Blood on the Crossbeams

Could forty feet of split spruce endure fifty-two knots of hydraulic drag without snapping the dreadnought's starboard spine?

Beathag NicAonghais hauled the hemp bitter-end until the braid bit deep into her raw palms. She did not wait for an answer from the gods or the foaming dark. Her boots found purchase against the sodden cross-ribs of the forecastle deck, her weight thrown backward against the shudder of the fractured outrigger. She needed this timber straight, lashed, and stiffened within thirty heartbeats, or the cedar canoe would roll into the black wall and grind eight hundred feet of primeval wood to kindling.

Muircheartach MacShìthich drove both massive shoulders against the bowed timber. The spruce grooved into the meat of his trapezius with a sickening groan of stressed fiber. Foam and shredded wyrm guts coated his chest, but his thick legs locked against the gunwale coaming like twin oak pilings.

"Quit groaning at me, branch," Muircheartach grunted into the spray. Splinters stuck out of his red beard. "I've wrestled fatter bull-elk through worse bogs than this. Steady, you crooked stick."

"Less talk, more weight," Beathag snapped, passing the three-inch hawser through the lower eyelet ring. "The drag is pulling aft at six tons of shear. If your heel slips an inch, the torsion will launch you across the river like an atl-atl dart."

"Then do not let it slip," the brawler retorted, veins knotting across his temples as a violent jolt shuddered up through the hull. "And hurry. The bark is biting my neck."

A spray of cold black water lashed across the deck from the starboard bow wave, smelling of crushed shale and blind wyrm marrow. Sixty paces aft, the monolithic shape of Donnchadh was visible by the glow of the helm runes, leaning his full torso into the main steering sweep. Down in the forward auxiliary well, Torcall’s squad of subdued mutineers leaned into their sweeps, muscles trembling under the sheer speed of the descent. The vessel did not slow; the wild current pulled the Sgàth-Bhràghaid down the subterranean chute at terminal velocity, every spar singing under the hydro-kinetic load.

Beathag worked with cold, practiced precision. She reached into her tool belt, drawing two six-inch wedges knapped from razor-sharp volcanic obsidian. Sliding them flat along the grain where the green spruce had split open, she created an opposing shear face.

She caught the loose hemp coil, looped it four times around the obsidian wedges, and threw a rolling hitch over the forward anchor cleat.

"On three, take the slack!" she yelled over the roar of the chute. "One. Two. Heave!"

Muircheartach let out an earth-shaking roar, driving with his thighs to lever the crooked beam back into its housing. The fractured seam groaned, closing by two fingers' width. In that split second of alignment, Beathag drove the butt of her stone maul against the obsidian pins.

The wedges seated deep. The hemp tourniquet cinched tight under the recoil, biting into the timber until sap and river-grit squeezed from the cracks. The violent vibration that had threatened to tear the outrigger away damped into a steady, rigid hum.

The spruce strut held.

A crisp chime rang against the drumming of the rapids, followed by azure glyphs rippling through the air before her eyes:

Beathag shook the spray from her eyelashes, knotting the tail of the hemp line into a locked half-hitch. The sharp ache in her palms gave way to an unfamiliar sensation behind her temples, like cool mountain water washing over hot slate.

When she looked up toward the rushing dark, the river had changed.

Faint cerulean traceries spread across the churning black surface. Fine lines of light curved along the current, showing the high-pressure ribbons where the torrent compressed against the gorge floor, and marking the lethal friction zones where jagged basalt reefs waited to rip the cedar belly open.

Muircheartach dropped his arms with an audible exhale, wiping a mix of sweat and river foam from his eyes with his forearms. He kicked the lashed strut once with a heavy rawhide boot. The wood rang solid.

"Told you," he declared, grinning through his drenched beard. "Just needed a firm hand. Timber is no different than an angry bear. You show it who’s broader across the ribs, and it falls in line."

"The obsidian held the tension, not your ribs," Beathag said, stowing the stone maul back into her belt. Her eyes stayed locked on the black waterway rushing toward them.

"Details," Muircheartach scoffed, though he leaned his back against the capstan to catch his wind. "You shoot them, I hold them, Donnchadh points the nose. Simple work for simple folk."

"Nothing about this gorge is simple."

Beathag swung herself back up onto the prow catwalk, her moccasins gripping the wet cedar without a tremor. With the outrigger stabilized, the canoe cut the rapids with a cleaner, sharper slice, throwing twin sheets of white rooster-tail spray into the gloom.

Two hundred paces ahead, the subterranean chasm opened into a massive vaulted gallery. The ceiling soared upward beyond the reach of their pitch torches, vanished into damp cavernous fog. But along the riverbanks, an unearthly luminescence bloomed.

Pillars of petrified timber rose from the shallows, smothered in thick blankets of pale, pulsating violet fungi. The river floor sloped downward into a series of jagged slate terraces, the water tumbling over them in boiling white cataracts.

Through the lens of her new perk, Beathag watched the cerulean vector lines warp and twist across the river. The visual currents swirled into abnormal whirlpools, curling around the bases of the fungal pillars in tight, unnatural eddies.

"Donnchadh!" she called out aft, her voice carrying over the rushing foam with sharp authority. "Starboard shelf thirty degrees! Keep us off the pale shallows!"

From the helm platform far behind, Donnchadh raised a single hand in acknowledgment, throwing his weight against the giant sweep oar to adjust their glide path by a fraction. The massive cedar hull drifted across the current, its keel singing against the surging depth.

Beathag leaned over the bowsprit, narrowing her gaze at the shimmering violet clusters coating the shoreline.

Something was wrong with the light.

The fungal blankets were not growing in random patches along the damp stone. They were smeared in long, continuous trails across the boulders, dripping thick, viscous mucus into the current. Embedded within the glowing purple slime were clusters of translucent spheres, each the size of a war shield, pulsing with dull, rhythmic warmth.

Inside each membrane, faint silhouettes twitched. Horned snouts. Spined tails coiled tight around yolk-sacks.

The glowing riverbanks were not wild growth.

They were an abyssal hatchery.

A heavy wet thud shuddered through the timbers as something massive clawed onto the washboard fifty paces aft. Torcall's squad shouted in alarm from the lower well, drowned out almost immediately by Muircheartach's booming battle-shout as the brawler charged toward the stern. Whatever was crawling over the gunwale, the deck crew would have to face it without her.

Beathag kept her boots planted on the catwalk, her attention locked on the illuminated split three hundred paces ahead.

Through the blue grid of [Tide-Sight], the river offered two choices, and both demanded blood.

To the port side lay a narrow gravel eddy where Donnchadh could bleed off momentum, stalling the vessel into safe shallows at the cost of shutting down the Wild-Torrent Matrix forever. Dead ahead lay the main chute: a sheer sixty-foot drop through the pulsing center of the egg-shelf, preserving their fifty-two knots while plowing the dreadnought directly into the waking brood-mother's jaws.

From the helm platform, Donnchadh’s shout boomed over the foam, demanding the line.

Beathag did not hesitate. She raised her right arm, locked her fist, and signaled straight toward the drop.