And into a descending wave cresting over the rail.
“I’m getting . . . a little sick . . . of being wet all the time,” I muttered, picking myself up, wincing and gasping.
A storm front pushed by the waterspout had closed in on the boat with unnatural speed while I’d been “out” and Mambo Moon was already pitching against thrashing water and gusting wind. Just keeping my footing on that moving deck was a painful task. Beyond the squall line the water was a little choppy but otherwise undisturbed and other boats seemed to have no trouble turning aside. But no matter how Zantree maneuvered, the waterspout closed on us, bringing bigger and bigger waves that soon broke over the rails. Trying to maintain my hold on the normal world and the boat, I didn’t dare fall deeper into the Grey and had to content myself with glancing at the incoming storm from the corner of my eye, scanning for the horrors it concealed and breathing in uncomfortable gulps.
It wasn’t so much a concealment as it was a literal front. The magic wasn’t deep and it probably wouldn’t hold up past a certain degree of damage, distance, or time, but how long or far we’d only know when it broke. The first real assault came over the side as blue-green figures of foam and water, reaching for us with tentacles and teeth. I heard Solis shout in alarm as the watery specters heaved aboard. I swung my boat hook at the nearest one, feeling the shaft connect with a slow thud to the mass of animate liquid. But the pole didn’t stop; it merely bogged down against resistance and snapped out the other side too fast under the power of my muscles, causing me to stumble and twist forward as the hook came free into the air on the other side. The figure I’d swung through dissolved into a huge splash, as if I’d shattered an aquarium.
I swore as pain broke across my ribs and I jabbed the pole’s butt backward into the next sea-foam monster. That, too, fell into a dousing explosion of water that knocked me down onto the deck, breathless and unable to refill my lungs as each heaving attempt was cut short by the sharp agony in my side. I needed to hold on to something or I’d pass out and the enchanted waves would wash me right off the other side. I rolled onto my back with care and started to shove my feet against the next one, but my foot passed through it and I felt a wet, electric shock as something gleaming wrapped around my leg and yanked me toward the rail.
“Oh no you don’t,” I gasped, getting a mouthful of seawater for my pains.
I braced my other foot against the rail as I was dragged to the edge and jabbed the boat hook into the gaping maw of the thing, shattering it. I dropped back onto the deck, free, but still down and hurting like I’d been beaten with a stick. I gagged on water and pain as I scrambled up, panting and not sure why the pole worked but my foot hadn’t. My leg stung where the aqueous phantom had clutched me and my chest throbbed. I gulped mouthfuls of air to refill my lungs and stabbed at every shape that came toward me.
I cut my gaze to the side for a moment to check on Solis. He seemed to be holding out, though he was soaked and confused, moving in quick lunges side to side following the jerky turns of his head. I could see the whites of his too-wide eyes and he slashed and reposted again and again with a surprising economy. If I’d had time, I’d have admired his fighting form, but there was no such luxury.
“Just poke them. Don’t waste energy; they’re not real,” I gasped, but my voice had no strength and he didn’t hear me.
A few more of the sea-foam creatures boiled over the rails and I dispatched mine with simple jabs, conserving my strength so I could get up and fight the denser forms beginning to thrust through the vanguard of shaped liquid as the gleam of magical energy began to fade and the scraping, spiraling song with it. They were difficult to see through the water and spray, but I assumed the new assault was formed by the merfolk themselves—if the monstrous things I’d seen in the distance were they.
One of the merfolk—a creature only vaguely human above its muscular dolphinlike tail—broached the surging wave and snatched at Solis with arms like the leaf-shaped tentacles of a squid that shot forward and wrapped the sergeant tight before the monstrosity fell back toward the heaving surface. Solis gave a shout as he was lifted and dragged over the rail, flailing his hook against the thing’s body, the point gouging into the monster’s flesh. Red blood spattered onto the deck and the hook caught on a rail stanchion, arresting their fall for a moment.
“Rey!” I shouted into a gasping silence in the attack.
The illusions collapsed in a crashing wave and the horrifying monster forms of the real merfolk—a mere handful, though they’d seemed like a hundred—began to recede as the one grappling with Rey tried to yank him under the surface. It opened its mouth, showing the rows of shark teeth within, and I lunged forward, driving the prong of my boat hook into that dreadful maw.
The mer-thing made a gurgling cry and jerked backward, tearing Solis’s hold free of the stanchion as it fell into the water. Solis fell after it, free of the tentacles for the moment as he vanished into the foam and spray of the merfolk’s retreat. I tried to heave myself over the side after Solis, but I wasn’t breathing well and my legs had gone limp under me while my ribs seemed to catch on fire. I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain.
“They’re falling back. I’ll get Solis,” Quinton shouted in my ear, rushing onto the side deck to shove me back. “You get to the bow and get ready to throw the life preserver to us.”
“Life—” I started, forcing my watering eyes open.
“Big orange ring with a rope on it,” he shouted back, pointing.
Then he was over the side and gone into the water.
The noise of the boat and the storm dropped to a high whistling and dull clanging and splashing, the merfolk—stripped of their monstrous illusions, but still monsters—sweeping back from whence they came. Zantree came scrambling around to the side deck and got me on my feet.
“You all right?”
I panted at him. “Just. Winded. You?” I hurt all over and thought I was going to throw up from it, but I wasn’t going to say so.
“Had to cut the engine so we wouldn’t run over the boys and cut ’em up with the props. Why did those things break off like that?”
“Out of power . . . I think.”
“I hope they aren’t just regrouping. . . . But I’d better get back topside and keep an eye out for the boys. If you miss with the ring, we’ll have to circle around—if we can and if this hole in the weather holds long enough. Can you manage?”
I would have to: There was only the two of us left aboard and I couldn’t maneuver the boat like he could. I nodded.
Zantree spun around and bolted back to the flying-bridge ladder.
I held the rail near the life preserver and stared out toward the water, looking for any sign of Quinton or Solis. I spotted something dark, splashing a distance out from the side of the boat but well to the rear. I wasn’t sure how to throw the life preserver that far from the bow, but I felt as much as heard the engines roar back up to speed and the boat turned, coming around and moving toward a point above the splashing. The engines cut back to a burble and the boat glided, turning a bit more so we weren’t coming straight on it. In a moment the splashing resolved into the shape of two heads and a thrashing arm. I grabbed the life preserver and tossed it like a giant Frisbee, letting out a sharp squeal of agony as it flew free from my outstretched arms. I folded over the jabbing in my side, scraping my arms against the rails as I went, and forced my eyes open to see the ring splash down.