“For myself,” Shanol said, “your neutrality is all that I sought. My work here is done and I and my pod will leave immediately.”
“Well,” Edmund said. “We’re waiting on our ship. We request to be allowed to stay until it arrives. I have some details to work out with Jackson anyway; I still think that you need more materials and I’m working on a list that I’ll pass to traders. But as soon as the ship arrives, we’ll leave.”
“Very well,” Bruce said. “You can stay until the ship arrives, it will be here soon?”
“Within a day or two, I hope. It is already overdue.”
“It had to stop and burn a peaceful merchant,” the orca said, snidely.
“Enough,” Bruce said. “This is what I want far from here. Shanol, go now. Edmund, as soon as possible.”
“Very well,” Shanol replied. “I hope to see you again in better times.” With that he gave a flick of his tail, which blew water across Edmund, and headed out to sea, whistling for his pod.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The next day dawned clear again and before the mists were off the ground, the dragons were aloft searching for a school of sizeable fish.
Koo and Vickie had stayed on land, so the only rider with Herzer was Jerry, who was the strongest swimmer. In the detritus from before the Fall, Jackson had dug up a set of fins and a conformable mask and snorkel, which fit the rider, and he intended to participate as much as possible in the hunt. Elayna had stayed back at camp, but the group included Jason, Pete, Jackson and an older mer-man named Bill, all of whom planned on working the net. Bast had also chosen to stay back at the town.
They spiraled upward, the dragons having to work for altitude with neither thermals nor wind, and looked for anything moving. But the surface of the ocean was glass smooth for klicks and there was no sign of migrating pelagics to be seen.
“I guess it’s reef fish, today,” Jerry said.
“Whatever,” Joanna complained. “I’m damned hungry.”
“If we can take just a little time,” Bill said, “sometimes schools wait for the ebb tide by Roberts Inlet. It’s not far down the coast.”
“By where we went fishing the first time,” Jason said.
“We can try it,” Joanna grumbled. “And if they’re not there we either eat reef-fish or mer-men that send us on wild goose chases.”
Herzer looked back to the east, squinting into the rising sun, and saw a flash on the surface.
“Hang on,” he said, spinning Chauncey practically on his own tail. “There’s something back there.”
“Dolphins,” Jason said, as Nebka banked around to follow Joanna. “Or maybe delphinos.”
“Delphinos,” Joanna said. “I can see the rounded foreheads.”
“From here?” Pete asked. He was riding behind Jerry and squinting to try to see what everyone was looking at.
“I can adjust my eyes for enhanced distance vision,” the dragon said. “They’re delphinos. But…”
“Why are they just standing on their tails?” Herzer asked. It was apparent the pod was not moving, just thrashing at the surface. As if they were trying to attract attention.
“I dunno,” Joanna said. “But there’s something closing on them from the direction of the town. Something underwater.”
“Commander,” Herzer said. “Will all due respect, I suggest we proceed immediately back to the town.”
“It’s an orca,” Joanna growled. The whole group had been gliding in the direction of the delphinos and now the great dragon started flapping her wings, accelerating. “It’s hunting them.”
She entered a steep glide then pulled out as she swept over the delphinos. She stayed on level flight, wingtips just above the ocean, until she passed over the orca. She had timed the strike, by luck or planning it didn’t matter, perfectly and just as she swept over the unsuspecting orca broached the surface. As it did, all four talons shot down and sunk into its skin.
She had banked upward as she struck and had nearly forty kilometers of forward momentum so the massive marine mammal was plucked from the waters as neatly as a fish being caught by an osprey.
But the massive orca weighed a good percentage of her own weight and Joanna quickly discovered that getting him out of the water was not the same as keeping him out. After a few desperate wing beats she released the whale and let him drop, bleeding, back into the water.
The orca, however, seemed to have had enough, and dove for the reef below, heading out towards deeper water and away from the delphinos.
“Just peaceful diplomats, huh,” Joanna said as she gained altitude. She banked towards the village but took a look back at the trail of blood from the wounded orca. “Buh-bye, buh-bye now.”
“We need to get down there!” Jason shouted.
“Let me and the dragons handle this,” Joanna replied. “Herzer, the birthing cavern.”
“Shit!” he said, banking Chauncey towards the land as the rest of the dragons thundered into the shallows. “I’ll be back!”
Rachel was watching her father, who was talking to one of the older mer-folk in the shadows of a ledge. The mer-man was nodding his head as Edmund talked, clearly agreeing with what the general was saying. Edmund had been doing the rounds ever since Bruce had ordered them to leave, late into the last night and was at it again even before breakfast this morning. He seemed to reach some sort of agreement and was just starting to swim away when there was a shrill screeing in the distance.
Rachel had become inured to the constant low-level noises of the sea. There was a constant snapping, which she had been told were shrimp although she rarely saw them. And there was the semiconstant pinging of the delphinos that hovered near the periphery of the town. But this was different, it set her teeth on edge and made her want to get up and run.
When Edmund heard it he seemed to recognize it and headed up above the enclosing coral with Rachel following.
When she got above the coral she spun around, looking for what was making the noise but what she saw was a line of raylike forms heading in from the direction of the rising sun.
“Attack!” Edmund bellowed, just as the rays swept across the crowded square.
The creatures, Changed humans, were the size of manta rays, nearly three meters from wingtip to wingtip. But instead of the soft, plankton-gathering mouths of manta rays they had vertically slit mouths lined with sharklike teeth. Rachel saw a line with a bony harpoon head dart down from the belly of one of the leading ixchitl and strike the mer-man that Edmund had been talking to. The mer-man struggled for a moment then went flaccid as the line began to accordion back up to the ray. When the still-twitching mer-man reached the belly of the ixchitl the beast tore into his body, tearing off great strips of flesh as the shallow water turned red around it. More of the darts were dropping among the mer as those that could dashed for the relative safety of the ledges and swim-throughs.
Bruce the Black suddenly appeared from one of the swim-throughs, a bone-tipped spear in his hand, and shot up into the crowd of ixchitl. He caught one of the beasts in the maw and the hard-driven spear penetrated through its mouth and up out of the back in a welter of blood. But even as he took that one out, another speared him and the leader of the mer shuddered as its neurotoxin ran though his veins.
“Get under cover!” Edmund bellowed at her, drawing his knife.