25. The Kraken

The crew rights the capsized boat and begins the hard tow of the dead red whale toward the Suepka. As Malk Na Brannyck urges the oars, a tentacle coils the whale’s tail, revealing a juvenile kraken. Malk hesitates between abandoning the fortune or fighting, but the captain’s gesture from the ship makes clear they must keep the prize.

Malk orders the boats in. He and Galva hack at the arms as multiple tentacles hammer down, shattering bones and crushing rowers. The balding mariner-mage who drowsed the whale is killed. An Untherdam woman is seized and torn by suckers, repeatedly dropped onto Kinch, who manages only shallow cuts against the massive arm amid carnage and panic.

The second boat tries for the brain with harpoons but fails. Suepka’s ballistas fire; one bolt bites the kraken, another pierces the other boat’s hull. Firepots ignite the water and the beast, which then climbs the ship’s starboard side, whipping sailors overboard and overturning a render pot to scatter hot coals at its attackers.

A glancing ballista shot kills a beloved short sailor against the mizzenmast. The kraken, wounded and outmatched by the ship’s size, grabs the largest sailor and wheels overboard, vanishing despite volleys of bolts and arrows.

With one boat sinking and decks bloodied, Malk consolidates survivors, pushes corpses over to make room, and commands those who can still row to continue toward the Suepka and reclaim the whale. Galva, seeing Kinch soaked in another’s blood, pointedly questions whether he hid; Kinch cannot defend himself. The captain glares down, and Malk bitterly orders the crew to fetch “the captain his redfish.”