Jherek swam hard, the knife still clenched in his fist. The pressure on his ears told him he'd gone down thirty feet or more. He searched the water and spotted Yeill still in the fishing chair less than fifty feet from his position, sinking slowly. He turned toward her and swam hard.
Two sharks glided in sinuous circles around her, close but not closing in. One of them still had the fishing line in its mouth. Beyond the sharks, three sahuagin clutching spears kept watch. They spotted him and did nothing but spread out, assuming he was fool enough to swim to his own death.
Jherek looked at them, matching all the stories he'd heard with the sight of the monsters before him. The sahuagin were huge in build, their bodies massive with muscle across the shoulders. Their legs with the extra joint looked grotesque. Broad faces with flaring fins sticking out into the water on either side of its head held dozens of narrow teeth, the black lips curled back to expose them in a threatening grimace. Their bite, Jherek had been told, could rip gobbets of flesh from a man, and the sea devils literally feasted on their victims, often before they died. Their tails whipped back and forth to help them maintain their position. The webbing between their long fingers and toes made their hands and feet look impossibly large.
Fear filled Jherek as he closed on the circling sharks, yet he was drawn to the act of attempting to save the young woman's life as surely as a compass needle was drawn north. He couldn't leave the young woman to her fate. Despite the water around him, his mouth was dry. He estimated that Yeill was less than twenty feet below the ocean's surface.
One of the sharks pulled away from the other and sped at Jherek, mouth gaping to reveal its teeth.
Without hesitation, Jherek dodged, kicking out hard and twisting in the water like a porpoise. All his life the water had been his element, and even though he moved well in a ship's rigging and on the ground, it was nothing like the way he moved in the water. He'd won every swimming meet he'd ever entered at Velen as a boy, and he'd dived deeper and better than anyone in the town, including seasoned sailors.
Madame litaar had suggested that it was because Jherek was linked to the sea, but even her powers of divination couldn't tell her how. Jherek only knew that there was no place he'd ever felt more at home. The years as a shipwright's apprentice on land watching ships he'd repaired and help build put out to sea had been hard, and he could never imagine living in a landlocked city.
Stroking furiously, he glided under the shark, missing it by inches. He decided not to use the knife. There was too much of a chance it would get stuck in the shark's body and he'd lose it. He didn't want the sharks in a blood frenzy.
His move caught the sahuagin by surprise as well. Evidently they'd felt confident of their shark's kill. Their finned heads turned to him as he swam to Yeill's side, their black eyes glinting with malicious light. The woman struggled with the seat restraints, trapped in the chair.
Jherek's blade freed her at once, slicing easily through the leather straps. He grabbed the Amman woman, pulling her from the chair and shoving her toward the surface.
An explosion of bubbles came from the mouth of one of the sahuagin. Immediately, both sharks turned their attention to Jherek.
His lungs burned as he watched the sharks and sea devils. He knew from his studies that the sahuagin controlled sharks and used them for war as well as security, though that control was a tenuous thing at times. He gripped the ceramic teardrop Madame litaar had given him when he set to sea.
Back in Velen, Madame litaar was known as a diviner and alchemist. She couldn't easily craft healing potions or some of the more exotic potions, but most things that related to the sea she could make without problem. She'd given him a shark repellent potion in the ceramic teardrop.
With the teardrop in his hand, he waited till the sharks were within ten feet, silent gliding death. He crushed the ceramic teardrop in his hand, releasing the strong potion inside. A yellow glowing cloud filled the water around him, swelling out to envelope the sharks even before they were on him. He reached out with his free hand, catching the lead shark's blunt snout. The rough, sandpaper hide pressed against his flesh, but he used the shark's momentum with his own to slide above it.
By the time the shark slid under him, the potion took effect. Both sharks jerked spasmodically, reacting to the potion's unique alchemy. Madame litaar had told Jherek the potion would create deep fear in the sharks, causing them to flee for their lives, and she was as good as her word. The sharks spun around and began to accelerate gracefully away. The sea devils tried to command them back into the cloud of repellent, but the sharks were more afraid of Madam litaar's concoction than their sahuagin masters. As a result, the sharks turned on their controllers, recognizing them instead of the now fading yellow cloud as the source of the threat that filled their simplistic nervous systems. The sahuagin broke ranks at once.
One of the sharks succeeded in seizing a sahuagin in its jaws. A bloody cloud darkened the water, spreading outward. The second shark pursued one of the other sahuagin, leaving the third one free.
Lungs near to bursting from the time he'd been underwater and the effort he'd expended, Jherek stroked for the surface. He sensed the last sahuagin coming after him, cutting the distance in heartbeats, feeling the hate and excitement that it radiated, imagining he could almost read its thoughts.
He surfaced twenty feet from the young Amnian woman and drew in a deep lungful of breath. "Swim to the ship!" he ordered, gasping. "Now!"
He glanced ahead, seeing that Butterfly was coming about. Captain Finaren hadn't given up on them. Even though the cog turned hard about, filling the sails with the almost listless straight wind rather than the cross-breeze she'd been making do with all day, she kept her port side to the marauding sahuagin aboard the manta.
The young Amnian woman screamed and cried, and Jherek knew she was in real danger of causing herself to drown before she reached Butterfly.
He turned from her regretfully, aware now too that the sounds of combat came from the cog. He took a final breath, judging the sahuagin had to be almost on him, and dived beneath the water again. He blinked, trying desperately to clear his vision while the blood from the sahuagin and sharks clouded the water.
The third sahuagin swim-flipped and thrust its trident as Jherek sank into the water. It was less than fifteen feet out. Reacting quickly, knowing he had no chance to escape the wicked tines completely by attempting to dodge, he shoved his knife hand up. The blade connected with the trident, slipping unerringly between the tines and jarring against the base. The force of the blow vibrated Jherek's shoulder and elbow painfully. The scrape of metal on metal rang in his ears, though blunted by the water.
The sahuagin was on him, lashing out with talons from both hands and feet. Moving swiftly, faster than the wide-webbed foot that ripped up toward his midsection, Jherek grabbed the sahuagin's scaled ankle in his free hand while keeping the trident turned from him with the other. He used the foot's downward ripping action to shove himself down, gliding under the sea devil, then twisting to come up behind it. The unexpected move caught the sahuagin by surprise, but it moved to defend itself.
The creature slapped at Jherek with its tail, the gristled tip of it slashing a cut across his chest. Jherek ignored the pain of the wound and kicked hard, driving himself into position to reach out and capture the sahuagin's head hi his free arm before it could move away.