"Scrags," Jak said. "Dark!"
From the maindeck, shouts of alarm from the crew echoed Jak's words.
"Sea trolls! Scrags!"
From below the waterline, the thumping against the hull continued, as did the grating sounds. No doubt some of the scrags were trying to tear a hole in Demon Binder's bottom. Cale had seen their claws and had little doubt they could do it, given enough time.
Chanting sounded from down in the water. Cale recognized the cadence of a spell.
"They've got a shaman," he said.
He pulled Weaveshear free of its scabbard, and he and Jak raced over the forecastle to the maindeck.
Azriim watched the huge heads and fang-filled mouths appear over the sides of the ship. Straggly green hair hung from the trolls' oversized heads.
"Scrags!" screamed several members of the crew, and grabbed for weapons. "Trolls on the deck!"
Riven started to draw his blades but Azriim stopped him with a hand on his wrist. He showed the assassin and Dolgan the compass. The needle pointed directly down.
"Here is where we disembark," Azriim said.
Several of the trolls already had scrambled over the rail. They shook the water from their long, stringy hair, roared, and charged the nearest crewmen. Sertan shouted orders, men fought with whatever weapons were at hand, screamed, and bled. Trolls answered with growls and grunts. The chant of a spellcaster sounded from somewhere and a bubble of darkness formed over the melee. Within the blackness, sailors screamed in pain.
Azriim knew the trolls had olfactory senses sharper than even his. They could hunt and kill the blinded sailors by scent alone. Dolphin's Coffer was lost; its crew, dead.
Azriim looked out over the gunwales and selected a point in the water a short distance from the ship.
"There," he said, and projected the location into the minds of Riven and Dolgan.
The assassin grabbed his arm. "I do not swim well."
"You soon will," Azriim answered.
Not ten paces from where they stood, another three trolls gained the deck. A sailor lost his footing at the edge of the darkness. The trolls swarmed him. They tore gobbets of flesh from his body as he screamed, bled, and died.
Riven started to remove his gear.
"I'd be quick," Azriim advised.
Azriim had little to leave behind. He wore only his clothes, his wands, and his blade. Dolgan secured his axe on his back. Riven stripped off his pack, his boots, his leather armor, everything but his weapons.
From behind them, Sertan shouted, "Use your wizardry, friend! Spells, man! And quickly!" The captain pointed at the trolls.
Another sailor died under troll claw. In their panic and desperation, two or three of the crew dived over the side. Azriim had no idea where they thought they would go. A troll dived after them, roaring with bloodlust.
Azriim smiled innocently at the captain, withdrew his teleportation rod, and teleported into the sea. He knew the salt water would ruin his clothes but nothing could save them now.
He found himself floating in the calm water a spearcast from the ship. Kicking to keep his head above water, he looked back on the slaughter.
Six or seven trolls had gained the deck, and another four were climbing up its sides.
"Farewell, Sertan," he said.
Dolgan appeared in the water beside him.
"Damned trolls get to eat the sailors and I got to eat none," the big slaad said.
Azriim cuffed him once across the face, hard, splitting his lip. "No cursing," he said.
Dolgan smiled and licked the blood from his lip.
Riven appeared. Azriim guessed that the assassin would find the water cold. The human foundered, but managed to keep himself afloat. Riven took a fistful of Azriim's shirt, and a sharp prick in Azriim's back indicated that the assassin had a blade at his kidney.
"I trust you have something in mind," Riven said. "Because I'll bleed you out before I drown here."
Azriim could not contain a grin. The assassin reminded him more and more of Serrin.
"Of course I have something in mind."
With obvious reluctance, the assassin removed the blade from Azriim's back.
Azriim removed from his thigh quiver the thin ivory wand with which he had turned a human into a cave shrimp back in Skullport. The wand allowed him to transmogrify a target into whatever shape Azriim desired. He held the wand up out of the water to confirm he had the right one. He did.
He touched it to Riven and said, "Aquatic elf."
The magic flared and the human began to change. Riven's one good eye went wide as gill slits opened in his throat, his body thinned, and his skin turned pale blue. His ears elongated into points, and his eye sockets broadened. The assassin held up a hand to discover flaps of flesh between his fingers.
"There now," Azriim said. "Well enough?"
The assassin grunted acquiescence, dived underwater, and emerged a short time later. He took a deep gulp of air. The new form allowed him to breathe both air and water. His mouth did not smile, but his good eye did.
"Well enough," the human said. "How long will it last?"
"Long enough," Azriim answered.
Azriim did not intend to remain underwater long. The mantle obviously had guardians-scrags at least. Azriim would descend to the provenance of Sakkors's mantle, plant the Weave Tap seed, and use the teleportation rod to exit. He expected it to take no longer than half an hour.
He tried to send a mental message to the Sojourner, to inform him of their progress, but the interference caused by the sentient mantle prevented him from making contact.
"And how will you two travel?" Riven asked.
"Something similar," Azriim answered.
He and Dolgan called upon their innate ability to change shape and converted their human forms into green-scaled, muscular bipedal forms, each with clawed, webbed hands and a mouthful of shark teeth-creatures known as sahuagin.
"I like to keep my fangs," Azriim said to Riven, and smiled a mouthful of razors.
With that, the three turned their faces to the dark deep and began to descend.
Demon Binder's crew, armed with cutlasses, met the trolls as the lumbering creatures tried to scramble over the sides.
Cutlasses hacked into troll flesh and black blood wet the decks. The trolls clutched the ship's rails with one hand and lashed out with claws from their other. Men screamed in pain, shouted in rage. Red blood joined the black. The trolls roared, deep and bestial. Cale did not see the shaman.
Two of the towering creatures clambered over the side and gained the deck. Sailors swarmed the pair, but troll claws tore into two seamen and kept the rest at bay. One sailor's chop with his cutlass brought him too close and one of the trolls caught him up in both of its clawed hands. The crewmen hacked at the creature but the second troll forced them back with a reckless charge, claws flailing. The pinned man screamed and kicked while the troll tore out his throat with his fangs and gulped down the gore. It roared victory to the sky, leaking red blood from its mouth, clutching the crewman's corpse in its arms.
From the other side of the ship, more trolls appeared over the sides.
"The other side too, lads!" shouted Evrel, and charged across the deck. A troll cut off the two sailors who would have joined their captain. Cale and Jak leaped down from the forecastle and joined the captain's charge.
Two trolls climbed over the side and onto the deck just as Cale, Jak, and Evrel arrived. The larger of the two lashed out with a claw that opened Evrel's shoulder, spinning him to the deck, bleeding and cursing. Cale lunged in front of the creature and stabbed it through its gut. It grunted with pain and struck out with its other claw at Cale's face. Cale dodged backward, but too slowly. The tips of the creature's claws tore gashes in his cheek and nearly took out his eye. Blood flowed but his regenerative flesh closed the wound quickly.