Bruce Cordell - Key of Stars

A school of large fish darted along just below the sea surface, occasionally breaking above, roiling and splashing the water. The disturbance was closing on Green Siren ’s position. He squinted, focusing on the approaching school. He felt his eyebrows rise when, instead of fins, he saw scaled limbs and webbed feet. Spear tips, harpoons, and other weapons gripped tight in fishy hands also flashed above the water line.

“Hard about!” Thoster yelled, even as he spun the wheel. Too little, too late. The attackers were already too close. He wished, not for the first time, that Green Siren had a porthole installed below the waterline to afford a better view of threats that swam beneath the surface.

“Break out arms! Repel boarders!” he shouted.

He glanced at Anusha. “Don’t just stand there; get to your cabin and lock yourself inside your strongbox, lass!” he said. “You ain’t protected by dream!”

Anusha ran for the stairs. Yeva stamped after her.

Thoster lunged for the starboard railing.

The approaching swimmers had already halved the distance. Though still mostly hidden beneath the waves, Thoster knew what they were: kuo-toa. He also knew there were many, many more than the few dozen he could see along the surface.

Crew swarmed the railing around Thoster. Most had their swords and axes drawn, but a few fired crossbow bolts into the swell of the approaching tide. The bolts struck the frothing water with no apparent effect.

“Don’t waste your shots!” Thoster yelled. “Wait until they breach!”

He drew his venomous blade. Its cunning gears immediately began to spin and click, pulling poison from the ever-full reservoirs hidden in the hilt.

The kuo-toa reached the ship and swarmed up the sides.

Ten or twelve attackers fell back into the waves, crossbow bolts buried in their heads, necks, or chests. But others leapt from the water to take the place of the fallen. The kuo-toa gave voice to a wordless chant that prickled Thoster’s spine. It was the same melody as the one emanating from Xxiphu.

The second wave of climbers reached the railing, and nearly as one, the crew slashed, stabbed, and clubbed the boarders. A dozen more kuo-toa fell back into the water. Scarlet threads of blood spread through the lapping waves.

A crewman screamed as a kuo-toa harpoon skewered him through the chest. The attacker wrenched the harpoon, pulling the crewman forward over the rail. The man yelled again before he hit the water. Thoster kept his eyes on the spot where the man had gone under, even as he dispatched two boarders with his sword. The crewman didn’t surface again.

A yell pulled his attention to the ship’s port side. A separate wave of kuo-toa poured over the railing there, unopposed. The damn things had surrounded Green Siren!

“ ’Ware behind you!” he screamed at his crew. Their attention was fully occupied with the initial boarders, who’d apparently served merely as a distraction.

Thoster swept his sword through three more starboard attackers, then charged across the deck to a wedge of spear-wielders who’d come over on the port side. The kuo-toa hissed and cried out in a disturbing language whose slick consonants made him queasy. He didn’t know the words, but … The sounds were hauntingly familiar.

He growled and engaged the lead kuo-toa. It was more proficient than the ones he’d already dispatched, damn it all. The two sides of the wedge continued to move forward, attempting to wrap and surround him!

A kuo-toa on his flank shoved a spear into Thoster’s left hip.

“Umberlee’s lying lips!” he said.

He took a step back, but his sword found the throat of an attacker. The creature blackened with poison and fell, but another kuo-toa immediately stepped into the gap.

Thoster tried to take another step, but the smooth curve of the mainsail ended his retreat. At least they couldn’t get behind him, he thought.

The exclamations of his crew grew more desperate. Thoster couldn’t spare a moment to assess the situation. It was all he could do to keep the five creatures pressing him from sliding something sharp into his viscera.

Then the kuo-toa on his right spit up blood and dropped. A sheen of light briefly illuminated … something standing behind it.

The creature next to it turned to see what happened to its comrade, but before it could complete its motion, it screamed. It joined the first on Green Siren ’s deck. The same sparkle of golden light hinted at an invisible presence.

“Anusha?” the captain said, and plunged his sword through one of the remaining confused kuo-toa.

Yet another of his attackers shrieked and fell.

“None other!” came the woman’s voice from an empty point in space.

The combined effort of his poisonous blade and her invisible one broke the wedge of attackers into so many unmoving fishy corpses.

The deck vibrated beneath his boots an instant before Yeva appeared from the doorway leading to the ship cabins. Four milling kuo-toa rushed her. She glanced in their direction. A corona briefly flared into an elaborate pattern of light haloing her head, and two of the four tumbled and lay still.

The other two didn’t flinch. One stabbed Yeva in the stomach; its spear broke on her metal body. The other tried to run past her through the door, but she stopped it cold with an iron punch to the face.

“Why are the kuo-toa attacking us, Captain?” said Anusha’s voice.

He shrugged. “They’re babbling something, but I ain’t proficient in fish talk,” he said, grabbing his amulet.

When he touched it, his sense of the ethereal music sleeting through his head faded, and the chant the creatures uttered lost its familiarity. But something in him was kin to the fatherless biters, and both Anusha and he knew it. She did him the courtesy of not pursuing the issue.

Another wave of kuo-toa swept over the railings on both the port and starboard sides simultaneously.

“How many are there?” Yeva yelled.

“Too many,” he said. “Yeva, you and Anusha are worth five of my crew put together. Hold ’em off the port side. I’ll help the lads keep starboard clear.”

He swept into the press, wielding his sword like a scythe; with it, he reaped.

But no matter how many kuo-toa they killed, more leaped out of the water. Their awful, lisping chant, voiced nearly as one, was thick in the air. The words tugged at him, urging him to accept some terrible insight. Part of him wanted to look. Most of him wanted to turn tail and run the other way.

Thoster’s shadow reached out across the deck for an instant as thunder cracked, too close.

He whirled and saw Yeva lying unmoving, face down. Her metal skin glowed a dull red. Where her body touched the deck, wood smoldered.

Two kuo-toa with elaborate headdresses and brandishing pincer spears stood near the fallen woman. Residual sparks of electricity danced between them. They reminded him of the priestess Nogah, whose strange message had pulled him into the mess in the first place. If those two shared anything like the power Nogah had been able to command, Green Siren was in trouble.

Kuo-toa stampeded through the doorway Yeva had guarded, into the crew cabins.

“They’ll find my luggage!” came Anusha’s voice.

She briefly materialized, resplendent in golden armor. She hewed into the rear flank of the creatures swarming the cabinway.

“Here! This way!” she yelled. “I’m right here!”

A few of the boarders turned to engage her. Most didn’t.

The anxiety fluttering in his stomach redoubled. Green Siren was being swamped beneath a horde whose numbers seemed endless. If ten or twenty kuo-toa appeared for every defender, the ship would be lost no matter how much power he, Yeva, or Anusha could bring to bear individually. And Yeva didn’t look like she was part of the fight any longer. Anusha might soon follow; if she wasn’t able to defend her body, her phantom self would be snuffed out too.