by John Ringo
“No,” Edmund said. “More water then.” He popped his own morsel of grouper into his mouth and swallowed it nearly whole. “I’m for bed.”
“I’ll take first watch,” Herzer said.
“No, I will,” Bast said. “But you’re going to lie down here beside me.”
Herzer soon found himself in a pile of bodies as the mer and landsmen huddled together for warmth against the cold wind. Herzer, Edmund, Bast, Elayna, Antja, Jason and Pete were all there. He realized that it wasn’t just warm, it was comfortably warm, and that was the last thing he remembered. Except a memory of gnawing hunger through the night.
He awoke to a bellow and was on his feet, sword drawn, before he realized that it was dawn, with the sun peeping over the horizon to the southeast.
He looked around for danger but then saw Joanna, stretching and yawning hugely in the dawn light.
“Sorry about that,” Joanna said, yawning again, which came as a bellow from the belly of the immense beast. “Can’t help it.”
“Well, the good news is we’re all awake,” Edmund said. He, too, was on his feet but his sword was still sheathed.
“And how are you this morning, Commander Gramlich?” Herzer asked.
“Fine,” the dragon replied, yawning again. “Except I had to keep waking up all night to let the water in and out.”
It was apparent that the sand of the entrance had been gouged by water and dragon claws. It was also deeper than it had been on their entrance, with the water going out again. They had slept through the flood and high tide and now were in the ebb again.
“Dragons have to forage first,” Edmund said, looking around at the mer, who were wiping at their eyes. “Landsmen and dragons get some water first. If the delphinos want to run some scouts out, I wouldn’t mind. When the dragons get back, if they bring anything, we eat. Then we take off.”
“We’re going farther out this time,” Joanna said. “We pretty much hunted out this area last night.”
“Go,” Edmund said. “Take as much time as you need, but no more.”
“Will do, General,” the dragon said with a grin. She rounded up the wyverns and between the three dragons they finished off the water barrel. Then they headed for the crest of the island to get some room for takeoff.
“I was supposed to take a watch last night,” Herzer told Bast, who looked wide awake.
“I don’t need that much sleep,” Bast said. “And there were no threats. On that you may trust me, lover.”
“I do,” Herzer admitted. “And thanks.”
“You can thank me properly later,” she said with a grin. “There’s been so little time!”
“Where the hell are the orcas?” Edmund growled. He was looking out to sea, frowning. “The ixchitl can be down in the sand. But the orcas have to surface some time or another. I expected them to be waiting right outside the entrance when we woke up.”
But neither the orcas nor the ixchitl made their appearance even after the dragons returned with a fine haul of large fish.
“We saw some rays in the distance,” Joanna said and burped hugely. “But I don’t know if they were ixchitl; we didn’t get that close. There’s a really productive reef just down the coast; we could see all the fish on it as we flew over.”
“This is great, Commander,” Edmund said. The three dragons had returned with huge grouper and there was more than enough for everyone to, if not eat their fill, at least get a good portion.
“But we need to get on the move,” Edmund said. The sun was already well up. “Dragons out, with riders, then the armed mer, then the delphinos, then the unarmed mer. We’ll set up a perimeter until we can get the hemisphere reformed.”
Herzer chuckled as he buckled the sailcloth halter on Chauncey, and Bast smiled at him as she climbed on Joanna’s back.
“You see it, too,” Bast said.
“Yep,” Herzer replied, leading the dragon down to the water; it was nearly impossible to ride the dragons without their full harness until they were laid out in the water.
“What?” Edmund asked.
“You,” Joanna said as she walked out into the water until she was deep enough to partially submerge. “Did you think about how to get out of this bay last night? Or did it emerge, full blown, from your forehead like Athena from Zeus?”
“I thought about it before we left Raven’s Mill,” Edmund replied. “It’s a simple modification of the way that Roman Legions, or the Blood Lords for that matter, exited their camps.”
“Except we don’t have to take it down behind us,” Herzer said with a nod. “I just hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“You’ll learn, Herzer,” Edmund said, climbing on Donal when he lay down in the water. “You’ll learn.”
They weren’t hit as they debouched from the inlet, or even after they reformed the hemisphere and started off down the coast.
“Where are they?” Herzer asked.
“Waiting in ambush,” Edmund replied. “That’s their way.”
Herzer had taken the comment about thinking ahead to heart and used the time now. Something about the narrows that entered the channel through the banks had been bothering him for a while and how he had it.
“I think they’re going to hit us at the entrance to the banks, sir,” he said. They were traveling beneath the water, the dragons swimming for a while and then broaching like whales for a breath.
“That’s my guess as well,” Edmund replied.
“And there’s only a few ways for them to do it,” Herzer replied. “And… I think I have a way that we might be able to round up the whole set. But I’m afraid it might take too much coordination, that it’s too complicated.”
“If a plan is too complicated, the way to use it is to decomplicate it,” Edmund replied. “So what’s the plan?”
Herzer told him and he nodded.
“You’re right,” Edmund said after some thought. “That’s too complicated. And you haven’t allowed for it to go to hell in a handbasket. Let’s see if we can decomplicate it and come up with a go-to-hell option.”
They talked about it for a while, as, reinforcing their suspicions, the ixchitl failed to attack, until Edmund finally nodded.
“It doesn’t take into account the orcas,” Edmund said. “Or the kraken. But it will do. If one appears it still might work. If both appear we’re on the go-to-hell-plan.”
“Which is?” Herzer asked.
“The mer get on land, as far up as they can and the delphinos are on their own,” Edmund said, brutally. “If there’s an orc force, we just pull into the shallows and fight until we’re all dead. That’s why it’s called a ‘go-to-hell’ plan. You’re all going to hell, anyway, so you might as well take as large an honor guard as possible. Go brief the mer, I’ll handle the delphinos.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Rather than follow the coastline all the way around, since it would be two longer edges of a triangle, they cut the chord across deeper water. This was one of the potential attack points, in Herzer’s opinion, and he kept a careful eye on the blue depths. But as no attack materialized, he relaxed, only to realize that they were approaching the entrance to the banks.
A long, narrow passage cut through the banks from the deeps side to the Stream side which was their destination. Most of the passage was up to thirty meters deep and almost a klick across. But at the edge of the deeps it narrowed and shallowed to only a few meters and no more than fifty meters across. Yet, within less than a click from the entrance into the deeps the water had deepened to over two thousand meters.
The group had reached no more than a hundred meters from the entrance when the sandbar to the northeast erupted in ixchitl.
There were more of them than had survived the first ambush, at least forty, and they swept around the formation, disdaining their nematocysts to close with the spear-wielding mer-men.
Most of them disdained their nematocysts, that is, but others swept in, targeting the dragons in particular and Chauncey l
et out a bellow as a harpoon entered his back. He bellowed past the body of a dead ixchitl, however, and the poison did not seem to affect him as greatly as it did the humans. He turned on his side, wrapping his wings around his body and using the technique of the delphinos to wrap the cord of the harpoon about his body and bring the beast down to where his teeth could sink into it, turning the water around him bright scarlet with its blood.
But others were swarming on the wyverns and the lesser dragons had to break off to the south, pursued by at least twenty of the great rays. The rays were, in turn, pursued by Joanna.
The rest of the ixchitl gathered around the mer, trying to strike into the formation past the spears.
Herzer, Bast and Edmund had released the dragons at the first sign of attack and now formed a reinforcement team at the center of the hemisphere. But the group could not press past the ixchitl, without going under them and risking their nematocysts. By the same token, the ixchitl were finding it impossible to break the line of spears held by the mer-men. It seemed as if it was a stalemate until one of the delphinos squealed a distress cry, pounding his sonar to the southeast, into the deep. Rising out of the deep was a leviathan of tentacles and beak. The kraken had returned.
“Jason!” Edmund bellowed. “We’re going to have to break low and proceed to the second phase. NOW.”
The bottom of the mer burst open like a flower, sweeping up and under the ixchitl to the west, braving their toxic harpoons in the face of the greater threat. The delphinos burst through their formation, doing their best to catch the harpoons, with most of them hanging back by command.
The mer-women and older males dropped their burdens and broke under the mer-men, swimming as fast as they could for the entrance with the delphinos screening ahead of them, pounding the sand to check for a second ambush of the rays.
Herzer grabbed Herman as he went past, holding onto the big dolphin’s dorsal fin with his prosthetic since there was no way that a landsman could keep up in this fast-paced underwater battle. He heard a scream from his side and looked over to see a harpoon pulsing poison into Elayna’s arm.
His sword swept out without thought and slashed through the cord, then he grabbed one flailing arm and held on. The big dolphin had sensed his movement and slowed to allow him one moment to recover the girl but now accelerated hugely, heading as fast as he could for the shallows. Herzer felt as if both his arms were going to be torn from the sockets but he somehow retained his grip on sword, girl and delphino.
As the delphino came opposite the shallows on the near side of the entrance he turned to the side sharply and threw Herzer and his burden off into the shallows. Without a word he then sped to the west, following his pod.
The mer-men, in apparent panic, were now streaming through the entrance to escape the combination of the ixchitl and the kraken. In the same apparent panic they made the same wrong turn in the tricky shallows as the mer-women, and ended up in a small, landlocked bay on the southwest side of the entrance.
There was no escape. The sides were relatively steep and while they could climb out onto the land they could never struggle over the steep cliffs around them. And the ixchitl controlled the only entrance to the sea. Unless someone came to their succor, the kraken could easily enter the relatively shallow bay and pluck them from the sides.
All of the ixchitl had followed them into the bay, even the group that had been pursuing the dragons, and the kraken waited at the entrance to the narrows, apparently preferring the deeps to the shallows that might be dangerous to his depth-adjusted design.
Herzer dragged Elayna farther up the shore, far enough that the kraken could not pull her to her death, and looked across the narrow entrance to the bay. It was almost exactly as he’d remembered it from his reading of the maps and he waved at Edmund, on the far side of the entrance, as he pulled the heavy package off his back.
“We still lost too many,” he called.
“No plan survives contact with the enemy,” Edmund replied. “This one came damned close. At least, it will, if you’ll hurry up.”
Herzer unfurled the monomolecular net from his back and took a section of it, whirling it around his head until it had good speed, and hurled it across the entrance.
At the splash, some of the ixchitl turned towards the sole opening to the bay, but Edmund had already splashed out into thigh-deep water and was scrambling back to the far shore.
The heavily weighted net quickly sunk to the bottom as Herzer and Edmund pounded the ends into the ground with the stakes they carried.
The ixchitl began to swim back and forth in the bay, flashing their bellies at each other. One jumped into the air to cross the net but the water on the far side was shallow as well and Herzer waded thigh deep before he spitted it to the sand below with his sword. The adamantite cut through flesh and cartilage, ripping a huge gash in the ixchitl, which was reduced to thrashing in the shallow water.
Another got a run up and jumped the net into slightly deeper water just as a shadow passed over the pool and Chauncey landed on it with both talons. One bite tore through the head of the ray and it, too, was left quivering as Donal landed next to the feasting wyvern. The latest arrival turned to the bay of penned rays and spread his wings, hissing in hunger and clashing his jaws as if to catch one in the air.
The kraken, seeing the dragons in water that was just deep enough for it to maneuver, jetted forward but stopped as Joanna landed in the inlet in water that was over her back.
“Hi,” Joanna said. “Wanna play? I like calamari.”
The kraken seemed to consider this for a moment and then jetted backwards in a cloud of black ink.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Joanna shouted leaping to the land and then running forward to get up in the air. “I’m hungry, damn it!” she bellowed.
She pounded her wings, ascending like an elevator and then turned over, pointed at the kraken, which was still, apparently, visible. She folded her wings back and, still accelerating, arrowed into the water like a dart.
“Commander!” Edmund yelled, but the dragon had already submerged.
“Well,” Herzer said, bending to Elayna, “I guess we get to answer the eternal question.”
“What?” Elayna asked, wincing.
“In a fight between a sea serpent and a kraken,” Herzer said, seriously, “which one wins?”
* * *
Joanna had timed the dive perfectly and even as she started to slow in the water her mouth closed over the body of the squid.
It was the foulest taste she had ever experienced, a combination of ammonia with a hint of long-dead fish. But she bore down and felt something pop in its vitals.
It wasn’t a killing blow, though, and the great kraken writhed in her grip, wrapping a tentacle around her neck and others around her wings, body, its beak tearing at her, searching for something that wasn’t invulnerable wing.
Joanna’s eyes bugged at the pressure from the tentacle and she shifted her grip to its base, ripping it off after a long struggle with the rubbery tissue. She spat the still-writhing tentacle out and bit down again, looking for something vulnerable, ripping at it with her talons, as the jets of the beast churned and they shot into the depths. She could feel the water growing colder and the light change from light blue to dark and then the deepest twilight. The pressure on her lungs was building enormously as she struggled to rip with talon and teeth.
Commander Gramlich, she thought, her brain growing foggy with the pressure and cold, this was not the smartest thing you have ever done in your life.
* * *
“I can’t feel my arm,” Elayna said, lifting it up from where it lay bonelessly on the sand.
“Daneh says it’s only a paralysis agent,” Herzer said. The bonelike harpoon was deeply embedded in her arm, though. “I think we should wait to try to get that out.” He took his sword and cut the dangling cord off.
“Okay,” she replied. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Herzer said. “We’d
both be dead if it weren’t for Herman.”
“Where’d they go?” Elayna asked, sitting up.
“Down the passage,” Herzer said. “They’re faster than the ixchitl. It’s the orcas that they’re worried about, but the orcas weren’t going to go into the shallows; they would have been out in the deeps somewhere.”
“So now what?” Elayna asked.
“Now, we wait for the tide to go out,” Herzer said, looking out to sea. “And we count the breakage.”
The breakage had been heavy. Jackson the toolmaker was missing as well as a half a dozen of the mer-men who had given their lives to screen the retreating forces. Two of the mer-women were missing as well. Leaving Donal to hold the entrance, Herzer took Chauncey back into deep water to try to find them and Joanna, who hadn’t returned.
He found one mangled body of a mer-woman, her identity a mystery, and another was found by one of the greatly daring delphino scouts that darted out of the entrance. But no further sign of the mer-folk, or of Joanna, was seen.
“I can’t believe she’s dead,” Elayna said, when Herzer returned.
“She might be invulnerable to most harm,” Herzer pointed out. “But she can’t hold her breath forever.”
“She said she can hold it a long time,” Edmund pointed out.
“It’s been nearly an hour,” Herzer replied.
“We’ve got time,” the general replied, looking up at the sun. “It’s several more hours to low tide.”
The ixchitl had apparently divined the plan and had been making more rushes at the entrance. But some of the armed mer-men had worked their way over the rocks to the entrance and the delphinos clustered there as well. One ixchitl that worked its way under the net was torn apart by the enraged delphinos even before the dragons could swarm on it. After that Herzer cut stakes and the net was staked all the way across the entrance.
Still they looked out to sea, hoping to see any sign of a sea serpent’s head. The sun was descending in the west and they had virtually given up hope when Chauncey gave a startled cry and flapped his wings.