Ahead, ranks of spralakers marched in unison toward the makeshift wall that stood between them and the village of Siriswirll. The town itself was something of a shock. It was much bigger than Sandrift or ruined Shakestone. Some of the structures, whose coral growth had been channeled and accelerated by merson architects and engineers, were four and five stories high. Fanciful spires and decorative protrusions erupted outward from the tallest buildings as the deftly nurtured polyps of which they were composed sought room to grow. The majority varied from a very pale pink to a deep purplish-red, though there were also edifices of bright blue, intense yellow, and in one spectacular instance, a sizeable domed structure of coral that was tinted a vivid violet.
There was no sign of either the community’s senior or most youthful inhabitants. Either they had been rushed to a place of greater safety, she decided, or else they were huddled somewhere deep inside the town.
Where the advancing lines of spralakers had reached the wall, the water boiled with mayhem. She swallowed hard as she looked on. Every variety and species of hardshell imaginable, including many entirely alien to her, seemed to be taking part in the assault, from small blue snappers whose legs would barely have spanned her open palm to others who … that were …
Some of the attacking spralakers were as big as tanks.
She could hardly believe the evidence of her own eyes. What she was seeing was incredible. Even the largest relatives of the spralakers in her own world were no bigger than a human. Pressing the attack in front of and below her were gargantuan crustaceans whose dimensions had no precedent in her experience. Some boasted claws larger than her own body. They could easily snip a person in half. Repressing her gag reflex, she saw that at several points along the rubble wall they had already done so to some of the town’s defenders.
Nor were the besiegers relying on their natural endowments alone. A few of the largest wielded double-headed axes whose ribbed blades were fashioned from the sharpened halves of tridacna shell. Others thrust and jabbed with spears no less lethal than those carried by mersons and manyarms. In lieu of the bows their powerful but inflexible limbs could not properly manipulate, they attacked from a distance by throwing chunks of coral and small boulders. Stones were hard to heave underwater, but once at the crest of their respective arcs, they gathered momentum as they descended. Many of the rocks had been shaped and given points that enabled them to move through the water with speed.
The gory sprawl of severed body parts and dismembered corpses would have crowded the battlefield enough to interfere with fighting if not for the powerful current that swept up from behind the town and carried much of the frightful detritus away. Somewhere off to the east, she knew, those same undisciplined and unmanageable sharks of whom Glint had spoken must be enjoying a feast of unprecedented dimensions.
An upsurge of spears and stones began to rise from below. While they fell short of their intended targets, it was a sign that the relief force had been spotted.
Sandrift’s commanders wasted no time. The order was given and relayed the length of each line. One column peeled off to the right, the other to the left. Heart pounding, Irina gripped her spear so tight that her fingers turned almost as white as the bone shaft. Then, barely aware of what she was doing, she was diving downward, kicking hard as she strained not to lose sight of Chachel and Glint.
What am I doing here? she thought. Events left her no time to formulate a response. Soon she had leveled off and found herself joining several of Sandrift’s fighters as they surrounded a spralaker the size of a luxury sedan. The raucous turmoil of battle that now enveloped her was deafening and she could hardly hear. Blood and body parts, including among the latter many soft shapes she did not recognize and did not want to, eddied around her position as she was caught up in a maelstrom of wide-ranging butchery.
Seafood, she told herself. It’s all just seafood. Then the head of a merson came tumbling past, its body nowhere to be seen, the eyes open, vacant, staring, emphatically unfishlike, and the consoling analogy she had just invented for herself evaporated like spit in a steel foundry. She did not throw up only because she was too busy defending herself from snapping claws that could effortlessly rip her to shreds.
Sandrift’s leaders had chosen the perfect time to attack. Shafting down through the warm water, the rising sun momentarily disoriented those spralakers who turned to fight back. Retracting eyestalks into protective shells shielded them from the light but sacrificed critical peripheral vision.
The relief force’s surprise was nearly complete. Diving down among the rearward ranks of the attackers, the merson and manyarm soldiers of Sandrift proceeded to sow doubt, death, and destruction.
Rising above the tumult of battle, cries of excitement and renewed hope came from the vicinity of Siriswirll’s defensive wall. In ones and twos, then small groups, and finally in a wave of spears and ink, the town’s hard-pressed defenders came swarming out from behind their protective bulwark to confront their attackers. Beset from behind, in front, and from above by a reinvigorated defense, the methodical advance of the spralakers hesitated, stalled, and began to collapse.
In the midst of the ensuing vacillation and in an attempt to break once and for all the iron will of their assailants, the defenders of Siriswirll sent forth the shock force they had been holding back as a last reserve. Each individual steered and led by a single manyarm clinging to its back, the team of dark green bumphead parrotfish came swimming over the wall to hurl itself at the center of the spralaker line. There was no need for reins or other means of guidance. Equipped with multiple arms, the manyarm riders maintained effortless control of their mounts.
Boasting beaks powerful enough to crunch and consume solid coral, the bumpheads were able to bite through the tough protective shells of even the biggest spralakers as if they were made of paper. In lieu of human screams and manyarm squeals, dying spralakers emitted loud, discordant hissing noises. As the bumpheads wrought their havoc and the soldiers of Sandrift slashed and speared from behind and above, the battlefield became dominated by the horrid cacophony of collapsing crab-shapes.
Then, just as the spralaker force was on the verge of breaking and fleeing, they were rallied by a singular entity. There were larger crustaceans on the field, many who were swifter or stronger—but none so commanding. With his bright crimson shell inlaid with gold symbols and glyphs, the spralaker commandant cut a striking multi-limbed figure. Arms held aloft, claws clacking like castanets, he hissed out one directive after another.
Rejuvenated by the definitive commands and cool confidence that had appeared in their midst, uncertain spralakers rallied around their senior officer. Sharp-clawed fighters closed ranks. Instead of advancing in successive lines, they began to form concentric circles. Gradually the newly applied defensive maneuver drew the surviving spralaker soldiers into a series of larger and larger rings, each of which served to defend the one immediately in front of it as well as the one behind.
True, they were no longer assaulting the town or the improvised defensive wall, but in their new battlefield configuration neither could the attacking force be easily defeated. Soldiers of Sandrift and Siriswirll were forced to hold back. Attempting to spear a chosen target that was surrounded on every side by active, alert co-defenders was much harder than sticking a preoccupied attacker from behind.
Swimming well above the condensed spralaker throng, mersons and manyarms sheathed their spears and brought forth their bows and arrows. Occasionally a shaft would strike an unprotected spot and a spralaker would go down. But its place was immediately taken by one of its neighbors, and the defensive circle maintained.
Their confidence increasingly restored, the entire mass of shells, claws, and legs began to move slowly but relentlessly in the direction of Siriswirll. And this time no wall or line of defenders would be able to stop them.
Though no military tactician, even Irina could see what was happening. Finding Oxothyr flanked by his two agitated famuli, she express
ed her alarm aloud.
“Use your magic, shaman! Can’t you stop this?” Having retreated to a safe height, she gestured downward. “They’ve positioned themselves so that each one helps to shield the one next to it.”
A reassuring arm snaked around her shoulders. “Patience, changeling. Watch and learn. There are things that in battle are even more effective than magic.”
She didn’t understand. “What could be more effective than magic?”
Both great eyes turned to her. “Pain, for one thing.” Two arms gestured. “Having experienced a good deal of it himself, our reclusive hunter also knows how to convey it.”
Irina looked to where the shaman was pointing. The first thing she saw was Chachel, diving downward. The other merson who had been with him on the scouting mission—Jorosab, his name was—flanked the hunter on his left. Somewhat disconcertingly, Poylee swam off to his right. Glint was there, also, together with a dozen or so other members of the Sandrift relief force. Each of the manyarms was wielding a single long-range bow of such size that every cuttlefish, squid, or octopus had to be pushed through the water by an accompanying biped. Serving now as mere conveyances, Chachel and his fellow mersons had sheathed their own spears. Freed of the need to propel themselves, manyarms were notching arrows to baleen bows that were being stretched to their limits.
How could a few oversized arrows make any difference, Irina found herself wondering as she looked on? They might make some kills, yet surely they could not halt the slow but methodical advance of the now rejuvenated and determined spralaker legion?
It struck her that there was something odd about the end of each arrow. Instead of the familiar bone or shell point the tips appeared bloated and globular. They looked too blunt to penetrate a sponge, far less the hard shell of a spralaker. She voiced her disquiet to Oxothyr.
“Your eyes work well, Irina-changeling.” The shaman could not smile, but she received the impression of one. “Keep watching.”
Reacting to the attack from above, a number of the advancing spralakers heaved rocks and long knives. All fell short of their intended target as the fighters from Sandrift unleashed their shafts. More than a dozen plunged downward to strike at the advancing horde. As Irina had predicted, the swollen, bulbous heads of the arrows did not penetrate a single hardshell. Instead, they burst on impact.
For several long moments it appeared as though nothing had changed. The concentric circles of spralaker soldiers maintained their steady advance. Then the center of the attacking multitude began to crumple. Shrieking and chittering, one spralaker after another fought to climb to imagined safety over the carapaces of its startled comrades. Others clawed frantically at themselves. Some went to the extreme of tearing off affected body parts that had begun screaming with pain.
The burst of frenzied activity served to spread the unexpected contagion to more and more of the unsuspecting foe. Curving around in a wide arc, this time the dozen or so manyarm archers and their grim-faced merson mounts dove on the front line of the spralaker swarm. Unleashing a second barrage, they sowed havoc in the center of the attackers’ advance.
From above and behind, an uncomprehending Irina watched anarchy unfold like a black flower among the enemy. “I don’t understand what’s happening.” She looked to Oxothyr, drifting contentedly beside her in a tangle of serpentine arms. “What are on the tips of the arrows our people are firing?”
“Spherical tunicates, Irina-changeling. Simple spherical tunicates. But not the harmless transparent creatures you may be familiar with. Each of these has had its body carefully stuffed with dozens and dozens of tiny jellyfish.”
Jellyfish, she thought. “What kind of jellyfish, shaman?”
Oxothyr returned his attention to the continuing battle below. The entire spralaker force was on the verge of falling apart, the panic that had begun to spread among it doing more damage than actual contact with the contents of the manyarms’ arrows.
“Very small creatures,” he explained. “We call them Death Cubes. One who did not know them would be astonished at their toxicity and think it the result of some lethal magick. But the power of their stings is such that they require no thaumaturgical enhancement.” He went on to describe shape and color and …
Cubes, Irina thought intently. A cube was a small box. Box jellyfish—irukandji! Within its nematocysts, or stinging cells, was contained a poison that ranked among the most powerful known. Untreated, it could kill a swimmer in minutes—or in sufficient quantity, even the largest spralaker.
Venom, it appeared, retained its lethal characteristics across worlds.
If anything, the mounting chorus of inhuman shrieks from the seafloor below was intensifying. Not only was the sting of the irukandji deadly, it was also incredibly painful. Frantic spralakers were running in all directions now, scuttling desperately sideways on their multiple legs as the manyarm archers dove and struck for a third time. By now all thoughts of taking Siriswirll had evaporated in the attackers’ desperate attempts to scramble or swim clear of the clusters of tiny jellyfish. Where a tentacle struck a fleeing enemy soldier, it left behind an angry welt on previously unscarred carapace. Where it made contact with a soft or sensitive body part, a spralaker died.
Everywhere Irina looked, spralakers were screaming, convulsing, and dying, helpless legs and powerful claws twitching and spasming uncontrollably as the frightful poison short-circuited their nervous systems. Yet despite the chaos and confusion being sown by Sandrift’s bow-wielding cephalopods, the struggle for Siriswirll was not over. The spralakers had one more tactic, one more trick, hidden behind their eyestalks.
Sathi saw them first. Hovering above and to one side of his master, he pointed out the dark shape in the distance that was rapidly approaching the field of battle.
“Master, look! There to the north, where the reef line drops away to the deep. What can it be?”
Oxothyr pivoted upon himself as Irina turned less gracefully to gaze in the same direction. The shaman said nothing, staring at the oncoming darkness until it resolved itself into individual shapes.
“More trouble,” he finally announced. “Tythe, Sathi—summon the silver squadron. The time for them to enter the fight nears.” A pause, then, “What are you waiting for? Stop sucking on your own siphons and make haste!”
Turning tail, the two famuli immediately shot off in the direction of the rear lines, where the last and most significant reserves from Sandrift awaited orders to enter the battle.
Drifting nearer to a confused Irina, Oxothyr slid several arms protectively around her. “I think we will be safe here, changeling—but I cannot tell for how long.”
“But why? What are …?”
The approaching dark mass resolved itself into multiple individual shapes, and she understood.
Some of the mantas in the fast-approaching school must have weighed more than half a ton. How the spralakers had inveigled, or forced, or persuaded them to take part in the fight Irina could not imagine. But it stood to reason that if the mersons could train or cajole fish to fight with them, as they had the bumpheads, then wily spralakers could do the same.
The rationale for the involvement of the big pelagics was immediately clear. Several armed spralakers rode atop each fast-swimming giant. In acquiring this single imposing ally the enemy had overcome the strategic liability posed by their inability to swim. As the school of mantas passed overhead, it began to rain spralakers. Spreading their legs wide and using their flattened bodies to slow their descent, the enemy for the first time was able to mount an attack from above. Short spears, rocks, scythe-like throwing shells and armfuls of poisonous urchins fell from the sky like lethal snowflakes.
Forced to dodge the shower of small weapons that could prove fatal to their soft bodies but that bounced or skid harmlessly off spralaker armor, the soldiers of Siriswirll and Sandrift found themselves exposed to renewed enemy strikes from below. Suddenly the tide of battle threatened to shift back in favor of the aggressors. Nor did the
school of rays limit themselves to releasing weapons and soldiers onto the field of battle. Continuing onward to pass above Siriswirll itself, they began to drop dozens of spralaker troops directly onto the town.
While larger soldier’s hardshells dealt with the villagers’ handful of desperate internal defenders, smaller specialist spralakers who had arrived with them were removing containers from their backs. These contained a distinctive blend of acids. Heavier than the surrounding seawater, when poured out it dissolved holes in the coral rock of the town’s buildings. In this fashion the spralaker invaders ate their way into structures intended to repel outsiders, where the community’s young and elderly had congregated for safety.
Beyond the town boundaries and hovering above and behind the increasingly fractious and disorganized battle, Irina and the counselors from Sandrift observed the disarray with increasing dismay. Outwardly Oxothyr exhibited no anxiety, but it was clear as he stared off to the southwest that he was growing increasingly impatient.
“What’s happened to those two idiots? If they’ve stopped to feed on anthias or cardinals, I’ll turn them both into limpets!”
Floating beside him, Irina tried to ready herself mentally to rejoin the fight. It was evident that every hand was going to be needed or else the spralakers were going to take the town. She said as much to the shaman.
He regarded her out of sad, cephalopodan eyes. “You are not trained for this, changeling. But though there is much I would still like to learn from you about your world and your kind, I cannot in good conscience order you to stay back while others are dying. Go and kill, if you will. Watch out for the left claw of the spralaker: they usually feint first with their right.”
She acknowledged the advice, lowered her head, threw her feet toward the sky and kicked downward. Her effort moved her only a couple of feet before a powerful tentacle wrapped around one ankle and held her back.
“Just possibly,” the shaman explained by way of apology, “your exertions and possible sacrifice may not after all be required.” As she straightened in the water, upside down and confused, she looked to where he was pointing. The other counselors were cheering. Sathi and Tythe had neither abandoned nor failed their instructions: they were just a little late.