Killed dozens of sailors

It was a bright day and his eyes were narrow slits against the painful
rays of the sun. But he could see the sails clearly enough, and the wooden
rigging to which they were attached. And he could also see poor Malora
hanging from one of the poles, a length of rope looped around her neck,
swaying lifelessly in the breeze and from the ever-constant rise and fall of
the ship.

A cold calm washed through Larten Crepsley. Many years earlier, as a
boy, he had experienced a similar calmness just before he’d killed the brute
of a man who had murdered his best friend. It was as if he withdrew
emotionally from the world. He forgot every rule he’d lived by and every
moral restraint he had ever placed upon himself.

In that moment he was neither man nor vampire, but a force, one that
would not stop until it had been spent. In the factory he’d only had one man
to direct his fury against. Here he had dozens. And for that he was glad.
“They used to call me Quicksilver,” he whispered, smiling hollowly.

“Fastest hands in the world.”

Then the smile vanished. His eyes flashed. And like a sliver of deadly
mercury, he attacked.

***

Larten sat near the prow of the ship. He was holding the baby and
absentmindedly bouncing it up and down. The baby was cooing happily.

Larten’s hands were soaked with blood and the red, sticky liquid had seeped
through the baby’s shawl, but neither seemed to notice or care.
He would never recall the slaughter in detail. Fragments would haunt
him, both awake and sleeping, for the rest of his life. Faces would flash in
front of him or shimmer in the theater of his dreams. He’d see his nails,
jagged and deadly, slicing open a throat as if it was a slab of butter. His
fingers gripping a man’s skull, digging deep, crushing bone, sinking into
brain.

Sometimes he’d get a strange taste in his mouth. It always puzzled him
for a few seconds. Then he would remember biting off a sailor’s salty toes
while the man was alive, leaving him awhile, then returning to finish the job
like a butcher who had been momentarily sidetracked.

He had saved the captain for last, letting him bear witness to the
destruction. The seasoned sailor wept and begged for his men’s lives, then
for his own. Larten only grinned and pointed to the girl dangling above
their heads.

In his dreams he often chased sailors into the rigging. In reality only
three had tried to climb to safety, but in Larten’s nightmares there were
hundreds and the poles stretched to the sky and beyond. But no matter how
many fled ahead of him, he always killed every last one of them before he
stirred and woke.

The baby gurgled, then started to cry hungrily. Larten bounced him a
few more times, hoping to shush him, but the infant boy wasn’t to be
distracted. With a sigh, Larten reluctantly turned from the prow and
surveyed the deck of corpses.

He knew it would be bad, but this was even worse than he’d feared. So
many hacked (bitten, chewed, torn) to pieces. Blood everywhere. Guts
hanging from the ropes in the rigging. Heads set on spikes and hooks. The
eyes of one were missing, two crosses rammed deep into the bloody
sockets.

***

The Saga of Larten Crepsley: Ocean of Blood, Chapter 23-24