John Ringo - Emerald Sea

He awoke to a bellow and was on his feet, sword drawn, before he realized that it was dawn, with the sun peeping over the horizon to the southeast.

He looked around for danger but then saw Joanna, stretching and yawning hugely in the dawn light.

“Sorry about that,” Joanna said, yawning again, which came as a bellow from the belly of the immense beast. “Can’t help it.”

“Well, the good news is we’re all awake,” Edmund said. He, too, was on his feet but his sword was still sheathed.

“And how are you this morning, Commander Gramlich?” Herzer asked.

“Fine,” the dragon replied, yawning again. “Except I had to keep waking up all night to let the water in and out.”

It was apparent that the sand of the entrance had been gouged by water and dragon claws. It was also deeper than it had been on their entrance, with the water going out again. They had slept through the flood and high tide and now were in the ebb again.

“Dragons have to forage first,” Edmund said, looking around at the mer, who were wiping at their eyes. “Landsmen and dragons get some water first. If the delphinos want to run some scouts out, I wouldn’t mind. When the dragons get back, if they bring anything, we eat. Then we take off.”

“We’re going farther out this time,” Joanna said. “We pretty much hunted out this area last night.”

“Go,” Edmund said. “Take as much time as you need, but no more.”

“Will do, General,” the dragon said with a grin. She rounded up the wyverns and between the three dragons they finished off the water barrel. Then they headed for the crest of the island to get some room for takeoff.

“I was supposed to take a watch last night,” Herzer told Bast, who looked wide awake.

“I don’t need that much sleep,” Bast said. “And there were no threats. On that you may trust me, lover.”

“I do,” Herzer admitted. “And thanks.”

“You can thank me properly later,” she said with a grin. “There’s been so little time!”

“Where the hell are the orcas?” Edmund growled. He was looking out to sea, frowning. “The ixchitl can be down in the sand. But the orcas have to surface some time or another. I expected them to be waiting right outside the entrance when we woke up.”

But neither the orcas nor the ixchitl made their appearance even after the dragons returned with a fine haul of large fish.

“We saw some rays in the distance,” Joanna said and burped hugely. “But I don’t know if they were ixchitl; we didn’t get that close. There’s a really productive reef just down the coast; we could see all the fish on it as we flew over.”

“This is great, Commander,” Edmund said. The three dragons had returned with huge grouper and there was more than enough for everyone to, if not eat their fill, at least get a good portion.

“But we need to get on the move,” Edmund said. The sun was already well up. “Dragons out, with riders, then the armed mer, then the delphinos, then the unarmed mer. We’ll set up a perimeter until we can get the hemisphere reformed.”

Herzer chuckled as he buckled the sailcloth halter on Chauncey, and Bast smiled at him as she climbed on Joanna’s back.

“You see it, too,” Bast said.

“Yep,” Herzer replied, leading the dragon down to the water; it was nearly impossible to ride the dragons without their full harness until they were laid out in the water.

“What?” Edmund asked.

“You,” Joanna said as she walked out into the water until she was deep enough to partially submerge. “Did you think about how to get out of this bay last night? Or did it emerge, full blown, from your forehead like Athena from Zeus?”

“I thought about it before we left Raven’s Mill,” Edmund replied. “It’s a simple modification of the way that Roman Legions, or the Blood Lords for that matter, exited their camps.”

“Except we don’t have to take it down behind us,” Herzer said with a nod. “I just hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“You’ll learn, Herzer,” Edmund said, climbing on Donal when he lay down in the water. “You’ll learn.”

They weren’t hit as they debouched from the inlet, or even after they reformed the hemisphere and started off down the coast.

“Where are they?” Herzer asked.

“Waiting in ambush,” Edmund replied. “That’s their way.”

Herzer had taken the comment about thinking ahead to heart and used the time now. Something about the narrows that entered the channel through the banks had been bothering him for a while and how he had it.

“I think they’re going to hit us at the entrance to the banks, sir,” he said. They were traveling beneath the water, the dragons swimming for a while and then broaching like whales for a breath.

“That’s my guess as well,” Edmund replied.

“And there’s only a few ways for them to do it,” Herzer replied. “And… I think I have a way that we might be able to round up the whole set. But I’m afraid it might take too much coordination, that it’s too complicated.”

“If a plan is too complicated, the way to use it is to decomplicate it,” Edmund replied. “So what’s the plan?”

Herzer told him and he nodded.

“You’re right,” Edmund said after some thought. “That’s too complicated. And you haven’t allowed for it to go to hell in a handbasket. Let’s see if we can decomplicate it and come up with a go-to-hell option.”

They talked about it for a while, as, reinforcing their suspicions, the ixchitl failed to attack, until Edmund finally nodded.

“It doesn’t take into account the orcas,” Edmund said. “Or the kraken. But it will do. If one appears it still might work. If both appear we’re on the go-to-hell-plan.”

“Which is?” Herzer asked.

“The mer get on land, as far up as they can and the delphinos are on their own,” Edmund said, brutally. “If there’s an orc force, we just pull into the shallows and fight until we’re all dead. That’s why it’s called a ‘go-to-hell’ plan. You’re all going to hell, anyway, so you might as well take as large an honor guard as possible. Go brief the mer, I’ll handle the delphinos.”

Rather than follow the coastline all the way around, since it would be two longer edges of a triangle, they cut the chord across deeper water. This was one of the potential attack points, in Herzer’s opinion, and he kept a careful eye on the blue depths. But as no attack materialized, he relaxed, only to realize that they were approaching the entrance to the banks.

A long, narrow passage cut through the banks from the deeps side to the Stream side which was their destination. Most of the passage was up to thirty meters deep and almost a klick across. But at the edge of the deeps it narrowed and shallowed to only a few meters and no more than fifty meters across. Yet, within less than a click from the entrance into the deeps the water had deepened to over two thousand meters.

The group had reached no more than a hundred meters from the entrance when the sandbar to the northeast erupted in ixchitl.

There were more of them than had survived the first ambush, at least forty, and they swept around the formation, disdaining their nematocysts to close with the spear-wielding mer-men.

Most of them disdained their nematocysts, that is, but others swept in, targeting the dragons in particular and Chauncey let out a bellow as a harpoon entered his back. He bellowed past the body of a dead ixchitl, however, and the poison did not seem to affect him as greatly as it did the humans. He turned on his side, wrapping his wings around his body and using the technique of the delphinos to wrap the cord of the harpoon about his body and bring the beast down to where his teeth could sink into it, turning the water around him bright scarlet with its blood.