They had lit the pyre. For all the good it would do them. The ship was rapidly sinking, the white wyrm snatching up all the men it could, ripping them to shreds but scarcely swallowing them before reaching for another.
“Jane!” I shouted, trying to rise once more. My head was spinning and the ice beneath me seemed to be tipping madly. It was only as I began to slide backwards I realized it was tipping. I rolled onto my back, trying to slow my slide with my stocking feet. Bootless and coatless, I wasn’t going to last long in the Arctic, but a dunk in the water would finish me off all the sooner.
Then the head of a wyrm rose up out of the sea before me and I longed to feel the killing cold of the ocean. The thing’s face was hideous, long and thin like a snake’s with bulbous knobs over its e
