by A. L. Knorr
“What about the surface?” Sisinyxa asked, processing the terrible possibilities of so many Atlanteans in the caves, like an invading colony of ants.
“The Atlanteans are not pressing their advantage,” answered another, this one with a topknot and features as sharp as her eyeteeth. “The tritons who did not accompany Ajak to the south are pushing them back in places, but it seems the greatest portion of their effort is to press into the caves.”
“Why the caves?” someone asked, but Sisinyxa was too busy staring at the maps and thinking to notice who. “They must know that once the tritons come down here, they’ll be trapped face to face with them, with no way out.”
Sisinyxa did not say what she thought in response: Not before they’ve slaughtered the bulk of us, and if the rest of the tritons made it back to Mount Califas in time.
“That must be why they attacked the south and the surface,” the sharp-featured one observed, black eyes flashing. “They wanted to draw the tritons away…”
“But with the thousands they brought, fighting in narrow passages and caves means their numbers are wasted,” the dark-crested one pointed out.
Multiple voices began to talk and argue, but then Sisinyxa remembered the sight of Nestor’s flag on the lead ship. It was a bold, even reckless, move to lead an invasion. Even the most impetuous leaders would not risk it, but Nestor had. She suddenly understood, as she remembered his face and whispered promise that day on the beach.
“This is vengeance as much as conquest.” Sisinyxa raised her voice to quiet the babble. “Nestor leads this attack and he knows, thanks to Renlaus, that the caves and their waters run through Califas like blood through a body. Even if one in ten of his warriors finds their way deeper, we will have hundreds of Atlanteans attacking us across so many fronts that there is no way we will be able to stop them all.”
That sobering reality quieted every mouth and drew every eye to her. She felt the enormity of their combined gaze, but squared her shoulders.
“Our only hope is stop them here in this chamber. They’ll go with the natural flows of the water, wanting to conserve energy, and they’ll be guessing that’s what we did as well. This cavern,” her finger fell to the underground maps and traced a line across a series of nexus chambers that hung like knots among a web passages and subterranean streams, “is the hub they’ll be led to. There is no better opportunity to halt their progress than here. If we hold this, we might buy enough time for the tritons to return. We need to act quickly. Hold your ground. This our only chance, understood?”
One look at the dark, fierce eyes around her gave her all the answer she needed. Breaking at Sisinyxa’s order, the sirens and Foniádes spread to the entrances leading from the cavern, hiding themselves in the dark crevasses.
A sleek, slip of a siren sprang from an entry pool.
“They’re coming!” she said with a forceful whisper.
Tension crackled through the air at the news.
Quickly, Sisinyxa rose from behind the makeshift barricade the Mer had previously constructed, and waved her blade in two quick strokes. Dozens of feet above the entry pool, among balconies and walkways, another sword flashed in acknowledgment. They were ready and waiting.
“Hold,” she hissed as those around her pressed toward the barricade.
Nestor and his forces had caught them unawares and they’d paid dearly for it. If everyone could hold their nerves, they might turn the tables. The blood of her murdered people called out to her, but she wanted victory, not vengeance. Preserving the people left would be victory enough.
The first Atlanteans emerged quickly and quietly from the broadest entry pool, eyes darting around the darkened chamber. Atlanteans saw better in the strange glimmering dark than mere humans, but they were no Mer.
The scouts ranged around the chamber, closer and closer to the barricades where the Mer lay hidden. Silently, Sisinyxa willed every warrior to remain patient. Finally, the scout signaled and several Atlanteans leapt back into the water to give the all-clear to the waiting forces.
It was just as well, because no sooner had the messengers departed than an Atlantean mounted the barricade and saw the mass of waiting Mer. Before he could scream, he was pulled down and dealt with. The remaining scouts soon noticed one of their number missing. Several of them clambered over the barricade as the full Atlantean force began to pour into the chamber. Most died without ever realizing what had happened, while a few turned to run and were dragged back to die screaming in the dark behind the barricade.
In the rush of water and clamor of weapons that came with the Atlantean forces entering the chamber, the screams were mostly lost. Soon enough, the Atlanteans were marching forward, forming a battle line on the rough floor of the cavern as they squinted into the darkness. Many of them had emerged from the pool when Sisinyxa leapt onto the barricade and leveled her spear condemningly at them.
“Now!” she barked.
A storm of rock, broken masonry, and jagged shale fell down on the heads of the Atlanteans. Men ducked and dove in frantic attempts to avoid being crushed and maimed by the avalanche of debris, clogging up the pool with their splashing, screaming efforts. The Atlantean battle line, fearing an attack upon their rear, spun round to launch spear and arrow, along with hateful curses, at those hidden among the gantries over the entry pool. Most of the sirens found refuge in the rails and crenellations, but here and there a Mer would fall alongside the rain of stones.
Without another word, Sisinyxa leapt over the barricade, her warriors hot on her heels, and pounced on the exposed backs of the Atlanteans. They fell on them like a stabbing, slashing whirlwind, their voices a screaming vengeful gale. The Atlanteans gave ground, pressed step by bloody step back toward the pool where so many of their comrades were still trying to avoid being crushed. Packed as close as they were, their spear formations were struggling to do anything but die as the Mer moved among them.
Every blow Sisinyxa struck felt like an avenging stroke, righting another wrong, appeasing the blood of the innocents still floating on the shores beyond these caves. In that instant, victory and vengeance were one, and she reveled in the strength it gave her.
The Mer would be victorious and Nestor would pay for what he’d done.
But the mass of warriors pressing into the entry pool was more than the Mer bargained for, and more Atlanteans, living and dead, were driven into the cavern by those pressing from behind. Soon there was not enough rubble to suppress them all. The floundering line of Atlantean warriors began to thicken, and then stopped giving ground. Those fresh to the fight reached over the sagging shoulders of the ones in front to jab and rake with their spears.
Sisinyxa was forced backward to avoid two separate thrusts. The Mer were being driven back as more Atlanteans pressed into the cavern. Then they took up their chant once more. Step by step, they moved as a single stabbing, advancing creature, and the Mer had to give way or fall.
“To the barricade!” Sisinyxa shouted, and the command was taken up by the Mer who’d heard her.
Warily as they could, the Mer drew back to the barricade and the deeper darkness that lay on that side of the chamber, where the thin refracting light did not reach. What light there was suddenly dimmed further as––most likely––clouds outside moved across the sun.
The Atlanteans pursued, but soon found the way made treacherous by darkness and the deep hidden pools. Their group began to fracture. Here and there, Foniádes exploded from the black opaque water of a pool to snatch an Atlantean and drag him underwater where she was stronger than he.
“Where are the tritons?” Sisinyxa hissed at the Foniádes at her shoulder. “Ajak should be here by now.”
The whites of her eyes were visible. “They’re coming, Sovereign.”
Sisinyxa snarled with enough ferocity that the Foniádes stepped back. Rage, hot and intoxicating, rushed through her veins, and without warning she vaulted on top of the barricade.
“Where is Nestor?” she screamed at
the encroaching phalanx of Atlanteans. “Where is he?”
For a moment, the Atlanteans kept chanting their battle march, but she screamed louder still, her siren voice blasting like brass instruments. Finally, they began to quiet. A moment later, a band of figures pushed to the front of the battle line.
“Here,” came the familiar voice.
She looked down to see Nestor standing among his retainers. All of them were armed with fine weapons and armor. Even though he stood below her, in full battle dress, Nestor seemed larger and more imposing than he’d ever appeared in his robes at the parties from those long-ago days before Atlantis had fallen.
“So, this is your answer?” she demanded, sweeping her spear and sword at the assembled Atlanteans. “A generation of murdered Mer and Atlanteans to salve your grief? To build a new home on the bones of my people?”
Nestor did not flinch from her stare, his face hard as the stone at his feet. “You gave me no other choice.”
Sisinyxa’s rage smoldered deep, heating her to her very core. “There is always another choice.”
Nestor looked down at the bodies strewn across the chamber, Mer and Atlantean. For just a moment, even across the dark chamber, she saw the man she had never liked but had once respected. Then he looked to the men on his left and the men on his right, and that grim obstinance settled over his face again.
“It is nearly finished.” He muttered it, but Sisinyxa and the Mer heard him as clearly as though he’d shouted it.
“Advance!” he bellowed, and the Atlanteans complied.
Sisinyxa leapt behind the barricade, chased by spear and arrows, and called out to her warriors.
“Hold the line! Do not give an inch! For Okeanos, for your children––hold the line!”
Their voices rose into a beautiful, mournful song. Sisinyxa believed that many, if not all, might die that day, but they could do nothing else but face what was coming. Everything she loved lay behind; only darkness and extinction lay before. All they could do was stand and hold the line.
The first Atlanteans coming over the barricade died quickly, met by eager blades. But they kept coming, each time probing for weaknesses, each attack costing the Mer another citizen they could not afford to lose.
There was the rattle of chains and the sound of metal points being driven through stone and wood.
Sisinyxa was just finishing off a pair of Atlanteans who’d leapt screaming down at her when there was a sound like many dull, grunting voices sounding together. An entire section of the barricade groaned and tilted forward. Nearby Atlantean and Mer leapt clear as huge blocks of stone gave a grinding crash and tumbled down to the chamber floor or plunged into the pools with great splashes.
There were bare seconds of both sides gaping at the sudden opening before Atlantean and Mer warriors surged to fill the gap, stabbing and slashing as they came.
Sisinyxa leapt from enemy to enemy, dispatching each as quickly and efficiently as she could. She dodged or parried one attack only to run into another enemy, and killed that one only to find two more advancing. Her body burned with exertion. With each blow she struck or deflected, she was sure her weapons would be knocked from her numb hands. A hundred times she thought she’d given her last bit of strength, only to dredge up one more burst of energy.
Something collided with her back and she was thrown bodily into a pool. For a moment in that dark, cool place, where the screams and cries of the battle above were only muffled warbles, she felt a desire to let herself slowly sink down and sleep. Then a siren’s scream stirred her from her stupor. At the far edge of the pool, two Atlanteans hemmed in a siren who was already bleeding from a wound on her shoulder.
Sisinyxa had lost her weapons in the fall, but her tail flexed powerfully and she fell on the two Atlanteans in a flurry of raking claws. The first fell without turning around, but the other managed to get the haft of his spear up between them and they wrestled with weapon as they fell back into the pool. She heard the strain and grunt of his voice through the water and then with a great heave he made to throw her off. Her whole body came up out of the water with the force of the shove, but she kept her grip on the spear. Using the momentum of her descent, she drove her body up over the haft at him where her talons found a home.
The injured siren had sunk deeper into the pool, and Sisinyxa could see her binding her wound with strips of leather from the dead Atlantean’s clothing. Knowing she wasn’t mortally injured, Sisinyxa took a moment to breathe. Exhausted as she was, she needed to get back into the fight.
She began to raise her head from the pool, hoping to steal a quick glimpse and avoid any stray blows, when a hard grip latched onto her hair. She cried out and reached back to gouge with her claws, but found no purchase. She was dragged, screaming, out of the water and thrown hard on the stone floor, clipping her head on the stones.
The world spun and wobbled, but she twisted and lashed out blindly. Rising to her knees, she bit and clawed at empty air as her vision began to clear. She was lying on the chamber floor surrounded by Nestor’s retainers. She spun in a circle and saw Nestor standing over her, a bronze sword in his hands. She raised her claws to strike, but one of his retainers struck her a rattling blow across her back. Sisinyxa fell onto her hands and knees, and another blow cracked her ribs. Suddenly it became very hard to breathe.
Her vision swimming, she gasped and looked up at Nestor, his blade raised to plunge into her heart.
“I wish you had made the right choice,” he said in a flat, cold voice. “This could have been avoided. This is your fault, Sovereign.”
His lips pursed and twitched as he smiled grimly and Sisinyxa could read his expression clear as day––he’d had every intention of taking Okeanos from the Mer all along. He’d just been hoping to be let in where he could then slay them all in their sleep.
Sisinyxa glared up at him, defiant to the very end.
The entry pool exploded behind Nestor, sending Atlanteans spinning through the air to fall lifeless on the cavern floor. A single clear note hung in the air even as the last spray of water slapped to the stone.
“It is finished,” she whispered, her voice craggy and raw.
Ajak and the tritons had finally arrived.
Tall, powerful figures leapt from the pool and surveyed the grim scene filling the broad cavern, bodies piled up at every entrance. For an instant, they shared a knowing look and then with bodies glistening with supple strength, they set to work. They loped forward with easy grace yet such speed that the Atlanteans could scarcely act before they were struck down. Some tritons had spears or blades that might have been taken from previous Atlantean victims, while others wielded tridents like their foes were mere fish. A few did not even bother with iron weapons, striking out with hands and feet which hit their targets like bone-crushing hammers.
Sisinyxa looked up into Nestor’s face and saw his disbelief, and she might have laughed if it hadn’t been such a struggle to breathe.
The armored retainers leapt to defend their master, but a pair of tritons, one with a trident and another wielding paired swords, made short work of them. Not even their armor was proof against a triton’s frightening strength, and each fell as easily as the next.
Nestor rushed toward the trident-wielding triton as he made to tug his three-pronged spear from a corpse. Sisinyxa made to call out a warning, but the effort made her gasp and clutch at her side.
She needn’t have bothered.
Ajak looked up and, quick as lighting, caught Nestor by the throat and wrist. With one hand, he lifted the fully-armored man as though he weighed nothing. With the other hand, he yanked the bronze sword from Nestor’s grasp as though he was taking a toy from a naughty child.
Nestor squirmed and kicked in Ajak’s grip, beating his free hand upon the arm that held him in the air. Ajak’s dark eyes showed nothing but mild contempt as he reversed his grip on the sword and then drove it through Nestor’s heart.
Sisinyxa was making to stand when Ajak strode ov
er to her, his trident retrieved. Had he not been there, she would have collapsed back onto the floor, but he steadied her and for a moment she just leaned upon him, sucking in air.
“You are injured, my love.” His fierce, handsome features were knotted with concern.
Her fingers tightened about his sinewy shoulder as she forced the words out. She pointed to the Mer still fighting with Atlanteans. “Help them.”
He gave her one more concerned look, then nodded and began to call to his comrades who’d scattered to dispatch various stragglers.
He carried Sisinyxa to the edge of a pool free of bodies and lowered her into the cool water before then returning to join the others.
Together, the force of tritons turned toward the line of Atlanteans and unleashed the power of their voices.
It was not a scream because it was too low and powerful to be that, and too musical as well, but it tore through the air like one all the same. The gloomy air of the chamber rippled around the force of it, and when it struck the Atlanteans, they were either thrown upon the ground to clutch at their bleeding ears or they simply crumpled.
Sirens and Foniádes used that mysterious piece of extra flesh in front of their ears, as well as their hands, to protect their own eardrums from the sonic booms the tritons unleashed. From one end of the battle line to the other, the song of the tritons swept the chamber, leaving deaf and witless Atlanteans in its wake.
In the space of a few labored breaths, the battle to save Okeanos was over.
Thirteen
The images blurred yet again, and the breath whooshed out of me in a painful rush as I was released from Sisinyxa’s memories. Now freed from my attachment to the mosaic, I fell and landed on my back on the stone floor. Breathing hard, my heart hammering in my chest and tears blurring my vision, I blinked up at the image of Sisinyxa.
The image gazed down at me, that same peaceful smile on her face, yet somehow it had become more knowing, more familiar. The image had chosen what to show me and I’d had to withstand the horror of it until she was finished.