Oshenerth (17 page)

As an attempt to inflict injury it was as bold as it was doomed. A quick squirt from his siphon sent the shaman skittering sideways and out of range of the spralaker’s claws. Snapping only water, the defiant prisoner drifted helplessly back to the sand. Those spralakers—crabs—she knew of who could swim at all could do so only fitfully, Irina remembered.

Flashing impatience, Jorosab removed the knife from his waistband and started to swim forward. “Leave this to me, shaman. I can make him talk.” He addressed the prisoner. “I will start with one eyestalk, hardshell, but leave the other so you can watch as I scrape your gill rakers.”

“No need, merson.” Before Jorosab could reach him, the prisoner reached back with one whetted claw, plunged it into his undershell, and in a single smooth motion tore out his own heart. Inhaling sharply, Irina swallowed enough water to drown herself—had she not been breathing the stuff. A couple of the assembled counselors uttered a startled word or two. It was Chachel who swam forward to wave away the swirls of life fluid that leaked from the dying body.

“Defiant words are nothing more than that: just words.” He kicked at the multi-limbed corpse. “This is a foe fit for supper, nothing more. I myself look forward to dining on more of the same.”

“The hunter is right.” Oxothyr drifted over until he was directly above the body of the scout. “We have much to do and little time in which to do it. Return to your schools. Inform and explain. Command all to get a good night’s rest. At first light we go to the relief of Siriswirll.”

“Or to our deaths,” Glint murmured from where he hovered close to Irina.

Taking the shaman’s words to heart, the assembly dispersed in a swift and orderly manner. As Sathi and Tythe worked to dispose of the dead spralaker, Oxothyr was left to consult with the returned scouts.

Nearby, a resigned Irina looked over at Glint. “I’m going to have to fight tomorrow, it seems. I know how to fight a little with my hands and feet, but that’s all.”

“It’s not hard to use a spear.” Retracting his two hunting arms, Glint demonstrating by repeatedly thrusting them in her direction. “Keep your adversary in front of you, back up if necessary, don’t let him get above or below you, and you’ll be fine. Chachel and I will look out for you.”

She nodded, not for the first time wondering if her altruistic instincts hadn’t got the best of her. Had she not volunteered to participate in this expedition, she could be back in Sandrift helping to care for the elderly and look after the children. No one here would blame her for having stayed behind. Not only was she an outsider; as far as the inhabitants of Sandrift were concerned she had all but redefined the term.

Of course, if she had stayed behind, she would not just live: she would have to live with
herself
.

“I guess both you and Chachel are pretty good with a spear.”

Glint’s tentacles curled inward in disdain. “Oh no, we manyarms prefer the use of far more sophisticated weapons. Multiple knives, throwing shells, and bow and arrow. Myself, I can handle three of the latter at once.”

She made herself envision a bow-wielding cuttlefish. It made sense. With its ten arms a cephalopod like Glint could fire off several arrows at once. Dozens of manyarms operating in concert would constitute a formidable force. She started to feel a little better about the battle to come. Clearly, mersons and manyarms brought complimentary capabilities to any skirmish. How could an army of cra—of spralakers, who could barely swim, hope to fend off an attack by agile mersons and swift manyarms who could strike at them from any direction?

She imagined that she would learn the answer to that troubling question as well as many others as soon as the sun once more rose above the mirrorsky.

— XI —

Day came up softly, as it always seemed to on the reefs of Oshenerth. The light of morning percolated through the water is if a master bowl-maker was slowly blending glass with flecks of gold. Underwater, sunlight did not hit you, Irina had learned. You fused with it. The glow became a part of you. An invisible illumination changed the world, and everyone was inside it.

Little was said as the well-armed relief force broke camp. A few of the older volunteers remained behind to look after the expedition’s supplies. Without supervision, the usual scavengers of the reef would help themselves.

One characteristic of underwater military movements struck her immediately. Traveling in three columns, the soldiers of Sandrift advanced in the absence of sound. Unlike on land, there was no tramping of feet to alert the enemy, no rumble of heavy equipment. Mersons and manyarms alike swam in silence. They also pressed forward, insofar as was possible, slowly and in single file to minimize the pressure wave their movement pushed out in front of them.

A perceptive shark might have detected their approach, the ampullae of Lorinzini along its snout picking up the presence in one place of multiple organically-generated electrical fields of a certain strength. It was a risk the counselors had no choice but to take. They could not hazard having their troops advance individually lest they be detected by any spralaker patrols.

Glint was explaining it all to Irina as Chachel swam ahead of them. “Hopefully we’ll manage to surprise the hardshells. We didn’t see evidence of any sharks working with them on the battlefield.”

Clutching the spear she had been given as if it was a protective talisman, Irina concentrated on keeping her place in the formation as she listened to the manyarm. “But I thought sharks were a traditional enemy of your kind, and of the mersons?”

“So they are.” Falling back beside her, Glint kept pace with periodic spurts from his siphon. “But that doesn’t mean they’re allied to the spralakers, either. A shark would just as soon enjoy a meal of hardshell as one of softbody. They are independent operators, are sharks. Some have access to special magicks of their own, others are nothing more than teeth with fins, and a very few will work together just long enough to facilitate a hunt. The two silkies who pursued the herald Zesqu all the way to Sandrift were an exception. They must have been very well paid.” The cephalopod wiped at his left eye with the back of a tentacle.

“But sharks are not soldiers. They are the bandits of Oshenerth. One day they will work for reward and the next they will turn upon and eat one another. Not the kind of fighters, however skilled, around which one builds a stable army. Even the spralakers know that.”

Irina considered. Off to the right a school of approaching trevally caught sight of the three columns, uttered a collective gasp of surprise, and quickly changed course. As the school was headed away from Siriswirll and posed no risk of giving the alarm, the soldiers from Sandrift saw no reason to pursue. Unsettled schoolish mutterings faded as the silvery mass vanished into the distance.

“I thought spralakers were also like that. Independent, I mean.” She rubbed at her own eyes, wondering if she would ever get used to the fact that though she kept them wide open underwater they did not itch or burn.

Glint gestured with a couple of arms. “Normally that is so. But these are not normal times.” He pointed sideways to a svelte mass that occupied the center of the middle column. “I have known Oxothyr a long time, and I’ve never seen him this worried.”

She nodded perceptively. “About the spralakers.”

“About the spralakers, yes.” The cuttlefish flashed a querulous yellow strewn with black. “And about other things.”

O O O

The unseen sun was still low in the sky the following morning when, at a signal from the expedition’s leaders, all three columns rose in unison toward the surface. As she followed Chachel and Glint upward, it struck Irina that she had not been this close to air since her transformation. Swimming along just beneath the barely perceptible wavelets, she found that she could see irregular shapes above, on the other side of the mirrorsky. Clouds. She hadn’t seen a cloud in—how long had it been?

No one was looking in her direction. The pair of merson soldiers in line behind her were conversing among themselves. What would happen if she …?

Holding tight to the spear with her right hand, she thrust her left upward and broke through the surface tension.

For a moment there was nothing. Then she felt—heat. Not unbearable, not intolerable, but oddly foreign and unfamiliar. Her air-caressed skin began to prickle, as if that part of her arm was falling asleep. If she kept her hand out of the water, would it begin to burn? She didn’t think so. If her skin had been rendered that sensitive, she would have begun to burn already. What would be the reaction of those around her be if they saw what she was doing? For all she knew, she might be violating some serious, unknown religious stricture.

This was neither the time nor the day to challenge local beliefs. She drew her arm back down and her hand underwater. Before she tried such a thing again she needed to discuss the possible physical and social ramifications with someone like Oxothyr. Anyway, there was no more time to experiment. The sun was behind her, and soon there was blood below.

Swimming over the last ridge of coral, they found chaos.

Screams, shrieks, and the sounds of fighting had been increasing for some time. Without intervening lines of solid reef to impede the din of battle, the volume now intensified many times over. She tried to take it in all at once.

Ahead, ranks of spralakers marched in unison toward the makeshift wall that stood between them and the village of Siriswirll. The town itself was something of a shock. It was much bigger than Sandrift or ruined Shakestone. Some of the structures, whose coral growth had been channeled and accelerated by merson architects and engineers, were four and five stories high. Fanciful spires and decorative protrusions erupted outward from the tallest buildings as the deftly nurtured polyps of which they were composed sought room to grow. The majority varied from a very pale pink to a deep purplish-red, though there were also edifices of bright blue, intense yellow, and in one spectacular instance, a sizeable domed structure of coral that was tinted a vivid violet.

There was no sign of either the community’s senior or most youthful inhabitants. Either they had been rushed to a place of greater safety, she decided, or else they were huddled somewhere deep inside the town.

Where the advancing lines of spralakers had reached the wall, the water boiled with mayhem. She swallowed hard as she looked on. Every variety and species of hardshell imaginable, including many entirely alien to her, seemed to be taking part in the assault, from small blue snappers whose legs would barely have spanned her open palm to others who … that were …

Some of the attacking spralakers were as big as tanks.

She could hardly believe the evidence of her own eyes. What she was seeing was incredible. Even the largest relatives of the spralakers in her own world were no bigger than a human. Pressing the attack in front of and below her were gargantuan crustaceans whose dimensions had no precedent in her experience. Some boasted claws larger than her own body. They could easily snip a person in half. Repressing her gag reflex, she saw that at several points along the rubble wall they had already done so to some of the town’s defenders.

Nor were the besiegers relying on their natural endowments alone. A few of the largest wielded double-headed axes whose ribbed blades were fashioned from the sharpened halves of tridacna shell. Others thrust and jabbed with spears no less lethal than those carried by mersons and manyarms. In lieu of the bows their powerful but inflexible limbs could not properly manipulate, they attacked from a distance by throwing chunks of coral and small boulders. Stones were hard to heave underwater, but once at the crest of their respective arcs, they gathered momentum as they descended. Many of the rocks had been shaped and given points that enabled them to move through the water with speed.

The gory sprawl of severed body parts and dismembered corpses would have crowded the battlefield enough to interfere with fighting if not for the powerful current that swept up from behind the town and carried much of the frightful detritus away. Somewhere off to the east, she knew, those same undisciplined and unmanageable sharks of whom Glint had spoken must be enjoying a feast of unprecedented dimensions.

An upsurge of spears and stones began to rise from below. While they fell short of their intended targets, it was a sign that the relief force had been spotted.

Sandrift’s commanders wasted no time. The order was given and relayed the length of each line. One column peeled off to the right, the other to the left. Heart pounding, Irina gripped her spear so tight that her fingers turned almost as white as the bone shaft. Then, barely aware of what she was doing, she was diving downward, kicking hard as she strained not to lose sight of Chachel and Glint.

What am I doing here?
she thought. Events left her no time to formulate a response. Soon she had leveled off and found herself joining several of Sandrift’s fighters as they surrounded a spralaker the size of a luxury sedan. The raucous turmoil of battle that now enveloped her was deafening and she could hardly hear. Blood and body parts, including among the latter many soft shapes she did not recognize and did not want to, eddied around her position as she was caught up in a maelstrom of wide-ranging butchery.

Seafood, she told herself. It’s all just seafood. Then the head of a merson came tumbling past, its body nowhere to be seen, the eyes open, vacant, staring, emphatically unfishlike, and the consoling analogy she had just invented for herself evaporated like spit in a steel foundry. She did not throw up only because she was too busy defending herself from snapping claws that could effortlessly rip her to shreds.

Sandrift’s leaders had chosen the perfect time to attack. Shafting down through the warm water, the rising sun momentarily disoriented those spralakers who turned to fight back. Retracting eyestalks into protective shells shielded them from the light but sacrificed critical peripheral vision.

The relief force’s surprise was nearly complete. Diving down among the rearward ranks of the attackers, the merson and manyarm soldiers of Sandrift proceeded to sow doubt, death, and destruction.

Rising above the tumult of battle, cries of excitement and renewed hope came from the vicinity of Siriswirll’s defensive wall. In ones and twos, then small groups, and finally in a wave of spears and ink, the town’s hard-pressed defenders came swarming out from behind their protective bulwark to confront their attackers. Beset from behind, in front, and from above by a reinvigorated defense, the methodical advance of the spralakers hesitated, stalled, and began to collapse.

In the midst of the ensuing vacillation and in an attempt to break once and for all the iron will of their assailants, the defenders of Siriswirll sent forth the shock force they had been holding back as a last reserve. Each individual steered and led by a single manyarm clinging to its back, the team of dark green bumphead parrotfish came swimming over the wall to hurl itself at the center of the spralaker line. There was no need for reins or other means of guidance. Equipped with multiple arms, the manyarm riders maintained effortless control of their mounts.

Boasting beaks powerful enough to crunch and consume solid coral, the bumpheads were able to bite through the tough protective shells of even the biggest spralakers as if they were made of paper. In lieu of human screams and manyarm squeals, dying spralakers emitted loud, discordant hissing noises. As the bumpheads wrought their havoc and the soldiers of Sandrift slashed and speared from behind and above, the battlefield became dominated by the horrid cacophony of collapsing crab-shapes.

Then, just as the spralaker force was on the verge of breaking and fleeing, they were rallied by a singular entity. There were larger crustaceans on the field, many who were swifter or stronger—but none so commanding. With his bright crimson shell inlaid with gold symbols and glyphs, the spralaker commandant cut a striking multi-limbed figure. Arms held aloft, claws clacking like castanets, he hissed out one directive after another.

Rejuvenated by the definitive commands and cool confidence that had appeared in their midst, uncertain spralakers rallied around their senior officer. Sharp-clawed fighters closed ranks. Instead of advancing in successive lines, they began to form concentric circles. Gradually the newly applied defensive maneuver drew the surviving spralaker soldiers into a series of larger and larger rings, each of which served to defend the one immediately in front of it as well as the one behind.

True, they were no longer assaulting the town or the improvised defensive wall, but in their new battlefield configuration neither could the attacking force be easily defeated. Soldiers of Sandrift and Siriswirll were forced to hold back. Attempting to spear a chosen target that was surrounded on every side by active, alert co-defenders was much harder than sticking a preoccupied attacker from behind.

Swimming well above the condensed spralaker throng, mersons and manyarms sheathed their spears and brought forth their bows and arrows. Occasionally a shaft would strike an unprotected spot and a spralaker would go down. But its place was immediately taken by one of its neighbors, and the defensive circle maintained.

Their confidence increasingly restored, the entire mass of shells, claws, and legs began to move slowly but relentlessly in the direction of Siriswirll. And this time no wall or line of defenders would be able to stop them.

Though no military tactician, even Irina could see what was happening. Finding Oxothyr flanked by his two agitated famuli, she expressed her alarm aloud.

“Use your magic, shaman! Can’t you stop this?” Having retreated to a safe height, she gestured downward. “They’ve positioned themselves so that each one helps to shield the one next to it.”