Oshenerth

by Alan Dean Foster

  Their inner lights dimmed, a squad of unseen, nearly blind spralakers succeeded in scaling the wall at the level of the seventeenth terrace. In the absence of illumination their intrusion passed unobserved until they were over the top and in among the city’s noncombatants. There they murdered in darkness and with abandon until their presence was frantically noted and a troop from the community’s reserve forces was sent to surround and exterminate them.

  No such difficulties of discernment declared themselves on the main field of battle, where the presence of bioluminescence in abundance permitted defender and assailant alike to see each other clearly with an eye to mutual destruction. Used to yellowish light, Irina found the blue-green-lit chaos unsettling, though no more so than the casualties that were rapidly mounting into the hundreds on the spralaker side and the dozens on that of Benthicalia. Plucked from where they lay or drifted, the wounded were rushed to medical facilities deep within the city. Stopping bleeding under pressure and under water, she learned, required the application of carefully conserved organic materials and, in some cases, more than a little Tornal-taught magic. The result was that people died, but not in numbers that would otherwise have been the case.

  The clash along several sections of wall generated light enough to illuminate the surrounding black water for hundreds of feet in every direction. Still, the line of battle was so long and deep that she could see only a portion of it, and nothing at all of the equally ferocious clash that was taking place at the same time between the defenders of the city’s westernmost terrace and the spralaker Second Army. Though not privy to the reports that passed between the commanders of both locations, she gleaned enough from what little she overheard to know that the struggle transpiring to the west was every bit as hard-fought and extensive as the one taking place before her.

  Lit by their own internally generated luminescence or that of the smaller creatures traveling upon them, galaxies of spralakers threw themselves at star clusters of defenders. The water above the advancing multitude of red and white and blue-tinged shell and claw was shot through with sprinting mersons and even faster manyarms. Occasionally descending to engage in hand-to-claw combat, mersons dodged around claws capable of pulling off limbs while manyarms relied on their greater agility and an occasional burst of disorienting fluorescent ink to protect themselves. Everywhere, water was suffused with blood.

  It was disturbing to see that the spralakers had solved the problem of almost always having to attack while moving sideways. Riding atop their larger brethren like turrets atop tanks, smaller spralakers were able to turn and fire in any direction while their mounts maintained a steady sideways advance. This unsettling development represented yet another new and unexpected tactic on the part of the enemy.

  “So much cooperation, so much preparation.” Watching the battle from a portico of purple coral behind and above the city wall, his arms writhing with anxiety, Oxothyr scrutinized the continuing offensive with evident alarm. “Something has happened to alter their customary fighting technique. The spralaker spirit has been imbued not only with new fervor, but fresh ideas. That is what unsettles me.”

  “You still have no idea what’s behind all these changes you see?” Irina stayed close to the shaman, feeing safer in the shelter of his waving tentacles than anywhere else.

  “Only that every time I fixate on such things I feel afresh the coldness of which I have so often spoken. I think that if I could only reach through to the source, I would find the explanation I seek. Despite my most forceful efforts to that end it remains tantalizingly out of reach.” His body turned a quietly amused pale orange. “When one has eight arms and something still remains out of reach, it is more disconcerting than you can imagine.”

  To change the subject and hopefully relieve the mage of his restless discomfort, she used her spear to point toward the raging battle. “So many of the spralakers generate no light of their own, yet these thousands appear well-equipped with illumination.”

  “As are mersons,” the shaman reminded her. “Yet there are some spralakers who can produce their own illumination, as can many of my own kind.” Reaching out with one cable-like arm, he eased her slightly forward. “There, to the northeast. The defense weakens. I see spralakers coming over the wall. Ready yourself.”

  Clutching her spear tighter, she looked where he was pointing. Having cleared the upper parapet of defenders, lines of white shell were scrabbling over the top of the stonework despite the death frenzied mersons and manyarms were raining down on them from above. Burbles and cackles of jubilation emanated from the triumphant spralakers.

  They were in for a surprise.

  The enemy’s screeches of triumph proved premature. Hidden behind Benthicalia’s outer wall was a second barrier. Lower than the one that fronted it, at first glance it seemed as if it surely would prove even easier for the invaders to surmount than the first. Unlike the outer wall, it was composed entirely of deep-water red and black coral. Polyps that had been grown, cajoled, and manipulated to create an obstacle that instead of being smooth-faced like the outer wall was riddled with points, projections, and protuberances. The resulting coral maze was deep enough, tortuous enough, and sufficiently convoluted to stop a line of tanks or paralyze a mathematician.

  Surprised by the presence of the second barrier, the intruding spralakers immediately started to clamber up this unexpected inner fortification. Their efforts soon gave rise to growing confusion. Amalgamated arcs and upthrusts of sharp coral defied easy ascent. They scored and sometimes even punctured the shells that scraped against them. Surmounting the initial stone knots, one heavily armed adversary after another found themselves confronting a dip, or hollow, or series of sharp extrusions. Crack spralaker troops became lost or trapped within the impenetrable, unyielding maze. Unable to advance or retreat or even move sideways, they became easy targets for the boneless manyarms who could slip effortlessly through the very same gaps that had ensnared their brawny but blundering enemies.

  The scenario was repeated along the length of the central terraces. Time and again, groups of spralakers would succeed in driving the defenders from the top of the outer wall, only to find themselves cornered when they attempted to penetrate the second and far more difficult inner fortifications.

  Which was not to say that damage was not done and destruction not meted out by the attacking horde. Massive spralakers swinging clubs studded with needle-sharp sea urchin spines ripped apart manyarm and merson bodies alike. Smaller aggressors hurled bundles of razor clams, urchin spines, and nematocyst sachets from short slings, bringing down swooping defenders who in search of the easier kill dipped too close to the marching multitude.

  When word of the existence of the previously unseen inner defensive wall finally reached the general staff of the spralaker First Army, it developed that Gubujul’s experienced Mud Marshals had a countering tactic for it as well. Like so many of the stratagems that infused traditional hardshell warfare, it relied for success on the engagement of the slow but steady.

  Big as buses, hulking multilegged representatives of the homaridae were brought forward. More heavily armored than any of their smaller cousins, they set to work with their huge front claws at chewing away sections of the outer wall. Once it was breached, they would not repeat the mistake of trying to climb over the inner coral labyrinth. They would simply, if slowly, chew their way through it as well, and into the unprotected city proper.

  Seeing what was happening and quickly divining the intent, Benthicalia’s defenders immediately launched a fresh succession of attacks from above. So heavily built were the coral-grinding homaridae that stones dropped from above simply glanced off their body armor. Meanwhile, the cream of the spralaker First Army did its best to keep the increasingly desperate merson and manyarm defenders from slowing the relentless, disciplined assault.

  At the same time, swarms of much smaller spralakers, lesser cousins of Gubujul and his ilk, were sent scampering over sections of outer wall from which
the defenders had been driven. Armed only with small knives, these thousands of prawns and other minor crustaceans were little threat to well-armed and trained merson and manyarm soldiers. But where their larger cousins found themselves slowed or trapped by the inner coral maze, these smaller invaders were able to negotiate the tubes and tunnels, hollows and cracks. By themselves they could not take the city—but they could occupy the attention of defenders whose skills were needed more urgently elsewhere, and sow panic and confusion through the community at large.

  Several came swimming fitfully up toward Oxothyr and his companions. Sheathing her spear, Irina gripped her dive knife in one hand and the curved merson weapon she had been given in the other. These diminutive crustacean warriors were weak swimmers even by hardshell standards and she had no trouble dispatching dozens of them, as did Poylee and the others. Spralaker body parts were soon raining down on the section of inner city wall immediately below. A few mersons suffered superficial scratches in consequence of the massed attack while the swifter and more agile manyarms avoided injury altogether.

  But while Irina and her friends were occupied in dealing with the widespread but ultimately feeble attack with all the gusto of a clutch of amateur ninja turned crazed sashimi chefs, they were therefore unable to assist elsewhere in the defense of the city. The widespread assault by thousands of lesser spralakers was not intended nor expected to conquer, but rather to divert, tie up, occupy, irritate, and otherwise buy time for the brute homaridae to complete their task of gnawing several routes through Benthicalia’s inner as well as outer walls.

  As soon as the swarm of lesser, poorly armed spralakers was sufficiently reduced in number, Irina and her friends were ordered to join in a group assault on the trio of homaridae who had breached the outer wall and had by now eaten a wide path halfway through the inner coral barrier. Weeks ago she would have been helpless to assist. Her legs would by now have been dead in the water. But day after day of swimming instead of walking had strengthened the muscles running from her hips to her feet to a degree where she could have competed seriously among the better swimmers back home. It was good that her endurance and speed had increased to the extent that they had. She was not competing for points now, or for gym club medals. Like her new-found friends, she was swimming for her life.

  Soaring over the three mammoth homaridae, she joined her companions and dozens of reserve troops in launching spears, arrows, and rocks at the armored, bulldozing monsters below. “Aim for the eyes!” she had been instructed, and she tried her best to do so. Meanwhile, she had to take care to keep out of range of the weapons wielded by the homaridae’s escorts. A few of these armored bodyguards struggled to swim upward to confront the counterattack. Devoid of fins, they had to kick hard with their many legs to gain any height. While the best of their continuing attempts were invariably ineffective, Irina found herself admiring the effort that was put into them. Courage and determination were not the sole province of mersons and manyarms.

  Though blinded by arrows shot from diving manyarms, one of the homaridae continued to grind resolutely forward until a succession of well-aimed stones eventually cracked the shell covering its head. Spears flung through the resulting fissures finally pierced its brain. It slowed, stopped, and was unceremoniously shoved aside by one of its still functioning brethren. A lucky arrow severed a vital nerve in a second monster, sending it running in wild circles to trample a number of its own followers. Able at last to concentrate all their efforts on the final surviving homaridae, the increasingly confident Benthicalian forces were preparing to put it permanently out of action and out of life when the spralakers launched a full-scale fresh offensive.

  Chaos ensued.

  Embracing a diversity of lethal jellyfish, the spralakers riding on an assortment of rays dove down on the wall’s defenders from above. The deadly coelenterates the hardshell riders wrangled had been trained to fire and release their nematocysts on command. By surrendering their poison cells in this unnatural fashion they would eventually be left without the means to defend or feed themselves, like honeybees deprived of their stingers. This concerned their handlers not in the slightest.

  Caught unawares by this new kind of symbiotic attack, soft-skinned mersons and manyarms were hard-pressed to dodge the tiny but lethal missiles. While the forcefully expressed nematocysts could not travel very far underwater, at close range they could be fatal.

  Incapacitated by the stings a number of defenders went limp in the water, their muscles paralyzed by an assortment of jellyfish toxins. Those who did not succumb to the poison on the spot drifted downward, there to be set upon and gleefully pulled to pieces by the eager spralakers who awaited them.

  Twisting and turning to avoid water that was now filled with thousands of tiny, deadly darts, Irina found herself joining her surviving companions in retreat. The ray-led attack force pursued them over the walls and into the city. There the spralaker riders proceeded to rain death onto the open corridors and pathways below. Their assault was only eventually offset when in their zeal to commit slaughter, some of them dove too low.

  But while the spralakers could train domesticated jellyfish to fire their poisonous nematocysts, they were not the only creatures who commanded such weapons.

  Long resident on the roofs and spires of Benthicalia, tenant anemones responded to the diving attacks by unleashing stinging cells of their own. Their paralyzed wings stilled, stunned rays spiraled downward toward the city streets. There they and their riders suffered the same fate as those mersons and manyarms caught outside the city walls. Residents swarmed over them, chopping the unfortunate rays into pieces while hunting down their scuttling spralaker riders as the latter frantically tried to conceal themselves in clefts and crevices in the surrounding buildings.

  All along the city walls to the east and to the west the battle raged. The deep sea was filled with screams and shrieks, hisses and chittering as mersons and manyarms, spralakers and rays were laid low by a vast assortment of weapons and willpower. Once gained, neither side was willing to concede so much as a foot of territory. Neither backed away from confrontation despite frequent disparities in strength and numbers. All fighters exhibited the unique individual characteristics for which they were noted.

  Along with increasing exhaustion Irina found herself yielding to a growing numbness. Had the struggle been taking place in the shallows where blood would show red instead of black she did not know if she could have continued. As it was, she had a hard enough time swimming through clouds of dark liquid whose composition she knew was thicker than water.

  O O O

  Frustration at the faltering progress of the offensive induced Cavaumaz to position himself in the forward ranks of the attack. Even from a distance, Gubujul could see the great right claw of the Mud Marshal rising and falling above the fray as the fearless general officer sought to rally and reinvigorate the assault. The Paramount Advisor’s attention was almost immediately diverted by the arrival of Bejuryar and Taww.

  “How goes the latest offensive?” Fiddling restively with a strand of small pearls trailing from the base of one antenna, Gubujul tried to devote his attention equally to both of the general officers.

  Taww’s tone reflected her mood. “Not well, Paramount Advisor.”

  “Not at all as we hoped,” added the bigger Bejuryar.

  Discounting these off-putting assessments, Gubujul strove to appear assured. “Time and numbers are our allies. With them on our side we will eventually overcome and overwhelm.”

  “I’d rather have another ten battalions than all the time in the world,” Taww countered curtly. “The city is strong, its fighters determined, and whoever is formulating defensive strategy most capable.”

  “What of our small-knife and ray swarms?” Gubujul asked tentatively.

  “Effective in spots. Not sufficiently dominant to turn the tide. They have shown themselves able to penetrate and wreak temporary havoc, but not to triumph.” Extending to their maximum length, Beju
ryar’s eyestalks inclined toward his titular, if not strategic, superior. “Should you be in possession of any devices seriously thaumaturgic, Paramount Advisor, now would be a most excellent time for their reveal.”

  “I don’t know if …” Gubujul stiffened. Not his spine, for he did not have one, but the muscles that ran along his shell. Here was his chance to shine. Now more than ever he would be compelled to live up to the lofty position that had been bestowed upon him, or fail in the trying.

  “Come with me,” he told the two senior officers briskly.

  Well to the rear of the fighting, the stacked cylinders of tightly woven sea fan lay innocuous and untouched among the small mountain of stores that had accompanied the spralaker First Army all the way from the Northlands. Sentries not yet bored with their good fortune at having been assigned to relatively safe guard duty snapped to attention at the unannounced and unexpected arrival of the Paramount Advisor and the two Mud Marshals. Gubujul indicated the mound of six-foot long cylinders.

  “There!”

  Taww eyed the pile dubiously. “Your pardon, Paramount Advisor Gubujul, but—‘there’ what?”

  All six of their superior’s antennae were in motion. “You will see.” I hope, he added quietly to himself.

  The shaman Sajjabax’s instructions had been very specific, and Gubujul had taken care to memorize them faithfully. Now was the moment to put both faith and memory to the test. His legs fluttering to drive him through the water, he approached the forefront of the collection of cylinders. Raising both long arms, he spread wide the pincers at each end and intoned as vigorously as he could in his lamentably high-pitched voice.

  “Seremus serivane! Columin fatalune,” he declaimed forcefully in the old language of his cannibal spralaker ancestors. Turning, he clamped both claws shut, pointed them in the direction of Benthicalia, and commanded evocatively, “Seek and kill!”