Three Times Chosen

by Alan J. Garner

  "How many did you count?"

  "A whole school of them,” the spotter reported to his quizzing captain.

  "Excellent.” Cerdic, his sword tucked gingerly under his armpit, rubbed his hands together in murderous zeal. “More frogmanned wood-bones to scupper."

  "No, Sire. They're swimming."

  "Even better. Their arrogance and stupidity makes them easier targets."

  "They'll be using the outgoing tide as a springboard,” construed Lasbow, “meaning their ride through the currents will momentarily disorientate them upon emerging. That gives us a precious few moments of advantage."

  "An edge we'll not squander. Deploy the frontline Seaguard units either side of the Surge."

  Respectfully, Lasbow suggested, “Don't you want them sited downstream a ways, Sire? Too close to the exit point and our own mermen risk being swept off their flukes by the surging currents."

  "That'll cause us to partially lose the element of surprise."

  "Better that than brave Fishers. They already know we're here waiting for them."

  "Place the mermen as you see fit, Captain, but I want them in position and ready to ambush the Landhoppers when I give the whistle. How far off is the enemy?"

  "Half a click away, Your Majesty,” gauged the monitoring Seaguardian.

  "Then what are you fish-lice waiting for? Get fluking!"

  Earlier, it took all of Lasbow's subtle powers of persuasion to induce the Merking to think outside the boxfish in terms of battle tactics. Outwardly innovative, the blockade had run aground on the sands of the atoll. With no way of progressing ashore, the besieging Cetari were simply treading water, unable to go further, unwilling to lose face by withdrawing. Superior mermen numbers confined the Landhoppers to their island and Cerdic would use that same brute force to blunt the belated armed reaction directed against his barricaders. Thanks to his farsighted captain, instead of putting all his fish eggs in one seagrass basket by meeting Landhopper aggression head on with a full scale counterattack using his entire submarine army, the eager Merking allowed Lasbow to split the blockaders and crucially hold a number of their warriors in reserve to respond to any unforeseen and unpleasant turnarounds in the tide of battle. Cunningly, Cerdic was allowed to think the strategy had been entirely his idea.

  Lasbow's ingenuity did not extend only to tactical planning. Examining captured Landhopper weaponry and debriefing Seaguards individually in the wake of their successful first engagement, he came to the worrying realisation that merman tridents were unsuited to general warfare. In spearfishing parameters the pronged whalebone thruster was an unqualified design success, but when applied to an underwater combat scenario its very specialisation produced an unsafe drawback. Lasbow had himself experienced that limitation when the barbed heads, ideal for snagging fleeting fish, became maddeningly embedded in a foe's flesh and needed to be cut free, dangerously wasting time and exposing any Fisher busy cutting to sneak attack.

  Resolving to remedy that problem, his solution was necessarily simple; shave off the barbs. Unsurprisingly, his practicality met with vehement resistance from King Cerdic, labelling the modification a defilement of merman tradition. Banned from implementing his sensible improvement on the grounds (or waters) of sacrilege, Lasbow managed to convert a squad of personally loyal Seaguardians over to the streamlined upgrade behind the Merking's back. The reconstruction at least permitted those particular warriors, selected for the ability to keep their mouths shut, to relieve the tedium of endless waiting and patrolling. Determined to trial the customised weaponry for the betterment of mermankind, he gambled Cerdic would surely give his approval after seeing the adaptation in action and, in doing so, overlook Lasbow's overt disobedience.

  Rallying his cadre, their simmering desire for action of any kind pulsing in time with the tidal fluctuations of the nearby Surge, fretfulness trembled the captain's confidence. The time for proving the modified tridents was on hand, and this was one test Lasbow could ill afford to flunk.

  * * * *

  "Ho! Over here, chief."

  With Knalli's hail reeling him in with the same certitude a sennit rope could have, Ryops kicked over to rejoin his anxious bodyguard. Hundreds more frogmen bobbed messily on the rippling surface in the Surge's outflow, their frantic calls to reform scattered ranks bouncing back and forth over the dividing wave tops. Not game enough to traverse the Surge underwater dictated that the Landhoppers navigate the mishmash of currents topside. Braving the funnelled waters was an accepted difficulty, so the disorganised frog army, strewn about like coral “leafs” by the submarine “winds", came as no surprise. Annoying, but anticipated.

  Visually homing in on his Shurpeha's uplifted spear acting as a pointer, Ryops tread water with Knalli as the regrouping warriors began pulling themselves together from confused rabble into an orderly mob once again.

  Chafing at the chaotic delay, Knalli dropped his spear with a frustrated splash. “Hardly the bests of starts."

  "Inauspicious,” agreed Ryops. “But goodness sprouts from heaped guano."

  "Yeah, Dokran ... weeds included."

  In no mood to contradict his protector's pessimism, Ryops wallowed in an eddy and his own physical misery. Tolerant of saltwater for only short stints, the Piawro preferred the purity of a freshwater dunking. Surfing the outgoing tide only worsened the chieftain's unrelenting hangover. It was if a miniature beater drummed a tattoo inside his head. All that, factored in with the heaving ocean's mimicked breathing, left him queasy and peevish. Fishing and seasickness did not mix.

  Waiting twitchily for the last of his ragtag army to fall into place, Ryops was on the verge of giving them the thumbs down, the signal to dive and commence the invasion, when trills of confusion and alarm sounded above the guiding ribbits.

  "Fish attack,” Knalli instantly deduced. And he did not mean sharks.

  Craning his stunted neck above the wavelets, Ryops spied the cause of the hullabaloo. Irregularly spaced splashes along the fringes of the formation marked the dramatic instances of Piawro warriors being snatched from beneath and dragged down to their deaths by aggressively bold mermen. Even before the Dokran recognised the trickles of deathly crimson pooling on the surface for what they were, he heard himself croaking the command to submerge and fight.

  The planned coherence of the invasion fell apart into a farcical free-for-all.

  A nictitating membrane sliding up and protectively over each eye gave Ryops a clear underwater picture of the unfolding debacle. Attacking Fish-with-Hands were indeed individually darting up from the depths with the ferocious speed of surfacing megasharks, harpooning luckless amphib spearmen on the ends of their cruelly barbed tridents and towing them downwards to shark-tooth wielding compatriots. Horror-struck, he looked on powerlessly as the hooked and hapless frogmen were knifed to death, turning the crystal blue sea a morbid shade of red.

  The amphibimen retaliated unthinkingly, bristling spears descending en masse to meet the armed fish on their own terms, the Shurpeha vanguard taking the fight to them first. Grabbing his chieftain's arm and hauling him back, Knalli prevented Ryops from following them down, determined not to endanger him. Puzzlingly, ten of the Shurpeha extras also lagged behind, even as their peers plummeted into the dangerous deep.

  "Let go, Knalli. I have to join them, to take charge,” Ryops protested, his croaks equally loud undersea. “My nightlong strategising will be for naught if the army plunges in leaderless."

  Refusing to loosen his grip, Knalli pointed downwards with the index finger of his spear-carrying hand, greying now from battle-lust. “Too late for that, chief,” he said. “This clash is degenerating into a catfish fight already."

  Noticing the loiterers, the Dokran croaked annoyingly, “What are they hanging about for?"

  "They're added protection."

  Ryops’ querying frown confirmed his suspicion.

  "Chulib did insist,” Knalli rather sheepishly confessed.

  * * * *

  Lasbow h
eld back from smiling. Although his slash-and-dash mode of attack proved devastatingly bothersome, the contest was in its opening stages and far from over, let alone won. The Cetari merely nibbled at the edges of the frog army, not bitten a crippling chunk out of the beast. No militarist, the commander of the Seaguard relied on the tried and trusted spearfishing technique of ambush to devise tactics for warring with their amphibious adversaries. Dispersing before the descending Landhoppers, the Cetari skirmishers retreated as rehearsed to deeper water. The baited frogmen rushed after, their vengefulness blinding them to the trap about to be sprung.

  Impatient as ever, Cerdic rode the bow wave of the responding assault, his handled swordfish bill cleaving the water and any oblivious hostiles in its arc as pods of ascending Fishers collided with their enemies. The half thousand amphib invaders impacted with eight hundred indomitable Cetari, spears clattering unevenly against tridents. Lurking on the sidelines with his elitist Seaguard group, plus a couple of hundred reservists, Lasbow watched on as the Merking shaped the battle's progress. Not content to be a backseat ruler, the Bounty Reef sovereign forged ahead, deluding himself that he was shark proof. The handful of accompanying Seaguardians Lasbow designated to shield the reckless monarch ensured that was so, ferociously fending off any frogman stupid enough to go after the merfolk figurehead.

  This was no long distance battle, but a close-quarters mêlée utterly devoid of rules or mercy. Mermen and frogmen lunged at each other with reciprocal tenacity, impaling each other on bone and stone and wood. Seen to be doing the bulk of the spearing, the Fishers from the outset outnumbered, outfought, and outclassed their froggy foes. Finding their landside training not a patch on Fish-with-Hands fluidity, the Landhoppers began to suffer telling fatalities. Regimentation wilted before free thought. Excelling at independent scrapping, the Cetari initially swam circles around the invaders, inflicting mounting losses on their foemen whilst themselves receiving minimal casualties.

  Early into the battle Lasbow's gravest fear was realised. Tridents became lodged inside their victims, some wrenching free when tugged hard enough, others stuck fast and snapping along the haft from the stresses placed on the brittle whalebone by amphibs bucking wildly about in their death throes. The majority required to be physically cut free, resulting in severe woundings to many cutters when surviving frog-spearmen rallied to the plaintive trills for help from their impaled kinfolk, jabbing at the frantically sawing Fishers with their black spear points.

  Uttering a determined click, Lasbow led his relief column into the fray, streaking through the undersea battlefield with the speed of dashing marlin. Obeying his earlier directives, the specialist Seaguardians paired up and split, a designated spearer engaging Landhopper targets with the barbless trident while his partner watched his back. The remaining reserves attacked at will, tipping the fish scales back in the Fishers” favour.

  Rashly flitting amongst the warring peoples on his lonesome, the Seaguard officer tested his reworked trident, slickly skewering the first of the enemy he happened across, before moving on and running the next one through. Any qualms that had surfaced from his initial Landhopper kill three months earlier were suppressed, duty diluting blameworthiness. Lasbow's squad performed with corresponding efficiency, spiking amphib after amphib until the seas ran red with frog blood, the Landhoppers deader than the skeletal coral forming Desolation Reef.

  Their timely entrance freed up Cerdic to single-mindedly pursue his goal of seeking out the Piawro leader, so as to challenge him to mortal combat. Easier said than done as he hewed a swathe through the horde of diving amphibs, his battling escort hard pressed to keep up with and protect their exuberant king, Cerdic glanced disappointedly at each frogman he swatted aside. Not a one of them carried the regal bearing of an autocrat.

  "Surely the Frog Prince must wear a crown to identify himself. Every ruler has a coronet of some description,” Cerdic supposed with a petulant whistle, shaving an inch off the scalp of an amphibiman slow to dodge his swinging sword.

  A ray of hope brightened his gloomy frustration. By chance, a fluke sonar glance from him swept over a small group of Landhoppers loafing near the surface, and he picked out a glaring anatomical irregularity in one of the two hovering off to the side. Could he be the elusive amphib leader? Favoured by the odds, the Merking shot upwards like an escaping air bubble, dragging his guard detail with him.

  Like a red rag to a bullfish, Cerdic charged headlong towards Ryops’ poison sacs.

  * * * *

  Startled by the ascension of the tiny breakaway group, Knalli panicked. “They must've spotted the Dokran. Intercept them before they reach us!” he exhorted the dallying Shurpeha.

  The ten strong contingent launched immediately into action, though not in the manner Knalli expected. Four of their number turned murderously on their fellows, backstabbing five in quick succession. Striking back, the sixth rammed his spear through one of the traitors disloyal heart before his companion turncoats answered in like.

  Far from being concluded, the trio's abrupt treachery was redirected against Ryops and his protector. Knocked for six, the chieftain could scarcely comprehend them bearing down in worrying silence, their bulgy eyes and sanity clouded by religious zeal. Piawro simply did not war with each other!

  "Chu's infiltrators,” he murmured, dejection in his ribbit. The Subos had subverted otherwise trustworthy Leapers. “May your skin dry out and flake off for your treachery, Eskaa."

  "Get going, chief!” Pushing the Dokran away from him, Knalli thrust his levelled spear out toward the oncoming traitors. “I'll hold them off for as long as I can."

  That was not a terribly long time. As one of the three assassins skirted the Shurpeha loyalist to swim after Ryops, his fellow conspirators confronted Knalli.

  Knalli acted decisively. Brushing his lead opponent's javelin sideways with the shaft of his own, he deftly stuck the traitor in the throat, turning to face the slaughterer's sidekick after shaking the speared corpse off his blooded obsidian tip. Too slow to block the spearhead aiming for his face, brave Knalli died when the glassy black point punctured his left eye, driving through the brain and erupting out the back of his skull. Leaving his lance embedded in the slain Shurpeha's head, Knalli's killer prised the bodyguard's own spear from his death grip and set off after the escaping chieftain, goaded on by the irony that the weapon meant to defend Ryops would be the one to snuff out his life and chieftainship in one foul thrust.

  Not daring to look back, Ryops frogkicked with all his might, looking for an escape route that simply was not there. Making for the lagoon was out of the question. A return to the island meant waiting for a tide change and the fleeing chieftain could not afford to tarry that long. Flight out into the open ocean was not an alternative either; amphibs were no seamen. And as for Ryops’ fighting prowess, well...

  That left option D, and Ryops hastily took it.

  * * * *

  Cerdic clicked an oath. The marked amphibiman plunged headfirst right by him, unmindful of his lapse in judgement. Counting on his escorting Fishers to deal with the two frogmen trailing after, the Merking looped back in pursuit of his slower quarry. On him in seconds, Cerdic hacked at the frightened chieftain's pumping frog legs.

  Weaving madly, Ryops came to a vexing standstill, made dead in the water when hamstrung by the king's swordsmanship. Trilling madly, the crippled Dokran clutched despairingly at the rent skin behind his right knee, the warm blood flow from the deep gash mingling with the tepid sea; the sensation of pain yet to register on his disbelieving senses. His gamble had not wholly paid off. Avoiding impalement from aspiring assassins, his ignoble death would instead be delivered by an armed fish.

  Sensing he at last had the right frogman in his sights, Cerdic oddly relinquished his sword to the nearest of his Seaguard not busy neutralising Eskaa's hired spears. This would be a hands-on killing, a personalised retribution for the murder of Lorea; the life of the Frog Prince taken as payment for that of the Merprincess.
In Cerdic's haunted eyes that was a fair swap. Emitting a potent sonar burst stunning his victim within its cone of intensity, the vengeful Merking seized his disorientated Landhopper counterpart by the throat with his powerful hands, and squeezed mightily.

  His eyes bulging more than normal, his hands dangling uselessly in the current, Ryops’ life flashed contritely before his fixed sight. Sadly, the show was pathetically brief. Reviewing his nonexistent accomplishments illustrated the Dokran's glaring failings. His incapacities to father an inheritor, reform the unequal caste system, and address the chronic shortfalls in food and housing all jumped out at him, mocking his ineffectiveness at remedying them. He could not even constrain Eskaa's priestly meddling. And to boot, the Subos was right all along concerning the Cetari; fish with hands and brains. Shamed at not attaining even the least of his goals, the heirless chieftain almost welcomed the oblivion of death to absolve his guilt.

  Cerdic was not yet ready to oblige the Landhopper he so merrily choked.

  "You'll suffer, as my darling Lorea must have suffered,” promised the riled Merking, momentarily reprieving the Dokran Teh. Releasing his chokehold, Cerdic gouged out Ryops’ distended eyes with his thumbs.

  Blinded, adrift in a sea of pain, the Piawro chief croaked his misery. “Warring with you was never my want, Fish-with-Hands. Conditions forced me into taking this drastic action. I don't wish to die, for the hopes of the Piawro surely perish with me."

  The unintelligible lament meant nothing to the Merking, as did his ravings in Cerat that lashed the stricken amphib boss. Sequestering the knife from the belt of the Seaguardian minding his sword, Cerdic maliciously pricked Ryops with the razor tip of the megashark tooth, each watery drop of blood he drew a punishment to compliment his rebukes.