—Iv—
The crimson feather star was graceful, beautiful, and lost. Multiple downy bright-red arms propelled it slowly through the water. Though some of its kin favored the depths, that was not the case with the red wanderer. It had been carried away from the reef by a sudden surge of strong current. Now it found itself out in open water without a potential hiding place in sight. It could not avoid the hand that reached for it.
Tempting toxins, a youthful Chachel flicked his fingertips playfully at the ends of the feathery arms but did not quite make contact. The weak-swimming echinoderm bobbed in the water, unable to escape. It tried curling its fragile arms in upon its body, which was miniscule in comparison to the spray of furry limbs. Grinning, the young merson continued to toy inoffensively with the creature. In the open ocean, anything was a diversion.
Having commenced the long swim the previous morning, the clan group’s destination was now in sight. Rising to within a couple of body lengths of the mirrorsky, the twin peaks of the seamount called Splitrock materialized out of the watery haze like some ghostly great gray spear. As the clutch of swimmers drew nearer, both its outlines and its rocky slopes acquired more and more detail.
The swift currents that flowed around and through the split-topped seamount made it difficult for corals, cnidarians, mollusks, or echinoderms to secure a grip on its precipitous flanks. A few who were hardy and determined managed a foothold. The rewards for those who succeeded were great, as the currents brought acre-feet of food swirling helplessly past waiting mouths and trolling tentacles.
Even fewer lifeforms succeeded in colonizing the crevice that split the seamount’s double crown. Powerful currents kept it scoured almost bare. These drew rather than discouraged the vast schools of fish that congregated in its vicinity. Slamming up against the base of the mount, deep-sea currents were forced upward, carrying with them a torrent of nutrients that sustained whole communities of visiting and resident pelagics. As clan patriarch Jeralach had pledged, hunting promised to be spectacular. Reflecting their leader’s optimism, the clan’s hunters had brought along especially large carrynets with which to tow the hoped-for haul back to Sandrift.
The seamount was not generally hunted because to reach it required a two-day swim across open ocean from Sandrift’s home reef system. Swimming for two days was easy enough. But spending nights out in the pitch darkness of open water, with no visible bottom, was sufficiently intimidating to dissuade all but the boldest hunters. Jeralach proudly counted himself among the latter. There was some debate as to whether it was safe enough to bring along eager young apprentices.
“Each of us will travel with tethered glowfish,” Jeralach had explained. “They will provide enough light so that even if someone wanders away from the others, they will not pass from sight.” He held up a tunicate that had been effusively enchanted. Showing a delicate mauve tint, the circular opening at the top of the otherwise transparent creature was pointed toward the northwest. “This was collected by me the last time I visited Splitrock. It has been imbued with meticulous charm by the subshaman Aseleaph so that no matter how it is held, its mouth faces always toward its home. It will be our good and reliable guide to the seamount.”
The magicked ascidian Jeralach flaunted would eliminate the problem of finding Splitrock in the open ocean. That was the difficult part of the expedition. Young Chachel and the other apprentices knew that returning home following hunting would present no comparable difficulty. Marking the position of the light that moved across the mirrorsky, they need merely swim westward until they struck coral. From any location on the reef walls even a child could find its way back to Sandrift.
As finally constituted, the foraging expedition included fifteen experienced adult male and female hunters as well as an additional six apprentices and a trio of curious cuttlefish. Together with several of his best friends, Chachel was honored to be included among the select group of chosen youths. The fact that his parents comprised part of the hunting team only magnified the pride he felt in participating.
Leaving the aggravated feather star in peace to find its own way back to the reef, he kicked hard to catch up to the rest. The pair of fishing spears strapped to his back had come loose and the shafts were rubbing against his skin. He had not bothered to tighten the lashings because he expected that the weapons would soon be put to good use. Behind him, the feather star filled his wake with a litany of tiny curses that made Chachel smile. At fifteen, there was very little that failed to make him smile. Life beneath the mirrorsky was good, and he had no reason to think it would ever be anything but so.
Though Jeralach was the nominal leader of the expedition, having visited the seamount before, he was not in charge. The hunting expedition had no formal leader. As soon as they arrived, decisions were reached through consensus, with every veteran hunter having a vote. That left the apprentices free to explore the mount. While the adults conferenced, they chased one another around the stone tower that rose from the dark depths, taking care to pay attention to the time of day and any potentially dangerous shifts in the powerful currents. Sensing an as yet undefined threat but unwilling to abandon so fruitful a feeding ground, resident schools of fish kept wary eyes on the caucusing mersons while continuing to stuff themselves with the bounty provided by the cold upwellings that swirled around the seamount.
That was one thing about most fish, Chachel had already learned. It was always the other school that was going to bear the burden of any hunting.
His mother was as adept with a fishing spear as his father, and her reactions even faster. Rather than opt for the kind of one-on-one hunting that was common among the reefs around Sandrift, however, Jeralach had proposed a strategy that promised greater success with less effort.
Chachel could hardly wait.
* * *
The following morning dawned the same as it always had for the abundant schools of trevally and snapper, jacks and mackerel who chose to feed in and around Splitrock. While busy snacking on smaller life, they remained constantly aware of the hunters’ presence. So they were not taken by surprise when a number of the spear-armed clan rushed them. With the glare of the morning mirrorsky behind them and riding the strong north-flowing current, the hunters’ intent was plain: trap the feeding schools against the rocky mass of the seamount and spear those too slow to swim around it. Except that the top of the seamount was divided in half, a distinctive geologic feature that gave it its name, and it was perfectly possible for even the dumbest school to shoot straight through the gap instead of trying to go all the way around the undersea mountain.
Driven forward by the shouting, gesticulating mersons, one shoal after another took the shortest, easiest path to escape. A school of a hundred big-eye trevally led the way—only to find the exit to the other side of the seamount blocked by the wide open, carefully positioned haulsacks of four mersons. As following schools began to rapidly bunch up behind them, the trevally fled upwards—straight into the waiting open haulsacks of another quartet of hunters. Assisted by the apprentices and harried by the excited, ink-squirting cuttlefish, filled sacks were drawn shut around wailing captives and tightly secured. It was only then that waiting spears and knives were brought into play.
As slaughters went, the one that took place at Splitrock that fine, clear morning was relatively serene. The fish nearest the outside of the haulsacks died first. Not all would be killed. A dead fish was only fit to eat for a few days before spoilage began to set in. While on site, the hunting party would kill only what could be eaten immediately or easily conserved.
The bloody work took most of the morning. When Jeralach finally called a halt to the methodical butchery, the haulsacks were gathered together and their contents prepared for transport. Diminished but not demolished, new schools promptly reformed around the seamount. These survivors returned to their own pursuit of feeding upon lives still smaller than themselves. That was the law of the realworld. That was the way of Oshenerth.
Every member of the hunting expedition, including Chachel’s parents, was overjoyed with their success. They had harvested enough food to feed the entire village for many days. Jeralach had no doubt that upon their return, a general time of celebration would be declared. There would be feasting and games and music. Proud to have participated in the hunt and to have contributed in some small way to its success, Chachel felt more like an adult than he had at any time in his life. All that remained now was to tow the catch back to Sandrift and trumpet their accomplishment. Their achievement would not go unnoticed, their hard work would not pass unrecognized.
Unfortunately, such was already the case.
There was a reason why those who set out to search for food beyond the safety of their villages kept close to the reefs of Yellecheg and Hingarol, Sandrift and Colaroosek. There was a reason why the open ocean was for the most part avoided by hungry mersons and their manyarm friends. In addition to supplying food, the reefs of home also provided positions of strength from which to fight and defend. With rock and coral at their backs, both mersons and manyarms could defend themselves efficiently. Out in the liquid space of empty sea, others had the advantage. Others who were more maneuverable, swifter, and in many ways more deadly.
There must have been a hundred sharks, an alarmed Chachel saw. Mostly lightning-swift blues and makos, a couple of errant hammerheads along for the ride, and at the head of the mob—two great whites, possibly three. Not good odds, not good at all. As the clan bunched together, forming a school of mersons, the smaller of the great whites advanced toward them. The lazy side-to-side flicks of the immensely powerful tail hardly seemed to require an effort. At full thrust, Chachel knew, that tail could hurl its owner forward with enough force for the head to shatter rock.
For the moment the smaller of the two male whites seemed content just to swim a tight circle, flashing its frozen, bone-chilling grin. Spear at the ready, Jeralach swam out from the rest of the clan to confront it. Along with the rest of his friends and family and clan members, Chachel strained to hear what merson and shark would say to one another. Had he taken a moment to look behind him, he would have noted that every one of the thousands of fish that had previously been calmly circling the seamount had fled; vanished into the distance, into the depths, or into any and every available crevice in the rock. In the space of a moment, the seamount known as Splitrock had been transformed into an eerie, abandoned, underwater desert.
“Greetments, merson.” The voice of the great white rumbled up from deep within as it cruised methodically back and forth, back and forth, in front of Jeralach.
“Good day to you and your fellow scavengers.” Keeping a wary eye on the great white, Jeralach held his spear loosely in both hands—but not so loose that the point wavered in the current. “Out hunting for a change?”
“Indeed.” If the massive shark noticed the merson’s sarcasm, it took no offense. “A tiring and often futile proposition. This morning we are feeling lazy.” The tip of his snout rose slightly. “We could not miss the smell of so much blood.”
“True, some blood has been spilled.” The leader of the hunters could hardly deny it. Not with his companions clustered around a dozen haulsacks full of fish both alive and dead.
“Indeed,” observed the great white. “I see you have had good hunting. Myself, I am always admiring how you mersons, having such ridiculous poor teeth of your own, fashion killing substitutes from shell and stone, coral and bone.”
“We make do with what we have.” Jeralach gestured meaningfully with his spear. “It’s true that our teeth are few. But they are sharp, and their reach is long.”
“Long and efficient,” the great white admitted. “As are the nets you make. I see that yours are full. Being so successful in your hunting, it would be polite of you to share with those who have had less luck and are also hungry.”
A tense Jeralach studied the slowly swimming line of sharks. Led by a pair of makos, twenty or so blues were drifting off to the right, another dozen to the left, while the central body of the unusual school was working its way up or down. Not all nets were made of woven material, he mused worriedly. And the numbers were undeniably bad.
“We would be happy to share with our friends the sharptooths. There is enough for all. Freely will we split our catch with you.”
The great white considered, flashing an occasional glance back toward the mob where his brother and the single female, larger as usual than either of the males, waited. Beneath him, his claspers twitched.
“We are very hungry.”
“Sharks are always hungry,” Jeralach countered with a combination of truth and a desperate attempt at humor. “Don’t worry. There is plenty here to eat.”
“That is truth,” the great white agreed. “And we are ready to share in feeding. I think we should begin now—with you!”
Chachel thought he was prepared for what happened next. But he had never seen a great white attack—only inshelf gray reefs, blacktips, whitetips, and other much smaller sharks. The huge, perfectly hydrodynamic shape exploded through the water, heading straight for Jeralach. How the organizer of the hunting expedition managed to sideswim the attack while simultaneously stabbing with his spear Chachel did not know. The sharpened bone pierced the left flank of the great white. The merson had spilled first blood—but critically, had missed the gills.
Within seconds the area to the immediate west of Splitrock was boiling with activity. Closing ranks to form a schooling sphere, all weapons pointed outward, the hunting party faced their attackers. Haulsacks full of fish that had been the object of so much effort and coordination were abandoned. They were promptly shredded by the eager squadrons of blue sharks who tore through tough netting and dead fish with equal alacrity. The remaining members of the mob turned their attention to prey that was both larger and still alive.
Occasionally a shark would try a perceived weak spot in the hovering ball of mersons, only to be met by a spear thrust that would send it reeling backward, frustrated and bloodied. Hemmed in by adults on all sides, a frightened Chachel wielded his own hunting spear with all the skill and determination he could muster. Considered the strongest member of his peer group, he intended despite his fear to give a good account of himself.
His chance came when two blues charged straight at his side of the schooling formation. The adults on either side of him jabbed out immediately, instinctively. Remembering the teachings of his weapons master caused Chachel to hold back. The first two spear thrusts should be sufficient to dissuade the blues and—sure enough, coming up like lightning from below were a pair of ferocious makos. One of the adults beneath him and facing downward warded off the first shark, but the second slipped past. Even as he heard one of his parents’ friends scream as the mako’s jaws closed, Chachel was stabbing frantically downward. He was rewarded with the sight of the mortally wounded mako slinking off, the silver-blue streamlined body spasming violently as it fought to dislodge the spear that had pierced it completely through at the gills. Instantly surrounding their condemned comrade, a quartet of blues proceeded to tear him to pieces while he was still alive.
Though it raged for what seemed like days, the actual clash lasted less than an hour. Pierced by spears, one shark after another retreated with wounds some of which were survivable and others not. Meanwhile Chachel’s hunting companions, adult and youth alike, suffered a steady and horrific attrition. Despite the constant current, there was so much blood in the water that it became more and more difficult to pick the fast-moving foe out of the increasingly red-stained gloom. Bits and pieces of torn flesh, still intact body parts, eviscerated organs, bone fragments that caught the overhead mirrorshine like flung handfuls of mother-of-pearl, all spun and spiraled and tumbled through the agitated water around him. Those bits that fell or were carried by the current out beyond spear-stabbing range were instantly snatched up by the ravenous horde of eager sharptooths.
What had begun as a relatively straightforward confrontation over food had rapidly evolved into a give no quarter and ask none battle to the death. By now subsumed in frenzy, the sharks would not retreat until all were sated or the last of them were dead. The increasingly desperate mersons were given no such choice. To the credit of his training as a fighter, Chachel did not vomit once, until he saw Aunt Selemoel come drifting past him. Spinning slowly in the current, tumbling end over end, the upper half of her body was like some grotesque sculpture of a memory of a merson and not a representation of the actual individual herself. The lower half of her body was nowhere to be seen. Entrails trailing behind the severed torso like a jellyfish’s tendrils, the vacant-eyed half-body of his aunt was soon set upon and ripped apart by half a dozen blues. Gasping to clear his gills, Chachel found relief only when the lump of ragged flesh that had been his relative was no longer recognizable as the nightmare it had become.
Then he heard someone, perhaps it was his father Horaleth, shout, “Beware—the Bite comes!” Chachel knew he should have turned his back to the open sea. But he could only stare outward.
Facing the still-intact remnants of the spherical defensive formation of mersons and manyarms, the female great white, as big as a small whale and weighing as much as thirty mersons, had opened her mouth. Rolling her eyes back to black, what she spat was half shark and half magic. Inside the front of that gaping maw, as dark as the caves that riddled the reefs of Chachel’s home, were multiple rows of teeth in various stages of maturity. Triangular in shape, serrated on two sides, precise of point, and sharp as any knife blade, some were large enough to cover his open palm. In response to the thaumaturgic urging of the shark sorceress, two hundred such porcelain daggers now shot from her jaws.
They shredded the merson globe.
Those teeth that did not find flesh flashed by in ivory arcs of varying efficiency and degree as they sought to slash vein and bone, artery and nerves. Trying to avoid them was worse than being caught up in a school of a thousand territorial triggerfish all biting and snapping at once. A tooth as long as his thumb sliced across the top of Chachel’s left bicep, leaving a trail of blood to mark its passage. Despite his training, despite his resolve, he screamed. All around him, the defensive orb of mersons and spears was disintegrating, coming apart under the assault of hundreds of individually motivated triangular white razors. In shock from his injury, he saw one merson couple leave the school and make a break for the potential shelter of Splitrock. Should he follow, or should he stay and fight?
His mother made the decision for him. He choked when he saw that she was bleeding from half a dozen wounds of her own. But she was gesturing forcefully, indicating that he should try to swim for the safety of the rocky spires. He nodded his understanding and turned to kick hard in the designated direction.
Looking to him and not behind or beneath her, she did not see the approaching male white death. How something so massive and powerful could come right up to one in complete silence was one of the deadlier mysteries of the sea. Her lower limbs disappeared into its wide-open mouth. The great jaws did not close until they were halfway up her thighs. Then they snapped shut, and in one bite the shark neatly bit off both legs halfway to her hips.
Rendered as immobile by the sight as if the blood in his veins had suddenly ceased flowing, a paralyzed Chachel could only stare. So transfixed was he that he did not even feel the pain of individual white teeth slashing at his own undefended limbs and torso. His non-reaction was all that saved him. Perceiving him as unfeeling and therefore probably dead, the cursed triangular teeth sped elsewhere in search of more responsive targets.
Once the jaws of the great white locked tight, everything thereafter seemed to take place in slow motion. So massive was the trauma that shock kept his mother from screaming. Turning her gaze away from her offspring, she looked down at herself as the shark pulled away. Dark red liquid ribboned outward in all directions from the stumps of her legs. She stayed conscious for a surprisingly long time, until the reduced blood supply to her brain brought with it blissful unconsciousness. By then her drifting form had been swallowed up in an eddying boil of blood, entrails, fins, limbs, bone, and cartilage that mercifully shielded Chachel from the sight of last bites.
Something came down firmly on his shoulder. It snapped him out of his shock. Whirling, he brought his remaining spear up and around, halting the thrust in time to see that it was Glint, the youngest of the cuttlefish who had joined the hunting party. Behind him hovered Germael. A senior seeker, not as skilled as Jeralach but wise in the ways of hunting—and also of combat. Employing arms and tentacles in equal measure, merson and manyarm proceeded to half urge, half drag the wounded apprentice toward the dark towers of Splitrock.
All told, out of the entire hunting party seven of them made it to the wide fissure that split the stone spires. Three injured hunters, three traumatized apprentices, and the surviving juvenile cuttlefish who had helped to save Chachel. Under Germael’s direction they hunkered down inside a cave at the base of the gap. Each of the mersons had managed to hold onto at least one spear; a couple still had both of theirs. They also retained their killing knives, and the cephalopod had his sharp beak.
“Not much to fight with.” Tired and shaken, the senior hunter muttered disconsolately to himself as he took stock of the survivors’ meager arsenal. The dearth of weaponry was hardly surprising. The hunting party had left Sandrift outfitted for foraging, not war. “It will have to do.”
“What now?” The surviving female apprentice’s name was Lillanech. She was trembling so badly that she could barely hold onto her spear.
“We wait.” Germael’s expression was grim as he turned to peer cautiously out of the cave mouth toward the canyon that separated the twin summits. “The mob may have enough to ea … may become sated. If not, we will have to fight again.” Reaching up, he tapped the solid stone ceiling of the cave. “At least here we have something at our backs. A few spear points cannot defend the six directions at once, but here we need only guard this entrance. A big shark would have trouble getting in. Two or even three blues might manage entry in tandem, but that I think we have a chance of fending off.”
“What if they’re neither sated nor ready to challenge?” wondered one of the surviving hunters. That he had lost several fingers to a bite had not kept him from fighting his way to the cave.
Germael considered. “We’ll wait them out. As far as food, we’ll manage somehow. There are always shellfish affixed to the rocks.”
All the rest of that awful day they huddled in the cave, but no sleek-finned shapes came to inspect the entrance. Night-time was the worst. The few bioluminescent lifeforms that visited the cave mouth emitted only enough illumination to light their own way. All of the expedition’s tame tethered glowfish had been lost along with the rest of their supplies. Glint helped as much as he was able, but he could not illuminate more than a small portion of any one of them, or of their surroundings. In contrast to their ocular helplessness, Chachel knew that sharks could easily find a fish or a merson in complete darkness by utilizing the special sensory organs that lined their snouts. Mersons possessed no such extraordinary extra sense. In the blackness inside the cave they were blind. Sitting slightly off by himself, Chachel clung tightly to his spear and sorrowed silently for his dead parents.
On the positive side, while they could perceive things in the dark, sharks could not make weapons, he reminded himself. Magic, yes. Especially biting magic. That they could conjure. But not weapons.
Morning brought with it no sign of their attackers. Venturing partway out into the chasm, Germael scanned the open water to left, right, and overhead before reporting back to his fellow survivors. Swifter than any merson, brave young Glint extended the reconnoiter by jetting as far as the crest of the nearest summit.
“I see not one sharptooth,” he reported back. “Not even a local patch reef claiming whitetip. The schools of fish we found when we first arrived have returned. They would not do so if sharks were still hunting here.”
“But they might,” pointed out one of the other hunters, “if there were sharptooths about who were just sleeping.”
“Sleeping is almost as good as absent,” Germael argued. “Especially,” he added with obvious reluctance and an eye toward the trio of apprentices, “if they are doing so on full stomachs. If they are still in the vicinity but sleeping off a heavy feed, it would behoove us to depart before either their alertness or their appetite returns.”
“I don’t know.” The hunter who had lost fingers was disinclined to agree. “It’s dangerous.”
“Staying here is dangerous,” Germael shot back. “Going is dangerous. Everything uncertain and unknown is dangerous. This I know.” His gaze flicked over everyone clustered in the cave. “I also know that starvation is a worse way to die than by fighting.” With his spear he gestured at the clear, mirrorlight water outside. “This may be our best chance to make a swim for it. This may be our only chance.”
They emerged from the cave one by one; the hunters leading the way with the apprentices following. In spite of the danger, it felt good, Chachel decided, to be out in open water again. Caves were fine for sleeping, but in the mirrorlight a merson needed to be able to move about in a space that more than exceeded his own body length.
Led by Germael, they swam slowly to the northeast. Another hunter swam patrol slightly above the rest, watching the sky. Within the gorge they were open to attack from only three directions. Back out in open ocean, they would once more have to be alert to all six.
A single pair of eyes to keep watch in each direction, Chachel realized as he kicked steadily and slowly. At least they would not be taken by surprise.
They had not anticipated an ambush in waiting.
Whether the dozen or so blues had missed out on their fair share of the bloody feast of the previous day or were simply exercising the gluttony for which their kind was known did not matter. Rocketing out of the dark depths that had concealed them, they hit the little party of survivors simultaneously and from the same direction. The hunters were as ready as could be; the youngsters less so. As Glint shot a relatively futile burst of ink at a charging shark, Chachel had the satisfaction of seeing his spear go right down the throat of an over-eager blue attacker.
“Choke on this, gnawer of bones! Filth with fins!” Wrenching the shaft free, he slammed it forward again. Blood gushed from the shark’s mouth as it struggled to free itself from the impalement. All around him, Chachel’s friends and mentors were stabbing, thrusting, and kicking. The surprise had not been complete. One shark after another found itself impaled on a spear point. Wielding his filleting knife, the hunter who had been swimming above the others plunged downward to nearly cut one blue’s head half off with a single powerful stroke.
Chachel felt something chewing on his right leg.
He hadn’t seen the mako approach. There were three of them. Swiftest of all the sharptooths, they moved through the water so fast they made even the blues look as if they were standing still. The mako fastened to his leg was a big one. Viciously slinging its head and upper body from side to side, it tore most of Chachel’s right calf muscle right off the bone. Left bleeding badly and unable to maneuver at speed, he still managed to fend off its bite at his face by ducking beneath the jaws and stabbing upward with his spear. He could feel himself weakening as he fought to remain conscious.
Then the mako came back and almost gently took the left side of his head in its mouth.…