Darkness and Stone (The Lost Book 3) Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  The Lost Book 3

  by

  Peter Nealen

  An imprint of Galaxy’s Edge Press

  PO BOX 534

  Puyallup, Washington 98371

  Copyright © 2021 by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  www.forgottenruin.com

  www.wargatebooks.com

  Chapter 1

  The coast had just come into sight, a faint, dark line to the north beneath the lowering gray clouds, when the sea serpent hit us.

  I looked up at Eoghain’s cry and saw him standing in the high, swan-carved prow, pointing off to the starboard side. I hadn’t caught the words over the wind, but the tone of alarm was unmistakable. I snatched up my M110 from the sea chest at my feet and started working my way across the deck to join him.

  If it had been the marksman rifle that I’d left behind on the USS Makin Island, I probably would have had it in a waterproof bag, slathered with silicone spray. But King Caedmon’s Coira Ansec, the mystical cauldron that could produce ammo, weapons—whatever you asked for, really—produced some fine firearms. That thing was practically impervious to salt water.

  The deck of Nachdainn’s ship was neat, every line, chest, and tool in its place, but that didn’t make it clear. It took me a minute to cross to the prow, where I joined Eoghain, Bearrac, and Gunny Taylor at the gunwale.

  Gunny was already up on his rifle, peering through the scope. The whole platoon had switched from our M4s and M27s to M110s and Mk 48s from the Coira Ansec after we’d seen how little 5.56 did against some of the monsters in this world.

  Eoghain and Bearrac simply peered out across the water. The Tuacha da Riamog didn’t use optics. Their eyes were far better than ours.

  I squinted through the gloom. The overcast had thickened as we’d sailed north, and though it was about midday, the ship was wrapped in a gloomy twilight as it heaved over the gray chop of the sea.

  There. A V-shaped wake cut across the waves, undulating slightly as it bore down on us. Whatever was making that wake, it was big, and it was fast.

  “Brace yourselves.” Bearrac, barrel-chested and black-bearded, was holding onto the gunwale with one hand.

  I was about to open fire on whatever it was, but it was apparently bigger and faster than it looked, because a moment later, something hit the ship with a bone-jarring impact.

  The ship heeled over, and every timber groaned after the boom of the initial blow. I grabbed ahold of the gunwale in time to keep from going over on my back and sliding across the deck, hearing the awful scrape of something big dragging across the keel beneath us.

  The deck swayed and shuddered alarmingly under our feet for a moment. The terrible scraping noise subsided, and Gunny and I moved quickly to the port side, scanning the water over our rifles. Only dark gray water topped with whitecaps where the wind whipped the spray off the tops of the waves met our eyes.

  Movement stirred in the depths, as if something huge and pale was turning over. Then it struck again.

  I felt the planks of the hull bend torturously beneath the deck as something massive slammed into the ship’s flank. Despite being braced for it this time, we all staggered, and I almost slipped backward. I still got a glimpse of a massive, pale gray back just beneath the waves, arcing as it dove underneath, once again battering at the keel as if the thing was trying to tip us over.

  Tipping over a Tuacha ship is far more easily said than done. While she groaned and rocked under the impact, I heard no cracks of broken planks, and she righted herself, rocking slightly from side to side, the sail flapping overhead, as the monster passed to the starboard side again. There is a virtue in everything the Tuacha build that is difficult to overcome.

  “Hold.” Mathghaman stood at the mast, tall, auburn-haired, and bearded, his feet planted wide, one hand on the mast itself. “It cannot sink us thus. Let it give us a better opening.” Grim as his voice was, there was still that lilting Tuacha music to his words. I had lived and fought among the Tuacha long enough that I no longer needed the “mind speech” to understand him.

  Mathghaman was King Caedmon’s champion and our brother through fire. Thrown together in Taramas’s dungeons, we had fought our way out of the Land of Ice and Monsters together. At the King’s own request, we had then fought our way through haunted forests and cursed deserts to rescue the mystic, Sister Sebeal, from an ancient vampire in its own lair. As vastly different as our origins might have been, we were closer now than any kin we might have left behind in The World.

  He stood firm while the ship rocked and shuddered under the continuous onslaught, as the monster dove and returned, battering our hull with increasing fury. But while the planks creaked and flexed, they held.

  Finally, the monster seemed to realize that it wasn’t doing much by simply bashing its skull against our keel over and over again. The battering stopped. But none of us relaxed. Weapons stayed at the ready as we scanned the waters around us. The impacts had driven us aside from our course, and the darkness of the coastline now lay off to starboard, drifting farther away.

  I was looking off that direction as the chop picked up, when the serpent came up out of the water on the port side with a noise like the roar of a waterfall.

  We all spun, guns coming up, both our more modern weapons and the more elegant, engraved rifles the Tuacha had adopted after joining us.

  Almost twenty feet of scaled monstrosity, topped by a blunt, stony-looking head with jaws that split it clear back to its gills, lined with forked, dripping teeth, towered above the ship’s hull. Those jaws gaped above us as the serpent struck at the forward gunwale.

  None of us just stood there gaping, though. We were Recon Marines and Tuacha warriors. Every man on deck shouldered his weapon and opened fire as that huge, dripping maw descended like a falling mountain.

  Suppressed 7.62mm gunfire roared as that massive head dropped toward us, bullets punching through scales and into rubbery flesh. One fang was blasted off. The monster shuddered and twisted aside, then dove back into the water to avoid the stinging blows, hitting with a splash that sent a massive wave crashing against our hull.

  “Hell.” Gunny was still watching the chop and foam left behind where the sea monster had disappeared over his rifle. “It’s going to take more than bullets to kill that thing.”

  He’d barely finished speaking when the deck heaved under our feet as the sea serpent struck the keel again, only this time it wasn’t just beating against the hull as if it could wreck us with its skull. Instead, a moment later that massive head came slithering up the starboard side, snapping at the lines and at Synar, even as he reared back from the rail and reflexively pumped another pair into the massive, blunt-faced head, with no apparent effect.

  The monster’s tail came writhing out of the water behind us, slithering over the gunwales and wrapping itself around the ship’s stern. It kept moving, too, twisting its slime-dripping body around once, twice, the coils tightening as its huge head loomed over the bow, jaws gaping as it hissed at us. I was right there next to Bearrac and Santos, dumping rounds into that mountainous skull, forcing it back as it hissed and shook, trying to protect its eyes from the stinging impacts.

  Gunny was right. We weren’t going to kill that thing with bullets. It was just too big, and it seemed like its skull was as thick as a grizzly’s. But we couldn’t exactly regroup and come up with a better plan while it was trying to crush the ship like an egg.

  The hull groaned as a third coil wrapped around it, and the big serpent started to squeeze. It snapped at Mathghaman, who was now closest to it. It darted in despite the gunfire, its maw suddenly gaping wide to close like a steel trap where Mathghaman’s head—his entire upper body, in fact—had just been.

  Mathghaman, however, was faster than the monster. He danced out of the way, leaving those huge jaws to snap shut on empty air, pivoting as he ducked beneath and away, bringing the muzzle of that elegant rifle of his almost in contact with the thing’s beady, unblinking eye just before he squeezed the trigger and obliterated the orb. The monster reared back again with what might have been a deep, ang
ry moan of pain, blood and slime running from the ruined socket. Then Mathghaman was moving again, ducking back beneath the huge head as the thing shook itself, then firing another shot into the soft tissue under its jaw.

  I half expected the round to do nothing. Half expected the jaw to be as armored as the rest of that thing seemed to be. But Mathghaman’s rifle blew a hole through it with ease, punching through scales and cartilage and into the roof of its fang-laden mouth.

  That still didn’t kill it. It hissed and roared, lashing its tail and its head alike and smashing its skull into the prow, then the deck just in front of the mast. It snapped at us, even as Fennean and Gurke went to town on its coils with axes and swords. But while their blades were biting into the slimy flesh, the creature’s body was a good four feet thick, all muscle and scale and cartilaginous bone. It was going to take a long time, even with Tuacha weapons, to hack through that.

  Which was why Bailey suddenly muttered, “Fuck this,” and shouldered past me, his rifle slung and a short, stubby black tube with a pistol grip and collapsible stock in his hands.

  He fired before I could say anything, snapping the 40mm grenade launcher to his shoulder and barely aiming. The thunk was followed immediately by a hollow clock sound. The grenade had just bounced off the top of the sea serpent’s head as it recovered from the wound Mathghaman had given it and reared back for another strike. The 40mm “egg” went sailing off into the water.

  “It’s too close to arm, and if it wasn’t, then you’d kill us all with that damned thing!” Gunny didn’t usually lose his cool in a firefight, but Sean Bailey had just forgotten a couple of things in his eagerness to get his kill on. One being the fourteen-meter arming distance, the other being the fact that we were right in that creature’s face, and an explosion would have fragged us at the very least.

  With a snarl, Bailey let the thumper fall and looked around for some other way to do enough damage to kill the sea serpent. Several of us were still shooting, but that was only burning through ammo and sort of keeping it at bay. Meanwhile, the hull groaned even more as it continued to tighten its coils around us. That ship was strong, but there was only so much even Tuacha handiwork could take.

  Mathghaman had ducked back beneath the thing’s head, and now, as it poised to strike again, he leaned over the gunwale and shot out its other eye.

  The monster shuddered and spasmed, making several of the hull planks scream in protest, but then it was uncoiling and slipping back into the water, blind and in agony, before retreating quickly back beneath the waves.

  For a few moments, we just stood there, panting, sweating despite the chill of the northern wind and salt spray, hardly believing it was over. We weren’t just staring in shock, though. Every man had moved to the sides, watching the water with guns up.

  All that met our eyes was the white-tipped, gray waves as rain swept in from the east, dropping visibility to a few hundred yards. The only sounds, beyond the beating of our own hearts and the rasp of breath in our ears, were the creaks of lines and timbers, the faint snaps of canvas in the wind, and the whispers and wails of the wind itself.

  Until the serpent came out of the water like a breaching whale, just off the starboard stern, sailing toward the mast with its jaws gaping wide.

  Chapter 2

  It hit the mast like a freight train, its jaws clamping shut on the towering oak pole, fangs sinking into the wood with an awful crunch. The ship heeled hard to port, nearly capsizing under the sheer force of the monster’s full weight hitting it that hard. We all went tumbling toward the gunwale and the sea, as gear and lines broke loose and clattered across the deck.

  I caught myself on a sea chest, almost getting the wind knocked out of me, even as the ship heeled back to the starboard under the monster’s mass. The virtue of Tuacha construction meant that the mast hadn’t given way yet, though it was only a matter of time as the serpent chomped spasmodically on the mast, splintering the white-painted oak even further.

  More gunfire hammered at the thing as Recon Marines and Tuacha alike got their feet under them, but the bullets may as well have been gnats for all the damage they were doing.

  As I regained my feet, though, I saw an opening. The monster was still trying to bite the mast off, which meant it was stationary for a moment. And while Fennean’s and Gurke’s axe and sword might not have been enough to cut through its body, their weapons weren’t quite like mine.

  I let my rifle hang on its sling and drew my own sword. Nearly three feet long, the blade a shimmering gray, the hilts accented in gold that never seemed to wear or tarnish, inlaid with runes that reminded me of an ancient Greek Chi-Rho, that sword had come through fire and storm with me, though it was immeasurably older than I. I still don’t know its full history. I might never know it. I knew that the blessed blade was far more potent than bullets against certain enemies, though. So, ducking beneath whipping lines that had been severed by those awful jaws, I waded in and brought the blade down with terrific force on the sea serpent’s neck, just behind what might have been its gills.

  The smoky blade bit deep, shearing through scales and even cartilaginous bone with greater ease than even I’d expected. Rubbery flesh parted as my sword cut deeply into its spine. The creature shuddered, its jaws tightening on the mast as the oak creaked and cracked alarmingly. I brought the sword through its circle to keep the momentum going, then hacked deeper into the wound I’d already inflicted, as Mathghaman came around on the other side with his own leaf-bladed sword in hand. His blade bit as deeply as mine, and watery, reddish black blood flowed out onto the deck beneath our feet.

  With only a few more strokes, the great coils of the serpent relaxed and slithered over the side and into the sea, floating and bobbing on the waves for a moment before slowly drifting down into the depths, leaving clouds of dark blood that obscured the paleness of the carcass for a moment before the darkness of the abyss swallowed it up.

  The head was still clamped to the mast, rigid in death, but it almost seemed as if there was still some awareness there. I can’t explain how that sense came to me. The creature’s eyes were destroyed, and it had just been beheaded. It didn’t move but stayed in place, its jaws locked onto the mast with those weird, multi-pronged fangs.

  For a few moments, we just stood there, gasping for breath, as the ship rocked on the waves, seeming to wallow in the trough of the swell, no closer to the shore on the northern horizon than we had been before the serpent had attacked. It was as if the sea serpent had arrested our progress, leaving us stilled on the sea, despite the wind that still flapped our sails atop the cracked and splintered mast.

  “Let’s get this thing off.” Gunny, as was his wont, was the first one to get us all moving again. He stepped forward, drawing his own axe, a gleaming, bearded affair with a wicked curve to the blade and a dark, carved and studded haft. He’d been given an old Tuacha sword from the abandoned armory in Teac Mor Farragah, but after we’d arrived at the Isle of Riamog, he’d decided that an axe fit him better. He sized up the severed head, as if trying to decide whether to just hack it off in pieces or try to pry the fangs out of the wood.

  Mathghaman and Bearrac were ahead of him, though. They had grabbed boat hooks from the equipment in the bow, and were already prying at the jaws, and Gunny seemed to nod to himself, as if realizing that prying was probably better than chopping. The mast was already damaged enough. Cutting through the sea serpent’s head might only bite deeper into the oak, further weakening it.

  We’d all seen just how incredibly durable the Tuacha’s work could be, but none of us figured it was limitless.

  The fangs were deeply embedded in the wood, and it took a lot of effort to wrench them out, prying against not only the bite of those weird teeth, but also the stiffness of the dead jaws themselves. The bones and fangs groaned and cracked, several of the thing’s teeth shrieking like rusty nails as they were slowly drawn out of the wood, every inch won with terrific effort against the tension of the clamped jaws.

  Finally, the hinge of the jaws gave with a snap, and the head fell to the deck with a heavy, wet thud.

  We had just picked it up, and were about to heave it over the side, when its eye moved to stare at us.