Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [74]
And then he was jerked half over the thwart, with a startled scream of “Blight!”
Fawn lunged, managing to get her hands around his belt. She snatched one look over the side before she leaned frantically backward, feet skidding on the deck. A huge gray splashing shape seemed to have half-swallowed Dag’s hook, and was trying to yank him into the river. In order to eat him, near as Fawn could tell. She supposed turnabout was fair play, but she wasn’t willing to give up her best husband to some awful river monster. “Dag, let go of it! It doesn’t matter! I don’t want a fish dinner that much!”
“I can’t! Crap! The blighted thing’s stuck on my hook!” Dag clawed futilely at the buckles on his arm harness, then managed to get his knees down far enough to clap them to the inboard side of the hull and give a mighty heave. Fawn added what weight she had.
Several feet of flailing gray wetness rose from the brown water and arced through the air to land on the mid-deck with a thud that shook the whole boat. Dag, still attached to its mouth-end, perforce fell with it, and Fawn with them both. She scrambled back on her hands and knees. The startled Copperhead tromped his hooves in the straw of his pen, jerked his head, and whinnied, and Daisy-goat bleated in fright, whether of the plunging horse or of the river monster Fawn was unsure.
“Whit!” Dag yelled. “Bring a mallet! Quick!”
The uproar brought the entire crew of the Fetch rushing to the bow. Whit, Hod, and Hawthorn jammed up in the front hatch. Berry, Remo, and Bo peered down over the edge of the cabin roof. Whit vanished, Hawthorn fell through, and Hod, eyeing Copperhead’s antics, hung back. Fawn bounced to her feet for her first clear view of the most enormous fish—if it was a fish—she had ever seen or imagined. It was nearly as long as she was tall. Its head was huge, eyes glaring yellow, mouth wide and ugly, and Dag’s left arm was still stuck partway into its gaping gullet. Red gills flexed, and its long barbels snapped like whips as it heaved and flopped. Dag was jerked around with it.
Whit reappeared with a shiny new shovel grabbed from Berry’s stock of Tripoint goods, and proceeded to try to beat the fish to death, or at least into submission, urged on by Dag: “Hit it again, Whit! Harder! Ow! Aim for its head, blight you!”
The catfish finally stopped moving, mostly, and Dag drew a long breath, sat up, and carefully worked his hook free from inside the thing’s mouth. If the monster had succeeded in pulling him overboard, would it have taken him to the bottom and drowned him before he could get loose? Fawn felt faint. Dag shook out his arm, looked around at his riveted audience, and cleared his throat. “There, Spark. Fish dinner for eight.”
“Thank you, Dag,” Fawn choked. Which won a flash of a smile back, the strain in his face easing. He almost succeeded in looking as if he’d meant to do all this, but she thought he might be picturing that trip to the river bottom, too.
“Fish dinner for forty-eight, more like,” said Whit, measuring out the gleaming corpse. “How much does this thing weigh?”
“Looks like about a hundred, hundred-twenty pounds, to me,” drawled Bo. An expert opinion, Fawn presumed. Whit whistled.
“Well,” said Berry, looking down at Fawn and shaking her head. “You did tell me your husband could catch fish, I’ll give you that. Never seen anyone use live Lakewalker for bait, before.”
“How do you fit it in a pan?” Fawn nearly wailed. She pictured it draped across her skillet with an arm’s length hanging over each side. She wouldn’t be able to lift it. Could it be cooked on a turnspit, like a roasting pig?
“Whit and Hod will clean it and cut it up for you,” said Dag genially. He stretched his back and climbed somewhat gingerly to his feet, wiping his hook on his trousers. “I’m sure Bo will be happy to tell them how.”
Whit’s look of big-eyed enthusiasm faded a trifle,