It was frigid cold, the kind of cold that broke you at your core, the winds blowing up between the icy pillars jutting up from the surf creaking and groaning like a living beast. The howl of wind made all the louder as it blew in from the east across the shelf of ice. Their aft, turned towards a massive tunnel bored through the shelf making a little cyclone of frost just for them.

Yet to spite the winds, their sails didnt even make a sound, ropes tied tightly around them to keep them closed against wind, sailors clinging to lines, holding down rigging by hand, collectively holding their breath, ears sharp.

Nothing else made a noise.

Nothing else dared to; not in snakehead waters.

The Redbird sat tied up, toe lines anchored to the shelf the only thing keeping them steady in the cove of close-knit arches of snow and ice. They had been forced to cut their anchor the day before to lighten the load, but had made it into this spot. Not a man had so much as pissed off the edge in that long, and things were getting antsy, but a bell had chimed before someone could shove a rag into it, and now all heads were up on a swivel.

The sea wasn’t the domain of man anymore.

The wind seemed to calm for a moment then, whispers from one of their gunners at the front carrying just a little to loud. But just as soon a fresh wind blew in cold and harsh across the deck, carrying their whispers away in a roaring gale.

Their watcher in the crows perch, a newbie from the America’s named Tom, scanned the horizon vigilantly.

Rui watched him, the kid had a crows eye, picking out the glint of danger in the water as they ran their supplies along the Ghostland Coasts.

The faintest creak off port made Rui look, a line was pulling tight, the wooden bell on it giving the faintest jingle.

His eyes shot up to Tom.

“Snakehead,” Tom mouthed, two fingers to his eyes, then pointed off in the same direction.

Rui looked back to the helmsman, then waved his arm overhead.

Michael, their helmsman nodded back, hands steady on the wheel.

The air felt suddenly heavy, another line off their stern pulling tight, sending a wooden jingle to his side.

It was circling them.

He had hunted snakeheads along the coast of Portugal before, but the weather here had turned so cold, he had hoped the icebergs would slow them down.

Seemed more likely it was helping them grow bigger.

A shadow passed in the distance, the faint flash of red scaled in the sun out beyond the mouth of the channel they had followed in here.

How far out was that? He wondered, hoping it was just a trick of the eye.

A bell rang again, this time to their aft, and again, the temperature meter snare.

It seemed, the serpent had found the easy way into the cove.