Ambassador (Conqueror of Isles Book 1)

by Stephen L. Hadley

  “Don’t poke fun, Eli,” Avans admonished softly. “There’s obviously something to it. I’ve sailed plenty long and seen enough oddities. You saw it, too. That was no ordinary storm. Whatever those elven bastards did, somebody was listening.”

  Eli grimaced and focused on his oars for a time. Fortunately, the pain made it easy to concentrate.

  “I know,” he said, at last. “I just wish Marssa would listen to us instead of them for a change.”

  It was an absurd thought and he knew it. And yet, as the minutes dragged on in pain and silence, he couldn’t quite shake the notion. Perhaps it was simply the sight of Cotora’s ship bearing down on them or the increasing turbulence of the waters beneath them. Whatever the reason, it took only a few, scant minutes before he found himself nearer to prayer than he’d been in years.

  Marssa, quit playing favorites and get us out of this.

  Without warning, the sea churned around them. Elias stared at them in shock and dropped his oars. Rather than the muted splash he expected, however, the oar landed solidly. A keening yelp of pain rose from the waves, followed by a powerful splash that soaked him head to toe.

  “Ah, hell,” Avans groaned, loudly enough that Elias turned. The man lowered his own oars and stared up at the darkening clouds beginning to swirl more and more aggressively overhead. “I would’ve preferred the elves.”

  Elias stiffened as something struck the cutter from below. The blow was not violent enough to upset the vessel, but was hard enough that it could not be mistaken for a mere wave.

  “What?” he demanded. “What is it?”

  Avans blew out a sigh.

  “Fucking nereids,” he said. Rising from his bench, he crawled cautiously toward the center of the boat and drew his sword. “Keep away from the sides. They’ll try and pull you under.”

  Hands shaking with a combination of fear and exhaustion, Elias clumsily pulled his own blade free of its scabbard. “What do we do?” he asked.

  “Nothing we can do,” Avans said. “There’s probably hundreds of them. If we’re lucky, we might be able to stick one or two and keep the rest at bay until the elves catch up. Trust me, whatever Cotora has in mind will be faster and more bearable than these damn fish.”

  They were hardly comforting words, but Elias had little time to consider them as the cutter jolted once again. He was dimly aware of Kyra and Rhona climbing over the benches to join him, and slightly more aware of the way they grasped his jacket. He didn’t know if they’d done so for reassurance or stability. Either way, they were near.

  They stayed near, even when the first of the nereids leapt from the water and landed heavily on the cutter’s starboard side, tipping it precipitously and threatening to capsize them. The creature’s face and torso were vaguely humanoid, but that was where the resemblance stopped. Its skin was a murky blue-green, scaly, and pockmarked with healed-over scars. And the webbed, clawed fingers it thrust in Elias’ direction were so unnaturally long that they were nearer to fins than human digits.

  He moved without thinking, slashing wildly at the nereid’s outstretched limb. And, almost miraculously, his blind attack landed. The nereid shrieked as its slimy claw was severed at the wrist in a spray of black blood. It thrashed in pain, further threatening to upset the bobbing cutter. Then, glaring with narrow, reptilian eyes, it hurled itself back into the waves.

  “Good job,” Avans growled. The man twisted slightly, putting his back to Elias’ to guard the other direction. “That’s one dealt with. Only a thousand more to go.”

  Elias grimaced. He would have replied if not for the bile burning in his throat. The nereid’s blood stank of salt and decay, and its lifeless hand oozed more of the stuff as it twitched in the bottom of the boat.

  It was hard not to focus on Cotora’s ship as the waves intensified. From the corner of his eye, he could see the vessel’s sturdy, bladed prow growing larger by the minute. And yet, the nereids seemed to possess some uncanny ability to tell when his attention waned. Once, when Kyra’s fingers tightened against his back, he made the mistake of glancing at her. And in that instant, three of the creatures lunged for the side.

  Elias was on them in an instant. He hacked at the first pair of hands he saw, cleaving one and mangling the other, then thrust blindly into the water where he guessed the next nereid must be. Presumably, he guessed correctly since he struck something and the grasping hands retreated. Unfortunately, his victory proved incomplete.

  Hissing, the final nereid lunged from the waters and landed bodily atop him. Its body was slick and writhing as an eel’s, and every blow he aimed at it simply slid off. He didn’t remember dropping his sword but it doubtless saved his life.

  The nereid hissed again, splattering his face with water and the smell of rotting fish. Its gaping mouth was jawless, little more than a vast, undulating pit full of ring after ring of serrated teeth. There was no tongue, so far as Elias could see.

  The creature strained for his face, wriggling and thrashing with its oil-slick arms in a feral effort to maneuver into biting range. And so, struggling blindly, Elias reached for its neck. He had no chance of strangling the nereid, of course. Its skin was far too slick for any sort of purchase. He did, however, managed to hold the creature at bay with his crossed wrists long enough. Roaring, Avans turned and skewered it through the head.

  Elias retched as a fresh spray of hot, foul blood dribbled onto his face. He shoved, and with Kyra and Rhona’s aid, managed to the pitch the spasming nereid back over the side.

  “Close one, eh?” Avans said, helping him sit up. “I told you. The slimy bastards are—”

  He never got the chance to finish. With a chorus of vengeful hisses, a veritable swarm of nereids assailed the now unguarded side. Dozens of dripping, clawing hands sprang from the deep, seizing ahold of anything they could find. Two of the beasts caught hold of Avans from behind. And before the man had time for more than a brief, undignified curse, dragged him backwards and pulled him under.

  “David!” Elias bellowed. He leapt forward, realized he’d dropped his sword, and bent to retrieve it. By the time he had, however, it was far too late.

  Avans was gone without a trace. And in his place, the sea seemed to boil. Dozens of slimy digits grasped the cutters sides in all directions. Kyra and Rhona pounded at the nereids’ claws with their fists to little effect. For his part, Elias hacked every which way. But as soon as a fresh pair of limbs instantly replaced the ones he’d cut, he knew they were lost.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing or caring who heard him.

  For several seconds, the world almost seemed to still. He saw Kyra and Rhona striving against their foes, teeth bared in snarls and hair swept by the increasing wind. From the corner of his eye, he saw an elf standing at the prow of Cotora’s ship, gesturing to the infested waters.

  Sighing, Elias sheathed his sword.

  And then, with a hiss like steam from a dozen cooking pots and a titanic, unnatural blow from the waters below, the nereids succeeded in upending the cutter.

  Elias gulped a heavy, final breath and plunged headfirst into the murky waters.

  For several long seconds, he felt nothing but the cold and wet. He tried to open his eyes, but the salt stung and he could see no more than a few inches anyway. Then, without warning, he felt thin but powerful fingers close around his ankle.

  He tried to struggle, but the water fought him and, as he felt himself dragged deeper, it was all he could do to continue squirming. He kicked blindly to no avail. Then, all at once, something collided with them. Or, more precisely, with the nereid who’d seized him.

  The fingers loosened. And so, driven by an instinct more powerful than thought, he kicked frantically for the surface. He reached it for an instant, just long enough to gulp a fresh breath of air. And then, just as before, another hand seized him. Once again, he was dragged down into the depths until the grip loosened.

  He surfaced again, gasped, and then the
pattern repeated anew. And soon, Elias began to understand precisely what Avans had meant by a slow death.

  It wasn’t that the nereids were deliberately malicious or cruel. They were simply beasts. And like beasts, they fought one another with nearly as much brutality as they hunted. Now that Elias had been plucked from the boat and was safely locked in their territory, it was no longer a question of if he would be prey, but rather whose.

  He was never allowed to break free for long. At most, he had time for a breath or two—sometimes far less than that. And slowly, as the minutes dragged on and the cycle repeated without interruption, he felt despair begin to creep into the edges of his mind.

  He was going to die here, worn and dragged to the point of exhaustion, until he could no longer summon the strength to take another breath. Until he gave in and filled his lungs with water, bit by bit. How long would it take? Minutes? Hours?

  He’d been dragged along for only a few minutes and was already beginning to dread the furious race to the surface. Avans was right. How much better would it have been to die at elven hands, perhaps even with a sword in hand?

  He wanted to let go. But the same instinctive part of him that had driven him to the surface in the first place would not give in. Time after time, he vowed that he would not ascend. And yet, as the burning in his lungs worsened, each time the webbed fingers on his legs slackened, he found himself kicking frantically for the chance to take his next breath.

  Just as he was about to despair his body’s inability to despair, however, something changed. Breaking the surface, he gasped his usual breath. Then another. And a third.

  He began to tread water, bewildered but relishing each breath as he had never treasured anything before. For the nearly half a minute, he simply floated there, breathing. Then he opened his eyes.

  The nearness of the rocky shoreline astonished him. Though the chaos of the waters and the terror of near suffocation had distracted him, he’d assumed that the nereids had been dragging him straight down in place. As it turned out, their fighting had gradually dragged him in the direction of the far-off shore. And although that land was mostly cliffs some five or six times his height, the very sight of that land filled him with a hope he’d long since forgotten.

  Shrugging off his exhaustion, he started to swim. He’d managed barely a half-dozen strokes when another nereid seized him.

  As he was pulled under the surface, Elias realized the difference at once. Where the previous nereids had grasped him by the ankle like living manacles, the hand that now clutched him easily enveloped his leg from thigh to ankle. The speed and power with which they traveled was of a completely different magnitude as well. This new captor carried him along as though he was a mere plaything. So fast did they travel, in fact, that the very water seemed to pummel him with its weight.

  He continued to kick, but his boot could not even reach the monster’s body. And then, so swiftly that he hardly perceived what was happening, the nereid breached the waters and hurled him.

  Elias cried out as he skidded across the waves, topping end over end. Then, quite abruptly, the water vanished beneath him and he found himself rolling over coarse, craggy rock. That hurt quite a bit more, of course, but he was so relieved to feel solid ground beneath him that he would hardly have protested a bed of literal knives.

  Bleeding from a multitude of small scrapes and gashes, Elias gingerly sat up. A fresh wave rolled in, stinging his wounds, but he ignored the pain as he hunted for some glimpse of his savior.

  He spotted it at once; the enormous nereid was impossible to miss. The creature sprawled in the tide, its impossibly large tail outstretched to block his access to the water. Its torso was easily three times the size of a man’s and its oversized arms were easily as long and broad as Elias himself. Only its head was somewhat normal sized, if a bit taller and narrower than a human’s. Compared to the rest of its massive proportions, it gave the creature a somewhat misshapen look.

  Elias staggered upright, groaning at the pain that shot through him—first his aching legs, then the rest of his battered body.

  Staring past him, the nereid hissed. Elias whirled, reaching for the sword that had, somewhat miraculously, managed to remain in its scabbard. And, although he didn’t draw the blade, he did realize two things in remarkably swift succession.

  First, he wasn’t alone. Avans, Kyra, and Rhona each lay upon the rocks or in small tidal pools. Judging by their wounds, all three were in rougher shape than Elias. But, if nothing else, the irregular rise and fall of their chests told him they were still alive.

  Second, they weren’t saved yet. Or, rather, they hadn’t been saved at all.

  The nereids had not, as Elias had mistakenly assumed, carried them to shore like the servants of a rather indelicate god. The rocky grotto to which they’d been brought had been worn from the cliffs and towered imposingly on three sides. If he’d been rested, Elias might have been able to scale one with great difficulty. In his current state, such a thing was utterly impossible. The only way out, so far as he could see, was past the alpha-nereid.

  And she wouldn’t be moving, as evidenced by the multitude of soft, eager hisses that answered her cry.

  Elias raced to his companions’ sides, dragging them as near to one another as he could manage. None of them stirred, though Kyra’s eyelids fluttered and she whimpered as he dragged her over an unexpectedly sharp bit of rock. Moving to Avans’ side, Elias checked the man’s scabbard and cursed when he found it empty.

  The nereid’s offspring were not so much children as they were adolescents. Though not quite as long or broad-shouldered as their ocean-bound sires, the smallest among them was taller than Elias from head to tail-tip. They advanced slowly, sliding cautiously like serpents through the multitude of small pools and patches of damp sand. And although they squinted warily at him, Elias barely noticed their hungry eyes. His attention was locked on the multitude’s sharp, equally ravenous mouths.

  There were dozens of them, more than he could hope to count in the minute or two it took for the creatures to draw near. And even as he drew his sword and sluggishly pointed it at the boldest of the lot, he saw in his peripherals another two dozen of the nereids spilling from a small, innocuous-looking cave toward the grotto’s back.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered.

  The first of the young nereids did not so much pounce as drag itself into striking distance. Hands shaking with weary resignation, Elias braced himself and drove his sword into the creature’s neck.

  He was ready for the pained, gurgling cry. He even expected the hisses of alarm from the nereid’s siblings as they frantically retreated. But no amount of preparation could have readied him for the enraged bellow that preceded the alpha-nereid’s charge.

  It seemed impossible that such an immense creature could move so swiftly over dry land. And yet, it did. Squirming and snarling, the nereid raced toward him.

  Elias knew from the very start that it was a hopeless battle. One blow from the creature’s mighty arm could snap his neck with ease. Or, if it decided to simply land atop him, he’d be lucky not to break every bone in his body. And yet, once again, the same instinct that had driven him to the surface time and time again returned in abundance.

  Roaring, Elias lifted his sword.

  Chapter Twelve

  Elias saw the shape of his own death a split-second before it transpired. Drawing itself up to a vast, almost unfathomable height, the alpha-nereid drew back an arm for the final, crushing blow.

  He braced himself, angling his sword to pierce the beast’s webbed hand. He had no chance of killing it, or even significantly wounding it. His only hope was that the pain might startle it and drive it off long enough for Avans, Kyra, or Rhona to wake and flee.

  The nereid hissed, sprouted a wooden beard, and froze. Elias froze as well, blinking in confusion and struggling to comprehend what was transpiring. It wasn’t until a pair of long, wooden spears descende
d from the cliff above him and buried themselves in the nereid’s flank that he realized what had happened.

  More arrows, dozens of them, pierced the nereid’s face and torso. The creature hissed again, batting ineffectively at the wooden shafts protruding from its oily skin. Then, as a third spear flew and wedged itself beneath its arm, it turned and raced for the safety of the water.

  Elias stared after it, long after the nereid had slipped beneath the waves, abandoning both him and its unfed young. His right leg shuddered and he dropped heavily to the ground before it could give out. Breathing in harsh, ragged gasps, he grasped his knees and tried not to shake. And, admittedly, he managed almost ten seconds before he lost that battle too.

  He didn’t even bother glancing up at the ones who had saved him. He knew only too well who, and what, they would be. Even so, he couldn’t help but flinch when the end of the rope landed audibly beside him.

  The first elf descended swiftly, scarcely using his legs at all. His skin was dark, with a vaguely silver tint that matched the wet stone of the cliff almost exactly. His eyes, however, were a gentle silver-blue and filled with so much wry amusement that Elias couldn’t help but grin slightly despite his shock.

  “At’kinch, kabsan,” the elf said. His intonation was quite different from Kyra and Rhona’s, but the words at least were familiar to Elias, even in his stupefied state. “Nos wei’sett ehmad.”

  Elias didn’t understand the latter half of the elf’s statement—nor would he have on his best day—but he understood the first half well enough. So well, in fact, that he frowned.

  “Bial wei’no kabsan,” he growled back.

  The elf froze. For just an instant, respect and appreciation glinted freely in his eyes. Then he grinned and bowed in a way that might have been mocking. Elias couldn’t tell.

  “Bial no at’kinch, wei’no-kabsan,” the elf said. Stepping past Elias, he hesitated at the sight of Rhona. He shook himself, knelt, and pressed gentle fingers to her neck. He must have been satisfied with her pulse since he moved on to check Kyra and Avans soon after. Rising, he flashed a smile and indicated the dangling rope.