when I heard the news. Calimshan needs me. Our homeland needs all its citizens, to fight. The land races must band together or else we'll be driven from the-'
A scream interrupted. Turning, more people screamed, and cried, and gibbered with fear.
Alongside the ship, rising, writhing, shedding sea-water by the gallon, reared an octopus tentacle higher than the mast and thicker around than a hogshead barrel. The flesh was a mottled green and brown, the colors shimmering and shifting in the bright spring sunshine. The largest suckers on that gigantic arm were wide as a man's chest. As the watchers stepped back in fear, another tentacle arose alongside, then a third.
Heart of the Lion had sailed the seas for thirty years, as boy and man, and seen many fantastic sights, but nothing like this. He had time for only one chilling thought-octopuses had eight arms-so was not surprised to see three more tentacles rising from the depths alongside the dromond. Like loathsome, sea-spawned trees, the six arms formed an obscene cage that threatened to block the sun and trap the ships.
The tentacles toppled and crashed on the wooden decks. People scattered in all directions, some even jumping overboard. Severed rigging snapped and pinged. Loose sails flapped all which way. Barrels stacked around the hold flipped and rolled like dice, and several split to spill resinous liquid running in streams down the deck. Half a dozen pirates and sailors were killed outright, crushed by the massive tentacles. Two victims screamed as trapped, broken limbs were pulped further.
The marine lieutenant, her captors, and two other pirates were hemmed in with Heart of a Lion, trapped between living walls of slimy flesh as tall as hedgerows and stinking of the sulfurous sea bottom. The ships shuddered and groaned like over-laden donkeys-as Heart of a Lion knew they were. Another minute and both ships might shatter. Sucked into the depths, drowning, the crew would be minced like minnows by the yellow parrot's beak the giant octopus sported beneath its bulbous head.
Buoyant as a cork, the merchant vessel yet shuddered as the deck tilted alarmingly to starboard. Barrels skittered, timbers groaned, and planks popped. The pirate captain wondered frantically how to fend off an attack by a giant octopus. Strong men would need an hour to hack through these rubbery limbs.
More noises, odd ones. From beyond the fleshy prison Heart of a Lion heard shouts, curses, and the clank and ring of steel. Mixed in were guttural roars like the rush of surf and the hooting of seals. What where they? How could the ships suffer another attack? Could some fiendish master have ordered a giant octopus to enwrap the ships, then sent unseen soldiers of the sea swarming aboard?
'Don't stand there gawking like a sea bass-fightr Lieutenant Destine shouted, then shook off her panicked captors and snatched her sword from one's belt.
Whipping it overhead, both hands on the pommel, Belinda Destine sank the sharp blade to the hilt in an octopus limb. Shearing flesh made a sucking sound ghastly to hear. Jumping high and hanging on the blade, she carved a furrow a cubit long that bled dark red. She called to the pirates, 'Bestir yourselves! Wedge in your blades!'
Dazzled by rapid events, and wondering what else menaced his crew, Heart of a Lion attacked with what came to hand. The fire-casting wand. With no better plan, he jammed the tube against the giant, pulsing tentacle, then whisked his hand along the polished brass. 'As'tal rifar
The flashback almost killed him.
Heart of a Lion was hurled backward as flame as big as a bonfire blossomed from the brass tube, filling his vision like a sun and blinding him. His head and shoulders thumped the opposite limb, and he sprawled on his broad rump. The huge limb didn't quiver now, but twisted and writhed. Rubbing his dazzled eyes, he discovered his shirt cuffs had been singed off.
A hole as big as a man's head was scorched in the octopus limb. Charred flesh rimmed a green hole that now gushed red blood like a hole in a dam. At the center of the wound glowed an inferno. The fireball, composed of mystical dweomer, continued to burn and bore into wet flesh.
All this damage he glimpsed for a second, then the limb was gone. Like a flying carpet, the never-ending arms ascended into the air. Evidently the octopus was bee-stung. It made sense, thought the dazzled pirate chief. An octopus was unlikely to feel fire on the sea bed.
One arm retreated so quickly the marine lieutenant was hoisted into the sky, for she single-mindedly clung to her sword pommel. Only when her boots ticked a canted mast did she let go to thump on the deck. Quick as a mink, she grabbed a dropped scimitar and raced to the attack before the nature of her enemy was even certain.
Berserk as a northern bobcat, Heart of a Lion thought. The woman was battle mad. Crawling to his feet, feeling old and slow, he made a mental note to stay out of her way. What did they feed Imperial Marines anyway? Dragon's blood and wolf guts? Wiping his brow, making sure he retained his fireball wand, Heart of a Lion cast about to see what force attacked his ship and crew.
He wished he hadn't looked.
Green, weedy giants, a dozen or more, raged across both ships leaving chaos in their wake. Heart of a Lion recognized the creatures, having seen one dead, caught in a fisherman's net. Sea ogres, called merrow by mariners, loomed ten feet tall yet ran thin as barracudas, with elongated necks and bear-trap jaws. Naked, with flesh pale as a drowned corpse, the beasts were stippled with hair like seaweed. Every ogre was inscribed with twisted tattoos and hung with necklaces, bracelets, and anklets cobbled from sharks' teeth, swordfish swords, tarnished brass and silver, broken bottle necks, and other sea wrack. Teeth and nails black as chert were tough enough to rend humans in half, and the monsters reveled in an orgy of bloodlust.
As Heart of a Lion watched, an ogre drove a spear through a sailor's guts, hoisted the squirming woman by the haft and her hair, then bit out her throat so her head flopped against her spine. Two ogres swatted a pirate flat, then grabbed him by both arms and yanked.
The limbs dislocated, then tore from their sockets in gouts of blood. Many sailors and pirates didn't fight at all, just ran in terrified circles, and Heart of a Lion couldn't blame them. Others fought back. Harun swung a wicked boarding axe to slice a merrow across the waist and spill its guts, then swung the other way to hamstring another rampaging monster and bring it crashing to the deck.
Maddest of all was the berserk Belinda Destine. Since conditions changed rapidly and unexpectedly at sea, Imperial Marines were trained to improvise in battle, to attack with whatever came to hand. Bereft of her sword, Belinda hefted one of the many barrels that rolled and careened across the deck. Gargling her own battle cry, she smashed the barrel into the muzzle of a marauding merrow. Oak slats cracked and liquid gushed over both combatants. Oddly, the sharp reek set the merrow stumbling backward, clawing at its eyes, gasping and retching. Belinda merely shook her streaming blond bangs from her eyes, hefted the empty cask again, and walloped the merrow in the breast. When it fell, Belinda beat the cask to fragments on its hard head. Heart of a Lion grunted at her mindless ferocity, and reminded himself to sheer clear of Imperial Marines.
As humans struggled and died, Heart of a Lion was disheartened to see more merrow swarm over the sides, rapacious as rats. A pirate swung a scimitar to lop off a black-nailed hand against the gunwale, but another merrow seized his sash and yanked him overboard like a pike on a line. A tall and comical head reared suddenly alongside, with goggling eyes like lamps, a long nose like a flute, and raddled brown skin segmented like a scorpion's carapace. A seahorse, Heart of a Lion realized, fully as big as a land steed from the great plains of Amn. Two merrow had wrapped long arms around its neck, and now used the seahorse's curved back to vault onto the ship.
On this benighted day of strange sights, Heart of a Lion was astonished to see that Belinda had spoken true and he'd guessed right. This assault was controlled by a single mastermind.
By the cog's prow, farthest from the fighting, a single octopus tentacle remained suspended in the air, jigging and bobbing as the giant bottom-dweller writhed in pain. Poised on the tip of the tentacle, like a canary perched on a finger, squatted a sahuagin. Tall as a man, hunched like a pelican, with a head like a cod and the body of a frog, finned and spined, the sea devil waved a narwhal tusk as it exhorted its queer troops to attack. It croaked and squawked and waved both crooked arms wildly. Only the barbs of its froglike feet, clamped tight, kept it from toppling. A shaman invoking magic, thought Heart of a Lion, elsewise the pain-wracked octopus would flick it off. Perhaps it hurled more magic to goad the merrow in their attack, not that the bloodthirsty enemies of mankind needed much prodding.
Heart of a Lion's only magic trick was the fire wand, and he had no idea how much dweomer still charged the tube. He should conserve his shots, he thought, except the battle could end within minutes, with the merrow the victors.
'What shall we do, master?' wailed a sailor.
