“It is not clarification of my nightmare dreaming that I seek,” Oxothyr explained respectfully, “but illumination of a different kind. All I and my companions would ask of you is that …”
“Revered teachers!”
Every one of the visitors turned in the direction of the unexpected interruption, which was as loud as it was impassioned. Even the thus far silent members of the Tornal bestirred themselves to stare.
The disruption came from the cuttlefish majordomo who had escorted the travelers into the Tornal’s presence. He did not look particularly wild-eyed, a dumbfounded Irina decided. At least, no more so than Glint or any other specimen of his kind. An abnormal trembling had taken hold of his exquisitely adorned fins. Most telling of all, his body had gone completely white—an unmistakable sign among cephalopodan folk of fear, terror, or the deepest possible anxiety.
The ammonite who was serving as Speaker for the Tornal responded placidly. “Verbal intimation of panic is insufficiently informative. Explain this intrusion.” When the cuttlefish hesitated, eyeing the visitors, the old one added, “In this chamber there are no secrets from honest supplicants. Speak.”
Plainly, the cuttlefish was struggling to control himself. “A group of commercial scavengers was scouring the valley to the east of the Halatanea Smokers. They returned as fast as they could in order to pass on the news.”
One of the long, spear-shaped orthoceras spoke up, grumbling. “What news?”
Since it could not turn its head, the cuttlefish shifted its entire body to more squarely face the speaker. “Spralakers! Tens of thousands of them, armed and eager, coming this way from not one but two directions.” As he spoke, the cuttlefish gestured wildly with all ten arms. Seen from the front, Irina thought, the agitated major domo looked like a nest of cobras on drugs.
“Two separate armies,” the cuttlefish continued frantically. “One approaching the terraces from the southern plains, the other advancing along the middle shelf.”
Edging together until their tentacles all but touched, the Tornal hurriedly caucused among themselves. They did not talk long.
“Alert those in charge of the city’s defenses,” commanded the ammonite speaker stridently. “Let those who would flee in the face of danger do so. All who remain will be expected to stay, stand, and fight!”
“This is an outrageous provocation,” declared another ammonite, his short tentacles writhing in front of his face. “Outrageous, and futile.”
“They will all perish.” The orthocera beside him spoke knowingly. “The spralakers understand only how to fight among themselves. They do not know how to contest with an adversary who is organized and determined. What can they possibly be hoping to achieve in trying to attack Benthicalia?”
Before another member of the Tornal could comment, Oxothyr raised several arms to attract their attention. In order to do so he had to shove aside the pair of frantic famuli who tried their utmost to restrain him.
“I believe I may have an answer to that.”
The Speaker-for-the-Tornal turned incredibly aged eyes on the octopod shaman from far Sandrift. “Any explanation for this apparent outbreak of mass spralaker lunacy would be most welcome.”
“You may not think so after you have heard it.” Oxothyr plunged on in spite of his assistants’ obvious unease.
“I believe they may be looking for us.”
— XIX —
Gubujul had to admit that the trappings of power which attached to the nominal commander of a vast military force exceeded in allure even those that accrued to the position of Paramount Advisor to the Great Lord. In the absence of Kulakak himself, the ranks of dedicated and determined soldiers were left looking up to him. The senior officers of the two armies felt otherwise, seeing the Lord’s hand-picked Advisor as inexperienced and untested. In the course of the long march southwest, however, Gubujul managed to win them over one by one. To some he promised favors of a personal nature, to others promotion, to still others an assurance that despite his position he would not interfere with their decisions on the field of battle.
“I know my abilities,” he informed them, “and I know my limitations. I am here to give you support, not to obstruct your efforts. The last thing any of us want is to return home in failure. Better to die here, in glorious struggle on behalf of all our people!”
His words went down well. They ought to, he reflected. Having survived many years rising through the murderous, self-aggrandizing levels at court, they had been honed to perfection.
Though not in line for the throne—he could never defeat the prospective challengers in combat—his official position was so fraught with uncertainty that it was not actively sought. Living every day on the cusp of death, living or dying at the whim of the Great Lord, was not a way of life that appealed to many. Gubujul, in contrast, thrived on the pressure. Compared to dealing with the Great Lord’s unpredictable moods, supervising a vast military campaign bordered on a vacation.
Regular communications reached him from the Second Army. The intent was to approach Benthicalia from two directions; from the flat, shelving plain at its base and from the deep reef above. A coordinated attack by the two spralaker armies would force the city’s defenders to divide their forces. Gravity would aid his own troops as, once over the outer walls, they cast themselves upon the inner city like grains of sand stirred up by an earthquake. The tremors that would shake and finally destroy Benthicalia would come from the feet of his soldiers.
The senior officers were confident. Few of them had supported the previous limited incursions into the southern reefs, even though these had resulted in the destruction of the town known as Shakestone and the near taking of the much larger community called Siriswirll. The Marshals had always argued for an all-out onslaught in force. Now they felt they had been given the troops to do the job.
“The mersons and the manyarms are swifter and far more agile,” Mud Marshal Cavaumaz had pointed out, “but we are individually strong, and we have the advantage of numbers. If we stick to our strengths we will surely win the day.”
Certainly the First Army was an impressive force. Incorporating soldiers drawn from throughout the many species of spralaker who lived in the northern waters, they covered the reef lines and ridges with their bodies, advancing sideways in endless number. Legions of impressed or engaged eagle, bull, golden, and manta rays transported hundreds of fighters at a time across chasms too deep to scuttle or too wide to swim.
Though they brought supplies with them, both armies felt free to live off the sea bottom, scavenging as they marched. Entire reef systems were scoured of life as the two armies advancing in parallel consumed everything along their route down to the coral polyps themselves. Unallied fish, inadvertent invertebrates, slow-moving mollusks, innocent worms and panicked nudibranchs—all vanished into the thousands of voracious, ever-hungry maws of the two spralaker forces. Small villages unfortunate enough to lie in the path of either army simply vanished. Such pleasant encounters offered the tirelessly marching soldiers welcome diversion in the form of entertaining opportunities to pillage and murder. As for the fate of the residents of these unceremoniously obliterated communities, the usual taking of prisoners was superceded by the need for both armies to continuously replenish their respective larders.
For the one in charge, the long march to the southwest passed pleasantly. Never in any danger, Gubujul essentially had an entire army at his personal beck and call. The day eventually came, however, when the lights of Benthicalia could be discerned as a faint glow in the distance, and the time for relaxation and effortless if minor triumphs was at an end.
Crouching respectfully before him on the last ridge line facing Benthicalia was the trio of spralakers who comprised the First Army’s strategic brain trust. Each had risen through the ranks to assume the exalted title of Mud Marshal of the Hardshelled. Two were crab-folk. Bejuryar was a smaller but no less fearless member of the same species as the Great Lord himself. Cavaumaz was a fiddler,
whose great metal-inlaid right claw was ever poised to snip off a piece of any subordinate who disappointed him—or the head of a merson. Smallest but perhaps toughest of all was Taww, a squat lobster whose mastery of tactics had seen her overcome physical inadequacies that would have soon discouraged a lesser spralaker.
“Everything is in readiness, Paramount Advisor.” In a sign of deference Bejuryar dipped his eyestalks forward. “We await only your command to begin the assault.”
Gubujul wished for more light so as to render the jewels he was wearing suitably magnificent. He felt certain that their bioluminescent bezels were insufficient to adequately accentuate his carefully sculpted splendor.
“What word from Marshal Xorovic and the Second Army?”
“They are in position, Paramount Advisor.” Cavaumaz gestured with his oversized right claw. The inner edges of the enormous pincer had been ground to battle-ready razor-sharpness, their gripping edges refined and filed down to killing points. “Xorovic and I have worked together in the past, on traditional smaller raiding expeditions in the far north. We know each other and our mutual stratagems well, and will act as one.”
Gubujul’s multiple antennae bobbed and weaved as his much smaller front pincers opened and closed nervously. The magnitude of what he was about to unleash weighed heavily on him.
“I have complete confidence in you all. I will look on, and be available to give what advice and suggestion I can, but will otherwise stay out of your way.”
Insignia gleaming in the reduced light, Marshall Taww scuttled slightly forward. “We will be relying on you, should the need necessitate, to introduce into the forthcoming clash those special weapons with which you alone have been furnished, Paramount Advisor.”
Nodding, Gubujul glanced reflexively across the stone mount in the direction of his personal retinue. Squatting there among other attendants and servants, four stout spralakers surrounded an oval container that had been fashioned from the upper shells of a pair of captured and long-since consumed hawksbills. Polished to a high, dark brown sheen, the shimmering turtle-shell crate contained certain disturbing talismans the use of which the dread Sajjabax had charged to Gubujul’s care and to Gubujul alone.
The Paramount Advisor quite understood the Marshal’s concern. Knowing what sinister devices the box held and having been instructed in their use, Gubujul was as afraid for himself should he have to make use of them as he was for their intended targets. In fact, he was downright terrified of the glistening container’s contents, though of course he dared not show it.
“Do not worry,” he assured the diminutive Marshal with more bravado than he felt. “If and when the need for such intervention arises, I will be there to support you with a sampling of the supreme sortilege of which only the great shaman Sajjabax himself is master.”
If what lies within doesn’t tear me to pieces first, he concluded bleakly to himself.
O O O
At first there was panic. It was to be expected. While remote villages and far-flung foraging parties working the most distant northerly reefs had historically been subject to occasional isolated attack by roving packs of enterprising spralakers, Benthicalia’s size and strength had kept it from ever being assaulted. That reputation combined with the status enjoyed by the resident and revered Tornal had been sufficient to ensure the city’s security for hundreds of years. Suddenly finding itself threatened by not one but two entire spralaker armies came as a shock that found its residents unprepared.
Order was restored quickly enough, however, as municipal authorities unlimbered long-dormant plans for the city’s defense in the event of such an unlikely assault. A principal reason Benthicalia had never been attacked was simply because it did boast strong, if untested, defenses. When broken, the seals on long disused armories revealed mountains of weaponry. This was rapidly dispersed among an increasingly resolute citizenry. The giant deep-water anemones that thrived atop many buildings were alerted to their forthcoming duties via communication with the fish that lived among them.
Comprised of thousands of coral structures, the maze that was Benthicalia was turned into a death trap for any spralaker that might make it past the city’s outer defenses. Even an aged manyarm, if well-armed, could prove nearly impossible to extract from a hole. Any merson could swim circles around an armed spralaker. Citizens invested with long-established rank were quickly assembled into a determined, mobile fighting force under the supervision of the professionals who were responsible for defending travelers and the general population from marauding sharks and other more conventional threats.
Befitting a community its size, Benthicalia rapidly put into the field two contingents of willing fighters each of which by itself was far larger than the force that had driven the invading hardshells from threatened Siriswirll. Confidence and determination soon replaced the panic that had greeted the initial reports of the spralaker incursion. Now under arms, citizens and soldiers alike prepared to defend their city, increasingly confident in their abilities and in the knowledge that in the collective wisdom of the Tornal they were supported by an accumulation of strategic skills that stretched a thousand years and more into Oshenerth’s storied past.
Like a flat stone caught in a slow but strong current, the bemused contingent from Sandrift and Siriswirll found itself swept up in the frenzied preparations for the defense of the city. Drifting above the ancient, eroded outer wall of coral blocks that enclosed and protected the north side of the terraced metropolis from spralaker attack, the visitors from the upper reefs argued among themselves how they could best be of assistance in the forthcoming clash. As transients they constituted an independent entity that would be allowed to make its own decisions and operate according to its own rules. So long as their actions did not conflict with Tornal-transmitted tactics, they could participate in the forthcoming fight however they saw fit.
While there was little doubt among the visitors that they were obligated to take part in the great battle to come, there was at least one who was not afraid to dissent.
Floating in near darkness high above the city wall, his face visible only because of a necklace of semi-soft luminescent tunicates, Chachel peered into the dark distance and voiced his discontent.
“We helped to save Siriswirll and nearly got killed for our trouble. We’ve come all this way to Benthicalia so that Oxothyr could ask his question of the Tornal.” Turning slightly in the water, he looked to his right. “If the danger that brought us here in the first place exceeds that threatened by this impending onslaught, shaman, shouldn’t you ask your question and see us away from here before chaos erupts all around like the black smokers that surround the city?”
“I might have expected you to say something like that.” Nearby, Jorosab growled his contempt. “I’m only surprised it took you this long. Of course, someone missing half a leg and a whole eye might be expected to be hesitant to go into battle against a fully-equipped army.” When Chachel refused to be baited and simply ignored him, the muscular Sandrift soldier used his spear to gesture at the city behind them. “These people need our help.”
Chachel gazed stonily at his colleague. “So does the shaman.” His attention snapped back to Oxothyr.
Everyone needs my help, the elderly octopod mused tiredly. Individuals like the changeling. Towns like Siriswirll. Cities like Benthicalia. Perhaps all of Oshenerth. With every passing day he was increasingly aware of the burden that had been placed on him by his damnable perception. He would have been happy to be free of it. Yet he could no more ignore what he sensed than he could blind himself to the neediness of those depending on him.
I should have mated, he thought wearily. I should have had offspring. How he longed for the peaceful, scholarly confines of his secure, silent abode in the reef near Sandrift! For the time to study, to learn, to analyze. Instead of private revelation he found himself compelled to spend precious life-hours preserving public welfare. He was only able to rationalize his continuing efforts by reminding himsel
f that if the lands of the reefs fell to the looming threat from the north, his cozy refuge would be overwhelmed as utterly as that of any simple villager or farmer. While not a deciding factor, it was nice when private needs inadvertently benefited the public good.
He could have simply fled. To the distant west, perhaps, and its mysterious but purportedly hospitable waters. He could have taken Sathi and Tythe with him and left the defiant Chachel and the confused changeling Irina and all the bewildered and panicky inhabitants of Sandrift and Siriswirll and Benthicalia and all the other towns and cities of the south to their own devices. But that, in its turn, would have given rise to another problem.
He would have been obliged thereafter to live with himself.
He became aware they were all staring at him, his two anxious famuli included. So many eyes, so many needs—merson as well as manyarm. Knowing they were expecting him to respond, he raised one arm.
“You are both correct. Jorosab is right when he declares that the people of Benthicalia deserve our support.” Penetrating eyes shifted in the dim light. “Chachel is right when he says that we should stay focused on the greater danger. You ask me to resolve the conundrum. I need not do so because it is resolved for us.”
Fittingly, both Chachel and Jorosab looked confused by the shaman’s finding. So did Poylee, who had taken the opportunity to show her support for the hunter’s position by moving closer to him. Not that it mattered to her what position he espoused.
Oxothyr proceeded to explain himself. “The two spralaker armies are almost within striking distance of the city. As at Shakestone, they will be intent on slaughter and plunder. To ensure that they maximize both, they will have sent out flanking patrols in every direction. Were we to try and leave now, even after having gained the Tornal’s answer to my question, the chances of running into such a patrol would be very great. The hardshells are not likely to repeat the mistake they made at Siriswirll and allow the city’s residents to put out a call for reinforcements.”