—X—
There was a sameness to the terrain near Siriswirll that troubled her for reasons she could not pin down. The feeling of disquiet did not leave as she helped, insofar as she could, other members of the expedition to set up the rest of the camp. An explanation for her unease did not occur to her until that evening, when she realized the scenery and the sights that surrounded her at this new location were every bit as fascinating, absorbing, and colorful as those she had encountered at Sandrift or, its destruction notwithstanding, at Shakestone. Beauty was everywhere: in the outrageously colorful fish swarming the reef, in the striking pelagics who patrolled its outer limits, in the sand and the rock and the crevices in the coral.
That was the problem.
As an occasional visitor to the underwater realm of her own world, she had been endlessly enthralled by what she had encountered there. Living, existing in such an environment on a daily basis, was leading toward her already becoming jaded. That was why the “sameness” of Siriswirll had unsettled her.
As if responding to her newfound ennui, something entirely new and strange was about to present itself.
She was resting near several other merson females, listening to their discussion without joining in. They did not extend themselves to bring her into the conversation but neither did they shun her. Soon most of the tethered or englobed glowfish and coelenterates illuminating the camp would be shrouded for the night. Except for the light of the moon filtering down through the mirrorsky, darkness would descend upon the expedition.
Out at the extreme range of her underwater night vision a line of sapphires appeared, marching determinedly eastward.
Sitting up straight on the patch of white sand, she found herself staring hard into the distance. Her eyes were not deceiving her. The dots of incredibly intense blue light were wending a winding path upward toward the top of the circular reef that had been chosen by the counselors, for its location and defensibility, as a campsite. Risking censure, she broke into the ongoing chatter long enough to elicit an explanation.
“Oh, I forget,” replied an older merson, “you’re unfamiliar with the simplest things.” She nodded in the direction of the cobalt column. “It’s just a procession of hoobia.”
“What are hoobia?”
The female shook her head slowly, pitying the changeling’s ignorance. “Go and see for yourself if you want. Hoobia of all kinds are harmless. Messy sometimes, but harmless. But don’t stray beyond the camp boundaries.”
No worries about that, Irina knew as she finned off toward the line of intense blue. She had already lost her world. If at night in an unfamiliar ocean she lost sight of the camp, she might as well seal shut her gill slits and give up.
As soon as she drew close to what from a distance looked like a queen’s unwound necklace, she understood what hoobia were. Nudibranchs, snails without shells or operculum, their backs were dotted with bioluminescent blue circlets that glowed in the darkness. Only, in the seas she was familiar with, there crawled nothing so brilliant, so beautiful, so utterly defining of the description blue. The organically-generated lights were almost electric, so intense was their radiance. Why the spectacular nudibranchs were marching in single file toward the shallowest part of the reef, where wavelets broke on its crest, she had no idea.
So she asked them. The last thing she expected was a reply. But in Oshenerth, it seemed, every creature large or small was capable of conversing to a greater or lesser extent. Where bioluminescent nudibranchs were concerned, it seemed that lesser was certainly the case.
Neither leader nor trailer, one azure crawler fluttered its feathery gills in her direction and explained in response to her inquiry, “We don’t know. Some nights we go up the reef. Some nights we go down.”
Hovering in the warm, dark water just above and to one side of the column of living jewels, she persisted. “But why go in line together? Where I come from, your kind always travel individually.”
A second sapphire-laden snail spoke up. “They must be lonely.”
And that was that. Turning, she kicked back toward camp. Behind her, the column of thrillingly luminous living blue continued to thread its shimmering cerulean path upward. As she swam, she felt improbably better about alien surroundings that could once again no longer be counted on to be wholly predictable.
Unrequited beauty will do that to a person.
* * *
Preoccupied with her own thoughts and concerns, she had not seen the trio of scouts leave as darkness began to fall. While the rest of the expedition remained in temporary encampment, Chachel, the powerfully built Jorosab, and Glint struck out for Siriswirll on orders from the council members to reconnoiter the situation and report back as quickly as possible. Jorosab had been sent because of his fighting prowess and a professed indifference to whomever might accompany him. Chachel and Glint had been chosen because if they didn’t make it back, the council presumed no one in Sandrift would miss or mourn them.
Guided by a negligible, pale red glow generated by Glint, they worked their way to the west, hugging the sea floor where the natural light from above the mirrorsky was least likely to reveal them to any patrolling spralakers. The occasional inquisitive night hunters they met hurriedly turned tail to avoid armed manyarm and mersons as soon as they were recognized. The one big shark they encountered out foraging was a ragged-tooth; impressive in size and fearsome of appearance but among the more inoffensive of its kind. It muttered a characteristically passive apology for getting in their way and slothfully moved off into the dark.
As morning began to seep through the water and the three scouts moved on, the constant clicking and chatter of nocturnal reef dwellers gave way to a distant and unmistakably unnatural clamor. Though still indistinct, its source lay directly ahead. Plainly, the commotion was coming from somewhere in the vicinity of Siriswirll. To the approaching mersons and manyarm it was at once alien yet familiar. All of them had heard screaming before; Chachel had heard more than most. But nothing like this. Never en masse, arising simultaneously from so many different kinds of throats.
“Slow and careful now,” the hunter whispered. “If we are seen, we’re lost.”
“Don’t tell me my business, hermit,” Jorosab growled.
“Both of you shut up: all mersons talk too much.” An annoyed Glint flashed a silently reproachful red-orange.
When the rising din had grown loud enough to all but vibrate the water around them, they surveyed the last barrier reef before Siriswirll itself in search of the highest possible overlook. Swimming and pulling their way up a steep coral slope, they paused at the very limit of breathability. Ascend any higher and they would find the mirrorsky itself breaking over them. Beyond it lay the Burning Void and all the horrors it held. A merson would suffocate there, if their flesh didn’t burst into flame first. A manyarm like Glint would last no longer. Few creatures from the realworld could survive long in such hellish conditions. Among those who could, interestingly, were certain species of spralakers.
It was the perfect place to try and get a sense of what was happening at Siriswirll. No spralaker was likely to look for mersons or a manyarm this close to the mirrorsky, and at this time of day the Great Yellow Smoker that suffused the void with heat and light would be directly above them, making it impossible to single them out from below.
Finning to the edge of the overlook, Jorosab muttered an occasional curse as projecting coral nicked at his skin. A large patch of bright yellow fire coral forced them to detour to their right and descend more than Chachel would have liked. They were still high enough that they ought to be able to see everything, he assured himself. To his left, the much lighter Glint bobbed in the waves of the proximate mirrorsky. It was not rough today, but neither did it sit flat calm with the glassiness the hunter would have preferred.
Then he found himself peering over the rim. Chachel sucked in his breath. Beside him, Jorosab was equally transfixed, and as he took in the scene below even Glint’s tentacles ceased their usually constant movement.
Siriswirll was built on the edge of a drop-off. Steep but not sheer, the cliff that marked the town’s limits served as a conduit for an upwelling current so powerful that no permanent structures could be fashioned from or attached to the ragged, rough coral clinging doggedly to its edge. While the rear of the community was therefore devoid of the usual forest of anemones, cnidarians, sponges, and other immobile reef dwellers, it did attract swarms of hungry reef fish eager to dine on the rich deep-sea broth that came coursing upward.
The same current weakened and flattened out as it swept over the ridge where the community was situated. To leave the town all one had to do was rise from within a building or from behind a protective wall and let the surge from the west deep carry the body forward. Returning was much more of chore. The conditions also made the village difficult to assault, since any attacker would have to contend not only with the strong current blowing directly into their face but also with weapons that would gain an extra boost in velocity and striking power from the surge behind them.
That had not dissuaded a small army of spralakers from mounting a direct frontal attack.
None of the scouts from Sandrift’s relief party had ever seen so many of the hardshell folk in one place. Usually they were to be found alone or in small groups. Cannibalism being a common and accepted feature of spralaker life, the rationale for large gatherings did not exist. It’s hard to hold a dialogue with someone who is in the process of trying to make a meal of your legs.
Yet these spralakers seemed to have overcome their proclivity for fighting among themselves. Searching the field of battle far and wide, Chachel certainly saw no evidence of it. Driven by a single, unified purpose, the aggressors were focused on penetrating the town’s defenses. Jorosab picked out places where vocal arguments had indeed broken out among the assailants, but nothing substantial enough to inhibit the attack. These spralakers were cooperating in a manner unprecedented.
Battling the current that blew in their faces as they marched forward, rank upon rank of heavily armed invaders advanced into a steady hail of arrows being unleashed by the towns’ defenders. There must be hundreds of the hardshells, an unsettled Chachel decided. Despite the number of attackers, Siriswirll’s defenders were giving a good account of themselves. Aided by the current behind them, one precisely placed arrow after another found weak spots in the enemy’s armor.
A temporary low wall of rock and coral had been erected in haste on the sandy plain outside the village. No permanent bastions protected Siriswirll, and unlike Sandrift it was too large to be enclosed by a carefully propagated coral dome. Even an ingenuous stranger with no military experience would have seen the futility of erecting defensive walls in such a place. While many denizens of Oshenerth could simply swim over the top of such a barrier, spralakers could not. They were poor swimmers. But Chachel had yet to encounter one that could not ascend any wall, even one equipped with an overhang. A wall imposing enough to give an attacking spralaker pause would have to be higher than a town the size of Siriswirll could afford, and defended by more fighters than it could muster.
What the impermanent and hurriedly raised barrier of rubble was useful for was warding off incoming weapons. It was literally a line in the sand. The increasingly desperate defenders were fielding every strategy they could think of to keep their assailants from surmounting the wall and entering the town itself. Those hardshells who succeeded in reaching the temporary barricade flung themselves upon it with a directness and ferocity that was shocking to the three scouts looking on from above. Clearly, these were not ordinary spralakers. For one thing, most of them were at least merson-sized, and some were bigger. For another, they fought with a confidence atypical of their kind.
As for the sandy battlefield itself, it remained oddly unsoiled. Caught up by the remnants of the current that roared over the edge of the drop-off, bodies and body parts were swept away, to be cleaned up by wandering scavengers with no interest in the mêlée’s eventual winner. Though he could not see them, not even if he’d had two good eyes, Chachel knew for a certainty that hundreds of sharks must be lingering far down current. Drawn by the dispersion of so much blood in the water, they would wait well away from the field of battle and when opportunity presented itself, swoop in to scoop up the debris. In a shark’s ideal world, both sides would lose badly.
“This is madness, the world has gone mad!” Hugging the lip of coral, Jorosab edged forward for a wider view. “Spralakers never attack anything but food that is smaller than themselves. They are born defensive. They do not attack individual hunters, much less whole villages.”
“The sight is indeed disarming.” Glint straight away employed as strong a wording as he could muster. “Spralakers are meant to be food, not soldiers. I have never seen any so big.”
“I have,” Chachel put in, “but they were solitaires, like myself.” He shook his head. “You are right, Jorosab. Something is very wrong here. The shaman hinted it might be such.”
Jorosab started to fin forward, over the rim. Reaching out, Chachel grabbed his right leg to keep him from advancing. Looking back in anger, the other hunter tried to kick free.
“They need help down there! Can’t you hear the shouts of the desperate and the dying? The current is stained with their screaming. Our brethren cry out for relief!”
“All the relief we can marshal,” Chachel readily agreed. “We are three here.” He nodded toward the battlefield. “Look at the weapons they are using, besides those they were born to. When did you last see a spralaker armed with a sea whip, or throwing something besides a rock? If we each kill a dozen, that would be helpful to the besieged, yes—but not as useful as reporting back what we have seen here and returning in strength.”
Hovering a finger-length above Chachel’s head, Glint added his own judgment. “I can regrow an arm. I can’t regrow information.” For emphasis he turned dark blue and flashed ripples of red.
The gill flaps at his neck spread wide, Jorosab looked from merson to manyarm, then spoke through clenched lips. “It is hard not to go to the aid of those whose shrieks fill my ears, but you speak the truth out of different mouths. We need to get back and tell the others.” Rising from atop the brain coral where he had been lying, he turned to go—and nearly swam into the giant triton triggerfish that had appeared behind him.
Mounted on a simple woven saddle atop the triton was a single spralaker.
It was difficult to say who was more surprised: the enemy scout, or the trio who had been scouting the enemy. Of course, as far as their respective positions were concerned, from the startled spralaker’s point of view the definitions were reversed. Recovering swiftly from the initial shock of their presence, the red and white spralaker nudged his mount and whirled to escape.
Jorosab’s bow and arrows were still slung across his back. So were Chachel’s spears. The hunter had to make an instant decision: he could draw and throw his knife, but it would have to be a perfect cast. Quick and powerful, too, before the intervening water slowed its momentum. Or he could throw …
Even flattened out, no cuttlefish had as hydrodynamic a shape as a squid. On the other hand, a manyarm in pursuit could change direction whereas a thrown weapon was committed to a single course. By throwing Glint instead of a spear, Chachel gave his companion just enough of a boost to let the cuttlefish overtake the fleeing spralaker. Extending his two hunting tentacles to their greatest extent, Glint plucked the enemy scout right off his mount.
Both adversaries were about the same size. In a one-on-one brawl Glint would have had the advantage of speed and agility, the spralaker those of strength and natural weaponry. But there was no chance and no need of such a fight. Chachel and Jorosab arrived almost immediately after Glint had neatly wrangled the armored soldier.
Well-trained and dedicated, the spralaker’s mount uttered a Piscean curse and turned to charge the mersons. With triangular front teeth as long as a person’s thumb and a thick, powerful body, the ferocious triggerfish was a formidable opponent capable of inflicting serious damage. Chachel’s spear went right through the attacker’s open mouth and past the saw-like teeth to emerge from its body near the right side of the tail fin. The impaled triggerfish fought and writhed on the hunter’s weapon for quite awhile. Chachel ignored its death throes. The spralaker’s mount was as good as dinner.
As for the scout itself, it found itself cornered and unable to flee. Raising both arms, it did its best to threaten its captors. “Kill me go ahead why don’t you maybe you can’t. Touch me and I open your veins!”
“I think not,” murmured Chachel. “You’re coming with us. There’s a council and a shaman who’ll want to ask you some questions.”
Backed into a corner in the coral, the combative spralaker held his ground. “You’ll suck my flesh anyway, so why should I tell any of you anything?”
“Because it doesn’t matter.” Chachel was careful to keep out of range of the spralaker’s arms, weapons that were considerably more lethal than the triggerfish’s teeth. “It’s apparent your people are going to overrun Siriswirll anyway, and then probably kill me and my friends. So why not prolong your life? Maybe you’ll find a chance to escape, or your superiors will work a prisoner exchange on your behalf.”
Jorosab looked at him sharply. “Whose side are you on, hermit?”
Some of the tension went out of the spralaker. “Yes so, you speak correct. Why not then converse? It will be last time to see pulp faces of your kind twist and deform.” He lowered his weapons. “I go with you freely then because I will enjoy final moments.”
After tying its arms and legs, they put the spralaker in Jorosab’s carryall, which when emptied of supplies was just capacious enough to accommodate the prisoner. Below, the battle for Siriswirll continued to rage. A last look back showed the inhabitants maintaining their position behind the temporary wall they had constructed. How much longer they could hold out against the relentless pressure none of the three scouts from Sandrift could tell. But at least for the moment, mersons and manyarms still had control of the battlefield.
Under normal conditions, Chachel mused as he and his companions swam in hard silence for the distant encampment, the spralakers should have given up by now, or fallen to chaos among themselves. But as the valiant rainbow runner Zesqu had intimated, these were no ordinary spralakers.
What was driving them? What power was guiding them and holding them together as a unified fighting force? Having succeeded in ravaging an entire town at Shakestone, an accomplishment beyond their wildest dreams, any sensible group of spralakers would have withdrawn to savor their victory and compose perverse ballads of triumph. Instead, they had moved immediately to attack a second, much larger community. It made no sense. Oxothyr was right for certain: forces were at work here that were as malevolent as they were abnormal.
He found his thoughts drifting again to the changeling. The demon changeling.
Hauling their valuable prisoner, the trio succeeded in making their way back along intervening reefs without being seen. No other hardshell scouts were encountered and the fish they met proved indifferent. Spralakers were possessed of many skills, but a loud voice was not among them. Their prisoner might cry out, but he was unlikely to be heard.
By the second day they were safely clear of the field of combat. Still, they did not slow their pace. Their observations had shown them that the citizens of Siriswirll were hard-pressed. Chachel, Glint, and Jorosab did not want to return in force to a scene like the one that had greeted them at Shakestone.
* * *
By chance, Irina was listening to Oxothyr expound on a particular aspect of cephalopodan learning when their session was interrupted by the commotion caused by the scouts’ return. When informed by a breathless Tythe that the trio had returned not only safe but with a prisoner, her interest was piqued even more.
“Can I come to the interrogation?” she asked the shaman. “I’ve never even seen a spralaker.”
“A chance to further your education, then.” Gathering his arms around him, the mage beckoned her to follow. Locking a few of his arms in her hair, Sathi allowed himself to be pulled along. His actions were both a game and an expression of low-key dominance. Irina didn’t mind. Underwater, the squid weighed next to nothing and his streamlined shape contributed little drag.
Several counselors had already arrived at the semi-circle of bright green and blue coral marking the northern edge of the camp. Huge black sea fans growing on the coral wall arched outward to form a kind of crenellated half-roof. One merson was conversing with an elderly octopus whose pale pink color indicated his anticipation.
Of the three returned scouts, the two mersons sat patiently on the sand. Transparent lateral fins rippling like the edges of a debutante’s silk gown, Glint hovered close by.
Catching sight of Chachel, Irina experienced a sudden and unaccountable urge to rush forward, throw her arms around the hunter, and congratulate him on his success in returning alive from the dangerous excursion. She focused on the impulse until it went away. What an odd whim. She told herself she would have felt the same sense of gratitude toward anyone who had risked his life on behalf of so many others. At the same time, she experienced no such urge to wrap herself gratefully around Glint. Or for that matter, the other merson who had accompanied them.
Very odd.
The counselors ceased talking among themselves when Oxothyr arrived. The shaman glanced briefly at the trio before summarily turning his attention to Jorosab. He did not waste time on greetings or congratulations.
“What news, then, of Siriswirll?”
The big merson drew himself up vertically in the water. “From what we could see, venerable mage, it lies under heavy and sustained attack. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of spralakers are trying to force their way into the town.”
A concerned murmuring rose from the counselors. Attacks by spralakers were far from unknown, but a coordinated assault in such numbers on a community the size of Siriswirll was unparalleled. Jorosab’s account supplied a perfect explanation of what had overwhelmed Shakestone, what now threatened to overcome Siriswirll—and if something was not done, was also likely to engulf their bucolic home of Sandrift.
“We must move quickly!” Waving all eight of his arms with as much strength as his elderly limbs could muster, counselor Vararem turned slowly from pale pink to an energized dark blue. “From what Jorosab tells us, not only is our beloved home in danger but every village from Sandrift to Soloss along the entire line of the western reefs!”
Oxothyr turned to his smaller counterpart. “Move we will—but with prudence and planning. A hysterical charge will do neither Sandrift nor the embattled citizens of Siriswirll any good.” From the attentive Jorosab, he shifted his attention to the other members of the scouting party. Under that intense stare, an intimidated Glint retreated several body-lengths. Other than glancing up, Chachel did not stir.
A long sucker-lined arm indicated the large, opaque carryall lying on the white sand near the hunter’s feet. “I sense that you have brought back evidence besides that of your eyes.”
Leaning to his right, Chachel began to remove the clam clip that held the sack secured. “Company, even unwilling, can be informative.” Pressing against a sensitive part of the mollusk with the fingers of one hand caused the bivalve to pop open. The top of the sack gaped free. The interior was quickly vacated.
Irina sucked in her breath, her gill flaps collapsing against the sides of her neck, as she realized she had seen spralakers before. Multiple times, on many occasions. But never one this big, this dangerous, or this intelligent. She had always thought of spralakers as entertainment, or food, or sometimes both. Never as a conscious enemy.
One look at the human-sized crab as it scuttled rapidly sideways across the sand, kicking up white grains in its wake, disabused her of any notions of cuteness.
A design engraved into the back of the crab’s carapace graphically depicted its wearer disemboweling a merson. A second, smaller motif might have been a sign of rank. Because the hardshell had been deprived of manufactured weaponry did not mean it had been disarmed. The major claws had been sharpened to give them an unnatural edge capable of cutting through bone as well as flesh.
“So that’s a spralaker.” Her reaction was a mixture of recognition and disbelief. “That’s the enemy that destroyed Shakestone and is attacking Siriswirll. Where I come from we eat them for supper.”
“As do we here.” Noting her reaction, Glint had hurried over to hover beside her. The cuttlefish had turned an unbroken gray. “The only difference being that we will consume them at any time of the day. They are a particular favorite of my kind and our close relations. That’s why spralakers hate manyarms even more than they do mersons.” He pointed to the prisoner, who continued racing in sideways circles searching for an escape route only to find himself confronted and blocked at every turn.
“The smallest species can barely mumble. Larger spralakers will make use of simple phrases. When they get this big, or bigger, they achieve a kind of rough civilization. There are no spralaker towns, no spralaker cities. They can raid and destroy, but they cannot really build. At least, that is what I have been told. Reality and stories often differ.” Gold-framed, one black eye locked with hers. “A little intelligence can be more dangerous than a lot.”
“From what I’ve been hearing,” she commented, “they’re smart enough to devise strategy.”
“In its simplest form, yes. What is different here, it seems, is that in addition to attacking in unparalleled numbers they are employing tactics never before encountered. Almost as if they are being advised by a non-spralaker intelligence.” He backed away slightly. “As to what is really happening, as to cause and effect, we will learn more, I am sure.”
In front of them, Oxothyr had begun to do just that. Realizing there was no way out, the spralaker scout had squatted down in the sand. Sharpened claws raised high, he readied himself to strike at any captor who came too close. Oxothyr was not afraid, but neither was the shaman unnecessarily rash. He could query the prisoner just as effectively from a safe distance.
“Hardshell, if you cooperate, you might be spared. Our concern is not the killing of individuals. It would be in your interest to tell us how many are in your force, what weapons they are employing, and who among you leads and makes decisions.”
The spralaker did not hesitate. “There are more of us than you can imagine and more coming to join with us every day,” he declared, waving his arms. “We have weapons you cannot imagine, and those who lead us have prepared for this for some time.” One claw swept wide to encompass the group of attentive counselors. “You are all become food. I am glad you have come to Siriswirll. It means more to die on behalf of the cold.”
Oxothyr’s confusion was evident. “The ‘cold’? Coldness is a quality of being, not an adversary.”
Swiveling on long stalks, both eyes turned back to the shaman. “You flaunt your ignorance, manyarm, the way a female does her eggs. Ours will hatch, while yours becomes sustenance only for memory.” Claws clicked together, heavy razors backed by organic hydraulics. “Come close and let me partition you!”
“Why?” The constant, steady waving of Oxothyr’s arms caused Irina to blink. Was he trying to hypnotize the spralaker? If so, it wasn’t working. “Why the need for all this killing? If your kind has an unforeseen problem, can we not talk it out together, over a ball of fish?”
“There is nothing to talk about in this,” the spralaker insisted, his contempt undisguised. “You will never understand until it is too late. The cold comes for all. Those who linger or fail to do its bidding will die. As you will die!” Kicking with all eight of his legs, he thrust himself upward off the sand directly toward Oxothyr.
As an attempt to inflict injury it was as bold as it was doomed. A quick squirt from his siphon sent the shaman skittering sideways and out of range of the spralaker’s claws. Snapping only water, the defiant prisoner drifted helplessly back to the sand. Those spralakers—crabs—she knew of who could swim at all could do so only fitfully, Irina remembered.
Flashing impatience, Jorosab removed the knife from his waistband and started to swim forward. “Leave this to me, shaman. I can make him talk.” He addressed the prisoner. “I will start with one eyestalk, hardshell, but leave the other so you can watch as I scrape your gill rakers.”
“No need, merson.” Before Jorosab could reach him, the prisoner reached back with one whetted claw, plunged it into his undershell, and in a single smooth motion tore out his own heart. Inhaling sharply, Irina swallowed enough water to drown herself—had she not been breathing the stuff. A couple of the assembled counselors uttered a startled word or two. It was Chachel who swam forward to wave away the swirls of life fluid that leaked from the dying body.
“Defiant words are nothing more than that: just words.” He kicked at the multi-limbed corpse. “This is a foe fit for supper, nothing more. I myself look forward to dining on more of the same.”
“The hunter is right.” Oxothyr drifted over until he was directly above the body of the scout. “We have much to do and little time in which to do it. Return to your schools. Inform and explain. Command all to get a good night’s rest. At first light we go to the relief of Siriswirll.”
“Or to our deaths,” Glint murmured from where he hovered close to Irina.
Taking the shaman’s words to heart, the assembly dispersed in a swift and orderly manner. As Sathi and Tythe worked to dispose of the dead spralaker, Oxothyr was left to consult with the returned scouts.
Nearby, a resigned Irina looked over at Glint. “I’m going to have to fight tomorrow, it seems. I know how to fight a little with my hands and feet, but that’s all.”
“It’s not hard to use a spear.” Retracting his two hunting arms, Glint demonstrating by repeatedly thrusting them in her direction. “Keep your adversary in front of you, back up if necessary, don’t let him get above or below you, and you’ll be fine. Chachel and I will look out for you.”
She nodded, not for the first time wondering if her altruistic instincts hadn’t got the best of her. Had she not volunteered to participate in this expedition, she could be back in Sandrift helping to care for the elderly and look after the children. No one here would blame her for having stayed behind. Not only was she an outsider; as far as the inhabitants of Sandrift were concerned she had all but redefined the term.
Of course, if she had stayed behind, she would not just live: she would have to live with herself.
“I guess both you and Chachel are pretty good with a spear.”
Glint’s tentacles curled inward in disdain. “Oh no, we manyarms prefer the use of far more sophisticated weapons. Multiple knives, throwing shells, and bow and arrow. Myself, I can handle three of the latter at once.”
She made herself envision a bow-wielding cuttlefish. It made sense. With its ten arms a cephalopod like Glint could fire off several arrows at once. Dozens of manyarms operating in concert would constitute a formidable force. She started to feel a little better about the battle to come. Clearly, mersons and manyarms brought complimentary capabilities to any skirmish. How could an army of cra—of spralakers, who could barely swim, hope to fend off an attack by agile mersons and swift manyarms who could strike at them from any direction?
She imagined that she would learn the answer to that troubling question as well as many others as soon as the sun once more rose above the mirrorsky.