Richard Byers: Queen of the Depths

Of course, it was possible they didn’t need to care. Their power might well prevail against every ruse and tactic Myth Nantar had prepared.

But Tu’ala’keth refused to believe it. Not after she and Anton had come so far and achieved so much. The Bitch Queen had no mercy, nor concern for fairness as mortals understood it, but still the pattern would not complete itself in such a bitter fashion.

She and the human swam onward, past dozens of their exhausted, frightened comrades rushing to get indoors, to the keep that was supposed to be their particular refuge. They hurried through an entry on the third story, an opening blessedly too small for even the least of the wyrms to negotiate, and the shalarin warriors waiting on the other side gaped at them.

“What’s happening?” an officer asked.

Somewhere outside a dragon roared.

“That noise pretty much says it,” Anton gasped, slumping with exhaustion. “We drew the dragons into town. Now you go kill them.”

Anton watched as the shalarins made their last-second preparations for combat. Most were soldiers of the Protectors Caste, with bony spines stiffening their dorsal fins rigid as the crest on a human knight’s steel helm. But they had spellcasters to support them.

Across the city other squads drawn from all six allied races were no doubt doing exactly the same thing, and Anton silently wished them luck. It was their fight now. He and his comrades had done their job by luring the dragons down the proper streets in the proper heedless state of mind.

But maybe he didn’t want to hold back while others finished the battle. It was strange, really. As a spy, he’d rarely been present when the Turmian fleet or army, acting on intelligence he’d provided, eliminated a threat to the republic, and he’d rarely cared. But this time, for whatever reason, he wanted in at the kill.

The greatsword rejoiced at his witless impulse, at a new opportunity for bloodshed. Calm down, he told it sourly, meanwhile casting about for Tu’ala’keth.

Clasping her skeletal pendant, the waveservant was murmuring a prayer. At the conclusion, she shivered, rolled her narrow shoulders as if working stiffness out, then took a firmer grip on her trident.

He swam to her. “What did you just do?” he asked.

“I suppressed my fatigue,” she said, “making myself fit to fight once more.”

“Cast the same charm on me, will you? If you’ve got another.”

She flashed him one of her rare smiles. “I do. I expected you would want it.”

The spell stung like a hundred hornets, and he grunted at the blaze of pain. It lasted only an instant, though, and afterward, he felt as though hed rested for a day.

Tu’ala’keth made her way to one of the warriors bearing a satchel. “I will take that,” she said, indicating the bag.

The Protector eyed her uncertainly. “I volunteered,” he said.

“Your bravery does you credit,” she said, “but unless you have experience fighting dragons, I am better suited to the task.”

“All right. If you put it that way.” He handed her the bag just as a roar from the street outside agitated the water and shook the walls of the keep itself.

Anton hurried to a window. Beyond was a dragon turtle, its spiky shell nearly broad enough to fill the canyonlike avenue. Its beaked head twisted from side to side, and its eyes glared as it sought the elusive prey who’d fled inside the buildings to either side.

Quarrels flew from windows and doorways. Anton shouldered his own crossbow and started shooting. Many of the missiles glanced harmlessly off the reptile’s shell or scales, but some lodged in its hide. Meanwhile, the magicians threw darts of light and raked the beast with blasts of shadow. Blood tinged the water around its body.

The reptile pivoted toward one of the larger entry-ways across the street, a circular opening midway up a marble wall. Anton prayed that everyone inside recognized the danger, that they were already bolting deeper into the structure. But even if so, many wouldn’t get clear in time.

With a screech like the wail of a god’s teakettle, the dragon turtle vomited its breath weapon, boiling the water in front of it. Framed in the windows to either side of the entry way, shalarins convulsed then floated lifeless.

But other defenders endured elsewhere, to shoot darts and fling attack spells, and it would take the reptile’s breath time to replenish itself. Maybe, despite its derangement, it now began to understand it was at a disadvantage. With a stroke of its flippers, it shot a few yards farther down the street then halted as it evidently perceived it couldn’t escape in that direction. Myth Nantar was a city half buried in reef, and like many of its byways, this particular street terminated in an upsweep of coral.

The dragon turtle wheeled just as, rippling with rainbows, a curtain of conjured force abruptly blocked the other end of the avenue. The leviathan angled its body upward, preparing to ascend, but a gigantic net, the magically toughened cables thick as a strong man’s thigh, now covered the street like a lid on a pot to complete the killing box. A team of warriors had stretched it across while the reptile was looking elsewhere.

Even so, it swam upward. Maybe it had wit enough to realize the net was the least substantial component of its cage. Its prodigious beak could likely nip through, or failing that, its raw strength and immensity could probably tear the mesh loose from its moorings.

Though not entirely unexpected, the dragon turtle’s sound judgment was the allies’ misfortune. They’d hoped to harry it from the relative safety of the buildings for a while longer, hurt it a little more, anyway, before anyone ventured out into the open. But they couldn’t permit it to breach the netting and maneuver freely. So officers shouted the command to go forth, and Anton, Tu’ala’keth, and dozens of others obeyed.

Some of the warriors bellowed war cries to attract the reptile’s attention. Anton yelled, “Turmish!” The dragon turtle peered downward then, trailing billows of blood, dived at the foes who had at last dared to come within its reach.

Midway through its plunge, it spat more of its breath. Some of the shalarins recognized the threat, but nobody managed to dodge. Everyone caught in the path of the blast boiled and died amid the burst of bubbles. By pure luck, Anton was safely to the side, but even he had to grit his teeth at a brush of scalding heat.

The dragon turtle hurtled down into the midst of its foes. The crested head at the end of the long neck swiveled left then right, biting a shalarin to fragments at the end of each arc. The elongated flippers bore talons like the feet of a land-born wyrm, and they clawed with equally devastating effect, tearing warriors to tatters and clouds of gore.

How could anything so gigantic maneuver so quickly? The confines of the street were supposed to hamper it!

It spun toward Anton, its beak gaping. He started to dodge, and a jagged block of ice materialized in the creature’s open mouth. Finally, one of the wizards had balked the creature in its furious assault. It flailed in shock and pain.

Anton kicked, shot into the distance, and cut at the reptile. The greatsword bit deep into the side of its beak. Maybe a mage had succeeded in cursing it with one of the enchantments devised to soften a wyrm’s scales, for other warriors, likewise taking advantage of the behemoth’s sudden incapacitation, were also piercing its natural armor.

Unfortunately, its incapacitation lasted only a moment. Then it bit down hard, and the ice jammed in its mouth crunched to pieces. Its head whirled toward Anton, and he wrenched himself out of the way.

More ice! he silently imploredit worked for a secondor, if not that, some other magic to hinder the brute.