Attracted by the glow of the ianthina, a monstrous bat had dived
suddenly toward them from somewhere up in that dense grey curtain.
Neither of them saw its giant webbed wings until it fanned them like an
abrupt deadly wind.
"Burn it!" scream Mahra, as the bat's hideous evilly grinning mouth
opened to reveal rows of yellowed teeth, and its gleaming red eyes
bored toward them through the mist. "I lost my electro in the water."
Moljar was shaking his head. He tossed her the blaster. "You. Burn
the ianthina free from the raft." The bat had sped by, circled, was
returning. "This bat can do us some good!"
Moljar stood up and met the sweep of the bat's flexing claws. Just in
time he leaped upward between them, and clutched the bat's thick furred
belly. He felt the ratty teeth clack shut behind him as he was raised
upward into the swirling vapor.
His nose curled, and he choked with the stench of the beast's
vermin-infested fur. Then, still gripping the coarse hair with one
hand, he raised his knife with the other. A quick long slash brought a
fearsome scream hissing in his face. He slashed again and again until
the probing blade found the beast's heart.
Gore spilled over him as he clung to the now wet hair. It got too
slippery to hold. He grabbed the flailing claws as the gasping,
thrashing creature plummeted seaward. The bat's body flopped into the
water not far from the raft. It beat futilely with one foot, spinning
in weakening frothing circles. Suddenly it was dead.
Moljar worked frantically against time. The blood would attract every
kind and condition of sea monster. He hacked and strained at the joint
where the huge wing joined the body. The stench almost overpowered him
as he floundered about. But finally the great ribbed wing came free.
Moljar's breath was coming in deep gusts as he dragged himself up onto
the raft and pulled part of the wing up after him. He sat on it to
anchor it while he rested.
He looked at the girl. She nodded. "You're pretty brave, for a
half-breed."
He grunted breathlessly.
She came closer and handed him his blaster. "I burned it away. I burned
its ganglia first, which it used for a brain. Then I severed the
tendons which fastened it to its float. Anything else?"
Moljar was up again now, hacking at the thick tough surface of one end
of the raft. "Yes. Watch that bat wing. Don't let it slide away. It is
what we must have to reach Anghore."
"What are you doing now? And what's the wing for?"
He answered carelessly, "I'm going to make us a sail from the wing.
It is almost a perfect sail of its kind. I figure the gyro brought us
halfway across the sea. Maybe we have a third of the way to go. I have
a compass and I saw what direction we were following before we crashed.
With a fair wind, and luck, we should reach shore within a day."
She stared with no attempt, now, to conceal her admiration for the
barbarian. "For a half-breed," she said, "you've got a brain."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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