The Crystal Seas

Chapter TEN

Alanyra swam up the tunnel from her chamber deep in the Reef of Clan Gnyr and emerged on the open bottom, in the shelter of a great cluster of dark-blue branching corals. Oknyr swam over to meet her. For all his age and his long and disciplined service to the Clan, he could not keep admiration for the Lady's beauty out of his one eye as he looked at her. She wore her usual fighting outfit of a red loinguard and belt with two swords, and nothing else except the black fins on her slender feet. No, that wasn't quite true. Her dark green hair was gathered up under a silver tiara set with rubies.

Oknyr frowned. «You wear that into battle?»

«Why not? It is of our Clan.»

«But you should not-«

«Should not risk it in battle, Oknyr? Not even when I lead my Clan in battle?» The Orderer shrugged and turned away. Alanyra swam after him, to join the fighters of her Clan on the open sand on the other side of the coral.

There were more than three hundred of them there, picked men and women, plus a dozen of the trained yulons. Those great monsters were well off to one side, with their trainers and riders holding their reins tightly.

Alanyra saw some of her followers throwing nervous glances at the reptiles and fingering their bows. Indeed the yulons were not the easiest comrades to have in a battle. But it had been demonstrated in the great attack on Talgar that they were deadly and utterly terrifying to the enemy. They would not terrify the Stranger, but then Alanyra doubted if anything could terrify a man who had fought and slain a yulon with only thrown stones. The average raider from Talgar would not be so courageous.

Some of the Fishmen archers had died, thrust through with swords or spears or knives. Others fled or at least tried to flee. Those who tried to make a break for open water usually died, for the Talgarans were crowding forward. The wise Fishmen plunged down into the darkness of the tunnels that honeycombed the coral bottom. Few of the raiders had the nerve to follow them, and those who did were called back by their officers.

For the moment, Blade was one of those officers. In the moment of panic after the first volley of bolts, he had been the first to act and the first to be followed. His plunge down among them had surprised a dozen Fishmen archers before they could fire a second time. They had not recovered from that surprise before the remainder of the vanguard was diving down on them also, swords out and spears thrusting furiously. It had been a desperate few minutes of swirling bloody struggle, down there among the sharp-branched corals and weedy boulders. The Fishmen had lost three times as many men as the Talgarans. It was a time for cool heads and hard fighting, and Blade showed himself the best man in the company at both.

He rose up from the bottom, to take command of the company just as the Fishmen swept in to the attack from the front. Between one second and the next, all order went out of the battle. These Fishmen were not attacking from ambush, nor were they darting away. They were coming in to stay and fight.

At first the attackers didn't single Blade out for special attention. Three of them swept past him, leaving their backs open as they drove for the main body of the company farther on. They paid for that mistake. Blade kicked off from a boulder and rose like a rocket behind them, thrusting down with both swords simultaneously. Both thrusts went home into the backs of exposed thighs. The two victims turned, eyes blazing with surprise and pain and fury, but they did not turn fast enough. Blade whipped over in a complete somersault in the water, thrusting up with both finned feet to block his opponents' vision. They were still looking for him when he rose. With another double thrust his swords darted into their throats. They drifted away, darkening the water with outpouring blood as Blade swam off.

Blade sensed a shadow and a movement in the water behind him, and spun and dove away in the same instant. A spear drove through the water where he had been, and an enemy warrior followed the spear. Blade dropped down until he could push off from the bottom again, then arrowed upward. As the Fishman's leg came within striking range, Blade used all his enormous strength to slash the leg open from knee to ankle. The Fishman dropped his spear and doubled up, clutching his leg, exposing his neck to a thrust from Blade's other sword. The thrust went home, and another dying Fishman floated away.

Blade dove again, this time plunging all the way into the holes where the Fishmen archers had been. There were abandoned crossbows there, and he wanted to get one, or at least keep the enemy from retrieving them.

Two Fishmen barred his way, one of them a woman. The woman closed. Blade lunged at her, twisting his sword at the last moment so that the flat rather than the edge came up under her jaw. The blow rolled her halfway over backward and gave Blade time to turn and meet his other opponent.

This one seemed to be a commander of some sort. He wore a jeweled ornament on his headband and a sleeveless jerkin of scaly skin over his chest. His weapon was a double-pronged spear, like a giant tuning fork. It lashed out at Blade with a speed that nearly drove it through his thigh. He twisted aside with inches to spare, then closed with the warrior and hooked an arm around the man's neck.

Blade couldn't risk dropping either sword, and the Fishman warrior couldn't risk dropping his spear. So they grappled clumsily with each other, kicking or trying to kick, each trying to get a firm and deadly grip. As they grappled, their struggles sent them rolling over and over in the water, like a barrel going through rapids. The Fishman clamped his hand over Blade's mouth, trying to rip away his breathing mask. Blade clamped a hand down on the pale, slippery flesh of the man's shoulder, squeezing hard on the nerves. The warrior gasped and jerked the attacking hand away. As he jerked, he weakened his grip on Blade's other arm. Blade found room to pull his hand back six inches, then drive it and the sword it held forward again.

The Fishman jerked so violently as the steel went into his belly that Blade's sword was twisted out of his hand. His opponent's foot drove up against his chest with a solid thud. Blade was driven back as the Fishman writhed and doubled up in the water. But the man was obviously dying. Blade made no effort to return to the attack. Instead he dove down again, heading for the half-concealed pits where the abandoned bows lay.

He darted in over the coral, grazing his thigh on a razor-edged spiky branch, reaching down with his free hand into the dark holes. The first bow he reached had already been fired. But he found some use for it just the same. A Fishman popped out of the hole as Blade raised the bow, caught the spear point in it, and twisted the spear out of the Fishman's hand. As the spear swung up and over, Blade dropped the bow, caught the spear as it floated past, reversed it, and thrust hard as the Fishman tried to close in. The thrust missed, but this Fishman was apparently a little more timid than most of his comrades.

He fled, rising rapidly until he vanished in the turmoil of blood and churning bodies above.

Blade crouched down out of sight and began his hunt for bows again. He found two that hadn't been fired, and he promptly emptied them into the two nearest Fishmen. The sudden attack from below startled some of the other Fishmen into backing away, in swirls of water. They left a clear space over Blade. Sword in hand, he shot up, back into the battle. The Fishmen backed away still farther. They had seen what Blade could do and didn't want it done to them.

Blade kept himself upright by pedaling with his legs, waved his sword, and ran through every obscene gesture he could think of. He had about despaired of getting any Fishman to attack, when a shadow overhead suddenly darkened the water. Blade looked up. The scout boat was passing overhead. As she did, splashes off her stern told of divers going into the water. The Fishmen lunged up to meet the descending Talgarans. As they rose, Blade was after them.

Once again he overtook Fishmen who weren't keeping a proper watch behind them; once again his sword laid open pale skin. His second victim was a woman, as he discovered when she turned around in pain and shock. She was carrying something on her back that looked like an enormous canvas-wrapped sausage. As she turned, Blade tried to direct his sword thrust aside. Instead it drove through the woman's shoulder and slit open the upper end of the sausage.

Instantly the sea was lit up by a searing blue-white flame as whatever was inside the sausage reacted to the seawater. The woman screamed, mouth open wide. Then she had no more mouth to scream with, as the fire spread over her and stripped hair and flesh away from her skull. Blade thrashed frantically with his fins and backed away from the pulsing core of fire.

Now the water around the woman was boiling, as the flame stripped her down to a skeleton and began to blacken and char the bare bones. A terrible hissing sound filled the water, and bubbles and steam roared upward in a continuous stream. Fishmen and Talgarans scattered in all directions. For the moment both sides were too busy getting away from the flames to have any attention to spare for fighting each other. Blade was one of the last to retreat, but even he eventually had to back further away as the flame heated up a whole area of ocean almost to the scalding point.

The fire died away, and the blackened bits of bone that were all the fire had left of the woman drifted quietly down to the bottom. As his eyes and ears cleared so that he could think clearly again, Blade realized that he had just seen another of the Fishmen's new weapons in action. Probably the one that had swiftly destroyed the ships. Then he realized that the Fishmen had scattered along with his own company. If he could rally his company first-

He swam up, waving his free arm to signal to the fighters from the scout boat. As he did, he saw a Talgaran swimmer thrashing toward him with an oddly lopsided stroke. A moment later Blade saw why the man's stroke was lopsided. One arm had been bitten clean off at the elbow, and the man was trying to tie his belt around the bleeding stump as he swam. Half unconscious from loss of blood, he swam straight at Blade, who swung to one side and caught the man as he passed.

«What is it?»

The man's eyes stared wildly into Blade's. «They bring the yulons! The yulons are upon us! Yulons!»

The pulsing blue glare coming through the water could only be a Ship-Killer, Alanyra realized. She hoped it had found a target. But even if it hadn't, the Talgarans were doomed. She took a brief look behind her, to make sure that her personal guard of spearmen and net-carriers was still close at hand. Then she tapped one of the messenger girls on the shoulder and pointed away to the left, where the dozen yulons glided along, their ugly shapes made almost graceful by distance. The girl darted off, while Alanyra counted off the seconds. Then she saw the yulons surge forward, their riders and guides trailing out behind them like seaweed from a rock.

The attack of the yulons was the signal to the whole force of Clan Gnyr. The fins of three hundred warriors churned the water faster and faster. Alanyra let herself angle upward, until she was just below the surface. Her guard and the whole first line of the Clan followed her. Below she saw Oknyr leading the second line down to the bottom. The Clan would come in on the enemy from above and below, crushing him between its two lines of warriors like a diver's foot caught in the shell of a giant clam.

A torrent of excitement poured through her. Was there any pleasure like the swift deadly approach to a mighty battle? Some women she knew said that men could give equal pleasure, to be sure. But Alanyra doubted it. She was no virgin, but neither had she found such a miraculous man in all her thirty years of life. If she ever did-

Then one of her personal guards was swimming up alongside of her, bellowing in her ear, and pointing forward. She followed his pointing finger with her eyes, then both her mouth and eyes opened wide.

The battle was shaping itself in the water ahead. And squarely in the middle of it was the Stranger.

Blade had only seconds to think about the yulons driving in against his men. Then there was a swarm of Fishmen racing in to the attack, where seconds before there had been only empty water. Not a single sound came from them, nor a single arrow. They seemed determined to close in one furious rush, to sweep away all of Blade's comrades in a minute.

And they were going to do just that. Blade realized that almost at once. He and all the Talgarans in sight could either flee or die. He decided not to flee. Instead he shot up toward the hull of the scout boat. If he could keep off those fire bombs-

He rose toward the oncoming enemy. Half a dozen swimmers were well out in front, each with one of those sinister sausages on his back. Blade drove in toward the lead one, sword thrusting out. The six promptly scattered. Before Blade could change course to chase any one of them, he saw a solid cluster of another dozen enemies coming down at him. These were all armed with spears, except for three who towed a wide-mouthed, close-meshed net behind them. And in the lead was the woman.

What she was doing here? What had brought them together again after so long? Blade didn't have time to answer these questions, though they flashed into his mind as he plunged down again. Whatever else he did, he was determined to escape that net.

The dozen plunged after him. Blade realized that they were trying to trap him against the bottom. He drove himself down faster, then swung to one side. He half expected a spear or an arrow to drive into him. But apparently the warriors above had orders that he was to be taken alive. Well, they would find those orders damned hard to follow! He wasn't going to be hauled home to the Fishmen's caves in a net, like some fish for a feast!

Now he was on the bottom and leveling out. A massive block of coral loomed up ahead, and below it the black entrance to one of the Fishmen's ambush tunnels. If he could get into that- He would much rather face whatever might be down there in the darkness than face capture.

But as he dove for the hole, the block of coral shivered under a heavy impact. It lurched upward in a cloud of sand and debris, then rolled down, squarely blocking the hole. Blade pulled up short, then backed water furiously as the fanged head of a yulon thrust forward past where the boulder had been. Damn! The last thought he could find in his mind was fury that he was going to die snapped in two like a fish, instead of like a fighting man.

But those fanged jaws never closed on him. Instead a pale blue-white body darted down between him and the gaping red mouth. One long slim arm reached out, thrusting with a pole. The yulon's head churned up a cloud of sand and silt as it jerked back, away from Blade, away from the Fishman. The Fishman turned to face Blade. He recognized the woman. For some reason she had decided to save him from the yulon. For a moment he hesitated.

That moment's hesitation was a moment too long. Suddenly he felt something bristly on his shoulder, looked up, and saw the net drifting down over him. He pushed himself away from the bottom, surging upward. But the three men holding the net jerked down hard. Blade found himself yanked to a stop before he had risen a yard. He hung there just off the bottom, slashing at the fibers of the net with his sword. Tough as they were, he could feel the steel going through them.

But once again he wasn't fast enough. He saw a hole large enough to let him through open up in the mesh of the net. And he saw the woman swim down in front of the hole, and reach out toward him with the same long pole she had used on the yulon. He slashed at it with his sword, but she was too quick for him. A swift twisting of those long graceful arms, and the pole drove in through his guard, its blunt end slapping hard into his chest.

For a moment Blade wondered what the woman could hope to do by tapping him with the blunt end of a pole. Then he felt a numbing chill spreading through him, starting from his chest. He could still breathe, still hear, still see. But his arms and legs would not listen to the frantic signals from his brain.

The chill spread up through his neck. His mouth drifted open as far as the air mask would let it. He tried to lift a hand to hold the mask in place. He was still trying to do that when the chill spread into his head, and all sensation faded out.

Alanyra took her eyes off the unconscious Stranger for the first time when Oknyr swam up. Ten years seemed to have dropped from his bones as he pulled to a stop in front of her, and his one eye was shining with triumph.

«They are all dead, captured, or fleeing, Noble Lady.»

«All?»

«At least all we came against,» Oknyr said with a grin. «I won't say that the other Clans have done as well.»

«None could have,» said Alanyra, pointing at the motionless form inside the net.

Oknyr's eyes fell on the Stranger, and he shrugged. «Perhaps.»

Alanyra was very tired, too tired to be angry with the old warrior. She merely said quietly, «Did you doubt my word?»

Oknyr's skin turned almost purple with embarrassment. «Not your word, Lady. Only your-enthusiasm.» Then, more briskly, «So you have him. Now let us set about getting him home to our Reefs, before the trinzans or the loose yulons decide to make a meal of him.»