Realms of the Deep a-7

by Lynn Abbey

  A dozen strokes later, he came to the end of the harpoon line and felt the ballista dragging through the water behind him. He pulled his knife from its ankle sheath and turned to cut the line. A cluster of small hand-hurled harpoons came slicing down behind him, and he saw the oblong hulls of four skiffs plowing through the water alongside the heavy ballista. Without cutting the line, Tanetoa turned and swam for his reef. The humans were not yet close enough to hit him with their little harpoons, but if he paused to cut the thick rope, they would be.

  No more spells came from the skiffs, but Tanetoa quickly began to tire and ran out of air. He came up for a breath and was rewarded with the prick of a hand-hurled harpoon lodging itself in his shoulder. He gulped down a lungful of air and dived again, but the new line stopped him less than thirty feet beneath the surface. The reef came into sight. Hoping to buy some time in the narrow confines of the channel, he turned toward the mouth of the passage-then recalled the lo-cathah and realized what would follow if he led the humans into their midst. Praying that Kani would see what was happening and start hurling boulders, he turned parallel to the reef and swam away from the channel.

  Another harpoon caught Tanetoa in the back, adding another skiff to his burden, and his pace slowed to a mere crawl. Having heard the whales sing of the "hauling death," he knew what lay in store for him if he did not cut the lines. He reversed directions, diving downward as the skiffs closed on him. Another flurry of harpoons came slicing through the water, and he felt two more of the barbed shafts lodge themselves in his back. There was the flash of another magic blast, but

  Tanetoa's ears were still ringing from the earlier explosions and he barely noticed the concussion.

  At last, the lines ran straight up from Tanetoa's back to the bows of the boats above. He sheathed his dagger, then gathered the ropes in his hands and swam upward, twisting the lines together as he rose. The skiffs turned toward each other and drifted together nose to nose, forming a tight little star above Tanetoa's head. A lightning bolt and a handful of harpoons slashed down through the water, but with the boats shielding him from above, none of the attacks came close. The sailors took up their oars and tried to move away from each other, but there was not enough room between the vessels to row. The humans began to hack at their harpoon lines in a panic.

  It was too late. Tanetoa came up under the boats and began to sink them, capsizing some and using his bare fist to punch holes in others. The humans panicked and leaped overboard, tossing aside their heavy swords and unbuckling their steel breastplates as they sank toward the bottom. Tanetoa let them go, content to pull his knife and cut himself free.

  The locathah had different ideas. They flashed past Tanetoa in a river of silver scales, overtaking the humans from below and opening them from gut to gullet. The water grew red and cloudy with gore, and the sound of garbled death screams came faintly to Tanetoa's ears. He cut himself free of the heavy bal-lista, then tried to pull the huge harpoon from his leg and managed only to lodge the barb deeper.

  A locathah floated into view in front of him. "Does the Reefmaster wish help?"

  When Tanetoa nodded, the locathah took its dagger and cut the flesh over the barb, then pulled the har poon free and let it sink into the depths.

  Thank you," Tanetoa signed.

  "This is no time for thanks."

  The locathah gestured toward the human fleet, where twenty more skiffs were underway. In the bow of each boat stood a sorcerer, spells already crackling on his fingertips. Behind each sorcerer stood a dozen sailors armed with all manner of tridents, crossbows, and harpoons.

  "We must return to the lagoon," said the locathah.

  Tanetoa was about to despair when a boulder came sailing over his head and crashed through the hull of the lead ship. He looked back to see Kani kneeling on the reef flat, pulling another huge stone from a tidal pool, and Tanetoa realized that his wife had hit upon the only way to save the reef. If the humans and the locathah were determined to have their war, they could have it in the open sea.

  Tanetoa turned back to the locathah. "You cannot return to the lagoon. That is what the humans want."

  "Why?"

  "Because you will be trapped." The pain of his wounds made it difficult for Tanetoa to think fast, but he hoped the explanation sounded reasonable. "We will kill more in the open water."

  Without waiting for the locathah's answer, Tanetoa struck out toward the skiffs. Another boulder sailed over his head. This one splashed down harmlessly between two boats, but the resulting water spout knocked a wizard overboard. The skiff stopped to fish its sorcerer out of the sea.

  Tanetoa came to the main school of locathah. Though the water was red with the blood of dying humans, many of the fishmen were turning to swim back toward the channel. He raised his hands, signaling them to stop.

  "The giants will sink the human boats." He pointed at himself, then at Kani on the reef flat. The locathah will hunt the humans."

  Another boulder sailed overhead, lopping the stern out of a skiff. A pair of men fell into the water and screamed for help.

  The locathah considered the scene for a moment, then one signed, "May you eat and not be eaten."

  "And may your belly be filled a dozen times," Tane-toa responded.

  He turned and dived deep, ignoring his pain and swimming toward the skiffs. The locathah raced along beside him in ever growing numbers, and it was not long before they saw the boats slicing through the water above them. The bottom of one vessel disintegrated into fragments as a boulder came crashing through the hull. Half a dozen humans suddenly appeared in the water, struggling to unbuckle their armor and sinking to the bottom.

  As the locathah shot up to slaughter the humans, they were greeted by a cacophony of eruptions and concussions. A dozen fishmen dropped their weapons to grab for their ears. A like number simply went limp and floated toward the surface. The survivors swarmed the sailors still in the water, clouding the sea with swirling blood. Harpoons and crossbow bolts slashed down from above, piercing locathah chests and puncturing locathah skulls. Within moments, the water became an impenetrable red fog.

  Tanetoa came up beneath a skiff and punched a dozen holes in the bottom, then reached out and capsized another. The water broke into a frothing mass of red foam as the locathah swam to the attack. A human grabbed one of the small harpoons still lodged in Tane-toa's back and began to hack at his collarbone with a sword. The giant dived beneath the surface, where a locathah rescued him by slitting the human's throat. A silver bolt of lightning crackled through the water and blasted a head-sized hole through the chest of Tane-toa's rescuer.

  Tanetoa whirled toward the surface and ripped the prow off the attacking wizard's skiff. The boat went down in the space of two breaths, pouring humans into the sea like eggs from a spawning grouper. Kani kept up a constant rain of boulders, smashing gunwales and shattering hulls at an ever-increasing pace. Tanetoa grew dimly aware that the battle was drifting closer to the outer reef, but the human flotilla was sinking fast, and the pace of their attack was declining at a steady rate. He dared to believe he and the locathah might drive the emir's landing party back to the ships.

  Then the sharks came.

  There were only a few at first, slashing through the red water, snapping and chomping and devouring anything they touched. The battle continued until only three skiffs remained, their crews rowing madly for the relative safety of the outer reef. Tanetoa caught one boat from behind, ripping the transom off the stern. A large tiger shark wriggled into the sinking boat and chased the inhabitants into the arms of waiting locathah. Kani sank a second boat, smashing a skiff in two with a porpoise-sized boulder.

  The sharks quickly outnumbered the combatants, rising up to bite off the leg or arm of a sinking human, or coming in from behind to snap a surprised locathah in two. A giant mako attacked Tanetoa, ripping a great circle out of the giant's hip before he could drive his dagger through the thing's snout. The locathah, what few there remained, dived for the d
eep and fled. The humans simply died before they could unbuckle their breastplates-sometimes even before they could drop their weapons. The sole surviving skiff sped toward the reef as fast as twelve men could row with only two oars.

  The boat was still twenty yards from shore when Kani lobbed a boulder into the starboard side. The vessel began to take on water and slowed to a snail's pace. The warriors clambered out of their breastplates and leaped toward shore, desperate to reach safety before the sharks took them. Even the fastest managed only three strokes before a big hammerhead caught him by the foot, and dragged him to a watery death.

  The skiff's wizard was not so foolish. He remained in the bow, glaring at Kani, yelling in some arcane language and weaving a spell with his fingers.

  "No!" Tanetoa swam for the sinking skiff, but was delayed when a frenzied blacktip bit his foot. "Kani, duck!"

  Kani's eyes widened, and she turned to hurl herself from the reef flat as a dozen bolts of magic streaked from the sorcerer's fingertips. The blast caught her in the back of the head and launched her into the lagoon.

  Tanetoa kicked free of the blacktip and lunged into the sinking boat. He caught the wizard from behind, dragged him out of the bow, and growled, "Why?"

  "It is war." The wizard's eyes were burning with hatred, and his fingers were rushing through the gestures of a cantrip. "People die in wars-even giants."

  "And so do sorcerers."

  Tanetoa tossed the wizard to the sharks, then swam the last few yards to the reef. As he climbed onto th flat, the smell of blood and saltwater saturated his nos trils, and the air was filled with the clatter of wave hurling shattered boat hulls against the reef flat.

  "Rani!"

  Tan… Tane…"

  Her voice was full of pain, and too feeble to finish hi name. Tanetoa rushed across the flat and saw his wif floating in the lagoon, surrounded by a roiling cloud o scarlet blood. Her eyes were open and glassy and star ing into the sky with a vacant expression.

  "Kani, I'm here!"

  Tanetoa dived into the water and took her in hi, arms. Her breathing was shallow and her flesh cold and he could feel a soft spot where the wizard's spel had shattered the back of her skull.

  She grasped his wrist. "Your promise, Tanetoa. Yoi didn't keep it."

  "I… I tried." He started toward shore. "But whei you started throwing boulders, I saw you had fount the way to save the reef."

  "Not the reef, Tanetoa." Kani's hand fell away. "You.

  Her eyes closed, then her body went limp and hei breathing grew too shallow to feel.

  "Kani?"

  She didn't answer. Tanetoa carried her up to thei] hut and laid her on their bed of palm fronds. He sa beside her all day and into the night, never looking om the window to see what had become of the emir's fleet or thinking even once of the reef she had saved. H‹ tended her wounds and held her hand and begged al the deities of the giants to save her, but there was t mighty war raging across the seas of Toril and the gods could not hear his prayers. In the heart of the night, t terrible stillness came to her, and Tanetoa sat weeping in the darkness.

  At dawn, he carried her body outside. The fleet was gone and the Shining Sea lay as still as a mirror, but the war remained a close and black thing, like a hurricane roaring on the horizon. Tanetoa waded out into the lagoon and lay Kani in the warm water.

  The locathah were streaming out through the channel, their silver-green backs flashing just beneath the surface. One circled away from the school and pushed its head out of the water so it could speak in the air-talk of humans.

  "Greetings, Reefmaster." The locathah's voice seemed somehow both wispy and gurgling. "Your wife will be eaten?"

  "Kani is dead," Tanetoa said, too sad and weary to take offense at what was to any sea creature the simple consequence of dying. "But she will not be eaten. I will build a tomb for her in the manner of a queen of my people."

  The locathah's glassy eyes seemed puzzled for a moment, then it said, "Eadro praises her bravery. The humans have fled, and it was much her doing."

  Tanetoa nodded, only half hearing the praise, then eyed the empty sea. "But why did they come at all? What did they want?"

  "What do humans ever want?" The locathah opened its gills in the equivalent of a shrug. "No one knows."

  THE PATROL

  Larry Hobbs

  10 Flamerule, the Year of the Gauntlet

  The summer sun blazed over Cimbar in a cloudless sky. The still air shimmered as waves of heat beat down on Riordan's face. The smell of rotting fish was heavy in the dockyard. Sweat burned in his eyes, but he couldn't take time to wipe it away. He stumbled backward as the Soorenar's blade flickered in front of him, nicking his arm and shoulder in rapid succession.

  Shouts, screams, and the clash of weapons echoed in the distance as the Dragon Watch fought the rest of the Soorenar raiding party. A watch patrol had stumbled on the raiders climbing down the hawsers of a shabby merchant ship anchored near the end of the wharf. The watchmen were outnumbered and killed, but not before one had sounded the alarm. The Dragon Watch barracks were close by and the entire company had turned out at the alarm. Now it was the Soorenar who were outnumbered and fighting for their lives, abandoned by the ship that was clawing its way out to sea before Cimbar's navy could catch it.

  Blood oozed down Riordan's arm, mixing with the sweat and making the sword slippery in his grip. He'd chased this man into a cul-de-sac of crates and boxes and they each knew there would be no escape except over the body of the other. Two other watchmen had followed him but they stood back and made no offer to help. Riordan realized they were waiting to see him killed before they'd step in and finish off the raider. For the first time, he realized just how much of an outcast he really was.

  Muscles rippled across the Soorenar's tattooed chest as the man twirled the heavy sword in front of Riordan's eyes. Plumed serpents writhed across his arms and shoulders. The tattoos told Riordan the man was a slave trained in the fighting rings. The tiny silver skulls suspended from the hoop in the Soorenar's ear warned Riordan he was facing a veteran of many combats. He would be very lucky to live through this fight.

  Surprisingly, the Soorenar stopped and stepped back, putting his hand on his hip and lowering the point of his sword. He looked at the guardsmen a moment, then smiled and saluted Riordan with the blade.

  "It seems strange a man's comrades won't help him, but a man should die with honor for all of that. Defend yourself or I'll kill you where you stand."

  One of the watchmen laughed and spat. "Go on, milor', show him what those fancy fencing masters taught you."

  "Milor' "-he hated the name, but ever since the other recruits found out he was the son of a noble, it had stuck. Thank the Gods they didn't know which noble.

  Riordan was angry and frightened. After what had happened on his last patrol, his own comrades wouldn't help him. There was no hope for it. Taking a deep breath, Riordan moved into the guard position. He began his attack in a traditional style, hoping the ritual opening would lull the big man into complacency. The Soorenar parried in second and they sparred back and forth in the gritty street, neither able to gain an advantage. Sparkling motes of sand sprang up about their feet as they shuffled across the paving stones.

  Riordan was not used to the heat. After several flurries his chest hammered and he was gasping for air. The Soorenar looked completely fresh. Riordan barely heard the jeers of the two spectators. His world had narrowed to the rasping sound of his feet on the street and the clash of steel. The Soorenar lunged and Riordan disengaged with a stop thrust that punctured the man's side, forcing the big man back.

  The man put his hand to the wound and stared in disbelief at the blood that ran between his fingers, then he looked up and grinned, stepping forward to attack.

  Riordan slowed and invited the attack in the first, exposing the outside low line and letting the other take the initiative. After a few feeble defensive moves, he decided it was time. Taking a tight grip on the hilt, he lunged
, swinging down and under the Soorenar's blade, knocking the weapon to the side with a beat and reversing. The man laughed and continued the movement until his sword was back in position. Riordan pulled back at the last minute to avoid a riposte that would gut him like a fish.

  "A pretty move, boy."

  The big man's blade flickered and danced in front of him. Like a snake, it slithered under his guard and raked his chest, cutting a bloody furrow across his ribs and taking his breath away with a sudden, burning pain. The man kicked him in the stomach and Riordan gagged, falling to his knees in the street.

  Riordan spat the sand from his mouth. He rolled away from a slashing cut that sent sparks up from the stone, and scrambled to his feet. One of the guardsmen laughed and Riordan glanced in his direction. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Soorenar's movement and cursed his inattention. He blocked, catching the man's blade and, without thinking, beat the other's sword out and swung under for a stroke that cut the big man across the thigh.

  The Soorenar roared and charged in a series of lightning moves that Riordan could barely block. The invader's weapon caught Riordan's blade and spun the tips in the air hi narrow circles. Before Riordan could disengage, the raider closed and slammed his shoulder into Riordan's chest, knocking him backward. He straightened reflexively and the man smashed the bell of his guard into Riordan's face. Riordan dropped his weapon and collapsed to the ground struggling to remain conscious. The Soorenar's foot caught him on the side of the head and sent him sprawling.

  From the corner of his eye Riordan saw the man's sword come up.

  The blow never came. There was a clash of steel above him and a groan as the body of the Soorenar sprawled beside him.

  His eye was swelling shut and it was hard to see, but Riordan recognized the voice of Morka Kodolan, Swordmaster of the Watch, yelling at the two watchmen. "You may hate him, but by Tchazzar he's a member of the Dragon Watch and we stand together. I should teach you all a lesson for this."