Not bothering to conserve energy, I poured all the prana my soul could expend at once. I spread the wall’s perimeter so that it encompassed everything but the sea itself. Feeding its length and unquenchable hunger caused rapid pulses of stinging wind to flutter my clothing. I sensed something strike my flames, but whatever it was, the intensely dense heat acted almost like a solid brick barricade, preventing the spear or arrow from piercing all the way through. Considering that a hiss and a cloud of steam erupted outward, I knew that water was the next method of attack.
“Mercer!” called Kiku.
I backed up, taking part of my flame wall with me. When my legs became submerged up to my knees, I split my blaze in two and dumped them in the brink of the sea. The surface of the benevolently lapping water immediately transformed into a hot, bubbling cloud that spread in every conceivable direction. Even through my boots I felt the residual heat that came from the water that had not been vaporized. My exposed skin tingled when the steam cloud rushed past me. With my squinting eyes barely able to see through the unnatural fog, my sense of touch guided me to Akachii’s slippery scales.
On getting a grip, I yelled, “Go!”
The beast lurched forward, nearly throwing me back into the sea. However, a hard clenching of my fingers kept me from doing so. Akachii cut across the water like a vulgar insult piercing through a sensitive heart. It was a speed he only attained in brief spurts before now. On exiting the brunt of the steam, I saw that Akachii kept most of his body submerged. Only the very top of his head and back remained visible. It was wise to keep our profile low, for no matter how quickly the gitra slithered through the water, he could not outpace a winged pursuer. We needed slyness as much as speed.
Lamentably, the minimal cloud cover and half-moon meant a scout did not have to get all that close to spot us, and no doubt killing a soldier prompted the camp to send every airborne rider in the area after us. There was little chance we could reach the cover Pukam Forest offered before a swarm of scouts descended upon us, but heading farther into the sea limited our options further. Hiding out in the town sounded like a sensible idea, but even if we found a place to hunker in, the seaport hardly looked large enough to conceal four people on the run. We’d end up being surrounded.
Fuck! What I wouldn’t give to summon Aranath for five godsdamn minutes! Why couldn’t Kiku wait two fatherfucking seconds to wake me up and come up with a plan better than nothing at all? I mean, I understood why she snapped. After all, it was a rape that snapped me out of a mind rune’s magic. Still, if it wasn’t for the victim clinging on to her savior, I might have been motivated enough to raise my voice at her for a sentence or two. Of course, our impulsive situation made it imperative that everyone do nothing more than inhale, hold it for a moment, then quietly exhale.
Akachii, while keeping a hearty pace, still needed to slow down a few minutes after absconding the shore. Not satisfied with the speed reduction, Ujin said, “Kiku, make Akachii go slower. They’re just gonna follow our wake.”
“Speed is our friend right now.”
“No, being sneaky is. We can’t outrun griffins or whatever they use.”
“We’re swimming, not running.”
“Gods, just shut up for a second! Listen, I got an idea. Slow us down so the wake can dilute. If we see some soldiers coming near, then Thonsono will try to hide us.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Shifa’s father. I mentioned him before, no? Mean fellow. Doesn’t like me much, but Shifa will persuade him to help, I’m sure.”
“And how can he help?”
“He can cast an illusion spell. He’s no master or anything, but all he would have to do is create the illusion of water around us. Nothing fancy there.”
“A good prana seeker will sniff us out,” said Kiku.
“Then you can get Akachii to swim as fast as he fucking wants in that case, but no way they’re not catching up to us. We’re not gonna win a race with them. Mercer agrees with me, yes?”
They both stared back at me. I looked behind us, inspecting the horizon. Vampiric sight would have been a real help right about now. Seeing nothing, I met Kiku’s gaze and said, “Minimize our wake and tell the girl to help us keep an eye on the sky. The second we spot anything approaching us, we’ll try Ujin’s idea, got it?”
“Yeah, yeah, got it.”
The next several minutes were spent straining my neck as it endeavored to twist my head in every direction but downward. The same went for the others. I already knew from previous queries that Shifa’s night vision was about equal to a human’s, so she gave us no advantage there. And with the wind coming from the west, her superior sense of smell became useless against any tracker coming from the east or south, the exact directions I expected to see the trackers appear from. Despite these non-advantages, it was Shifa who spotted something first.
Kiku brought Akachii to almost a complete stop as we peered at what could have been a mere seagull gliding over the southeastern horizon. It was such a speck that every blink threatened to make me lose sight of it. I therefore ended up paying too much attention to it. It took the extracted girl to point out another point of interest to the southwest. That silhouette looked to belong to something as large as a human atop a griffin, but at least it headed more west than north. With neither distant blob posing an immediate threat, Akachii slowly propelled himself again.
Creeping through the water without a good way to tell how fast time ticked meant time slunk at the same pace as Akachii’s forward movement. So in what felt like three nights into the future, we saw a flapping figure coming at us from the south. Its general shape was that of a large bird, not a griffin. Nonetheless, the top half of a human body rode upon it, so it was definitely one of the scouts. From the outset it was obvious it would be on top of Akachii very soon, so Kiku signaled for her lesser leviathan to stop completely.
“Summon him,” I said.
“Okay, just back up a little so I have some room… Thanks, that should do. Now let’s hope he doesn’t resist the summons…”
A few seconds of silence and concentration produced that puff of air that came from a fruitful summoning. In the dim light of night the black fur of our new guest almost made him invisible. He wasn’t much taller than Shifa, but his hearty build made him look three times as heavy as his daughter. Shifa started to chirp as though someone stuck a piece of ice on her back. The bigger drenindru’s cheeps sounded deeper and more drawn out. He also snuck in some growls directed at Ujin. No matter his thoughts on the situation, the parent drenindru complied with his child’s wishes.
Once he harmonized his spirit energy with the physical realm, he cast a blanket of “water” above and around our group. He held his paws up to continue fostering the spell with prana. Usually one wanted to stay as motionless as possible when behind an illusion, but the sea’s natural undulations made that impossible. Though perhaps it wasn’t so bad that Thonsono illusion rolled with the motions, as a changeless section of water might stick out in this particular case.
The illusion partly obstructed our view as well, so we only reestablished sight with the flying creature when it flew right over us. Mercifully, the scout stayed quite high in the air, evidently trusting that the higher altitude granted them the advantage in their search. Its high speed also did not allow it to linger for long. When we assumed it had gone, Thonsono dissolved the illusion. After taking a few moments to look around, Kiku urged her mount forward.
Chapter Twenty-Five
For the rest of the night we stuck to Ujin’s plan. We encountered four more instances of scouts flying overhead, and though a couple of them flew lower than the first, none lined up right over us. However, not being adept at illusion spells, Thonsono expended a great deal of prana each time he cast it. His last spell was practically transparent, and with the sun not far at all, his next spell was going to be pointlessly translucent, prompting Ujin to cut the link to save his own energy. His departure made the ride nonbelligerent aga
in, for the annoyed creature spent his free time irritably chirping away with Shifa.
Tahlous’ cosmic red torch was quick to best Ylsuna’s placid blue candle, giving me the impression that we were as obvious as an open sore on a beautiful young maiden’s face. As a result, I instructed Kiku to make Akachii swim faster. We had not covered much distance in our attempt to be slow and discreet, but I couldn’t imagine that Pukam lied too far away by this point. I trusted that the cover provided by a major forest would let us get away for good.
The coastline came into view deeper into the morning. There even looked to be the inception of a tree line at the northern fringe, so that’s what we headed for. I would have liked to go farther into the sea before making the turn back to shore, but Kiku was approaching her summoning time limit.
Once or twice I wondered whether we should have instead taken a cue from my father’s profession and board one of the ships to hide in. Of course, I thought it likely that the scouts inspected any ship they came across to counter that very tactic. Any sailor on board would also just become another unknown variable. Then again, that idea sounded like the much better option as soon as I saw a row of flying scouts between us and the shore. Each flier was spread out by a few hundred yards, but the stark blue of the sky and sea gave everyone the potential to see anything bigger than a Shifa from a long way away.
“What now?” asked Ujin. “They’ll be all over us if we get any closer.”
“We can go under them,” said Kiku. “I mean, like, really under them. Underwater.”
“We’d have to hold our breath for a lot longer than a couple of minutes. We’ll drown before we can make it to shore.”
“We’ll take breaths of air, dummy! We only have to get our noses above the water for a second, no? They can’t see a few noses from that high. And unless you can come up with something better, we have no choice but to try. What do you say, Mercer?”
Opening my eyes, I said, “I say we could have done that instead of the illusion spell. Anyway, you’re right, we don’t have the prana to try anything else. Tell the girl our plan.”
“Her name is Masai.”
“Noted. Also, since I assume she’ll be in need of it the most often, tell her we’ll come up to take a breath whenever she requests it. Come up with some kind of signal.”
“All right.”
A few sentences in the Jegeru tongue later and Kiku urged Akachii to not only go on ahead, but to begin sinking into the water. In a couple of seconds the sea went from lapping against my waist to enveloping my neck. From there I took a deep breath and dunked my head below the surface before Akachii did it for me. Even if half of my body had not spent an entire night becoming accustomed to the seawater, the temperature was bearable enough to not shock a warrior’s senses.
Holding my breath had never been a part of my training regimen, but my lungs seemed to have benefited from the exertions all the same. To be sure, I experienced more distress from the salt in my eyes than any water going up my nose. So in what was easily less than half the time before I sensed that I needed to inhale, Akachii slackened his pace and floated to the surface. Given that my eyes were compromised, I took in air when I felt the lessening of water pressure around my head, not by seeing the clouds or coastline. Prior to diving again, I had time to fill my lungs with two quick breaths.
This bobbing pattern repeated itself six or seven more times, with the time between breaths varying greatly. As we came up for the next life absorbing act, the gitra’s long throat bellowed out an abrupt, whale-like call. Following Akachii’s gaze, which looked out to our left, I spotted a griffin some three hundred yards away flying lower and toward us. Not far from that one, a red, vulture-like bird was circling back to face our direction.
Akachii was going to dive again, but I said, “Stop him, Kiku! They know we’re here! Just get him to go as fast as he can!”
In a few seconds most of our bodies breached the surface. Besides making the air colder than it otherwise would have been, our wet skin and clothes seemed to make us five times as heavy as before. Whether or not Akachii actually felt encumbered by the extra water weight, his maximum speed did not suffer for it. Nevertheless, air was much easier to cut through than water. The aerial scouts must have been going twice as fast as the water-bound creature, and with the coast still hundreds of yards off, they had the space to catch up to us.
I clutched a dragon stone in one hand and an explosive one in the other, hoping I did not have to do anything more than give them a fire show. I suspected that none of them knew the reason why their fellow brother-in-arms was killed, so gravely wounding warriors merely following orders did not sit well with me. Ujin struck me as someone who would have trouble killing anyone, much less soldiers of his homeland. I wished to avoid testing his mettle against such circumstances.
The other scouts had been a little slower to react to our presence. Regardless, at least three more were trimming the distance between us and them. When the red bird came within fifty yards, I turned around and threw the explosive stone near its beak and set it off. As expected, the little blast made the bird flinch, but its rider quickly corrected its flight path, going a tad higher in the sky.
I pulled out another dragon stone and threw it and its duplicate a few yards behind Akachii, making sure the flames I elicited did not burn the beast by way of the boiling water. I held the ball of flames right above the water’s surface, getting them to produce rising streaks of steam as we moved. Hiding our position was impossible, so the steam was really meant to give the scouts something to think about. It sort of worked. Both the bird and the griffin had to waste some precious seconds climbing the sky to make sure they kept us in their sights. With a moment gained, I let the fireballs die out.
To recoup the distance lost, the red bird’s rider decided now was a good time to unleash a burst of speed. Using the wisps of steam to perceive the invisible, I noticed that the air under bird’s wings swirled. The bird dove and released the assembled air on its next flap. I couldn’t know what the rider’s plan was once he got over us, but I didn’t want to give him the chance to impede us.
Enacting the only plan that came to mind, I picked up Shifa. “Sorry about this! Just unsummon yourself before they can get you!”
Putting all my might behind it, I hurled Shifa toward the incoming scout, prompting a “Hey!” from Ujin. Understanding my intent at some point between my apology and being launched into the air, Shifa cast an air spell to propel herself even more. The bird saw the drenindru coming. It banked to my right, but Shifa was able to grab on to the tip of its wing. From there she scrambled under the feathered appendage, all while holding on to the wingtip. Bending the tip was enough to unbalance the bird, careening it into the sea.
After the impact with the water, Ujin said, “She’s back in her own realm.”
Kiku laughed. “Did you really just throw him?! Has the great dragon knight sunk so low that he has to toss innocent creatures at his enemies?”
Pointing a finger at the shore, I said, “Focus on Akachii! We’re almost there!”
The “we’re almost there” could also be exclaimed by the whiptail rider behind us. However, seeing her companion hit the water must have convinced her to wait for the reinforcements to catch up, for she seemed to forgo using her superior speed to close the distance any more than she already did. That extra time gave us the chance to get within a hundred feet from shore before the other pair of scouts came inside a worrisome range. A tired Akachii was losing his momentum while the three scouts now felt they had the numbers to test our ability to counter them.
Kiku yelled something in a Jegeru tongue. Akachii responded by dunking his head in the sea. A few seconds later and we entered shallow water. Kiku slipped into the chest high waves, encouraging Masai to jump after her. Assuming we needed to do the same, Ujin and I dismounted the aquatic steed. That’s when Akachii turned his body to face backward and rose his head above the surface. An opening jaw then shot out a jet of wat
er at the scouts.
The first targeted griffin was struck directly in the chest. It looked as though it was going to be able to bear the brunt of it, but Akachii next aimed the aggressive water spout at its right wing. That sent the griffin splashing into the sea. With more time to react, the subsequent whiptail dodged the hard line of seawater while the last one blocked it with a ward. Akachii kept up his attack until the rider who dodged it gained partial control of the spout with a water spell and ruptured it. When the scout who had blocked the attack with a ward looked ready to throw a short spear at the gitra, Kiku unsummoned him.
Meanwhile, our bodies were having an easier time running through shallower and shallower water. Not wanting her to fall behind, I took it upon myself to carry Masai all the way to the pebble-strewn beach. I would have continued carrying her from there if it wasn’t better to have my hands free. We ran toward the first clump of trees over fifty yards from shore.
I reached into each of my pockets to pull out my dragon stones, but my fingers only found one. Apparently, all our time in the sea had dislodged the other three I thought I still had. The beach flaunted plenty of stones that looked perfect for carving dragon runes into them. Seeing as I did not even have the time to summon additional stones, I had to leave the rock picking for later.
No matter how fast a competent human runner could move his ass, a soldier’s trained griffin was going to have the advantage in speed. What’s more, Kiku, Ujin, and Masai could not run as fast as I, so unless I abandoned them to their fate, I was forced to slow my legs to their pace in order to protect them.
One of the scouts overtook us and flew low to the ground. The rider cast an earth spell, raising a wall of pebbled sand behind him to impede our way. The second rider pulled tendrils of sand behind her, ready to whip them at us. I ran on ahead. Igniting my last stone, I hurled a ball of dragon fire at the seven foot tall wall. I thought sand would be easier to burn than rock, but I needed to add just as much prana to scorch away the material in the few seconds we had. When the breach was made, I pushed aside the flames to allow the others to get across.
The Dragon Knight and the Light Page 34