PART FIVE
~ The Moon Never Beams ~
When the sentinel was finished with her wild and elaborate tale, Rhonan stood there with his mouth hanging open.
“A sea demon?” he repeated. “Do you truly expect me to believe that?”
The sentinel shrugged. “Shall I step aside now and let you in to see?” she asked. “It is possible that I am lying but it is equally possible that I am not. Gis has not seen the light of day for centuries and I am sure he is quite hungry right now for man-flesh. I am sure he would find you quite tasty.”
Rhonan gave her a rather droll expression to let her know he wasn’t intimidated in the least. Then, he rubbed at his chin and leaned against the stone wall, pretending to be quite thoughtful. It was clear that she was trying to scare him away because she had no other recourse left. He was going to enter that chamber at some point and go through her to get to it, so he was certain she was trying to discourage him in a most imaginative way.
Truth be told, it was a very clever story. He had enjoyed it. He was enjoying speaking with this woman warrior as he’d never enjoyed a conversation in his life. She was beautiful and intelligent and skilled, and he found the combination both inviting and enchanting. But he wasn’t going to let her get the best of him; absolutely not.
He was going to beat her at her own game.
“You spoke of sea serpents in your tale,” he said. “In fact, I have battled the very same serpents.”
The sentinel eyed him suspiciously. “How do you know they are the same serpents?”
“How do you know they are not?”
He had a point. She couldn’t tell him that they most definitely were not because it would have given her entire tale away as being untruthful. So the sentinel’s gaze lingered on him, realizing this Northman was much more astute than she had given him credit for. A conqueror who also had a mind? A soul? She’d never heard of such a thing. Northmen, as her father had taught her, were mindless barbarians but this man clearly was not. There was something more to him, much more than she could have imagined.
There was fire behind his pale eyes, but it was the fire of life, not the fire of death.
The fire intrigued her.
Had she not been so terrified of him, she might have thought him rather handsome and pleasant to speak with, but that inherent instinct deep inside her continued to be her voice of reason.
Don’t trust him!
“I cannot say they are not the same ones,” she finally said. “You have battled them, you say?”
“I have. And I won.”
“And you believe that because of this, you might stand a chance against the Demon King?”
“I am sure of it.”
“Then your tale of bravery must be an astounding one.”
A smile flickered on his lips. “Would you like to hear it?”
“Do tell.”
The sea was the color of lapis lazuli, that mysterious stone from far away that I had once seen brought forth on a trade caravan from regions far to the south. My father, a man known as Nordjul the Fierce, had bought a strand of those stones for my mother while she lay ailing. The color, that dark blue and gray color, seemed to bring a light to her eyes. It was a light that would soon dim with sorrow.
A ship had been lost not long before, a ship bearing my uncles and cousins, all from my mother’s side of the family. We were told by other ships that had been sailing in the same fleet that great serpents had come out of the sea and had swallowed the boat, whole, only to spit out the wooden boat in the end and keep the men inside its belly.
My father had, therefore, promised my mother that we would sail to the spot where the serpents were seen and extract her brothers from the belly of the beast. Therefore, on a cold morning as the snow-capped mountains bid us a silent farewell, I embarked on my father’s longship with its great dragon-head prow, a ship known as Mjölnir. It was the most feared ship in my father’s fleet, one known to force an enemy surrender simply by sight.
It was the hope that this ship could strike fear into the hearts of the serpents that my father had long enjoyed a relationship with. The serpents were intelligent creatures, you see, and my father was convinced that he could ask them to give back our men. My father knew their hunting ground and he knew that they would scream to one another to communicate, great screeching sounds that would carry over the waves. Upon this sea of deep and gray blue, and beneath a moonless night, we searched for these serpents.
Days went by and there was no sign of them. My father had brought along a horn, a very old horn from a ram that, when blown upon, created a cry that was similar to the cry of the great serpents. One of my father’s men blew on the horn, repeatedly, trying to summon the beasts, but the days passed and the serpents did not come.
Soon, a storm began to blow upon us and our ships were tossed on the waves. Our longships rode the crests, searching in vain for these serpents that seemed to be too far beneath the waves to hear our calls. As my father grew discouraged, I stood at the bow of the ship and began to shout for them, issuing challenges that no serpent could refuse. I called them cowards and berated them as evil, wicked creatures. I challenged them and laughed when they did not respond. Still, the storm blew harder and the serpents, as cowards, remained out of sight.
But that changed the next morning as the sun began to rise and black, angry clouds overhead swirled with rain and thunder. The sea was a maelstrom of crashing waves and rolling surges, and the Mjölnir was beginning to show signs of damage. My father pleaded for me to stop tempting the serpents but I would not listen. In fact, I began to defy Odin himself for his world in which serpents were too cowardly to face a challenge from Man. My father became so terrified that he began praying to Odin, begging the man to forgive his young and rash son, and begging him to spare the ship which was now becoming seriously compromised. As my father prayed, I shouted, and the storm rolled.
By mid-day, the situation began to change. I first began to glimpse the heads of the serpents as they approached from the south, like giant cow heads with pale green skin upon them. They traveled in a herd, heading towards our ship, and I yelled out to them and shook my fists, daring them to confront me.
As the men aboard our ship cowered in fear, I stood on the bow and shouted at the serpents as they circled our boat. They created such a whirlpool that our boat began to spin. My father, who knew these serpents, cried out to them and begged them to return the men they had eaten, but the serpents ignored my father’s pleas. It seemed as if they did not want to bargain with him. The boat spun faster and faster until the sea began to swallow it up, and the serpents continued to swim circles around us.
Now, we were sinking down into the sea, into the sounding sea, and we had a wall of water all around us and could see the serpents swimming in swirls and creating the whirlpool. The ship began coming apart, crumbling into pieces as the water spun it about. Still, I stood on what was left of the bow and challenged those slimy, briny beasts.
One serpent, the biggest one of all, heard my challenges and was angered by them. His head came through the wall of water that surrounded us, gaping wide-open with his fangs dripping of venom. He was so close, so very close, and it seemed to me that he was answering my challenge, so I leapt out onto his head and fit nicely into his mouth, sliding down his throat until I came to his belly. Because his mouth was still open, I had some light to see everything in his innards and I saw my uncles and cousins, dead from the serpent’s venom. I realized we could not save them so I had to save myself. I had to get out of the serpent’s belly.
Taking my dead uncle’s sword, I plunged it into the side of the serpent’s belly and cut, and continued cutting, as the serpent howled and thrashed. I cut and cut until I cut all the way around his stomach and suddenly, he was in two pieces. He was dead by now, sinking to the bottom of the sea, and his fellow serpents fled in terror when they saw that I had killed their leader.
But I had to make it to the surface of the sea because I could not breathe underwater. I barely made it in time, my uncle’s sword still in my hand, to see that the storm had eased and the water was relatively calm. The ship, however, had broken apart and men, including my father, were floating on the surface. We were far out to sea and I knew I was the only one with the strength to save them all, so I told the men to tie their beards together, as in a great line, and I took my father’s beard and tied it around my neck.
Towing my father and his men, I swam all the way back to the shores of my land, where I presented my mother with her brother’s sword.
And that is how I defeated Gis’ sea serpents.