Whispering for Najoli to click on the frontrunner, Durgay softly whistled, “I'll give the bigger one the once over.” Their individual sonar evaluations yielded joint results, for each read and assessed the returning sound waves of the other in real time.
The rakish wings angling outwards from the sides of the five-foot long bird's portly body was a dead giveaway of its avian ancestry, though the appendages could be more appropriately labelled flippers. Outwardly penguin-like in body plan, this strange bird boasted other radical adaptations in biology making it completely aquatic and independent of the land. Having gradually lost the power of aerial flight, this species later sacrificed the ability to come ashore, its stunted legs and webbed feet fusing with the shortened tail feathers and flattening out into a steerage assembly. Breeding underwent the same degree of acclimation. Being a bird, it naturally produced, in this case, a single colourless egg to be incubated and hatched internally, giving birth to a live chick at sea.
The beast actively pursuing it was just as difficult for the Cetari to quantify. On closer scrutiny its classification as one of the pinnipeds was borderline, its membership in the seal family authentic yet open to debate. Beyond the typical four flippered limbs, any resemblance was superficial; its rear-end glaringly tailless, while frontwards took on an even weirder grotesquery. A convexly curved tusk dominated the left corner of the animal's downturned mouth, the three-footer canine giving it an intimidating gape despite the offsetting stump of the broken-off tooth marring the other side. The legs were also abnormal, reverting to a terrestrial pawed look with splayed toes ending in blunt claws, the innermost nail of the forefeet enlarged and sharpened into a fearsome slashing weapon. This anomalous beastie was a reinvention of the classic walrus, a dedicated carnivorous version not above adding a feathered undersea flier to its meaty diet. Far more amphibious than the original model, its veneer of silky grey hair coating the fatty insulation common to all polar swimmers warded off the arctic chill both in and out of the water. A ferocious hunter at equal ease on or under the ice, the evolutionary morphed seal, furred and four-footed, shared a lifestyle comparable to that of the ursine super-predator, the formidable polar bear.
"Durgs, you study seabirds. Since when do they flap underwater?"
"They normally don't."
"This one plainly doesn't know it's not meant to.” From afar they watched the submerged bird flitting and jinking, barely managing to stay one wing ahead of the walrus so obviously hounding it. Darting quickly to one side, the crunching jaws of its faster pursuer nipping at its tail, it seemed only a matter of time before the harried evader lost the crucial race for life. “That swimming gull looks to be in trouble. The big feller almost had it then."
"Leave them to it. It is a dogfish eat dogfish seaworld."
"If the bird's a local, I'm betting he'll have pertinent information about the region, possibly have heard about, maybe even know firsthand, where Nupterus might be found."
"It's a he now. How did you jump to that assumption?"
"A female isn't stupid enough to place herself in that predicament. Stop flapping your gills and shoot up there to save him."
Rolling his eyes in disapproval, Durgay scoffed. “Wanting to go off talking to the animals again? Remember what came of it on the last try. You didn't have a whale of a time, as I recall."
"That's why I'm going to natter with the birdie. I'm bound to have better luck with one of those chatterboxes."
Durgay sustained his reluctance. “Really, we shouldn't interfere."
Najoli was reciprocally insistent. “We could be missing a blued opportunity to shorten our search. Don't flappers, even one which flies beneath and not above the waves, range far and wide enough to glimpse many unusual things?"
Cowed by female logic, the Fisher had smarts enough to lodge no further objections. Early on in his pairing with Najoli, he figured out that the merwoman wore the belt in a relationship. Any merman who told his buddies otherwise was either a liar or seriously deluded.
Blinkered by the chase, the predatory walrus never saw Durgay coming. Sweeping in like a storm wave, he pronged the twelve-footer behind the head with his marine pitchfork. Heeding the Fishers rigid code not to slaughter any of the sea's mammals, Durgay took special care to only slightly harm the burly seal, ascertaining from his x-ray vision not only its maleness, but also the best probable spot to hook the pinniped without actually killing him. That bull's-eye proved to be the nape of its chunky neck where the flesh piled excessively thick; a blubbery torc providing ample protection against the horrendous injuries sustained by jostling males at the height of their breeding season, when brutal tusk fights determined those who would seed the next generation, while relegating the impotent losers to lowly bachelor status. The collage of healed wounds scarring this fellow's throat stood out as proud trophies of remembered sexual conquests and shameful brandings of failures best forgotten.
Durgay's aim to merely debilitate his target hit a snag. Bellowing his surprise at being undamagingly speared, the walrus followed his vocal objection with a physical protest, nearly yanking the merman's arm out of its socket as he tried to dislodge the stinging irritation. Mindful to keep that grandly fearsome tusk at arm's length, Durgay wrestled to keep the bowed shaft of his trident from splintering under the strain, and grunted, “He weighs a tunny!” The irked super seal indeed tipped the scales at a short ton.
"Ere, ain't no need to get personal. I've been dieting."
It was the modernised walrus, rumbling rustically in perfect Cerat!
Coming up out of hiding, Najoli presented herself open-armed in a show of friendliness to the incensed predator, attempting to calm his aggression. The gesture went unnoticed as the underseabird, curious at the merfolk intervention, doubled back to circle the group, insanely squawking, “Fultark! Fultark! Fultark!"
Agitated by its nearness, Durgay had trouble controlling the heftier carnivore and braced his tail against the captive's broad back. Bleeding from the wound, kept minimal by the watery cold, increased in proportion to the mammal's gyrations, the ribbon of dilute redness stirred, not shaken, into an adulterated cloud. “Distract him, Najoli,” he incited her. “Get him to quiet down, or else I'll resort to viler methods of subdual."
Believing she could not compete with his attention centring on the raving bird gave Najoli the idea to capitalise on that interest to refocus the walrus onto her.
"Is that what kind of seabird he is? A Fultark?"
Orienting on Najoli, the hoary-haired seal quit fighting Durgay, much to the Fisher's relief; his tested trident had started cracking from the tension. “Fultark ain't what he is, missy. It's a who he is."
"That's his name?"
"Not rightly. It be the collective name of the fal's flock. Them birdbrains ain't bright enough to name theirselves individually."
Whooping delightedly, the aquatic avian orbited just Najoli, displaying to good effect the two-tone plumage mirroring a penguin's polar countershading; ebony on the top half, ivory paling its undersides—perfect camouflage when viewed from above or below. Pausing to growl teasingly at the lanced walrus, a tinny sound like a muffled outboard motor, the outgoing bird caressed his slim, curved beak in a friendly fashion against the back of the mermaid's hand. She flinched as the serrations in the bill scraped over her skin, and the flighty swimmer took off to joyfully begin circling again.
Startled by the toothy contact, Najoli had no way of perceiving the notched beak was an evolutional throwback to a time predating the emergence of mermen, when wingless diving birds fished using specialised jaws filled with true teeth. Not above repeating itself, natural selection tinkered with variances on a common theme and the serrated bill, while toothless, functioned with likewise efficiency by vicing slippery fish. You cannot beat the soundness in design of a good clamp.
She was equally ignorant of the seafowl's parentage. Thriving in the polar south, true penguins had no need to colonise the northern ice cap, plagued by terrestrial
hunters that would happily maraud their breeding rookeries to feast on unguarded eggs and chicks. In the south they only evaded predacious seals and skuas. Which left their corresponding ecological niche in the Far North wide open for exploitation, a golden opportunity taken advantage of by this bird's ancestral stock: the puffin. Moulded over time by the chiselling forces of progressionism, whether viewed as the seminal hand of god or Mother Nature's exacting touch being a matter of personal conviction, the end product was a prime example of convergent biology, where two dissimilar species, geographically separate, paralleled each other in form and lifestyle. A classic case of copycatting.
"Don't get yourself to a liking that fal."
Najoli retorted with witticism. “I'm assuming he's not your travel companion then."
"Nah, we is playing tag and he was it,” the sardonic seal reciprocated. “I'll be a lunching on him right soon enough, once he stays still for me to gore him."
"Only if I permit you to,” Durgay begged to differ, shoving the seal's tusked head forwards on the end of his trident, reminding the meat-lover walrus who was in control.
His pained prisoner rumbled discontentedly. “Youse ain't like no seal I've seen afore, and neither is youse kin to them killing whales. But I see hints of them both in your weird form. What is youse fish-eyes?"
Durgay's response was one of blunt arrogance. “We're your betters"
"Youse got a high opinion of yourselves."
"I am the one who's got you by the throat."
The tusker's squat, piggish face, bearded by hairs stiff with response, bristled.
Hurriedly interceding, Najoli scolded, “Durgs, there's no need to antagonise him."
"Sticking him in the neck with my trident qualifies as that."
Showing concern, she sincerely asked the walrus, “Are you in much pain?"
"No worse than when I did broke me tusk against the hide of an ole rival. That was just worth the agony. No matter, I be a fast healer. What's one more war wound to wear? This pain in aid of something special?"
Regretful, the mergirl said, “Durgay acted in the promptest, if not the most pleasant, way to halt you from eating that bird out of hand."
"Youse do look a mite thinly. Suppose we could split him three ways, but I ain't one for sharing and the portions will be small like."
"You misunderstand. We're sorely in need of him as a guide, not as food."
The walrus guffawed. “Harrumph! This be a first. All birds are loons, missy. I'm too old to be migrating outta the cold snap, but chickadee here is too stupid to leave the chiller. Youse are up the proverbial ice floe with nary a tusk between youse if a wanting him as a map."
Durgay's turn to interject came up. “Are you saying, in your annoyingly animalistic way, that the bird won't be helping us?"
"He can't, cos him is thicker than pigfish shite."
"That's just swell, Najoli,” groaned the merman. “Your supposed waterspout of knowledge is an imbecile."
"I myself might be a willing to act as your tour guide like ... for a couple of concessions."
"Name your terms."
Durgay shot his amicable lover a daggered glare. Bargaining with animals was not on his agenda.
Defending her agreeableness, Najoli argued, “We are swimming uncharted waters, my love. Who knows what dangers abound in this freezer?"
"Nothing I'm sure we can't handle ourselves,” he clicked confidently. “Luckily these seas are too cold for sharks. That's one menace we needn't fret over."
"Says youse,” scoffed the walrus. “Just cause they ain't seen, don't make them not there."
Made anxious by such talk, Najoli's whistle came out shriller than she liked. “There are sharks hereabouts?"
"Just them sleeper sharks a cruising deeply. “Bout your size, they is harmless enough.
"No shark's harmless, only armless,” stated the Fisher, unintentionally strengthening Najoli's case. She was quick to cash in on his error.
"It's settled, Durgs. We definitely require a local guide."
Unable to sway his mulish mergirlfriend, a permissive nod from him gruffly sanctioned the resumption of negotiations. Not that Najoli needed or waited for Durgay's sayso, telling their captive, “Go ahead, name your price."
The shady seal rumbled smugly over his petty win. “To be a letting me free tis the obvious one."
Wiggling his catch, the Fisher rebuffed the deal out of hand. “Don't trust predators,” he warned Najoli.
The insane laugh the walrus gave out blended his pain with mirth. “With them pointy teeth youse got, youse ain't no vegie eaters. That makes youse no more trusty than me."
Durgay waggled his forked spear harder, upping the walrus's non-lethal hurt. “Tempting though the prospect is, we won't be eating you. My father taught me never to dine on something I don't know the name of."
Najoli's curiosity peaked and she grilled the walrus, “Just what are you?
"I be not telling that, in case youse change your mind and make a meal outta me."
"Overcome your shyness and I'll see what I can do about getting Durgs to reconsider cutting you loose."
"Najoli!"
She threw Durgay's condemning look right back at him, much to his annoyance.
The miffed Fisher exhibited marvellous restraint not retorting to the taunt with which the toothy seal baited him.
"Does cows wear the tusks in your herd, nipper?” Her enticement worked a charm and the harpooned walrus opened up. Finding oneself in a bind really loosens up the tongue. “Myself is called Shagroth and make no mistake, I be the burliest bull Bureal to swim this icy sea.” Honesty came with its very own superfluities.
"And the Fultark?” Najoli wanted to know everything.
"The loony fal's just an Enguan snack. I've a given what youse wanted, now give me mine."
Durgay jarring the prongs embedded horridly behind his head dissuaded the Bureal from being pushy. “You mentioned another stipulation. State it,” demanded the controlling merman.
"Nipper, youse really is a pain in the neck.” Shagroth's stomach got the better of him. “I goes to sea to get me a full belly. Feed me the Enguan and I'll shepherd youse anywhere youse be a desiring to swim."
Horrified, Najoli strongly opposed the request. Taking an instant liking to the submersed flier, Durgay's subsequent willingness to sacrifice the bird shocked her.
"Don't be hasty, Najoli,” he contended. “Think of him as a feathered fish, dumb and delectable."
"And your conscience has no problem feeding him to the fishes?"
Shrugging his shoulders complacently, Durgay reasoned, “It comes down to survival of the smartest, not fittest."
A suddenly perceived silence, detectable despite the constant background creaking and cracking of the restless ice, struck them all. Casting about, the mermaid was pleased to find the noisome Enguan absent. Shagroth's fast food was faster than anticipated, departing unnoticed.
"Where is that Fultark?” muttered Durgay, unhappy at losing complete leverage over the Bureal. Scanning the shielding depths with his sonar sight only confirmed the Enguan slipped away by diving deep. Flitting about 600 feet directly below them, Fultark's business was masked from inquisitive eyes by the concealing blackness. Unusually quick on his flukes, the Fisher offered Shagroth a reasonable alternative. “How about all the herring I can catch for you instead?"
"I be allergic to seafood."
"But you hunt in the ocean."
"Don't mean I have to dine on them fishy things, does it."
Gathering her resolve, Najoli boldly threatened the Bureal. “Do as we bid you, or ... or my merboyfriend will saw off your tusk and stab you through the head with it."
Appalled again by her forwardness, Durgay said nothing. The departure of the Enguan lessened their bargaining position. Old-fashioned violence, unconscionable as it was, became their chief negotiating tool.
Undaunted by the blatant threat, Shagroth strangely capitulated. ‘I says yes to your terms. B
ut seeing as youse can't offer up Fultark, I'll be a wanting something else for me trouble."
"You're in no position to make demands, Bureal."
"And youse dare not deny me this."
"We'll see about that."
"I'm a soon needing air. Try and say no to that."
Durgay very well could not. Damn air gulpers are more nuisances than anything else.
"Better hurry and make mind up,” Shagroth pushed him. “I be no good to youse drownded."
Sullenly consenting, Durgay snapped orders at Najoli. “Get the rope out of your bag and tie a loop around the Shagroth's back fins. Make sure you knot it good and tight. We're putting the Bureal on a leash.” Never in the merman's weirdest imaginings had he envisioned taking a sea mammal “walkies.” When she had the walrus roped up and the line held taut in her grip, the Fisher commenced knifing the whalebone barbs free of Shagroth's blubbery flesh, truthfully stating while he worked, “This'll hurt you far more than me."
In between twinges of bearable pain dully felt through the shielding blubber, the Bureal detected a perverse note of pleasure in the stranger's clicky voice. Concerned more by inflating his flattened lungs with replenishing oxygen, Shagroth put aside all thoughts of retribution until he drew in a fresh breath of bracing polar air. Following that, he planned on making these odious foreigners pay for their insolence. His carnivorous tendencies aroused, the savage seal speculated on how good Najoli and Durgay would taste.
Operating with the surgical skill of a practised fisherman completely at home with gutting and filleting his catch, Durgay quickly let the harpooned seal mammal off the hook. Glimpsing the merman's extracted weapon, Shagroth masked his hatred of the offending “tri-tooth” and remarked appreciatively, “Hmm, detachable tusk. That be weirdly impressive."
Swapping his trident for the leash, Durgay advised Najoli to keep the pronged spear levelled at Shagroth's humped back, sniping, “I wouldn't trust the tusker as far as I could tow him.” The cautious Fisher played out enough rope to allow the Bureal mobility to swim ahead of him using only his forelegs, without granting too much freedom. “Try escaping, airhead, and I'll yank off your rear fins,” he threatened the paddling walrus.
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