"What do we do?" someone asked her.
Mariana felt immense pressure to start acting like an expert on sea monsters, but the hydra moved and one of its heads seemed to be sniffing the air.
"Do you think they can smell fear?" the Wizard asked.
Mariana shook her head. "I don't think they do. I know they do. There is a slight difference."
"You knew of them, Cap'n?"
She had known, but she had hoped to never cross paths with another beast like that again.
"Get something inside the stern chasers," she said. "It won't die if you hit the head…but that, too, has a heart. Aim for the chest."
Then she pursed her lips into a tight line and returned to the helm so that she would at least have some control of the movements of the ship.
The monster squirmed. Maybe it had some experience with ships and their cannons, but it had obviously not yet realized just how bad a cannonball could be for one's health.
"Fire as soon as you can!" Captain Mariana screamed.
This seemed to put the hydra on edge. It circled around the spot in the waters that the Good Wife was heading towards, obviously trying to extend one of its slimy necks to catch one of the men.
A roaring cannon shot at it, but just before the impact the hydra dived down and the Wife missed its mark.
Mariana cursed her slow cannons and the heft of her ship. It would have been so great to be in a nimble little boat like the ones Daniel always used. Size did not seem to scare the beast; indeed, its own body was the size of an elephant.
The men reloaded the cannons.
One more shot - it hit the hydra in the front leg! Crippled, it descended into the depths, but the wind was blowing so strongly into the sails that the privateers could not turn back in these shallows.
They had to sail over the hydra and hope it would not stir again.
Mariana clenched her jaws so tightly shut that she feared losing a tooth or two.
They slid onwards, still with quite many knots in their speed, as they had only just stopped actively chasing the northern vessel. The captain of the ship was clenching the helm along with the first mate who had not yet lost his cool.
Mariana would have wanted silence, absolute and complete silence, but she could not sail without the guidance of the men in the rigging, those with sharp eyesight, they knew which shade of greenish blue was safe and which had rims of light or darkness that suggested a treacherous spot of a reef.
Finally, Mariana was assured that they had won this round. She should have been happy to avoid a potentially deadly encounter with a sea monster, but she felt uneasy.
Wolfe told her that it was only her natural pirate instinct telling her that she should never run away from a fight that could yield results. She argued that chasing fame was not a very piratey thing to do; the pragmatic sea villains preferred to live. It was hard to waste gold when one was under the waves.
SNAP!
Something splintered the wood of the gunwale just next to them. Wolfe barely managed to throw both himself and his captain out of the way in time.
The hydra was rising from the sea. It was angrier than before, trashing the Good Wife with all of its bleeding mouths, it bit the ship like the vessel itself had done something to it.
Someone shot it in the head.
"No, NOT THE HEADS!" Mariana screamed. "It will grow a new one! Two, if we're unlucky!"
She commanded her gunmaster to prepare the regular cannons instantly. The dumb beast did not understand that they were the lethal parts of the ship.
"FIRE! FIRE AT WILL!"
A chunk off from the - ah, yes, what a good shot! That did the job! The beast slid back into the sea with a dying rattle that sounded worse than a suffering ghost. Mariana sighed. She felt like she had finally done something worthwhile. The entire mess of a voyage had just been one self-inflicted calamity after another, and the captain had feared that they would not win any significant battles.
Yet here they were, the slayers of hydras, the bane of all sea monsters.
Mariana arranged the men who had operated the cannons to have a night off. They had already lost the northern vessel, it would do them no good to search the shallows, because of the constant danger of wrecking the ship against the sharpness of the reef.
Mariana wished to retreat into her cabin and have so many cups of tea that she would turn green, but Wolfe interrupted her.
"It's about the cube," he said sternly and pushed himself into her cabin without waiting for any curious ears to creep around. "It's doing something it should not do."
"What do you mean exactly?" Mariana asked. "Should I call Roinar?"
"It has been worse ever since Roinar came aboard, so no, I don't think he can do this matter any favors. Look, Mariana…can I call you that?"
The first mate lowered his voice into a whisper.
For the first time, Mariana saw this limitless fear of the unknown in Wolfe's eyes.
It seemed like he was just another mortal after all.
"Yes, call me whatever you like. Wolfe. What's wrong? What are the dice doing? You have not touched them directly, have you?"
"No, but I don't need to. Look. It MOVES on its own. I came back to check up on it, to see that it was surely there, you know, where I put it last time…"
The first mate swallowed audibly.
"It had moved. I didn't move it. It was open. If I had not scooped it up right there, it would have summoned something that I don't even care to think about."