Operation Arcana - eARC

by John Joseph Adams

The waves had swelled in the last couple of minutes, troughs grown deeper and darker. “No choice. Wake the others.”

  By the time they were assembled on deck, the storm had gone from promise to howling wind and freezing spray.

  “Trust the Navreen to use a river just over the border when they control the whole fucking south sea,” Travis grumbled, settling the heavy leather harness around his neck. “They should shove their shipyard somewhere warm.”

  “River ships can’t spend much time at sea,” Harrin reminded him. “Not enough keel.”

  The big man’s lips twitched “Somewhere warm where the sun don’t shine.”

  “That’s . . . oh.”

  “Estuary’s not large, but even you lot should be able to find it.” One hand holding the coracle in place on the top of the slide, Kytlin flicked sleet off her face with the other. “We’ll form up in the river. First team, go!”

  Heavy robes hit the deck to a chorus of profanity. Three men and a woman went over the side in long low dives, powerful legs pushing them away from the ship. Skin in the air, seals when they hit the water. Ropes attached to the two harnesses disappeared into the black glass curve of a wave, snapped tight, and the coracle dropped.

  It didn’t shatter on impact, so Kytlin counted it a win.

  “This could end the war!” NcMarin shouted from behind her.

  She could barely hear him over the wind. Hadn’t heard him approach. “That’s what they tell me. Second team! Go!”

  “Commander NcTran says the brass are calling this the Coracle Raid.”

  She turned to face him then. “Why? Was Operation Suicide taken?” Before he could answer, she turned again. Eight of her people and two coracles in the water. “Third team!” Robe off, she tugged the leather harness into place on Harrin’s shoulders, adjusting it so he could change within its circle. “Go!”

  She was the last into the water, and, even in seal-shape, the water was as cold as it looked. Without the coracles, they could have gone deep and, at the very least, avoided a pounding by the waves. Tethered to the surface, Kytlin stayed close on the left while Shuard guarded the right and Euan and Harrin threw themselves forward, struggling to remain far enough apart to keep the ropes from tangling.

  The surf got harder to fight closer to shore. They were in enemy water, and the water was the enemy.

  The coracle slammed against her shoulder then tipped up on one side. If it went over, it’d twist the lines, so she dove far enough to slap it back level with her rear flippers, scraped her chin along a rock shelf bottom, and surfaced in time to see Harrin flung out on shore, Euan right after him. If the coracle hit with that force . . .

  She slid under it, brushing against Shuard’s flipper as he had the same idea.

  Bones wrapped in seal-shape were harder to break, but slamming down onto the rocks still knocked the breath out of her. Harrin staggered close on legs, skin wrapped around his waist, and bent to drag the coracle off her, looking as though he worried about her age as much as she worried about his youth. Rolling out of her skin and onto her back, she gasped up at the scudding clouds and tried to work out how long they had until the storm hit land.

  “Commander?” Harrin had never sounded so young.

  Right. Commander. That would be her this trip. Except for NcTran, rank had little permanency among their people. “I’m okay. Shuad?” A flipper and a curve of fur extended past the shell of the coracle.

  “Hit his head,” Euan grunted. “Should be fine in a minute.”

  “Not sure we have that much time.” She stood, shivering in the cold, missing the layer of fat she’d lost. So far they’d attracted no attention from the enemy, but that couldn’t last. No one gambled so deeply and left the dice undefended.

  “River’s that way.” Harrin pointed northwest.

  Seals had excellent night vision. Not as good in skin, but still better than non-shifters. Harrin’s it seemed was better than hers. Young eyes. “Faster on foot,” she said. “Sling the coracle.”

  They were fisherfolk when they weren’t fighting wars. If this worked, maybe they’d be fisherfolk again. She helped Euan tie the tow ropes off into a loose net while Harrin got Shuad onto his feet.

  “Commander? Should I unstrap the knives?”

  There were four sheathed on each of the coracles’ lids. Kytlin glanced across the rock to the dark line of trees. “Leave them. If we’re attacked get back in the water.”

  The footing was slippery and uneven. They moved recklessly fast to keep from freezing.

  When they reached the river, bruised and shaking, they found the second team already in the water, Fyona bleeding from a cut across the top of her right shoulder. “Blades,” she ground out through clenched teeth as she came up on shore, sealskin dropping into her hand. “Spears with long sharp points set just under the surface and angled to catch anything coming in. Coracle skimmed over them. I didn’t.”

  In the center of the river, where the water was merely rough not wild, two blunt heads bracketed the coracle. Eoin and Mykal. One short.

  “Dugald never met up with the team.”

  They turned together to look out to sea. He might have been swept south. He might still be working his way toward land.

  He might not.

  They weren’t the only predators in the water.

  Kytlin waved her team into the river as she squinted across it at the stretch of gravel beach that made up the estuary’s north arm.

  “There!”

  Harrin’s young eyes again. “Get in the water before you freeze.” He had less body fat than any of them.

  First team carried their coracle slung between them. Even at that distance she could see Boyd favoring his left leg; otherwise, they seemed fine. Stone rolled smooth made easier walking than the shore to the south, but with the beach rapidly disappearing under the storm surge, the team was farther from the safety of deep water. Travis spotted them and waved, his team picking up the pace.

  The wolves attacked without warning. Six, no . . . seven silent shadows separating from the treeline. Large, heavy shoulders, dark gray fur that blended with the night.

  “Not wolves,” Fyona snarled.

  Shifters.

  When they reached the first team, Aiden screamed.

  “Eoin!” Kytlin’s voice jerked him to a stop, halfway to the far bank. She understood his need to help, but they couldn’t stop a wolf pack. At best, they’d become part of the slaughter.

  She dove, changed, and when she surfaced in the center of the river saw that Aiden and Boyd were down. Travis charged toward the sea in sealskin, coracle bouncing behind him, tangled in the net. Beside it, Selen swung one of the big knives. The wolf stalking her leapt back, jaws wide. The coracle tipped and broke open. Two of the wolves darted in between Travis and the water. He reared and roared, a bull seal not easy prey, but the closer wolf rose onto two legs, pulled the single shot crossbow strapped to his side and fired. The quarrel slammed into Travis’s mouth, and two wolves leapt in to rend and tear. Selen fell onto the coracle, one forearm caught in a wolf’s jaws, one hand reaching back . . .

  . . . then rising above the wolf’s head, the wind licking sparks from her fingers.

  Kytlin slapped Harrin with a flipper to get him moving, and the seven of them raced upstream, the tidal current lending speed.

  Three.

  Two.

  Selen had been sprawled out over the coracle. Igniting one incendiary would ignite them all. Take an honor guard with you, Kytlin told her.

  One.

  Heat. Light. Smoke rolled up the river after them, stinking of burning blood and fur. One less wolf pack. One less seal team. Two coracles and seven hands to hold a hammer. Enough to do the job.

  When they were far enough from the sea that the water barely tasted of salt and the storm had become a roiling gray cloud against the horizon, Kytlin brought them to a halt and searched both shores for signs of pursuit. Nothing—although she thought she could hear howling in the distance. He
r flippers were unwilling to give way to legs, sealskin and water combining to wrap around and stop the change, but with wolf packs on patrol they couldn’t risk their scent on the ground. Eoin changed with her.

  “We’ve been made,” Eoin grunted, eyes wide, the sudden death of four of their number lingering on the surface. “They’ll have sent word to the shipyard.”

  “Probably,” Kytlin agreed, “but it’ll take time to get the word through. Non-shifters barely trust us, and these are wolves.”

  “They trust them to guard the river.”

  “They use them, but they won’t trust them. There’ll be a shitload of hoops they’ll have to jump through before they can pass information on.” Teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, she watched heads nod, then she bared them. “And if they’ve sent word, we’ll beat it.” It was as close to a speech about not allowing the five they’d lost die to in vain as she planned to make. She held Eoin’s gaze until he nodded. Pain and grief pushed down, denied until the job got done. “All right.” She let the current drag her sealskin back around her. “Let’s go end the war before we have to do something this stupid again.”

  All twelve of them had been chosen for their ability to maintain speed over distance, so that’s what they did. Bruises driven into Kytlin’s arms and legs during impact with the shore ached as she slipped through the water—a shadow among shadows. When she took her turn in the harness, she hissed at the press of the leather against her shoulder. When Harrin and Fyona, who had the least protective bodyfat began to look glassy-eyed, their strokes stuttering, she sent them deeper to the warmer water—although warmer was relative and distance from the surface added distance to the swim.

  They ate on the move, small fish snapped up without slowing, blood and scraps of flesh left to swirl away toward the sea. Just past a weir, Shuad grabbed a young salmon and forced Harrin to eat half.

  Twice, warned by the change in currents, they cut their way through weighted nets, the top cable just below the surface, invisible in the dark even to their eyes.

  “If the net moves too far in any direction, it sets off a spell. Don’t know what kind, but I doubt the Most Wise are working in our favor.” Face barely breaking the surface, Kytlin swam back to the center of the river. She’d had to stand ankle deep at the shore before she could see the cable ends and had nearly frozen her tits off. The water’d actually felt warm when she’d submerged. “Coracles will clear it with a little help, but we’ll have to go through. Cut it carefully about an arm’s length down. Carefully!” she repeated as Eoin changed and yanked a knife free.

  With the stars masked by thick, gray clouds, time became defined by the ache of joints, the burn in lungs. Remaining at the surface, Kytlin weighed colder water against her increasing need for air. She noted each ache, each pain, and knew they had to be close. Might as well spend it all on the way there; time enough to rest when the shipyard burned.

  They’d rounded a bend and headed south when the taste of the water changed.

  Acids. Metals. People. If not the shipyard, then a shipyard.

  Then visibility dropped; the water suddenly murky.

  She surfaced and could see only another bend and what might have been unnatural angles through the trees—if they were still in leaf, she wouldn’t have seen that. Eoin surged past her, powerful rear flippers slamming up and down. If she’d had a hand, she’d have grabbed him, but all she could do was slide below the surface and bark out a warning.

  The currents changed, broken into eddies.

  She tasted blood in the water.

  Beckoning Shuard forward, the two of them sped through the murk. Speed. And caution. One of Eoin’s rear flippers slapped the side of her head, and she froze. Shuard stopped dead beside her. Eoin stilled at her touch, and she worked her way up his body until she found . . .

  Blades. Spears angled to catch anything moving upriver. Fyona had been injured on a similar set; Eoin had been impaled. Instincts had taken over and he’d fought to get free, twisting the blade in the wound.

  Together, they worked him back off the spike. A gush of blood darkened the water further as they carried him to the surface and rolled him onto his back. More blood as he coughed and gasped for breath. The blade had cut through skin and fat and into muscle. He couldn’t have hit it hard enough to damage bone, no matter how sharp it was, but it could have slid across his shoulder, cutting tendons.

  They were harder to kill in sealskin, but easier to treat out of it.

  If he changed, and the change didn’t kill him, if she packed the wound and bound it, he couldn’t change back. He’d drown out in the river, and he’d freeze on the shore. With Shuard tucked under him, sculling gently, Kytlin led the way to the shallows. It took a few moments to find a protected area with water deep enough to hold Eoin’s weight. Then she shifted. This needed fingers.

  “Stay here,” she growled, packing weed against the wound. It was cold enough that blood in the water shouldn’t call the wolf packs, but this close to shore she wasn’t taking the chance. “We’ll pick you up on the way out.” When Eoin snorted, dark eyes rolling back in his head, she tugged on a handful of whiskers with fingers nearly numb from the cold. “Don’t die. That’s an order.” Now, two people short, she couldn’t leave anyone with him.

  Skin draped around her neck, she rode Shuard back to the center of the river. Harrin stared at her as she slid into the water, eyes wide, nostrils flared. “We’ll pick him up on the way out.” If she said it often enough, she might believe it. “Fyona, Mykal, those blades will have to be lowered to bring a boat out—they can’t have covered every boat they own in steel—find it and flatten them.” She wanted to add, as fast as you can, but they knew that. If she could smell dawn in the air, they could, too.

  If the lives lost were going to mean anything at all, they had to reach the shipyard while night still provided cover.

  While they waited, she checked the wax sealing the coracles closed. Cracked in multiple places, there was no way to tell if the water had gotten inside until they opened them.

  Fyona surfaced and sneezed, blowing water out of her nose.

  Mykal surfaced beside her.

  They stayed close to the surface, swam over the blades, rounded the bend . . .

  The steel-covered boats were in the water, docked diagonally, bows jutting halfway across the river. Camouflaged from the air by poles and branches, the sides of the shelter were mostly open except for where it looked like two trees had been torn up and shoved down in the water. Kytlin ground her teeth and hoped there were no giants around. Usually giants stayed in the mountains, throwing boulders at each other, but if the Navreen thought this important enough, they might have pulled a couple off the front lines.

  Still, camouflage from the air meant nothing from the river. Unfortunately, there could be a whole division camped beyond the shipyard, ready to board, and they wouldn’t be able to tell from the water.

  They crossed the last open area and tucked in under the shelter of the bows. Long and shallow draft, completely closed in, painted in patches of grays and black, the boats would be as hard to see slipping up a river in the dark of the moon as their coracles would. Had been. But these boats were large enough to hold troops.

  Death, like life, needed hands. “Euan, port side. Mykal, starboard. Fyona, Harrin, stay here at the bows.” Fyona was injured; Harrin was going home alive. The bows were the farthest from the enemy and offered the most cover. “Shuard, you’re up the middle under the dock. Once your spells have been set off, join me at the stern for the incendiaries. The rest of you, the moment the things start to burn, haul ass back to Eoin. We’ll join you there.”

  When they cracked the first coracle, two of the spells were wet. Three out in the second. Eleven left; they needed eight.

  “Two on each on the outer hulls, then. Might as well use them if we have them.” She held up a hand, ignored the way it shook, and began the count. “One.”

  Moving silently, a ripple in the wat
er, a shadow following, Harrin pulled the coracle to Euan’s position. Euan changed, set the spells on the ship, changed again, hammer held in his mouth. No point freezing.

  Starboard side, Fyona and Mykal swam the same pattern.

  Thirty.

  Bowls set on the bow.

  Forty.

  All the incendiaries were loaded into a single coracle and Shuard dragged it under the dock.

  Fifty.

  With his set, she dragged it to the stern.

  Sixty.

  Starboard first.

  Seventy.

  Then port.

  At eighty, everyone was to be in skin.

  Ninety-nine.

  One hundred.

  They’d practiced this on unspelled bowls.

  Strike the hammer against the ship.

  It actually went bonk.

  The steel began to sag the moment the bowl broke, the light seeming to sag with it.

  Light. Dawn.

  She could hear voices approaching, and there were two bowls still to break. An incendiary tossed over a pile of cases at the end of the dock acted as a distraction as she swam to the other ship, slow and clumsy in skin, rose up, and broke the second bowl. Turning back to the coracle, she saw Shuard crouched on the end of the dock, muscles in his arm and back bunching as he threw incendiaries deep into the shipyard.

  There was smoke, plenty of smoke, but not much flame.

  Then Euan screamed. Back in sealskin, she rounded the stern, past steel sliding off the boat like silvered water, to find three long black arrows nailing Euan’s dead body to the exposed wood. And she remembered what else the Hawkeye had seen. The Navreen had archers in a tower.

  She could see it now she knew where to look. At the edge of the shore rising out of the trees, light glinting off an upright. A metal tower? They’d expected incendiaries then, thus the lack of flame. They hadn’t expected the spell on the steel, though. No one ever expected the Most Wise.

  The archer had a clear line on the river, but if they went deep . . .

  An arrow hit the water.

  The river lit up, the water suddenly crystal clear and bright as day.