The Coral Kingdom

by Douglas Niles

  “I’m ready to try anything,” said Tristan—and he meant it.

  * * * * *

  “Dead ahead, Brandon,” Robyn quietly announced to the Prince of Gnarhelm. The northman nodded. For five days, he had followed no compass but the intuition of the Great Druid, yet he didn’t begin to doubt the acuity of her direction.

  The wind had favored them for the first two days but then faded to a lackluster breeze. They made headway, but their listless wake sliced placid waters, a far cry from the white slash trailing the Princess of Moonshae when she was under full sail.

  “Look—in the water!” announced Brigit, her voice terse and commanding.

  The others saw them, too—sharks, in a great school gathered around the longship. Schools of the ugly fish, triangular fins slicing the surface of the water in menacing patterns, approached from fore and aft until dozens of the predators surrounded them, spread in a wide escort around the longship. The marine predators had no difficulty matching the Princess of Moonshae’s speed.

  One of the longbowmen took aim at a huge gray shark as it approached the hull. His arrow pierced the sleek body, immediately coloring the surrounding water pale red. Moments later, the ugly fish closed on their stricken fellow, tearing the body apart in a thrashing orgy of killing.

  “Look! Here come more of them!” announced Keane as more fins appeared, slicing through the water from the north. Additional bowmen raised arrows and took aim.

  “Don’t shoot,” the queen suggested. “The blood will only draw replacements—faster, I’m sure, than we can kill them off.”

  “Makes sense. Save the arrows for the sahuagin and scrags,” Brandon agreed.

  “Look!” For an hour or more, Knaff the elder had been observing a strange blot on the northern horizon, until finally he made his terse announcement, calling the discovery to the attention of the others.

  “It’s one of those damned flat ships!” cursed the captain as soon as he saw the object. He looked critically at the sun, the sail, and then back to the pursuing Manta.

  “They’ll be on us with hours of daylight to spare,” he announced cryptically.

  Robyn came to the stern and looked. “I could try to raise the wind …” she said tentatively, turning to look at the Prince of Gnarhelm.

  Brandon met her gaze, then shook his head firmly from side to side.

  “There’s only one of ’em now. I think we should take our chances in a fair fight. We’re sailing into the heart of their territory, and it doesn’t make sense to let that ship hug our tail while we do it!”

  “I agree,” Alicia said firmly, turning to her mother. “And we serve no purpose exhausting you before we get there!” The princess’s readiness for battle surprised even herself, but Alicia found herself looking forward to crossing blades with the aquatic horrors on the Manta. After the long days of travel and repair and further travel, her emotions distressed her. Brandon continued to make her nervous, and she couldn’t look at Keane without a stab of guilt.

  It seemed proper now that they would begin to settle this matter, writing the solution in blood.

  True to Brandon’s prediction, the Manta had closed to within a few hundred feet by midafternoon. Alicia studied its approach, clearly able to distinguish the long platforms separated by strips of churning sea. Hundreds of fishmen paddled furiously, and the blunt prow of the raft rode up on the swells, the flatship surging forward like a great flying fish.

  The humans readied themselves for battle, and it seemed to the princess that her mood was shared by the rest of the crew. She saw no reluctance to face the sea beasts. Indeed, many of the men displayed smiles of grim satisfaction at the prospect of battle.

  As the splashing raft drew steadily nearer, the crew of the longship studied their foes and prepared to mount a defense. First to strike were the Corwellian longbowmen.

  “Aim for the sahuagin, men!” Hanrald urged. “Your arrows’ll be wasted on the sea trolls!”

  The ten Ffolk archers fired volley after volley of steel-headed death from their powerful weapons. Most of the missiles angled with precision onto the unprotected decks and rowing benches of the Manta, and dozens of the scaly fishmen squirmed from the impact of the deadly rain. Their comrades simply pitched the slain over the sides to lighten the load for those remaining. Sharks swarmed among the corpses, relishing the gruesome feast.

  The High Queen faced the approaching craft and held her staff in both hands. Alicia, beside her, carried the changestaff for the time being, but her sword rested in its scabbard at her belt. More arrows poured onto the Manta, but they seemed to put little dent in the teeming sea beasts.

  Then, to the horror of the humans, the raft surged forward, veering toward the longship’s rear quarter. The prow of the Manta, Alicia saw, was not so blunt as she had imagined. In fact, it narrowed to a sharklike snout, and through the froth of the wake, they could see the gray reflection of a metal-tipped ram!

  Robyn recognized the impending disaster clearly, and she raised a prayer to the goddess Earthmother. Even through the deck of the longship, past the thousands of feet of brine into the ocean depth, the power of the great druid touched that of her deity and the words of the spell came forth.

  “Cadeus, devor-ast!” cried the High Queen, and the command words touched the power of wood. Trees were the most stately children of the goddess, and thus ever susceptible to her will, even after they had been torn from the earth, their timber turned to the uses of creatures such as humans … or sea trolls.

  Timber such as the heavy shaft of the ram.

  Robyn’s spell warped the great beam, twisting it downward and forming a great curl back toward the Manta. The creaking force of the twisting wood shrieked against their ears, but the shaft did not splinter. Instead, it held its new shape, the great timber curling downward into the water, pointed harmlessly toward the ocean floor. The sudden increase in drag slowed the great raft like an anchor, and disaster was averted for the moment. As the Manta lurched to the side, waves of water rolled over the long rowing benches, dragging the craft still slower and carrying many of the sahuagin right off their vessel.

  A huge scrag, wild strands of weedy hair blowing around its head, snapped and shouted at the crew members, many of whom scrambled back aboard and returned to their places on the long benches. Slowly the flat ship picked up speed, until it again approached the pace of its quarry.

  But though no longer threatened by the ram, the Princess of Moonshae couldn’t pull away from the deceptively swift vessel. Keane cast a fireball against the bow of the Manta, incinerating a dozen sahuagin and a trio of scrags—but even that lethal explosion made little dent in the numbers on the wide raft.

  The thing was surprisingly huge, Alicia saw—far bigger than she had previously imagined. Not only was it longer than the Princess of Moonshae, but the Manta’s tremendous beam also increased its carrying capacity by dozens of times. She counted six of the great rowing benches, each little more than a long pole running fore to aft, straddled by dozens of sahuagin. From the pole the creatures dipped their paddles into the water that slid below them. The Manta had five long slots in its deck for just this purpose.

  The sharks swarmed in closer, as if they, too, sensed imminent bloodshed. Several more sahuagin, slain by arrows, toppled into the water, and the ravenous shark pack immediately swarmed around them. The blood in the water drove the fish into a frenzy, and the surface of the sea roiled from the savage orgy of feeding.

  “We can’t keep this up forever!” Brandon declared, drawing Robyn and Keane aside.

  “What do you suggest?” inquired the queen.

  “We attack,” the Prince of Gnarhelm stated bluntly. “We grapple with the bastards. We kill them or kick them off of that accursed raft, and then we burn the thing!”

  “They outnumber us ten to one,” objected Robyn. “That’s too rash!”

  “More like five to one,” suggested Keane, who was studying the Manta intently. He frowned in concentration. “Of cour
se, we’ll need to leave a guard behind on the Princess. It wouldn’t do to have them swim under her and come up on the far side.”

  “You’re not seriously thinking of this, are you?” pressed Robyn, turning to the magic-user. Then her brows tightened. She knew the time for debate and decision was short, and finally she sighed. “I don’t have any other solution. Let’s do it.”

  “The sharks … they might keep the fishmen out of the water,” suggested Alicia, who had joined them.

  “Too risky. They kill the wounded, sure, but they’re under the control of the same forces. Better to leave the bowmen on the longship. They’ll have to use swords if it comes to that. Bring up the casks of oil. We’ll need help if we’re going to burn the raft.”

  Within a few minutes, the plans for the attack had been made. The Manta plunged along to the rear, within long bowshot range, but the archers had ceased shooting some time ago in order to conserve their arrows.

  “Now!”

  On Brandon’s command, Knaff brought the longship into a tight turn to port, cutting across the Manta’s path. The monsters howled as they surged forward, once again closing the gap while the Princess of Moonshae veered across the raft’s bow. Gradually the ungainly Manta began to swerve after them, but now the longship cut back, carving a broad S on the sea before the plunging raft.

  Both vessels had slowed considerably during the maneuver, and when Brandon gave the command, his northmen plunged a dozen oars into the water, bringing the Princess of Moonshae to a sudden stop. As the Manta surged alongside, humans cast hooks and harpoons, each attached to a long line anchored to the longship’s hull. Some twenty of these grapples stuck, and in the blink of an eye the two huge vessels lunged together, hulls grinding, lashed in a battle to the death.

  Bowmen poured volley after volley into the monsters at the edge of the raft. Keane called upon lightning and fire, raking one bench with a lightning bolt that blasted two dozen sahuagin to pieces. He sent a great fireball to blossom in the middle of the enemy troops, sending many more of them hissing and shrieking into the sea. Next Keane pounded the Manta with meteors, huge stones that splintered pieces of timber from the hull, crushing the scaly warriors struck by the magical bombardment.

  “Phyrosyne!” cried Alicia, stamping the base of her staff against the hull, hoping the tree creature could maintain its balance better than it had the first time she had summoned it in the longship. Immediately the shaft began to grow, and as the twin feet appeared, the being braced them to either side of the hull, growing taller and taller until the leafy, branching form rivaled the height of the mast itself.

  No earth elemental could serve the Great Druid here, but Robyn’s powers drew from a broad arsenal. She barked a command, again calling on the power of her goddess, and this time her servant arose from the sea itself. A foaming, manlike shape grew from the waves beside the Manta, scrambling onto the raft and bashing several sahuagin overboard with watery—but very solid—limbs. Humanoid in shape, it grasped the Manta with two arms, pulling itself aboard the pitching craft where it stood up on two broad, sloshing feet.

  The lurching figure of frothing brine possessed real crushing power in its Whitewater fists. The elemental scrambled across the raft and crushed any of the scaled monsters foolish enough to come within reach. Even the scrags tumbled away, battered and broken, from the summoned creature’s powerful blows. Under the onslaught, the first rank of monsters fell back, leaving fifty or more of their number dead on the deck.

  “Let’s go! The path’s as clear as it’ll get!” cried Brandon, whooping and raising his battle-axe as he scrambled over the gunwale, followed by his crewmen and their Ffolk allies.

  Brandon led his shouting northmen, with Hanrald, Alicia, and Brigit in their midst, against a mass of fishmen who had evaded the elemental and surged back to battle human foes. The two forces met in violent melees of hacking and stabbing, chopping, snarling, and hissing bodies. The cursing of wounded northmen mingled with the reptilian gasps of battered sea creatures.

  The lurching figure of Alicia’s changestaff lifted itself methodically over the rail of the longship, and though it staggered on the planks of the pitching raft, it picked up a squirming sahuagin and snapped the creature’s spine with a twist of the tree’s great limbs.

  From the afterdeck of the longship, Tavish took up her lute and sent forth a martial song. Her fingers struck the strings of the enchanted instrument, a treasure from the tomb of Cymrych Hugh himself, bestowed upon the bard by the will of the goddess. Now she called upon those strings for all the power at their command.

  Chords resonated in the wooden box, rolling across the combatants with different effects. The music attacked the creatures of the sea with raw violence, an excruciating assault against their senses. The jarring force of the notes forced some of the sahuagin back, driving many of them to press their hands over their heads in an attempt to block out the horrendous noise. Even the scrags barked and growled, discomfited and annoyed by the sounds.

  To the humans, charging onto the pitching deck of the Manta, the music sounded a trumpet cry of courage, urging them forward in a cause they knew must be just. Hoarse northmen bellowed cries of battle, mingling with the bard’s vibrant notes, and Hanrald and Alicia shouted the name of Callidyrr as they raised their swords and charged across the heaving planks of the Manta’s deck.

  A lightning bolt crackled over Alicia’s head, blasting a gap in the rank of sahuagin standing ready to meet her. Hanrald’s two-handed sword chopped a pair of the creatures in half, while Alicia stabbed one and quickly parried another’s return blow. The second one lunged a fatal step too far, and her dripping blade drove through its neck to make her second clean kill.

  Alicia saw her changestaff slip and fall, splashing through one of the slots in the hull, but then the limbs extended across the rowing bench, and slowly the stiff wooden shape scrambled back to the Manta. A huge scrag leaped at it, splintering one armlike limb with a crushing axe blow, but the tree being’s other arm wrapped swiftly around the scrag’s ankles, pulling the beast to the deck. The monster howled in pain as the wooden form twisted its body into a crippled mass of scaly flesh, finally tossing the grotesque thing to the sharks.

  “Attack! Take the fight right to ’em!” bellowed Brandon, gathering his crew for a charge.

  The water elemental and the prince led the lumbering assault. The humans formed a V-shaped wave with Brandon at the point as they battled their way across the rocking deck of the Manta. Several men fell through the rowing slots in the chaos of the battle, plunging into water churning with hungry sharks, but there was no stopping to save them as the battle rose to a furious pitch.

  Alicia’s vision focused on an array of fang-studded mouths and ripping, wickedly curved talons. Her blade claimed victim after victim, and she drew comfort from Hanrald’s steady presence at her side. On the other side of the earl, Brigit Cu-’Lyrran held her own, her silvery longsword streaked with the green, red, and black blood of their fishlike enemies.

  Robyn advanced in the rear of the attacking wave, going to each of the sea trolls wounded or temporarily slain in the battle. To these wretched predators she touched the tip of her staff, and the body crackled into flame, sputtering an oily cloud of black smoke into the air. The legs and arms of the horrid beasts shriveled into the flames as the magical fires devoured their grotesque fuel.

  Arrows showered overhead as the longbowmen, standing at the rail of the Princess of Moonshae, continued to support the attack. When the assault carried halfway across the Manta, a huge scrag organized a counterattack, a rush of monsters that took the humans by surprise. Several crewmen fell, and Alicia lost her footing on the blood-and-water-slicked deck.

  She teetered at the brink of a foaming slot in the deck, sensing the sharks thrashing below, eager for her blood. Desperately she reached out, but her hand slipped across the slick timbers. Then she felt a firm grip under her arm, and Keane pulled her backward, just beyond the thrust of a monstrous
scrag. Her feet splashed into the water, and she felt a sharp cut in her calf as a snapping shark narrowly missed a meal.

  The mage barked a command word as a sea troll—the hugest Alicia had ever seen—raised a monstrous trident. Keane pointed over Alicia’s head, and she saw bolts of magic explode from the mage’s outstretched finger, each of the missiles spattering into the chest of the monster, driving it steadily backward until, after nearly a dozen blasts, a mass of sahuagin rushed forward, blocking the magic-user’s line of fire. The fishmen swarmed around the water elemental, and though many of them fell from the creature’s crushing blows, finally the enchanted being collapsed into water, flowing back into the sea from which he had come.

  Brandon personally led a charge toward the huge scrag. The other monsters deferred to the great creature, who wielded a monstrous double-bladed sword. The Prince of Gnarhelm struck at the thing with his axe, and the sea troll slowly, steadily gave ground.

  Hanrald and Knaff the Elder stepped in to guard the captain’s flanks, while Alicia turned to look back to her mother, intent on protecting her against any monsters who might break through the rank of northmen. She saw a monstrous sea troll fell a crewman and charge forward with an upraised spear aimed straight at the High Queen’s heart!

  But Alicia leaped across a slot of churning seawater, getting there first, chopping savagely to hamstring the charging monster before it could cast its weapon. The beast fell and she cut its throat, stabbing hard to penetrate the scrag’s scaly armor. Quickly her mother stepped to her side, stamping her staff against the sea troll and starting its incineration.

  Brandon and the monstrous scrag chopped and slashed back and forth, the northman swinging his great battle-axe with bone-crushing force, the scrag wielding the massive sword as if he were a lumberjack striving to fell a tree with a single blow. Again and again the two metal blades clashed together, neither fighter able to gain an advantage as they leaped and dodged across the blood-slicked planks of the Manta’s deck.