by S. A. Hunter
“Eiryana, does it seem to you that the Memteth deliberately distract the Cythians from that larger, wider ship?”
They watched this particular Memteth ship maneuver—it was armed with a shielded catapult device that now flung a black, pitch-like substance toward the Cythian vessel. Blotches of this substance adhered to the warship’s sides, dark tendrils of slime oozing toward the waterline.
Eiryana hung in the airstream above the warship’s mast. The Cythians seemed unable to effectively injure the swiftly moving Memteth. As it was, neither side was significantly damaging the other.
Thera remembered the Grace O’Gull as she’d been found after the Memteth attack on it—all the crew killed, their bodies carved and cut. “They toy with the Cythians,” she shared with Eiryana.
Just below them, a Cythian soldier yelled, then swore profusely. Alarmed, they looked to see only that he had been pelted with some of the Memteth’s black substance. Other than his disgust he seemed unhurt.
“Blast ya Krist!” cried the man next to the besmirched Cythian soldier. “I thought at the least you’d been skewered! Blood of a Devil! You smell like bilge bottom.” He shoved at the unfortunate Krist, then wiped his hands on his jerkin. “Ach. Now look. Pfah! You’d think they’d do better than fling their chamber pots at us.”
“Thera. See!” Eiryana meant the rocks of the Lorn a’Lea point. The broad beam of the harried warship was close to running aground. They glanced at the helmsman. “He knows.”
The helmsman yelled desperately…something…to a sailor near him, who ran to the stern hauling aside a young mariner crouched below the turret wall. The sailor’s face blanched and he skidded forward to hail the deck crew.
The blonde-haired nobleman near the stern grabbed the shrinking young mariner by his shirtfront, shouted into his face, and then flung him toward the stair. The youth stumbled, scrambled to his feet with a white-eyed glance over his shoulder and ran to join those mariners attempting to climb the mast. A moment later he fell to the deck with an arrow in his neck.
“Fire! They are lighting fire!” Horror rang in Eiryana’s mind-shout.
“Fire arrows!” Closing in now, the Memteth fired volleys of flaming arrows at the warship, aiming for the thick black globs that clung like huge leeches all over the ship. Memteth raider ships now slewed off to intercept the Allenholme vessels that were almost upon them.
Frantic, they spared a glance, using Eryana’s sharp sight, toward the Allenholme ships—they were preparing to engage the Memteth.
The cries of men angry and afraid were muffled by the roaring of the strange blue flames. Flames now leapt high over the Cythian vessel’s sides. Like a dry wick, the mainsail caught and flames went shooting up the mast. The rush of rising heat under Eiryana’s wings tossed her out of the fire’s reach. The roar of it dinned in her head.
“By the One Tree!” cried Thera, as Eiryana panted in the dry, scorching air. “What is it that makes this fire so fierce and strange?”
Cythians were jumping overboard now. They saw the soldier, Krist, backing from the flames that consumed the ship’s sides. He gathered himself as if to jump, when the eerie blue fire seemed suddenly to lean inward, snapping like wild dogs at prey. The flames howled as, afire, he ran through the wall of blue flames and tumbled, voiceless, toward the water. His companion whose hands and forearms were afire, writhed in agony, his screams shrill as a seabird’s until he, too, struck the water.
Eiryana screamed, as Thera struggled with tearless horror and pity.
Many of the Cythian soldiers now leaping from the doomed ship, weighted by their gear or unable to swim, quickly sank beneath the water. Mariners who clung to floating debris were picked off by Memteth archers. The Memteths’ shouts rang triumphant.
Thera could not tell Eiryana’s anger from her own. The Cythian deaths were terrible—Memteth archers continuing to execute the exhausted burned survivors at will. The flaming ship drifted ever closer to Lorn a’Lea point, and the Elanraigh.
Eiryana whistled in alarm.
The Elanraigh!
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Withdraw!” Thera’s mental shout was full of the panic she felt. Leave the endangered area! Her mind flinched from visions of the Elanraigh tree elementals tormented and dying in the Memteth’s fire.
The Elanraigh rumbled, “With common fires we would, as you say, retreat from the stricken ones and group to form a barrier of our will, united we would smother the flames. This fire, though, also has will—we sense it. It hungers after us. We cannot chance it gaining foothold. We will not withdraw, child. Do not mourn—any of us would willingly die, to save The All that is Elanraigh.”
They keened in frustration. The loss of even one tree elemental was grievous. Thera remembered the forest’s rage when the Memteth had cut down the sitka.
“Eiryana, you hear the Elanraigh—how many elementals will be lost in a battle of this kind?”
“Forest-mind is strong,” Eiryana’s mind-voice expressed hope.
“I know. Remember, I told you of the bodies of the Memteth raiders in the ancient grove—like husks ground between the miller’s stones. They are right, this blue fire has consciousness. I feel awareness of it like the aftermath of nightmare.”
Eiryana whistled mournfully.
“Don’t despair. This thing must not overwhelm us, or distract from our belief in the Powers of Good. Elanraigh bless, I must think of something!”
They circled silently, and then Thera gasped. “Wind!” she sent to the Elanraigh, “You can call the wind. It will come for you.”
“We touch minds, child, with those cousins of the air, but we do not command.”
“Oh? What of Sussara? Just a few like Sussara and we can accomplish this!”Thera flung out a calling to the wind elemental.
“Thera”, warned the Elanraigh, “They are unpredictable!”
“They will come. I feel it.”
“They must come”. Thera kept that thought between she and Eiryana.
Eiryana whistled softly. She swept toward the Allenholme ships. The Bride was grappled to a Memteth raider ship, their crews a heaving mass, fighting hand to hand. Father!
“Eiryana, where is my father? Where is he? The red cloak—do you see it?”
Eiryana whistled, her wings sweeping back. Below them a red-cloaked warrior struggled, clenched in a spine-cracking embrace by the largest Memteth Thera had yet seen.
Leon’s neck arched back—tendons straining, teeth bared. His upturned face was a taut mask as he blindly met her gaze. With a throat-tearing roar, he broke free.
Eiryana’s keen sense of smell warned Thera that the deck surface was beslimed with blood. Oak Heart slipped, falling hard on his hip. The Memteth howled and charged. Leon rolled, grabbed his sword, deflecting the Memteth’s powerful down stroke. Thera’s scream was an eagle’s shrill-pitched call as they watched her father struggle to his feet.
He limps! He cannot keep this up! Oh where are the others?
A wounded mariner lay propped against the mast. His eyes on his Duke, he inched the fingers of his uninjured arm toward a bloodied iron gaff. Thera smelled his sweat, and fear. Do it, good boy! A distraction, anything!
They saw Dougall, hard-pressed, casting frantic looks aft, striving to hack his way to the Oak Heart’s side. Teckcharin fought with strength and skill but there was something about his footing…
The Ttamarini may never have been at sea before, and look how the deck is tossing!
A throbbing cry burst from the throat of another Memteth on the raider ship. This one grabbed a pike and vaulted the gap between the two ships to join his companion.
Eiryana shrilled her hunting cry, and before Thera could even form the thought, folded her wings and attacked.
Both Memteth wore helmets, but the pike-wielder’s was made only of leather. The eagle’s vision was focused on her chosen prey, though the speed of their plunge would have dizzied Thera’s human perceptions. She attacked from high and behind th
e pikeman. Oak Heart’s eyes widened in surprise as he saw what came towards him. Eiryana, talons extended, struck hard. Thera felt terrific impact as her hurtling weight snapped the Memteth pikeman’s neck and propelled his body against his companion’s sword.
She heard the cracking of bone and smelled the scent of rising blood.
Thera refused to submit to the lightning-like flash of exaltation that now blinded Eiryana to all other senses. “I will not allow you to be hurt as the young sea hawk was. Eiryana. Arrows! Get out of range of their arrows. Quickly!”
“Eiryana! “Thera’s mind-voice almost sobbed with anxious care.
“I will kill this other one! Leave be!”
“Do you think the Memteth will stand still to watch? Eiryana Sky Weaver is not foolish. Now! “Understanding too well how Eiryana felt, Thera exerted the steady pressure of her will even as Eiryana opened herself like a floodgate to share with her the rapture of this victory.
“No!”
Finally Eiryana obeyed. Snapping her wings, she lifted away. Memteth, crying out in consternation, sent arrows to harass their flight. Eiryana screamed defiance.
Oak Heart, recovered from the surprise of the giant raptor’s attack, swung his sword striking the Memteth’s shoulder. The raider roared. Planting his foot against his dead companion’s chest, he shoved the corpse off his sword. Shifting his weapon to his uninjured arm, seeming oblivious to his massive wound, he charged forward. Leon ducked beneath the wild sweeps of the giant’s sword.
Leon’s injured leg betrayed him. It gave out, crumpling beneath him. The Memteth raised his weapon high.
Eiryana screamed.
With a hoarsely yelled curse the wounded mariner at the mast lunged for the barbed gaff, grabbed and threw it, striking the Memteth’s groin.
Wild-eyed, the Memteth stared at the protruding hook. Leon levered to his feet with a yell, and swung his sword at the giant Memteth’s neck.
The raider fell to his knees; his head wobbled grotesquely and fell to the deck an instant before the corpse dropped.
Cries went up. Thera saw Dougall thrust his sword into his attacker and break free, sprinting to Oak Heart’s side. Teckcharin growled something to the Memteth before him and grinned wolfishly. The raider retreated toward his ship. Allenholme mariners cheered.
“Thera.” Eiryana warned. Distracted, Thera heard the sound before she saw. Groaning like a suffering beast the Cythian warship grated across the farthest rocks of Lorn a’Lea islets.
Thera’s heart pounded. “Perhaps she’ll catch and hold.”
Eiryana shrilled, sharing the hope, her voice carrying even over the roar of flames. Thera prayed to the Powers of Good that the flaming ship would indeed be held off from the forested beach, but the ship lifted clear to drift slowly shoreward again. Two men, one, the blonde-haired noble, the other all in black, vaulted from the warship’s stern, past the fire and into the water. They bobbed to the surface, swimming for the rocks of Lorn a’Lea.
“Therrra! Therraaa! I’ve come with family! All want to help the tree cousins. Are we going to make a wave?”
Thera almost wept with relief.
She felt Eiryana’s surprised grunt as the covey of wind elementals tossed her exuberantly.
“Sussara, Blessings on you. However, do stop now and listen. No. This time we need to make a big wind. A wind big enough to blow that burning ship away from the beach.”
Sussara swirled. “Nasty fire folk,” it commented. “Push and shove at me when I went to get help. Huh. Brought all my family. Now we’ll see.”
“Sussara! Can you do it? Can you save the Elanraigh?”
Sussara gusted. “Family say that ship will be hard to move until the tide turns.”
“When does the tide turn?” asked Thera, trying to keep anxious haste from her mind-voice.
“Soon, family say.”
“Sussara, we must try now. For the Elanraigh. The terrible flames are so close to the trees.”
Sussara swirled, apparently communing with the family of wind elementals. Thera could get no sense of the “family’s” mind-voice.
“Family say they will try. Therrra, they say it would be good to move the little ships that still have the wind catchers on them.”
Thera checked with Eiryana, who was as baffled as she. “But they’re not on fire, little one.”
“Yesss. We know. But Therra, Eiryana Sky Weaver, and Elanraigh tree-cousins would like to see them go away. Yesss?”
Eiryana grunted in surprise again, loosing height, as the riotous covey of wind elementals departed.
“Eiryana, where are they? Can you tell?”
“They have gone to the top of Lorn a’Lea cliff. Perhaps they commune with the Elanraigh.”
“Ah.” Thera could sense them now. They spun above the cliff, faster and faster in tight circles, then plunged in an ever increasing gust down the cliff face and out over the water.
The wind elementals couldn’t affect the burning warship directly, but they could affect the water around her. The ship slowly righted. Spinning slightly, she tipped back, away from the shore. The flames howled eerily, flattening, snapping like werehounds at the wind.
“It’s working! Elanraigh Bless! If they can just hold her there until she burns completely away. She’s almost down to blackened beams now—surely the flames must die when the ship is gone?”
Eiryana whistled.
Memteths’ voices carried in snatches over the wild winds as the crews of the raider ships adjusted their “wind catchers,” as Sussara called them.
“Yes,” commented Thera, bitter satisfaction laced her mind-voice as she and Eiryana skirted the edge of the maelstrom. “Imagine how mystified they are by this “freak” wind!”
Horrified cries rose from the raider ships closest to the Cythian vessel as the perverse wind forced them against the burning hulk. Flames eagerly leapt to their new havens. Once alight, the raider ships were blown toward their companions’ ships as they made haste to be underway.
“So, the fire is equally merciless to its own creators,” Thera murmured, subduing an unwelcome welling of pity for even the Memteth as they leapt wrapped in whirling flames into the waters of the bay.
Eiryana veered toward the point.
“What”
“A Memteth lizard beast. Below us.”
The huge reptile, shifting nervously, stood at the stern of a Memteth ship. Ship’s crew must already have jumped overboard. It swayed, forked tongue questing the air. As the flames hurried toward it, it too slid into the water. The flat, reptilian head soon reappeared at the water surface. The beast swam, arrowing for the rocks where the two Cythian nobles had pulled themselves to safety.
Thera could see the blonde man and his dark companion casting about for, anything, presumably, they could use to defend themselves.
Thera felt all the horror she had on her first encounter with a Memteth lizard. Eiryana appraised the creature, “Reptiles are good. I frequently take them if there is no fish.”
“Ptah”! Thera commented, “Can we help these Cythians, Eiryana? Is it too dangerous for you?
“It is much bigger than a bluefish or even a bristlefang. It will be difficult to kill. I will not be able to carry it,” she added.
“Blessings no! If we can just keep it from the Cythians, it will be well.”
Eiryana winged for height. Thera held herself quiet as Eiryana prepared. She experienced the sharpening of vision as Eiryana became completely focused on the giant lizard. Then, once again that sudden drop as Eiryana folded her wings, diving through the driving winds toward the snake-like head.
Thera heard the blonde Cythian’s shout, peripherally saw his gesture of pointing. His black-robed companion with one hand on the younger man’s shoulder, shaded his eyes with the other, watching. Wind elementals lashed at the dark man’s long black hair and sweeping moustaches. He moved his hand, absently, as if swatting flies, and the elementals recoiled in disorder. Thera had no time to wonder.
> Eiryana struck. Just behind the reptile’s head. Her talons pierced the tough skin and clenched on muscle. The beast thrashed and Eiryana held, half lifting, then tearing loose just as it rolled and submerged itself into the eddies of its own blood.
The blunt head re-appeared several pike lengths away, the beast deflected from its earlier course and now swimming for the beach.
“Eiryana, are you all right?” Thera felt the young eagle’s pain.
“Well enough. Hind talon. It’s a heavy beast.”
“Its wound is bad, Eiryana. You may have killed it!”
On the shore of Lorn a’Lea Beach were a double-hand of Ttamarini and Duke’s soldiers equipped with ropes, buckets, and shovels. A continuous string of riders were edging down the steep trail.
“They must have come to defend the Elanraigh against the fire. Blessings on them.” Thera shared.
“We will drive the Memteth’s beast to them.” Diving and swooping, Eiryana harried the lizard. Snapping at them, it rolled, its limbs convulsed then loosened. The body washed ashore. The men on shore who were shouting and cheering the eagle on, fell silent as they observed the creature.
“Spawn of a Sea Fiend!” exclaimed one as they circled it.
“What be it?” asked Kirten, his youthful voice cracking.
“What matter?” replied Ent. “Some form of filthy Memteth creature.” He shaded his good eye in a long look at the eagle drifting above him. “It be an omen. Yon fine, brave creature of the Elanraigh has destroyed this vile beast. Tore its throat.”
“Worse teeth than a bristlefang!” whispered Kirten. He crouched at its head and reached to finger the gaping jaw.
“‘Ware!” yelled Ent. He laughed uproariously as Kirten flinched back a full body length, scrambling for his spear.
Wiping his eye with the back of his hand, Ent subsided, only to start up again as he observed the youth’s wrathful face.
“You one-eyed old sedgemole! If you weren’t older than my granda I’d make you pay for that!”
“Oh-huu-huu-huu!” Ent hooted, pointing. “Oh, aye. Aye.” He finally turned, hefting his own spear. “Damned young fool. Your old granda would have known better. It’s not dead yet. This beast could still take your arm off.” He prodded it with the spear tip, and the jaws snapped. “Be done with you,” Ent snarled and plunged his spear into the lizard’s chest. The lizard’s massive tail lashed, sweeping sand into Kirten’s startled face, before it lay still.