’d been chewed on by a troll. Small tight-cropped beard on his chin. The rest mostly stubble shot through with grey. Almost as grey as his pants and woollen vest. He’d been good with his axe, she thought. Real good. Said his name was Maks. Said it in a way which made her think he’d had other names before. “Bastards will come again tonight. And there’ll be too many.”

  “Fuck you, Maks,” Hapi growled. “Don’t say that. Now it’ll happen.”

  “Was gonna happen anyway, boy.”

  “I ain’t no boy. You saw me. I killed three on my own.”

  “Killing don’t make you a man. If it did, I’d wager that long-ear over there’d be finding it hard to walk. On account of her balls would be in the way of her feet.”

  He waved his axe toward her as he spoke.

  Never let the weapon go.

  She understood that. Respected it. But despite the respect he injected into his voice, there was something in his eyes which hinted dislike. Or maybe she was imagining it? She’d found it difficult to understand the raiders.

  In a lot of ways they were more secretive than she was.

  The elf said nothing in reply. Wasn’t sure what to say. She wasn’t part of their crew. She turned her head and spat over the side in answer.

  A couple of others laughed, though it felt forced.