Time Castaways Read Online Free PDF

was almost palpable, like waves of heat radiating from the stove.
    Tossing aside the blood-soaked bullwhip, the executioner pulled a fresh one from the green leather bag at his side. But just then the prisoner howled again, louder this time, even though he was standing limply at the learning tree.
    “Silence!” the baron commanded, rising from her throne.
    In ragged stages, the mob stopped making noise, and this time everybody heard the low ghostly moan, echoing over the ville as if coming down from the cloudy sky.
    “Sweet nuking hell, that came from the sea,” the sec chief whispered, his scarred face going pale. “The screams of the prisoner must have caught the attention of…of….”
    Slowly a dark mountain of flesh rose from the other side of the ville wall, six huge, inhuman eyes glaring down at the scene of torture even as a hundred tentacles began to crawl over the granite block wall.
    “Kraken!” a sec man on the wall shouted, firing his crossbow.
    Then a tentacle wrapped around his waist and the cursing man was hauled out of view.
    As the alarm bell began to sound, the civies started screaming and racing around in a blind panic. Trying to control her breathing, Baron Wainwright could only stare in wonder at the mountain of flesh looming over the wall. So the old doomie had been right! The death screams of the condemned man had summoned a kraken. Now, the colossal mutie would level the ville, unless the defenses held. However, the sec men had been preparing for this battle for a year. Hopefully it would be enough.
    “Defend the ville,” the baron yelled, pulling a Navy flare gun from her gunbelt and firing the charge straight up into the fog. The explosion of colored lights dis tracted the mutie, several long tentacles reaching upward for the sizzling charge slowly drifting downward on a tiny parachute.
    As the kraken rose behind the ville wall, ropy tentacles extended into the streets searching among the stone houses for anything edible. A stray dog sniffing at the barrels of fish offal was caught and hauled bodily into the gaping maw of the horrendous creature.
    By now, the sec men were launching swarms of arrows into the goliath. But if they did any damage it was not readily apparent, and the mutie continued feeding upon the population.
    Scampering out of an alley, a gaudy slut tried to get back into the tavern when ropy death came wiggling out of the sky and grabbed her around the neck. Shrieking in terror, the slut pulled a bone knife from her bodice and started wildly stabbing at the tentacle. But the resilient hide was too tough for the blade, and she was hauled upward, going over the wall, cursing and fighting until the very end.
    Meanwhile teams of sec men in the guard towers feverishly operated the hand cranks to pull back the mighty arbalests. The giant crossbows were thirty feet long, and used three bows working in conjunction. Each arrow was twice the size of a man, and the barbed head was edged with thin strips of genuine predark steel.
    “Pull, you lazy bastards!” a sergeant bellowed. “Pull or die!”
    Attracted by the shout, the kraken headed toward the guard tower, and Baron Wainwright quickly fired another flare. Once more, the beast turned to try to catch the descending flare, giving the team of sec men just enough time to load the arrow into the arbalest, the catch engaging with a hard thunk.
    Grabbing the aiming yoke, the burly sergeant swung the colossal weapon around toward the mutie, aimed and yanked hard on the release lever. There came a groan of wooden gears, then the triple bows let fly and the giant arrow went straight into the kraken’s throat.
    Bellowing in rage and pain, the mutie turned toward the source of the agony, its tentacles lashing out wildly.
    But more giant arrows were launched from the other guard towers, and the kraken twisted madly in the deadly cross fire, roaring defiantly.
    A catapult snapped upward from the roof of the barracks, and a wooden barrel