Marisa smiled ruefully, her mouth opening as if meaning to speak further on the question. Another voice spoke up before she could.
“Bourgeois,” Bryant called down from the captain’s quarters above. “Chidi, get up here. Quick! We got company.”
Company? Chidi wondered. All the way out here?
She had little time to debate anything else, even in her own mind.
Marisa was leaving the table before Bryant had finished calling to them. The mystic Silkie flew up the ladder leading to the upper deck, and she vanished before Chidi could think to question her.
“Chidi!” Bryant called again. “Get up here!”
Chidi started to obey, but hesitated when Allambee began to rouse.
“What is it?” he asked, blinking away the drowse in his eyes. “What is wrong?”
“I don’t know,” said Chidi. “There’s someone—”
“Chidi! Up here. Now!”
The urgency in his voice commanded her to obey. Despite Bryant’s continued shouting after her, a coldness surged in Chidi as Allambee looked back at her with similar uncertainty and the question as to why they must hurry. Though her instincts compelled her to stay, curiosity and the need to make sure Allambee was safe won out. “Just stay here,” she said to her younger friend. “For now. I’ll come back once I find out what’s going on.”
“No, Chidi. Wait!”
She heard him call out to her as she ascended to the upper level. Chidi continued on anyway, hurrying into the captain’s quarters to join the others. Their coyote guide and Selkie captain, Girard, was at the wheel, his steely gaze focused on the open stretch of Salt that his ship continued speeding across. Marisa stood silently alongside him, not bothering to acknowledge Chidi as she stepped in to join them.
“Where is Bryant?” Chidi asked.
Girard motioned toward the ceiling. “Went topside,” he mumbled.
Chidi was about to ask why when a spotlight kicked on from above the cabin. The searchlight shot out among the darkness, illuminating the open, empty stretch of unending Salt. Chidi sighted no other sign of a boat in the vicinity. “Bryant yelled down that we had company,” she said.
“We do,” said Girard. “Left them in our wake . . . not that their kind can’t catch up.”
Their kind? Chidi wondered. She looked behind her, and found Allambee coming up from below to join them.
Then, some thirty yards off behind the boat, Chidi witnessed the first of several plumes of sea-spray. Orcs . . . she gulped as the pod exhaled one after the other.
Above them, the spotlight wheeled in the Orcs’ direction as Bryant homed on the incoming pod.
The hairs on Chidi’s arms raised at the pod’s relentless pursuit, their black dorsal fins rising above the surface like a slew of gathered submarines that moved in tandem to make their presence known, only to then vanish below once more a second later.
Allambee touched her on the arm, Chidi startling at the simple gesture. “Chidi . . .” he said. “Why are you frightened?”
Is it so obvious? She wondered, taking him by the arm and leading back to the steps that would take him below. “Allambee, you need to go back down below.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because if the Orcs are really after us, it might not be safe up here.”
Allambee frowned. “If someone means to attack us, then it will not be safe down there either,” he replied easily, standing his ground, despite Chidi’s continued insistence to push him toward the ladder.
“Allambee, please,” said Chidi, the exhales of the approaching pod resounding in her mind even above the roaring boat engines. “Please, just listen to me and go below.”
“No, Chidi,” he said. “If we are in danger, then I will stand with you. I will not leave your side again as I once did with Mr. Zymon when your master Henry came for us.”
“It isn’t Henry chasing us this time,” said Chidi, pointing to the continued, ongoing plumes as the Orc pod kept nearer to the surface in their relentless pace to catch up to the boat. “There’s more than one killer back there hunting us now.”
Allambee smiled. “In my village, I was well known to bring home fresh meat whenever I ranged.” He glanced back at the approaching pod as another wave of sea-spray shot into the air. “If those creatures are to come for us now, they will find a hunter among us also.” His teeth flashed as he patted her on the arm. “But a hunter will need a weapon.”
“A what?” Chidi asked when Allambee left her to descend into the lower cabin. She had the thought to follow him there when Girard’s voice rang out, distracting her.
“Cowboy!” the captain shouted at the ceiling and Bryant atop it. “Get the spotlight to starboard. There’s more out there!”
Chidi winced when Bryant swung the light to the left side instead. The shaft of light cut thought the night, scattering the darkness, illuminating the endless, choppy waves, but revealing little else beyond.
Girard mumbled a response. “Can’t hear us. Bloody fool.”
Or he doesn’t know what direction you were asking him to focus the light on. Chidi thought. She gathered Girard’s assessment correct a moment later when Bryant’s muffled voice shouted over the engine whir. With the Salt crashing around them, his words were dulled and lost to those inside the captain’s cabin.
The Orcs are still out there. Chidi knew, scouting the surrounding water. But where did they go? Squinting, she could see no sign of the pod, or their sea-spray either. Below, she heard Allambee rattling around in the lower cabin, scattering closet drawers and flinging the contents throughout in hurried search.
“Chidi!” Marisa called. “Come! Hurry!”
Chidi was turning to obey when she glimpsed someone waving for attention from the water, thirty yards off, their voice distant and near muted among the crashing waves. Too far out to clearly hear what the person yelled, Chidi squinted for a better look. “There . . .” she said, pointing in the direction of the castaway. “Someone’s over there.”
Girard barely looked off in the direction she pointed. “Can’t see nothing in this mess. If you can, girl, then go tell the cowboy to light them up, so I can see them too, will you?”
Chidi’s face flushed at his tone, but she ran out of the cabin to yell at Bryant all the same. The wind howled in her ears the moment she ventured outside. Chidi lost hold of the cabin door too, a strong gust slamming it against the cabin-side. She left the door open, reaching for the ladder that Bryant had climbed to reach the top of the cabin. “Bryant!” she tried shouting over the whistling wind. “Bryant, someone is out there! Swing to the right!”
Though Chidi could not say as to whether Bryant heard her or no, his spotlight swung around at the sound of her voice. The light fell upon one lost further asea, waving for aid. When the light struck the castaway’s face and torso, Chidi wished that Bryant had not bothered. It’s a trap . . . she thought, recognizing the castaway’s offsetting skin colors for what Salt race he represented. The Orc means to slow the boat, or stop it altogether by waving us down.
Squinting against the beaming spotlight, the Orc-man grinned before a Salt wave swept over him, and he vanishing beneath.
Chidi glanced over her shoulder then, cupping her hands to her mouth to act as a funnel and strengthen her voice as she called out to the Selkie captain inside the cabin. “Girard! Speed up! It’s a trap!”
The words had scarcely left her mouth when one of the Killers erupted from the Salt. He flew toward the boat in half-human form, bearing a spear. Tattered, soaking rags hung off of his torso, ending near his waistline where the Killer Whale’s gleaming black tail melded with his human skin. Reaching the zenith of his leap, the Orc-man aimed and flung the spear at Bryant and his spotlight.
“Bryant!” Chidi shouted to warn her partner, witnessing him leap off the top of the boat in an arching swan dive rather than be skewered. The flung weapon found a home instead in the spotlight that Bryant had manned. The glass shattered, raining its glittering
shards across the boat deck. The light flickered and died, the air hissing with the electric current inside until the noise of it died or else was stolen by the whipping wind.
Before Chidi could think to cry out a warning to her other companions, the Salt spat still more of the Killers from its depths too. At scattered locations around the boat, the other Orcs timed their jumps to emerge as a single unit. Each burst free of the Salted shadows, each in their mammoth Leviathan-like forms, their speed matched with planned precision. As one, they transitioned in mid-air to their full human forms before landing upon the ship deck.
The first of them to land at the boat’s front was welcomed by a hail of bullets, all peppered into his chest and driving the would-be attacker backward.
Wincing at the thunderous echo that came from inside the captain’s cabin, Chidi fell to a knee and covered her ears as the flurry of gunfire continued.
The would-be Orc attacker flopped overboard, back into the Salt, his mortal wounds given to him by the boat’s Selkie captain.
Girard shouted defiance from inside his quarters, already reloading his sawed-off shotgun as the other Orcs ran for his cabin. Just as Girard finish reloading, another Orcish spear, expertly thrown, crashed through the window pane and skewered the Selkie boat captain, pinning him against his chair.
Chidi called out Girard’s name, her voice lost to the constant, stormy wind. She watched in horror as Girard collapsed into his seat, then slumped upon the spear and over his captain’s wheel, never to move of his own choosing again. Though her vision was limited, Chidi glimpsed the triumphant Orcs headed for the cabin to collect their prize and lost weapon. All were turned back when Marisa Bourgeois rose alongside the murdered Selkie captain, and she with Girard’s fallen shotgun to thwart the oncoming enemies. Marisa raised the weapon to her shoulder and fired off the double-chambered rounds through the port-side window to fend off the Orc attackers, then threw it aside to fetch up a pistol instead.
Chidi wasted no time in hurrying toward the stairwell leading below. “Allambee!” She cried down the steps at him. “Allambee, hide!”
Her Kenyan friend stepped into her line of sight, a harpoon clenched in one hand, a butcher’s knife in the other. His eyes rounded as they met with hers, and Chidi’s blood ran cold even before Allambee called her name with a warning of his own.
“Chidi, behind you!”
A vice-like grip clamped down upon her shoulder, grabbing hold of her Silkie suit with sausage-like fingers. The next Chidi knew, she was lifted off her feet and flung from the boat. She somersaulted end over end before striking the Salt on the flat of her back. Gasping, a wave thrashed over her, the Salt’s churn sucking her down. Chidi choked down the water and instinctually reached for her hood to adopt the Silkie changes of her Ribbon Seal form. She welcomed the warmth and protection from the frigid, Atlantic water, but then had to fight against her seal’s primal mind for all of the warnings it sensed and heard in the surrounding environment.
The clicks and whistles of Killer Whales encircled the area and the depths. Try as she might, Chidi could not see the Orcs through the darkened waters with her seal eyes. Bryant! She called in vain, spinning in search of the partner she had watched dive into the water before calling to those still upon the boat.
Chidi! Bryant’s scattered voice shouted after in reply. Chidi, where are you?
Before she could answer, a mammoth shadow sped past her. Its shrieking call screamed in arrival.
Chidi dodged at the last to avoid the fateful bite meant to swallow her seal body whole. The beast of black and white rocketed onward, the speed of its swim setting Chidi’s mind and seal body to spin in the Killer’s wake.
Chidi righted herself by seeking out the lighter stretch of water that signaled the surface and the air beyond. Finding it, she kicked with her hind flippers to race upward for a quick breath before the Killer came for her again.
Again, Bryant shouted in her mind from somewhere further off. They’re everywhere! Get to the boat! Where are you, Chidi? Which direction?
I don’t know! She replied, peeking above the surface, blinking her seal eyes as she stole a breath from the above. Nothing but more empty Salt lay before her. Where is the boat? She briefly wondered, surmising its location a moment later.
More peppered gunshots rang out behind her to signal Marisa’s ongoing battle for the captain’s quarters, at least. Exhaling, Chidi was turning toward the gunfire and feral screams when she caught sight of a rising, black dorsal fin closing on her position.
Diving, she glimpsed the overly large and seeming white eye patches of a Killer Whale racing in a direct path to claim her. Spinning away, Chidi swore she could feel the rubbered skin of the Killer Whale’s mouth on the tips of her hind flippers as she called upon all the speed she could muster. Rather than wait for further confirmation of the Killer coming for her again, Chidi commanded her seal body to dive for deeper water.
The Killer screamed as she did. Again, it missed her by inches to judge the speed of the mammoth creature’s self-made undertow that carried it onward and over Chidi.
The booming voice of the hunter reverberated in her mind not a second thereafter. Keep swimming all you like, Silkie. You’re nothing but meat when I catch you.
Glancing back, Chidi witnessed the Orc shifting from its Killer Whale body to adopt its half-human form instead. She continued her flight from the Killer, wheeling again when feeling his presence drawn near enough to reach her.
Unlike before, the Orc swiped at her with a human hand, his fingers closing around the end of her left hind flipper and pinching upon it.
Her momentum allowed her to slip free of his grasp. Bryant! Chidi called for his aid as she swam onward. Bryant, where are you? They’re on me!
Bryant did not answer, and Chidi had no time to call for him again.
The Orc had caught up to her once more. Learning from his failures, the hunter had waited to grab for a better hold of Chidi. His hand landed higher upon her seal body, near where her thigh would be, then slid down to grab a lower joint. Like a noose closing on its victim, the Orc twisted at the last to immediately turn and slow Chidi’s momentum.
Chidi yelped at the suddenness of her trapping. She attempted to wriggle free, but the Orc was already swinging her around to face him. No sooner than she witnessed the pleasure in his gaze, the Orc grunted in pain, his eyes rolling back. A plume of crimson water bubbled and rose around him, the Orc swallowed in a watery cloud of his own blood.
In death, the Orc’s grip released Chidi to swim free once more. She wasted no time in hurrying away, the clicks and whistles of other Orcs never far away. Despite the fear hastening her on, Chidi took a moment to look upon the face of her rescuer, expecting to find Bryant, or Marisa Bourgeois.
Instead, she met the youthful face of one wizened beyond his years.
Allambee Omondi stared back at her with a sterner look than any she had ever witnessed in her innocent, younger friend. In his gaze now, Chidi recognized the hardened stare of a hunter in his environment. More surprising still was the coldness in the Kenyan’s dark eyes.
As Allambee plucked one of Girard’s harpoons free of the dead Orc, the movement drew Chidi’s attention to how it was that her friend had come to swim so deep beneath the Salt and to slay one of the greater predators there also. Where his legs should have been, Allambee Omondi had a darkened, if silvery shark tail that stretched into the black water below.
He’s a Nomad? Chidi questioned herself, blinking with her seal eyes as if she could wish away the image.
Allambee remained in front of her, his shark tail waving back and forth like a slow pendulum to count the time. Flicking his tail to position himself in front of her, Allambee spoke to her mind with a quiet confidence. Chidi . . . swim away.
She understood why he gave the order when another pair of overly large, white eye patches gleamed at them both from the darkened waters ahead.
Go . . . Allambee commanded once more. Swim for the boat,
Chidi. I will deal with these monsters.
Chidi gulped when two more Orcs appeared from the shadows around them like flanking parties on either side. I can’t. She said, idling closer to him as the Orcs closed in. I can’t leave you . . . and there’s no way for me to go without them catching me. No way I get past them.
Then, I will make you a way past them, said Allambee. Rather than wait for the Orcs to reach him, Allambee flung himself at the nearest of their attackers, lunging with his harpoon as the Orc came at him also. When the Orc used his sword to bat the harpoon away, Allambee swept his butcher’s knife upward in a killing stroke that caught his opponent beneath the chin and nearly cleaved off the Orc-man’s head.
The swift brutality of his blow stopped the other pair. For a moment, the closest Orc looked back at the other, almost as if waiting to see which would dare to attack the young Kenyan next.
Allambee used the momentary mishap to his advantage too. Bringing his harpoon to bear, he flung it across the Salt with the accuracy of a well-trained and experienced hunter. The harpoon’s end plunged through the chest of the closer Orc, spinning the hesitant killer dead in an instant, leaving only one remaining enemy where three had swum not moments ago.
Despite his slain fellows, Chidi had only to look at the remaining opponent to know he would not be driven off. Not bad for a savage, said the Orc, raising his sword in a spiteful dare for Allambee to come and claim him too. Where did you learn to fight like that, boy?
Come closer and I will tell you, Allambee growled in reply. Swim away now, and I will let you live.
The Orc raised his arms to the surrounding, empty water. ‘fraid there’s nowhere for me to go, is there? Sneering, he pointed the end of his blade at Allambee’s chest. ‘An Orc without his pod is nuthin’ as it were . . . but the day I swim away from a savage boy and his Silkie pet is the same as I meet my end, savage.
You might be nothing anyway, Chidi thought but did not say as the Orc flicked his tail and began to circle them.
Allambee matched the movement, keeping his back to Chidi, skillfully using his tail to keep himself between her and the remaining enemy.
Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Page 19