The Wolf Age Read Online Free Page A

came off the gray gleaming water; no one was sweating much.
    Presently it grew still worse. There was a shout from one of the other boats, and everyone turned their eyes to the east. Morlock followed their gaze, but at first he wasn't sure what he was seeing. He had never seen anything like this before.
    Emerging from the blue broken clouds, high above the moonslit eastern edge of the Bitter Water, were gray shapes like teardrops, riding through the sky like ships. Their prows were pointed; their sterns were wide and rounded. Under each midsection hung chains suspending a long black craft, snakelike in form.
    "What are they?" he wondered. "Are they alive?"
    No one answered. No one understood him. But the townsfolk knew something about them. Some turned back to their oars with renewed panicky energy; others put their hands over their faces, resigning themselves to their fate.
    Morlock was not the resigned type. He struck out at the water savagely with his oar, but turned often to watch the approach of the airships. At first they were headed toward the center of the Bitter Water, but then they turned their prows slightly to intercept the flatboats. The sharp ends of the airships tilted slightly forward, and the snakelike gondolas slid forward on their chains.
    The old woman in front of him said something and he turned to look at her. She said it again. He shrugged and opened his free hand.
    She grunted and gestured impatiently back toward the shore. Then Morlock did understand: the airships had something to do with the werewolves.
    Morlock was impressed. He also felt a savage covetous longing to know how the things were made, how they worked. But the main thing at the moment was to survive, and that looked increasingly unlikely.
    The airships were clearly coming in to attack the flatboats. They were close enough now that he could see the windows lining the snakelike gondolas. And in many of the windows a warm, welcoming red light shone.
    "We're done," he remarked grimly, and turned back to his oar. He still wasn't the resigned type.
    Soon the airships were nearly overhead, and he could see the bowmen in the windows, their arrows alive with red light.
    "Ware fire!" he shouted, though he knew no one could understand him.
    The bowmen shot, and burning arrows struck all around them, in the water and on the decks. Few seemed to have been wounded, a fact that struck Morlock as ominous. The arrows largely fell in the center of the boats, on open planking.
    Morlock reached under his bench for his nearly empty backpack. He swung it over the rail and passed it through the water. Then he ran with it, still soaking, to the nearest arrow burning on the deck and tried to douse the flame. But he managed to do nothing except set the soaked backpack alight: the burning arrows were treated with some agent that burned even in water. And it burned fast and fierce: he tossed the backpack off the boat, but it was already half consumed, and the fires were chewing deep holes in the flatboats. As he watched bemusedly, boiling water began to bubble upward amidst the spreading flame. This boat was sinking, and a glance around showed him that the other flatboats were as well. People were abandoning them on every side.
    Now was the time for the crews of the airships to attack again, if they were seeking to kill the refugees. But they didn't. In fact, Morlock saw that they were lowering something from the airship gondolas on long chains. Nets. They were nets. As they hit the water, people already adrift on the waves started to crawl into them.
    Morlock could not imagine what use the werewolves could have for humans except as meat animals or slaves. He expected his fiery blood would keep him off the menu card, so he wasn't concerned about that. But he had never been a slave. He had no interest in trying the profession.
    He turned back to his bench and grabbed Tyrfing from its sheath. He struck with the dark glittering blade, severing the bench from the deck.