"If the wind holds," the prince announced between clenched teeth, "then we might be able to make it. If not. ."
"What is that thing?" demanded Alicia, determined to find some means of dealing with this challenge.
"It seems to be nothing more than a flat platform, probably with a neutral buoyancy-it neither sinks nor floats on its own." Keane had obviously been thinking about the object, for he answered without hesitation.
"Why would they use it? Why not just swim?" persisted the princess.
"Look." The mage pointed. The broad raft skimmed across the surface of the water, bouncing through the swells in clouds of spray, breaking a broad, foaming wave to either side of the blunt prow. "I think it lets them travel faster on the surface than they could otherwise swim. See? A number of them can rest, while the craft still makes good time."
"Excellent time," noted the northman captain grimly. More than two hundred sahuagin manned the great paddles, while an unseen number of scrags propelled the craft by musclepower. More than a hundred additional scaly monsters of the deep sat patiently in the midst of the wide platform, bearing weapons and ready-and rested-for battle.
"Dead ahead-another raft of the critters!" The cry from the bow, by the barrel-chested Wultha, paralyzed Alicia for one terrorized moment, but in that space of time, the Prince of Gnarhelm had leaped down the center of the longship's hull and was scrambling up the neck of the proud figurehead, the princess racing to join him.
"By the hundred curses of Tempus!" snarled Brand, and in another moment, Alicia saw the cause of his distress.
She recognized the pattern of bubbles, saw the swells of the Trackless Sea mound upward as they had when the other raft had broken the surface. But this time, the obstacle lay directly in the Princess of Moonshae's path!
"Hard port-emergency helm!" shouted the prince. Even before the order was completed, the vessel heeled violently as Knaff the Elder pulled the rudder to port. Alicia lost her footing and tumbled to the deck, falling heavily as the longship crunched into the broad raft of the sea creatures with a timber-straining collision.
"Death to the humans! Attack!" hissed Krell-Bane, fang-toothed king of the scrags. The Mantaship beneath his feet staggered from the impact with the speeding longship, but the sleek vessel's keel rode up onto the raft, and now the ship was stuck there.
Two columns of huge scrags lurched forward, while the smaller sahuagin threw themselves with abandon at the gunwale of the longship. Human defenders quickly scrambled to their positions, but even as Krell-Bane exhorted his troops, he saw northmen fall, slain by trident and scimitar, tooth and claw.
In another moment, the first of the fishmen had scrambled onto the enemy craft.
In the darkness of the depths below, the body of a giant squid lurked, hearing the sounds of battle, waiting for the report of victory. Sinioth would not involve himself in this battle. Instead, he would let his children bring the bodies of his enemies to him.
10
Brandon cursed, and veteran northmen sailors tumbled from their rowing benches, dislodged by the force of the collision. The Princess of Moonshae shuddered violently as a cascade of seawater surged over the gunwale. Alicia scrambled to regain her balance, certain that the hull of the longship had been fatally punctured.
But as she stood again, the princess realized that the deck felt solid under her feet, and she could see no sign of a crack in the solid planks of the hull. She tried to tell herself that, just maybe, the Princess of Moonshae was not finished yet.
If water was not pouring in, however, the same could not be said of the sahuagin. Dozens of fishmen leaped toward the longship's hull as soon as the two vessels collided. In a few seconds, many of them sprang to the gunwales and scrambled into the shallow hull.
Following the impact, the prow of the longship rested on the broad, timbered deck of the enemy raft. Stout, waterlogged beams formed parallel keels separated by the long strips of water. Under the weight of Brandon's ship, the bow of the raft wallowed beneath the waves. With the fishmen scrambling all around, it seemed as though the two vessels were firmly locked together.
Brandon shouted an inarticulate cry and split a sahuagin skull with his great axe. Wultha picked up one of the creatures in his huge hands, snapping the creature's spine before casting it into the faces of two of the corpse's charging compatriots.
Keane, meanwhile, snapped the words to a quick spell and crushed something like dried threads in his left hand. He pointed at the fishmen with his right. Immediately strands of gooey string shot from his extended fingers, wrapping themselves about several of the approaching monsters, binding them securely to the hull. The creatures snapped and snarled, but their most diligent struggles couldn't break them free. Even more were ensnared as they attempted to crawl over the original targets of the web.
Hanrald, holding his great longsword in both hands, cleaved his way through a pack of the sea monsters, slicing a huge scrag into pieces small enough that he could kick them over the side. The lack of armor, which he would have worn for any battle on land, didn't slow his aggressive tactics in the least. He shouted and roared, leaping this way and that, muscles tensing for each bone-crushing blow.
But not all of the attacks went the way of the humans. Three northmen in the bow fell, fatally wounded in the first rush before they even had time to draw their weapons. Others felt the kiss of sahuagin steel-hooks and spears, scimitars and tridents-as more and more of the creatures spilled into the longship's hull.
Alicia's keen longsword drove through the shelled breastplate of a scale-faced fishman, and then she gasped as the creature fell, for beyond it loomed a much more formidable foe.
Nobody had to tell her that this was one of the scrags. A wide mouth, like a shark's, gaped open to reveal many rows of short, barbed teeth. Stringy hair, like strands of pale kelp, straggled across the monster's smooth scalp, while pale, dead eyes stared with all the emotion of a fish.
But there was plenty of threat in the creature's actions as it raised a double-pronged spear and aimed it at the unarmored princess. Powerfully clawed feet gripped the gunwale as the creature loomed, monstrously huge.
"Incendrius!" Keane barked the single word that cast one of his most powerful spells, a magical command that caused a tiny pebble of flame to burst from his finger and drift, with a deceptively gentle and wavering flight, like a seed borne by a gentle breeze, toward the gunwale of the Princess.
"Down!" shouted the mage, then watched as Alicia scrambled back from the looming horror of the scrag.
The fireball exploded with a white flash that, for a split second, seemed to outshine the sun. The mage had pushed the center of the spell well past the longship's hull, but tongues of flame sizzled outward in a seething hellfire that licked along the gunwale and singed a corner of the sail. Several scrags perched on the rail vanished, incinerated to ashes in less than a second, and the following wave of sahuagin perished, shrieking, in another moment.
The respite gave the princess enough time to climb to her feet. She thought of her staff and immediately seized the shaft of wood, stamped it on the deck, and shouted the command: "Phyrosyne!"
The shaft began to grow, extending upward in shoots of green branches, planting feet to either side. The tree creature reached out with its tough, branchlike hands-and promptly fell over as the longship rocked on a gentle swell. The flailing branches knocked sahuagin and northmen down together as the magical being struggled to gain its balance on the unstable platform.