Peter Mercier and the Hunters of Artemis

Chapter 11

Peter woke slowly, his eyes burning like they'd been lit on fire, coughing and sputtering violently as the tall waves tossed him to the shore only a few dozen yards ahead. After a few seconds, he tumbled onto the cold sand, his hearing minimal as water seeped from his ears. A dull, piercing pain in his chest lessened as the dirty, frigid, seaweed-ridden saltwater spilled from his dry mouth. He sank to his hurting stomach as his other senses came back to him one by one.

He heard the crackling and popping of the ship as it was ground to splinters, the deck he'd been knocked off churning and roiling as the hull broke. The waves pushed the bow forward relentlessly, further into the black algae-smothered rocks and forcing it sideways. He didn't see as it groaned and flipped over onto the shallow water with a shattering splash, boring a deep gash into the sand that soon filled with water, but he certainly felt the deathly silence that followed the sound of their ship breaking in half along the beach.

He knocked at the side of his head with his shaking palm and started to hear the frantic voices of his companions. "Where's Amber?" Hiccup yelled, his uneven wet footsteps getting louder as he approached. He was drenched head to metal, his hair caked in sand and his normally green eyes turned bloodshot red and dripping with tears. He was violently swatting at his eyelids, sand on his fingers lodging in his eyelashes.

Peter cleared his throat, shuffling to his feet. Sopping wet with his shirt stuck to his chest, he rushed over to the wreckage, seeing half the underbelly of their ship lodged under a thick rock forty yards from shore. "She was still below deck," he replied breathlessly, hobbling towards the wreckage. Peter saw Eret out of the corner of his eye, barely crawling his way out of the surf, missing a shoe, a wave battering him to his knees as he tried to stand.

Behind him, he heard Hiccup gasp and fall, the gears in his prosthetic leg rattling, and he almost turned to help before hearing Amber's voice break through the churning waves. "I'm okay!" she cried out. Peter saw her emerge from the surf next to the wreckage, holding her shoulder. She had grabbed her coat and tied it around her waist. It was soaked with water, strands of liquid running off it onto the sand as she emerged. "Get to the trees! Get Eret!"

Peter nodded, turning around to help Hiccup back up, his leg still rattling. "Eret! Get to the trees!" he yelled, helping the chief forward by letting him lean on his shoulder. Eret nodded, crawling his way up slowly to the shrubbery a few dozen feet away. Eventually, they all collected under the shade of a tall tree, watching the tide push the shipwreck further in. "Is everyone alright?" Peter asked, his vision starting to fade back to normal. His voice was scratchy and hoarse, his throat dried out and hurting almost as much as his stomach.

"My leg," Hiccup groaned, sitting down painfully. His eyes were still red, but his hands were more or less clean. "It isn't supposed to get wet. The gears must be waterlogged," he reached and twisted the prosthetic's top, pulling the entire thing out and laying it on the sand. His dripping pant leg hung loosely at the bottom where the prosthetic had been. When Peter looked at him funny, he explained. "It was pinching the skin."

Eret made a sour face, laying on his back. "Thanks for that image," he said. "As if I couldn't feel any sicker."

"How's Amber?" Hiccup asked, eyeing her concernedly as she sat next to Peter on the sand. "I pulled something in my shoulder," she said, small tears forming in her hazel eyes. "It really hurts."

"We'll make a splint or something in a bit," Peter assured, wringing out her coat and handing it back to her to sit on. He looked at Eret, who had his hands on his forehead. "What the hell just happened?"

"We've been shipwrecked," the captain answered. "Which is just amazing, honestly."

"Do you know where we are?" Hiccup asked. "Sure," Eret retorted. "An island in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't make a difference where we are, chief. There aren't any trade routes around for miles, farther away than anybody would bother traveling to rescue any of us. Let's be glad there's some shade."