He dismissed her wish as silliness. “Impossible. That would've meant passing uncomfortably close to the stronghold of the Landhoppers. Believe me, Lunder Atoll ain't no island resort. I'd rather face what's lurking out there any day."
"The frogs are that bad?"
Not really having discussed the evil menacing Castle Rock, perhaps because Bounty Reef was fading from their immediate concern, Durgay talked candidly about the threat now. “I was captured and tortured by them. They are brutalising, pitiless beasts mistakenly viewing the Cetari as both a threat and food. They ate the princess, didn't you know."
That stomach-churning snippet was purposely withheld from the merfolk masses, and for good reason. Blanching at the thought of winding up someone's fish dinner, Najoli turned whiter than a beluga whale.
"While enduring Landhopper hospitality, I got the impression they're expecting us to start a war,” Durgay concluded. Sadness softened his chiselled features. “King Cerdic's not disappointing them. He's playing right into their unwebbed hands."
"Captain Lasbow will protect the merpeople,” Najoli confidently predicted.
"Las will give his life defending the Rock if need be.” Durgay hoped it would never come to that. “But the entire Seaguard and Fishers combined won't be nearly enough to thwart them. A bonito can't fend off a shoal of slashing radcu. Neither will the mermen keep the Landhoppers at bay."
Not without fabled help Najoli promised herself.
"What'll happen to Grammy Ochar and the rest of my family?” she wondered in a frightened, childlike voice.
Glad her question was rhetorical, Durgay himself did not want to contemplate the inevitable; the frog army overrunning the Cetari bastion, killing all and sundry, then making sushi out of their gutted corpses before raping the defenceless reef. Evacuation might save them, but the Merking would never permit retreat. Pride prevented Cerdic backing away from any contest and that arrogance would see the Cetari sunk with him into oblivion.
Happily returning to his own solvable problem, that of rounding the defiant headland regularly pounded topside by thunderous combers and lashed with shrieking gales while deceptively serene undersea, Durgay prodded Najoli to push on. “Well missy, you wanted freedom. Independence lies just on the other side of that peninsula. All you have to do is make it across the Alley in one piece."
Megashark Alley.
The very name sent shivers of fright up and down the spine of even the staunchest Fisher. This stretch of coastline, unpopulated except for the tens of thousands of fur seals which pupped three nautical miles offshore on islet rockeries, and in doing so drew the great fishes in to feed on the easy takeaways floundering pups made, was claimed as prime hunting grounds by a year round congregation of the monster sharks. Prowling the rocky-bottomed shallows with hungry malevolence, terrorising the local eared pinnipeds with their mere presence, the apex marine predators intimidated all sea creatures. A tylo-croc would have second thoughts tangling with the king of fish. Not even the multitudinous radcu were game enough to encroach upon megashark surf. They were that scary.
The sea was correspondingly deserted. Fish shoals were scarce, not frightened off by sharks but the rapacious seals. Bunched en masse on their overcrowded rockery, unwilling to be the first to dive headfirst into shark-infested waters, eventually the avalanche of seals would cascade into the dangerous seas, impelled by their ravening need to fish. The unluckiest amongst the foragers risked becoming the catch-of-the-day. But not this morning. So far their hunger was not overwhelming enough for any to take the plunge.
Stiff with fear, Najoli made the suggestion, “Can't we just go around it, instead of through?"
"Too far to swim,” refuted Durgay, “not to mention the blues and bulls patrolling deeper water."
"As if we need more shark problems. What about sticking closer to the coast?” That'd be safer."
"Currents are too strong."
Najoli was fresh out of ideas. “I'm sacred,” she whistled vulnerably. Her barely audible admission came at great personal cost. She was irrepressibly spirited, a battler unafraid of taking life by the fins and wresting it into submission, regardless of the penalties.
Her dread stimulating his, Durgay said for his own sake as much as Najoli's, “Look on the bright side. Big as the suckers are, they're the only sharks we have to contend with.” He wisely kept to himself the reason for that was because megasharks ate all the rest.
Before proceeding with care into the channel, Durgay insisted on giving the trembling mergirl a few important pointers gleaned from past explorations and exploits of adventuresome Fishers plucky and lucky enough to make it back to home reef alive, if not always whole, from the cape.
"Practically crawl along the bottom,” he instructed. “Make like a flounder. Your life depends on it. Megasharks routinely hunt by sight, looking up at the surface in order to spot a prey shadow inked against the sky light. While seals are their preferred meal in these parts, they're not above taking any creature they chance upon—fish of all descriptions, the small whales, sea turtles ... and us."
Najoli's already brittle resolve quavered.
"Have a care not to scrape yourself on the bottommost rocks when pulling yourself along,” Durgay cautioned. “All sharks sniff blood in the water from an impossible distance away. Megasharks are no exception. An open wound, be it graze or cut, will frenzy them faster than a gutted grouper."
Najoli gulped down her anxiety and nearly gagged, her stomach awash with butterfly fishes. She blurted out her immediate concern. “What if we meet a megashark face to face?"
"Hope it's already eaten.” Durgay led off, reiterating, “Stay low, move slow."
"Oh goody, a chance to put my Fisher skills into practice,” the mergirl sniped while bringing up the rear, a measure of the familiarly acerbic Najoli resurfacing.
Her sarcasm was on the mark.
Training in the merman ways resulted in bitter disappointment for the aspiring female Fisher, Durgay's teaching methods highly controversial. Thinking he had overcome his inbred sexism, Najoli naively went along with his ideas. The second lesson should have been far more stimulating than sleep; spearfishing was fundamental to mermales, as staple as the water they breathed.
Porpoising at the chance for some hands on fishing experience, she had yesterday eagerly followed her teacher's directions and silently cruised near the surface, Durgay trailing several yards behind and below. Acting as lookout, Najoli began actively pinging her biosonar the moment she crossed the ribbon reef drop-off into bluer water, employing both sight and sound in the search for fish. The latter detected a likely candidate twenty or so yards off to starboard.
Pre-empting her hand signal, Durgay shot past on her right, his rate of knots surpassing that of a speeding motorboat. Astonished by the oldster's upward turn of speed, Najoli hitched a ride in his turbulent wash, struggling to catch up. She remained well astern of him when he darted to port, matching the snap, evasive turn of the alerted fish to guarantee its interception.
Inexperienced proved the prey's downfall. An adolescent male pelagic thresher, whose natural timidity would not kick in until adulthood, foolhardily homed in on the disturbance caused by Najoli's swimming action, a slave to the vibration sensitivity of his lateral line canals—a fishy form of early warning radar.
Curiosity killed the catfish.
Too late the juvenile shark realised his mistake. At twice his size the Cetari was not suitable fish food and more likely to be the eater than the eatee. His instinctive veering off was also a grave error, presenting Durgay with the biggest available target, the hunter becoming the hunted as he turned broadside. The Seaguard Fisher rammed the triangular heads of his trident just behind the retreating shark's gill slits, and braced himself.
Exploding into action, panicked by pain, the impaled fish fought with all the might he could muster for his stolen life, bucking and writhing on the end of the spearshaft like a devilfish possessed. Smallness counted for much in the shark
world. Surprisingly powerful, even a modest three footer was a handful for the muscular merman.
Grappling to maintain a grip on his whalebone haft, bending horrendously under the strain, Durgay sensibly kept the scrappy shark at arm's length. Thrashing threshers (what a mouthful!) deserved their reputation for being notoriously dangerous to subdue. Their cutlass-like upper tail lobe, fully half their body length, scythed through the water with the finality of a falling guillotine blade, an eleven footer actually responsible for a verified decapitation. Durgay was intent on remaining level-headed.
The tussle between food and feeder, a role reversal completely flummoxing the shark, was ferociously short. Tiring quickly, his struggles reduced to feeble twitches, the thresher literally had the fight wrangled out of him by the tenacious merman. His own protesting muscles close to bursting from the effort, Durgay hauled the fagged fish in hand over hand along the wobbling shaft until the snub-nosed head was within reach, mindful to keep fingers and fins well away from the shark's business end.
Grateful now for Najoli's ill-timed detour that delayed their getaway from Bounty Reef—she had backtracked inexplicably to the Rock, making her unwitting accomplice wait long, tense minutes while craftily commandeering essentials for their exile—Durgay frantically waved her over. Holding open the neck of the shoplifted holdall, unslung from her shoulder, as the old Fisher rummaged through the misappropriated tackle with his free hand, she watched him gingerly lift out the gleaming shark-tooth knife, careful not to slice the woven seagrass bag. The irony of Durgay's next act was plain enough, killing the weakened thresher by expertly cutting into the charcoal skin behind the head and severing its spinal cord. Arching his back, the dying shark momentarily shuddered before assuming the flaccidness of death.
Durgay worked fast. He had to. A fresh kill, whether in the open ocean or out on a treeless savannah, promptly attracted all manner of scavengers and the larger predators individually aiming to steal a share of another's efforts. Lacking the numbers to chase off freeloaders, he bled his catch with practised quickness, sawing off the head and belly flaps. Sharks enjoyed the last laugh in death by reflexively excreting a urine-based body fluid throughout their dead flesh that in due course fouled the meat with a repellent ammonia taste. Bloodletting removed the polluting urea.
Slitting the carcass open on either side by making cuts from the spinal cord notch down along the flanks to end behind the pelvic fins, he gutted the fish, the scooped out internal organs mixing higgledy-piggledy outside the billowy redness. Deftly butchering the flesh into transportable chunks, Durgay abandoned the remains to the current after bagging the tastier tail cuts last.
Praised for her performance while they swam hell for shark leather away from the makeshift processing site, now being invaded by fishy “vultures and jackals", in this case the resident lionfish and migratory tarpon, Najoli smiled back. “Lookout is an easy job,” she boastfully said.
Durgay's chuckle was not so complimentary. “I wasn't referring to that. You acted perfectly as bait."
This time around, Najoli had not the slightest intention of tempting any fish with her delectability ... especially not a monstrous shark!
Probing ahead with his sonar, followed up by a needless glance, Durgay eased along the bottom, finding handholds amongst the stone outcroppings to pull himself forward, slithering just above the rocks like a sideward undulating sea snake. Sea conditions made him nervous, heightening his caution. An overnight blow had churned up the seabed, clouding the water with lingering sediment, visibility falling away to less than ten feet. His illuminating clicks travelled less than a quarter along the length of the channel, the swirling particles of sand and broken-off coral fragments blinding him acoustically to the remaining distance.
Najoli's jitters worsened the further they penetrated the Alley, her jerky movements betraying her escalating dread. Anxious to calm her down, Durgay risked a shark overhearing them conversing as he sought to distract her with chitchat; sharks heard almost as well as they smelled. “You never did let on who the personality was you ticked off to get yourself jailed."
"Now's not the time to dredge up my indiscretions."
"Was it Lasbow?"
"Shouldn't you be concentrating on navigating the Alley? I'd hate to bump into a megashark by accident."
"Must've been Las,” decided Durgay. “He's always fancied himself as popular with the merladies. Obviously doesn't take a rebuff terribly well. Throwing you in the grotto is overreacting though."
"It wasn't the captain,” Najoli flatly refuted, working her way up and around a spindle of algae-smothered rock blocking her route, the water shallowing to eighteen feet. “If you must know, it was Cerdic."
Dumbfounded, Durgay stated the obvious. “But the Merking's married ... to Queen Minoh!"
"That doesn't prevent him trying to sample other fish,” was Najoli's resentful analogy. “Only, I took myself off the menu and he took exception to it. The rest you're aware of."
There was slightly more to Najoli's story than merely that. Buoyed up by the minor victory over the Landhoppers he had, by proxy, led his mermen in, the over-stimulated king needed an outlet for his excess of adrenalin, and for Cerdic that meant vigorous lovemaking. Minoh was a cold fish however, never showing any inclination for sex after the obligatory wedding night consummation. That was a onetime only deal. Theirs was a marriage of political convenience, Cerdic gaining the throne by popular consensus, Minoh keeping her station and prestige. Thereafter, she steadfastly refused her new husband's ardent advances. It was almost as if Cerdic's brother, the preceding Merking, had sexed Minoh out.
Galled by Minoh's out of the blue chastity, Cerdic's frustration was exacerbated by his beguiling wife's shameful behaviour in public. Flirting with every Seaguardian assigned to the royal protection detail, she maddeningly espoused the essence of prudishness in private. Seeking his sexual gratification elsewhere, Cerdic rationalised his disgusting abusiveness away by absurdly thinking, If I can't have the mother, her daughters will do. In his warped perception that transferral worked fabulously, set to continue with the younger princess now the eldest was beyond his groping reach.
The Captain of the Seaguard put paid to that incestuous lust. Under the guise of beefing up the Rock's security to protect against Landhopper infiltrators, Lasbow placed guards with the royal merwomen around the clock. Prevented from being alone with Ahlegra, the Merking's desirous eye fell upon the mermaid nearest to hand, which happened that day to be a discouraging Najoli. Rejecting his unwanted amorousness landed her in the dogfish-house, though it pained Lasbow to make the arrest.
"A punishment of one, two nights at the most in jail,” Durgay guesstimated. “A mergirl such as you could've done that stint floating on your head."
"Normally, except the method of dissuasion I used against lover-boy was a bit severe.” Prompting her with a curious stare, an amused grin split Durgay's face when Najoli revealed, “I whacked him in the private parts with an uprooted sea anemone."
Durgay laughed aloud.
"It was the closest thing to a weapon I could lay my hands on,” she retorted petulantly, rather proud of her improvisation.
"You certainly don't do things by halves, girlie."
"Neither does Cerdic. Captain Lasbow confided in me that kingy had it in his head to banish me for my crime. So you see, leaving the reef was never going to be an issue. I was soon to be expelled anyway."
Durgay marvelled at her calm acceptance.
Najoli leered wickedly. “I can take satisfaction that our beloved Merking won't be able to spear any lovelies anytime soon. Strange how multiple stings deadens one's sex drive."
"Shush!” Durgay silenced her. A ponderously moving bulk crept into the farthest range of his sound-sight, the returning echoes defining a creature of around thirty feet in length; easily big enough to be one of the resident megasharks. Gripping her arm, Durgay pulled Najoli to a halt, feeling his own tautness stiffen her body, and waited fearfully.
The minutes ticked by agonisingly slow. The disquieting sonar blip approached at an unhurried two knots, protracting Cetari anxiety, giving Durgay ample time to consider options. Avoidance was out of the question. Half as wide as it was long, the channel afforded no protection or hiding places whatsoever, leaving the Fisher one harrowing choice. Confrontation.
It's an ill current that flows no good he sourly thought. Story of my life: whatever can go wrong, does go wrong.
Motioning for Najoli to take refuge behind him, Durgay resisted the upwelling of terror threatening to paralyse his courage, as it had in the Landhopper lagoon when he failed to lift a finger to defend Princess Lorea. Nupterus was testing him anew, giving him the second chance to get it right. Planting the butt of his trident in the bolstering rock, Durgay faced down his fears, adamant that this trembly mergirl dependent on him was going to come through their trial unharmed.
His relief was indescribable when an outsized sea cow hove into view, sluggishly churning a path through the opaque seawater about six feet above them. Content to let the lumbering hulk pass by unmolested, Durgay jumped when Najoli started hailing the plodding beast. “Fool of a mergirl! Leave the animal be,” he snapped, turning briskly to spear her with his censuring gaze as the leviathan cruised overhead unheedingly. “Worry about staying clear of shark chompers, not getting pally with that dumb brute."
"Grams used to say that all higher sea creatures possess the ability to communicate.” Najoli poked a finger challengingly into Durgay's chest. “You just have to make the effort to talk with them.” She called up to the sea cow convivially again and the colossus heard, rolling on its nearer side to better glimpse what manner of ocean denizen was flagging it down. Short-sighted and hard of hearing, the goliath tipped nose-down inquisitively and pleasantries were exchanged.
"Greetings tovarysh,” it conveyed with a marked, heavily accented lisp. The language of the sea, despite being universal, was inflected with regional dialects.
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