Wainwright said gently, cradling the flare gun protectively in both hands.
Unexpectedly, the body rolled off the little shed as the roof slid aside, exposing a honeycomb of bamboo tubes. A nest of fuses dangled from the rear of each and as the baron watched in growing horror, a torch was touched to the group fuse, setting them aflame.
“No! Too soon!” Wainwright cried.
“Too late,” LeFontaine replied curtly.
With no other choice, the baron jumped off the dais and raced into the middle of the ville square. Raising both hands, she carefully aimed the flare gun and fired. The charge thumped from the wide barrel and streaked away to hit the kraken in the face. Snapping around with surprising speed, the colossus stared down at the tiny norm in open hatred and moved along the wall, its tentacles reaching out for the fresh meat.
In a stuttering series of smoky explosions, the top row of bamboo tubes unleashed a dozen homie rockets, closely followed by the second row, then the rest.
The rockets flashed upward and slammed into the kraken, disappearing into the mottled hide. Howling in anger, the mutie probed the tiny wounds with some tentacles just as the next wave of rockets struck, and then the first salvo detonated.
Gobbets of raw flesh exploded like a geyser from the monster, sending out a ghastly spray of piss-yellow blood. That was when the next shed lost its roof and more black-powder rockets launched, peppering the monstrosity with high-explosive death.
Bawing in agony, the kraken lashed out mindlessly as the new rockets detonated inside the beast. Literally torn apart from within, a tentacle went limp, an eye turned dead-white and torrents of yellow blood gushed from the hideous wounds.
Enthusiastically cheering, the sec men redoubled their assault on the mutie, the arbalests now targeting the open wounds.
Turning to flee, the weakening mutie discovered there were iron chains attached to the arrows, the barbed heads caught deep within the belly of the beast in exactly the same way its own tentacles dragged a victim to their death in its cavernous maw.
Its inhuman brain sluggishly comprehending that death was coming, the kraken threw itself at the ville wall, hammering the stone ramparts with its full weight. The entire shoreside wall trembled from the impacts, and several sec men lost their grips and fell screaming onto the cobblestone streets below with grisly results. But even as the baron watched, the struggles of the creature became noticeably weaker, the rush of blood increasing.
“More rockets!” Wainwright yelled, running toward the thrashing kraken. “Fire them all!”
A grip of iron grabbed her arm, stopping the woman in her tracks.
“No closer, Baron,” sec chief LeFontaine commanded. “I won’t allow it.”
Contorting her face into a sneer, the baron started to reach for her blaster, then grudgingly relented, realizing the wisdom of the caution. Any animal was at its most dangerous when it was wounded and dying.
Chewing on the chains to try to get free, the kraken was hit with a third wave of rockets and then a fourth, the last few of them going completely through the mutie and coming out the other side to arch away over the bay. Yellow blood was everywhere, flowing down the sides of the stone wall and forming deep puddles in the street.
In a final rush of hatred, the dying kraken reached out with every working tentacle and wrapped each around the nearest guard tower and squeezed hard. Astonishingly, the support timbers audibly creaked from the titanic strain, and a wealth of crossbeams fell away like dry autumn leaves. As the tower began to tilt, the sec men inside cursed at the unexpected tactic and tried to hold on to the railing for dear life.
That was when there came a high-pitched keen of a steam whistle from the other side of the wall, and more rockets slammed into the back of the beast, widening the exit holes of the arrows.
Shuddering all over, the kraken released the guard tower and sluggishly tried for the bay once more, but again it was stopped by the iron chains. Mewling weakly, the creature reached out with a gory tentacle, the tip just managing to reach the cold, clear water of the bay. Then it sagged and went still, the flood of blood quickly slowing to a trickle, and then stopping entirely.
Instantly a new bell began to clang. Minutes later every man, woman and child in the ville stormed out of the dockyard gates, each equipped with a wicker basket and a sharp obsidian knife. Resembling an army of ants, the people crawled over the chilled mutie and started to slice off pieces. Meanwhile, sec men armed with torches and axes began to hack apart the corpse, chopping a tunnel into the thing, and soon disappeared inside.
“It worked! We aced a kraken!” The baron chortled, slapping her sec chief on the back. “What a glorious day!”
“You can load that into a damn crossbow and fire it,” LeFontaine agreed wholeheartedly, rubbing his hands together. “We’ll get enough salt from the gizzard to last the ville for months, for years.”
“Plus, there’s enough good leather for everybody to get new boots, belts and winter jackets,” she agreed with a smile, watching the harvest progress. “Sinew for a thousand crossbows, enough bones to…well, for any damn thing we need until further notice.” Plus, that bitch at Anchor ville would pay a baron’s ransom in metal for a single pint of kraken blood. But Wainwright kept that observation to herself. In the right circumstances, the blood of a kraken was the most valuable thing in the world.
“Sadly, we lost the dockyard gate, a horse and at least a dozen sec men,” LeFontaine muttered unhappily. The dogs and the gaudy slut were of no real importance.
“Yes, a pity,” Wainwright agreed. “But still, a price that I would be willing to pay anytime for the death of a kraken. The bay belongs to us now. No more will our fishing boats be pulled underwater, the crew drowned, the catch destroyed.”
“Aye, that’s good news. Too bad we can’t eat the meat,” LeFontaine said. “I hear it tastes fine, but soon afterward…” He gave a shiver. Any further embellishment was unnecessary.
“Leave some outside the wall for the Hillies to steal,” the baron ordered. “Maybe we can ace two birds with one stone, eh?”
“By your command, Baron,” the sec chief agreed, giving a small bow. “I live to serve.”
Trying not to smile, the baron acknowledged the formal action with a prim nod of her head, mentally deciding to reward the man for his action later in her private bedchamber.
As for the ville, both the civies and sec men would spend the rest of the day and most of the night dissecting the mountainous mutie, scavenging everything of value. Even the fat of the monster could be boiled down into a crude form of tallow for candles. When that odious task was accomplished, the crew of the Wendigo would haul what remained of the bedraggled corpse out into the deep water near Liar’s Gate, so that the smell of the decaying corpse would scare away any other kraken for years.
The baron ruefully smiled. Then she would open the royal wine cellar and authorize a shore party the likes of which had never been seen before! It would be a day of rest for the slaves and roasted meat for the civies, while the sec men would revel in enough shine, sluts and song to satisfy even their warrior appetites.
Feeling exhausted, and exhilarated, the baron started back for the stone dais to watch over the rest of the harvesting. In the back of her mind, the woman tried desperately to ignore the rest of
