Riverkeep by Martin Stewart

tolerated.
    â€œIt’s comin’ back!” shouted Doc. He looked at the speed of the moving shadow and grabbed ahold of the tiller. “Lavernes’s name,” he whispered.
    The mormorach broke the surface and kept rising, clearing the height of the ship and scooping two harpoonists in its jaws before smashing through the edge of the deck in a shower of broken wood and crashing back intothe waves. It threw its head from side to side, serrating the sailors’ bodies and sending their limbs drifting, then it passed its mouth through the blood cloud around their corpses, sifting for flesh, biting at clothing and hair and bone. Then it sounded, turning against the seabed before whipping its tail and roaring again.
    â€œTo me!” shouted Doc, grabbing a fallen harpoon and mounting the gunwale, rolling with unconscious balance on the swell of the sea against the frozen wind. “When he comes back you stick him with all you’ve got!”
    The mormorach soared past Doc, its massive head knocking him into his crew and shattering the central mast as it broke once more through the deck and—Doc saw with a constriction of his guts—the hull. With majestic slowness, the sail began to topple into the water, and the
Flikka
split in two.
    The sea rose in an instant to Doc’s feet.
    â€œThe ship!” he shouted. “She’s breached! She’s sinking! Abandon . . . abandon ship!”
    But his crew had already begun to flee, throwing themselves from the sinking vessel and swimming for the shore or the boats that surrounded them.
    Only Doc remained, scrabbling at the red deck that, now sharply inclined, tipped him into the sea’s turbulence. He fought for purchase, the toes of his boots fast on soddenboards now slick with blood, its iron smell filling his nose over the water’s salt. As the deck passed below the surface, Doc felt himself come loose, his flailing, heavy legs exposed to the black depths, a million icy needles stabbing his skin, and he looked around desperately for a sign of the mormorach’s silver shadow.
    â€œHelp!” he shouted, waving frantically at the other hunting boats. “For the sake of . . . Help!”
    The boats, faceless under sails he did not recognize, rolled in the current.
    As his thick layers of clothing saturated, Doc sank, his face splashing through the waves, spray filling his mouth as he gulped in a final, desperate breath.
    On board the
Hellsong
, far off in the safety of the harbor and leaning on his crutch, Gilt Murdagh snapped closed his telescope between wide leather-skinned palms.
    â€œMormorach right enough, Cap’n?” asked Ormidale, the first mate, his wide, dark face scrunched in the light.
    Murdagh nodded, a grin splitting his beard. “That fat sod Fletcher jus’ lost his boat. Himself too, it seems. Went after it wi’ harpoons like it was a reg’lar game fish.” He snorted and laughed, shaking his head.
    â€œâ€™In’t we usin’ harpoons, Cap’n?” said Samjon.
    Murdagh glanced at the wind-pinked cabin boy, then shifted his weight to the whalebone stump below his leftknee. “There’s a reason this ol’ tub’s still floatin’ while others’ve made their way to gatherin’ hermits an’ coral on the seabed.”
    â€œWhat’s the reason, Cap’n? Ow!” said Samjon as Ormidale kicked his ankle.
    â€œPatience,” said Murdagh. He opened the telescope again, pressed it to his good eye, and smiled. “We’ll wait till folks around here get nervous—money moves quick on clammy palms. Let’s see how the next lot gets on. . . .”
The Keep
    Wull read the passage again.
    It was real. And what a beast! If he could get his hands on such an animal, he could buy all the whale oil in the world. And imagine how much the oil of a mormorach would be worth! What would the wealthy lords and ladies in