Captain's Sacrifice

by Meghann McVey

forgotten. With a jaw-cracking yawn, she remembered that by now, she would have swam out to the fortress, heard Egudar’s report, and returned to sleep for a few hours before the morning reports.

  “We will know for sure when we have taken a roll call,” Egudar was saying. “There are missing and dead among our soldiers, though nowhere near as many as the First Brigade. They were guarding the west tower tonight.”

  These were strange times, indeed, Chatir reflected, in which she would feel grateful for Assan’s stealing off to Meyroth. At least he would be safe with her.

  “I took the liberty of instructing the Third Brigade to come here after they have searched the fortress grounds for the wounded.”

  “Why aren’t you still with them, Egudar?”

  “I thought you might need me, Captain.”

  And that was Egudar: loyal, dependable, in short, everything Assan was not.

  They worked in silence for a time. Slowly the Third Brigade and the tattered remanants of the First came back and helped comb through the destruction.

  Their combined efforts uncovered Captain Xinc of the King’s Brigade first. His forehead was raw and bloody but not beyond healing.

  Eventually Captain Heilios of the Second Brigade swam into their midst. “I see it is fortunate I was late for the meeting.”

  “Call your mersoldiers,” Chatir said. “We need their help here!”

  “You presume to command me, you who are not permitted to keep council with the king?”Captain Heilios’s porcelain-white face remained utterly smooth, despite his disapproval.

  Chatir was reminded of basic training when her instructor appointed her class captain over thirty other young mermen. It had taken months for them to accept her, and many never came to respect her.

  “The two masters both advocated for her to be captain,” Egudar growled. “You would do well to remember that their word comes before the king’s in a time of emergency.”

  Although Captain Heilios did obey after that remark, he took his time -- ostensibly. Egudar glared all the while. The mersoldiers arrived later than Chatir would have expected, given the situation’s exigency.

  “He didn’t spare us many soldiers, did he?” Egudar muttered after the mersoldiers had reported to Chatir. “I bet he gave them some fool’s errand to run before they came here, too.”

  By this time, a line of pages had formed. Most had come to report the safety of this noble family or that. All concluded their messages with the names of missing merfolk. Chatir posted a soldier in training to take down names. They could not afford to waste a minute; the trapped merfolk were depending on them. There were also the wounded to see to and organizing efforts to clear the wreckage. Naturally, not even an hour later, Chatir was interrupted by the youth calling her name. Ahead of him was King Abin’s majordomo.

  “I come from the queen,” he said. “She seeks tidings of her husband.”

  “We have not found him yet,” Chatir said. “We began searching shortly after the humans stopped firing. Perhaps he escaped and is hiding elsewhere...”

  The majordomo’s lip curled. “I will tell her he is still missing.” His bow to Chatir was too brief. But on this taxing night, such rudeness could be excused. At least he had talked to her this time, though that might have been because no other captains were nearby.

  “I feared it was so,” Chatir murmured to Egudar who had left his work to hear the news. “We will not be able to stop looking until the king is found.”

  “Finding Captain Laramas is nearly as important,” Egudar said, though Chatir knew the tacit merman well enough to know he really meant more important.

  The first rays of dawn had lightened the water when they uncovered Captain Laramas.

  “I thought you’d never dig me out!” the captain said as he stretched his arms and tail. “Where is the king? I must speak to him right away.”

  “We have not found him yet,” Chatir admitted.

  Captain Laramas puffed out his chest. “Well, we will soon, now that I’m freed.”

  He was right; in fact, it was Captain Laramas himself who found the monarch. However, King Abin was dead, suffocated under the stones.

  “Highness!” Captain Laramas’s voice cracked. He gathered the king to him, lifted him free. “Curse those humans!”

  Heads turned toward him. Chatir imagined a whisper flowing through the courtyard like an invisible icy current.

  “This is war!” Captain Laramas whispered. “War!” he bellowed. “For the honor of Zurolind!”

  “Control yourself, Captain!” Chatir seized his arm. “Think of what you are saying!”

  For just an instant, she glimpsed the grief in his eyes, and the fear.

  “But we must do something!” Captain Larmas clenched his fists above the corpse as though the tenuous line of King Abin’s life were slipping through them.

  Dread turned Chatir’s flesh and fins stony. She had bever seen proud Captain Laramas look so helpless.

  “What can we do?” Captain Laramas demanded.

  The only answer to his plea was silence.

  {****}

  The court returned once to survey the damage to Castle Zurolind. Queen Zenclaire herself came back with a small retinue to look on the king’s body. She gazed on him scarcely long enough to call it a glimpse, rumors claimed in the barracks. With a face white as sun-withered coral, the queen turned away from him. Shortly after, she left Zurolind altogether. Her swiftest messengers went before her to Ianoc and Hasar. It would fall to them to answer Captain Laramas’s question of what was to be done.

  Four terse days passed while Ianoc and Hasar debated. By the fourth evening, the plan arrived on pages of seaweed parchment.

  In anticipation of the humans’ return and the inevitable battle, the queen, court, and all civilian merfolk would seek sanctuary with several pods of dolphins who were the merpeople’s allies. The King’s Brigade and the First Brigade, as well as Ianoc and Hasar, were to travel with them for protection.

  That left Captain Chatir’s Third Brigade and Captain Heilios’s Second Brigade to guard the castle and the remaining fortress tower.

  Ianoc predicted that Captain Laramas and Captain Xinc would return within three days.

  On parchment, three days were brief, a trifle.

  But in reality, guarding the wounded castle and ruined fortress might be a last stand for them. Chatir tried not to recall old stories of besieged mersoldiers who died hours before their comrades arrived to save them.

  Two Brigades were barely enough should humans attack in great numbers. And what were they to do against cannonfire? So went the muttering of the troops.

  And suppose the brigades encountered the inevitable delays that plagued any large body of merfolk?

  {****}

  Even with her citizens evacuated, Zurolind did not remain quiet. As she watched and waited, Chatir thought she heard snatches of voices in the eerie silence.

  So long as the sun spread its golden ripples across the sand, Chatir felt confident in the absent captains and brigades, in Zurolind’s fate. But when those ripples darkened to red, when the anglerfish emerged from their sleep in the castle’s darkest rooms, every movement of the seagrass, every change in the current made her tense.

  At the start of the third day, Chatir started watching for the returning Brigades. Using the pearls of far-seeing, Chatir scrutinized the west. The sun was a cannonball frozen above an unseen target. The orange sky dimmed to purple, then to black. And still, there was no sign of the brigades.

  Later that night, the sight Chatir had dreaded appeared: ships’ shadows, their wake breaking the night rhythm of the waves.

  She touched Egudar’s elbow. Cursing, he signalled for the anglerfish to dispell their lights. However, they had already been spotted. Lights flared from the ships, piercing the water and illumining every crevice and hiding place.

  Through her narrowed eyes, Chatir discerned flashes of silver near the surface.

  The humans wer
e coming beneath the waves to fight.

  The Third Brigade saw them, too, and drew for their weapons.

  “Forward!” Chatir commanded. In a way it was a relief for the long wait to be over, to face tangible opponents instead of phantoms raised by nerves.

  As she charged out to meet her enemies, Chatir saw that they had changed their weapons from iron blades that the sea would encumber, to the mersoldiers’ slender style that mimicked the roll of ocean waves. Her heart plummeted further at the sight of their garb. The humans no longer wore the white clothes of before, but something silver that resembled fish scale armor! But that could not be! How could they have changed their style so drastically in such a short time?

  Chatir turned, sought Assan in the crowd. He hung back, gaping like a beached fish at these human troops in his home, his face alternating between astonished and guilty.

  Then the rising wave of battle chaos crested and engulfed them all.

  The next hours steeped the water in blood. A raw, copper taste filled Chatir’s mouth. Surely Zurolind’s victory was near! It had to be! The Third Brigade had fought long and well, but Chatir had no illusions that they could survive a protracted battle.

  Her entire body aching with weariness, Chatir broke free of the fight and swam toward the surface. Even here above the fighting, red froth ringed the waves. With the pearls of far-seeing, she scanned the battle and all directions around it. “No,” she whispered.

  There was no sign of aid in any direction. And worse, the Third Brigade was weakening.

  Splash! Splash!

  Chatir tore her gaze