"Time to go hunting and here's me without even a trident,” he morosely whistled.
Steeling his frayed nerves, the Fisher thrust upward again with powerful flicks of his tail. He erupted from undersea with exquisite timing, twisting in midair and catching the forefront of a forming comber as he arced over and dropped. Prepared as he was for the impact, slammed by the familiar expression of oceanic power exploded the watery breath from Durgay's gills. Gasping in the spray-drenched air, he clenched his teeth and bodysurfed the sixteen-foot storm surge, riding it toward the algal ridge.
Abruptly expending its energy, the wave broke short of rolling over the barrier and dumped Durgay onto the razor coral. Bouncing along uncontrollably, the bony outgrowths shredding the skin on his back, arms and shoulders, the battered Fisher came to rest on his stomach. The spent wave receded, leaving pain to seep into Durgay's stunned awareness. Before he could groan in anguish a following wave thundered over him, the force of its collapse compressing his body into the unyielding coral. Blood mingled with the foaminess of the ebbing seawater, its redness stark against the white and grey of the seething ocean. Durgay quailed. Unless he got off the reef ridge, the super surf would pound him to death.
Weathering another crashing wave, he pulled himself gruellingly forward after the assaulting water receded, his strong fingers finding purchase in the corrugations of the coral. Hauling himself hand on over hand across the roof of Desolation Reef in between wave strikes was a Herculean effort made doubly arduous. The cruel coral grated the driven merman's underside into a bloody pulp, while the pounding surf hammered his back black and bluer.
Exhaustion rapidly overtook Durgay and his painfully sluggish crawl slowed to a dead stop. Raising his weary head only worsened the Fisher's distress. He was yards away from reaching the lagoon, the foreboding background presence of Mont Plaas mocking his insignificance and lack of achievement. Aching, bleeding, cut and bruised beyond recognition, beaten by the punishing surf, Durgay's head lolled as he pointlessly prayed to a god he no longer believed in.
Prayers do get answered and in Durgay's case it took the form of a twenty-five foot wave sweeping over the coral ridge, engulfing the Fisher in its raw power and bowling him over, so that he plopped anticlimactically into Harvest Shallows.
Only Durgay was not alone in the lagoon. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Landhoppers were sheltering from the storm's fierceness in the atoll's seawater moat, packed in like sardines. Plonked into their midst left Durgay no time to react, let alone escape. A multitude of pinching hands latched on to the wilted merman, immobilising him instantly. He faced getting chopped up into sushi then and there by ravenous amphibs were it not for the intervention of a sharp-eyed Shurpeha.
"Back, you sea slugs,” he croaked, warning them off with his obsidian tipped spear. His threatening behaviour attracted the interest of other Shurpeha nearby, aiding him in crowd control.
"What you got there, Sorkil? Lunch for us?” one of the helpers keeping back the rabble hungrily asked. His bearing a stone axe marked him as lower in rank than even Sorkil.
"Ulobb will want to see this one. Help me drag him out of the water and up on to the beach."
"Are you coconuts? That's a killer storm raging above us."
"And my spear will kill you just as readily. Make your choice. Die down here, right now, or take your chances with me on the sand. If I'm judging this situation right, we just might get to shelter in the palace as reward for our labours."
"Why didn't you simply say that in the first place? Grab its tail."
Dazed and enfeebled, Durgay allowed the Landhoppers to haul him out of the precious saltwater, knowing innately his removal was a death sentence. He barely cared. His strength of will battered past the point of recovery, he had always known he would make no return trip from the island. Lunder Atoll would become his place of death, alongside the wretched, unsuspecting Landhoppers. But he would die satisfied in more ways than one. Norton had seen to that.
"Give me that axe!” Sorkil demanded of his partner in crime.
Pain lanced the merman's brain and he reflexively thrashed about on the wet sand. A savage blow to the back of his skull mercifully dulled the unbearable sharpness cutting at the base of his tail, and Durgay slipped gratefully into unconsciousness.
Mercy had not guided the hand of Sorkil in striking the Fish-with-Hands with the flat of the axe head. It was practicality. After hacking off the merman's tail in one foul stroke, he did not want his prize to exert itself and bleed to death before his betters had the chance to examine, and kill for themselves, the windfall providence had deposited in Sorkil's lap.
"Guard it with your life!” he ordered his cohort, tossing him back the bloodied axe. They crouched over Durgay's stilled body on the windswept beach below the high tide mark, pelted by driving rain and sea-spray. Even here they were in real danger of being swamped by the worsening storm surge, but the two amphibs could not drag the deadweight any further. “If I come back and find any more body parts unattached, I'll be sure to make the Living God aware you were responsible for the added mutilation."
Sorkil's fellow Shurpeha looked suitably cowed by the threat. Everyone knew Eskaa conjured up this hurricane as a means of testing Piawro faith. Capable of summoning such forces for a religious test, the frogman shuddered to think what powers Eskaa might invoke to mete out punishment on a careless Shurpeha.
"And for Eskaa's sake, don't let him die before my return,” Sorkil needlessly added.
His compatriot nodded his understanding, his fearful gaze glued to Sorkil hopping away up the path leading into the logged foothills, trailing Cetari blood over the soggy white sand from the merman's severed tail gripped in his free hand.
Sorkil bounded inland with great purpose and even greater difficulty. Lashed by hurricane force winds and pelting rain that drove against his skin like a thousand needles, he fought to remain upright. Corakk Jungle was but a fading memory of humid air and cradling greenery. Stripped of its tree cover, the island was fatally exposed and suffered accordingly. The storm's deluge made quagmires out of the bald hills, liquefying soil and triggering awesome mudslides which entombed luckless amphibs hiding out in the interior.
Smarter than them, Sorkil had sensibly joined the masses taking refuge in the lagoon. Bullying his way into that obvious refuge, making use of Shurpeha prestige and outright threats of bodily harm secured his place. And he relinquished that safeness to foolhardily climb the slopes of Mont Plaas in the teeth of hurricane.
Questioning his own sanity, Sorkil jumped across rivulets of mud trickling downslope, seeking pockets of solider earth or the roundels of submerged tree stumps on which to place his webbed feet and launch from. Such islands were becoming increasingly harder to spot in the waterlogged dirt and he finally abandoned the shallow valley floor he was ascending after hearing an ominous, muted roar up ahead.
The very fact that he did not freeze from indecision saved Sorkil's life. He was halfway hopping and scrabbling up the valley's slippery walls when a torrent of watery mud cascaded downhill with terrifying speed, guided by the contours of the trough. Spurred on by the inrushing wave of ooze, Sorkil made a desperate leap for the ridge top as the mudslide sloshed at his heels, wobbling the unstable hills with its terraforming passage.
Lying on his back in the sludge, amazed by his close brush with death, Sorkil laughed insanely at his narrow escape. He was a born survivor. Some called him jammy, but Sorkil made his own luck. After all, he progressed from a lowly ranked Digger, with no prospect of advancement, to an albeit lesser Shurpeha with greater social standing due to his capitalising on the opportunities presented by first the Hundred Spears War, then this storm; events orchestrated by Eskaa's godly hand. The war effort had required enterprising young frogmen and those same individuals, survivors of the undersea conflict and motivated by religious fervour, would form the backbone of the reconstituted amphib society.
And Sorkil determined to be at the head of their number.
>
"You damn Leapers left us out here to die!
Hotness ripped through Sorkil's shoulder and he rolled to his feet, slipping in the mud and his own blood streaming from a deep gash in the deltoid muscle. Glancing sharply about, he spied his mouthy attacker; a knife-wielding Climber, eyes maddened by fear and hopelessness.
The Climber kicked away Sorkil's spear the instant the wincing Shurpeha levelled its point at him, retaliating with a slash at the defending frogman. Sorkil could not lament the loss of his only weapon slithering down the hillside out of reach—the searing cut of the crude obsidian hand-blade scraping across his chest focused all thought on his pain.
"I'm a Digger!” Sorkil protested to his assailant.
The crazed Climber did not buy that. “"You're a Leaper lackey!” he trilled insanely, pointing his knife accusingly at the Shurpeha. “They've brainwashed you. You've sold your soul to Eskaa."
"I serve the Living God,” Sorkil bravely countered.
"And by doing so enslave the rest of us!” ribbited the Climber, slashing wildly at the former Digger. Sorkil dodged the slashes and swatted him aside using Durgay's amputated tail.
Enraged beyond sane thinking, the wailing Climber leapt spread-eagled for Sorkil and was blown off the hilltop by the hammering wind. The swirling rain swallowed him up instantly, his trills of terror taken by the very gust dooming him.
Tottering, Sorkil could not believe his luck again. All about Lunder Atoll the super storm flaunted its unrestrained power. Lightning flashes lit up the outer core of the tempest, hundreds lancing through the black rainbands every hour like winking fluorescent lighting. Those clusters of thunderstorms, rotating outward from the storm's centre, fed the hurricane, releasing destructive energies in a recurring loop. Tornadoes danced around the eyewall in deadly pirouettes, those touching the coldly boiling sea becoming fearsome waterspouts. Rain bucketed down, an airborne torrent threatening to drown all those above water. Even the cone of Mont Plaas, squatting indomitably on the skyline, seemed cowed by the cyclonic onslaught.
But somehow Sorkil survived. He decided it was Eskaa's will that he live and praised the Living God for His benefaction.
Struggling onwards and upwards with his burdensome wounds and trophy,
Sorkil picked his way through the pathetic remnants of Corakk. With the jungle felled, its boles reduced to forlorn stumps, the shrubs and ferns that thrived under the protective tree canopy took a beating from the elements. Sorkil increasingly had to brush windblown fronds and straggly branches, uprooted by the tempest from their places of planting, out of his face and off his body. Those nuisances added scratches to his already cut and abused body.
Whipped by the wind and rain, he battled his way into R'bat City. The muddied streets were predictably deserted, the inhabitants flinching from the turmoil within their squalor. Mud pithouses offered little in the way of protection or comfort in normal times, but gave the dwellers much needed psychological security as they clung to their frail existence. It was not much of a guarantee. Sorkil cringed as he witnessed the ferocious wind tear the roof off a pithouse to send it spinning away, the amphibs crouching within hurled skywards behind the shredded palm thatching, their screams drowned by the storm's rampant voice.
The Diggers were faring much worse. Trapped in their burrows by the muddy runoff from the soaked hills, great numbers of them drowned and suffocated.
Squelching through the sodden earth in short hops, tired and injured as he was Sorkil decided against resting up before pressing on. If he halted now, even for a precious few minutes, he would not find the strength to resume his ascent. It seemed a shame. The hurricane was cleansing R'bat of its filth, washing away the stink and muck griming the dreadfully overpopulated settlement. Eskaa's clean sweep of Lunder was remaking not only the islanders, but also their city to boot.
Leaving the huddle of mud huts behind, Sorkil discovered the dirt path up the volcano's slope washed away. It proved no obstacle. With the underlying rock fully exposed he found the footing better, his ascent easier going, gripping the ancient lava with his webbed toes and pushing off on the strength of his zeal.
That resolve carried him up to the gates of the palace compound. Not that they were standing. The gusting wind demolished the bamboo palisades hours earlier, scattering like rag dolls the Shurpeha doggedly guarding the flimsy walls. Leapfrogging their sodden corpses, Sorkil reached the square house unchallenged and collapsed on the threshold. Weakly raising an arm, he rapped feebly on the door.
"Whatever it is you're selling, not today thank you,” a muffled voice responded.
"Master Ulobb, is that you? I must see Lord Eskaa. I have something to show him."
Sorkil's plea met with derision. “Go away. None may see the Living God without an appointment. Not unless it's an emergency. And no, a killer storm doesn't count."
"What about a visitor who dropped in from out of the blue?"
"I told you already. Our lord is not receiving visitors."
"Inform him Der-kay is here. Part of him, anyway."
The welcome sound of the door unbarring preceded Eskaa's open-minded appearance on the doorstep, Ulobb a pace away. “Produce the Fish-with-Hands,” he commanded.
Sorkil proffered the severed tail, only to have Ulobb snatch it from his shaky hands and examine it desultorily, declaring it safe to handle.
Eskaa dismissed the Shurpeha's gift. “You offer up this faceless souvenir as the most wanted Fish-with-Hands in Nir Sea? Ulobb, throw this worm back to the storm. Gut him first though."
"My god, wait!” Sorkil grabbed Eskaa's ankle.
Eskaa instantly shook the offending hand off his leg. “Ulobb, don't bother gutting him. For this blatant transgression, cut off his arm and strangle him to death with it."
Desperate to be believed, Sorkil further supplied, “The Fish-with-Hands bears burn scars on its belly. I recognised them as belonging to Der-kay. Those are the marks of his torture!"
Ulobb slapped Sorkil's upturned face with the back of his hand. “You should have said so right from the start and not wasted time."
"I have trouble sorting information by relevance,” Sorkil confessed, rubbing his stinging snout.
Inspecting the tail in Ulobb's possession, Eskaa smiled grimly. “Where's the rest of him?"
"Down on the beach, opposite the hole in the lagoon wall."
"Alive or dead?"
"Breathing rainwater, for as long as you let him."
"Ulobb, make ready an escort. We're going for a hop along the beach."
"My Lord, the storm is not letting up."
Eskaa patted Ulobb's cheek debasingly. “Have faith. Don't I command the elements?” He returned indoors, puzzling Ulobb further. “I have to dress up for the occasion,” Eskaa called back.
Chapter Thirty One
"You cannot launch the missile."
Abe Norton was fit to burst a sprocket. His cunningly crafted plan was coming unhitched. “What is the hold up!” he yelled at the impassive mainframe. “Sea Dog delivered the package on cue. Em-Two is at the island, isn't he?"
"The general location of the transceiver signal indicates its carrier is correctly positioned on the island,” Dog flatly reported.
"As is the eye of that hurricane."
"The storm's epicentre crosses the island, precisely as my calculations estimated."
"Then what's the blasted problem, Dog! Everything is going according to plan."
"The strength of the signal is weak and unclear. Unless it grows stronger, the electronic beam from the satellite, which the missile's inertial guidance system will ride down on, cannot maintain an exact lock."
"Can't you boost the satellite's receiver?
"It is operating at maximum wattage now."
Pacing his quarters, the walls closing in on him like an inescapable prison, the baffled manbot shook his head frustratingly. “The emitter was tested before it went on the sub and en route. It was working perfectly. Surely it can't be malfunctioning now
?"
"It was constructed in haste, Norton."
"That is so, but you work exceedingly well under pressure. You don't make mistakes in the machine shop. And I doubt it's been damaged from Em-Two getting into the lagoon. You built it to be virtually indestructible. No, there's some other cause, one we haven't computed. What about the power source failing?"
"Improbable. The battery installed was new and fully charged."
Norton was fast running out of problems to consider, all of which were unsolvable from his end anyway. “Could atmospheric conditions be causing interference?"
"Impossible. The island's in the eye of the storm,” Dog repeated, unsubtly reminding Norton that the clear air was the backbone of the manbot's plan.
"We have no choice left but to launch."
"I cannot recommend launching. I calculate a high probability that the missile completely misses its intended target, and that the effects of the resultant thermonuclear detonation will be absorbed and nullified by the hurricane."
"It's now or never, Dog."
"Negative. The eye will remain over the target for approximately one hour. Factoring in missile flight time, that leaves forty-four minutes and twelve seconds before launch must be instigated. It is my recommendation you postpone the launch sequence until then. In the delay, the signal may become clearer."
"I can't afford to wait three quarters of an hour for a maybe!"
"Technically, forty-four minutes and one second,” Dog updated.
"Felix will be a drooling imbecile by then."
"Computer programs do not drool."
"Machinery does leak oil,” Norton parried, not wanting the cybernate to get the intellectual upper hand.
"The missile could be converted to radio guidance,” suggested Dog. “Limitations imposed by range can be mitigated by flying the x-winged helicopter out over the Atlantic to provide midcourse corrections."
Norton had already contemplated and dismissed utilising the one remaining aircraft in his possession. The chopper lacked the necessary endurance for such a mission, and there were other considerations precluding Dog's remedy. “Time constraints notwithstanding, the ionisation of the rocket exhaust garbles radio communication. Once in the air, that bird is under its own computing steam until it flies in range of satellite guidance. We can't wait."
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