Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [139]
“This is senseless. Why disgrace yourselves by spilling blood inside the palace? You should meet your fate with dignity.” Holding his blade at the ready, he extended his other hand. “Give up your weapons.”
“Look!” one of the men behind him shouted. An uncomfortable susurration rippled through the contracting circle of soldiers.
Something was emerging from the point of the herdsman’s sword. Gray on top, white on the bottom, it swelled massively as it expanded away from the bone. It looked like a giant bicolored drop of milk oozing out of nothingness parallel to the floor. As it continued to increase in size it began to grow individual features, like a closed flower sprouting petals. And it just kept getting bigger and bigger.
The ornamental floating fish in the reception hall identified it before any of the soldiers. They vanished through open doors as if propelled by lightning and not fins, evaporating streaks of yellow and orange, red and gold. In one case they literally flew through a squad of blue-clad reinforcements hurrying to the chamber. It was as if they had not fled, but vaporized.
The gray-white mass grew fins of its own, and a great, sickle-like tail. A pair of black eyes manifested themselves. They were jet black and without visible pupils. All of these details were ignored by those in the room as they focused on a single predominant feature: the mouth.
It was enormous, capable of swallowing a person in a single swallow. Multiple rows of gleaming white, triangular teeth lined the interior of that imposing cavity. Their edges were serrated on both sides of the sharp point, like steak knives. The largest was more than three inches long. It was a peerless mouth, unlike anything else in all the undersea kingdom. When viewed from straight on, jaws and teeth combined to form a uniquely terrifying smile.
The great white shark broke free of the tip of the bone sword and drifted toward the assembled soldiers. Several broke and ran, but the rest bravely held their ground, their long pikes extended. A second gray-white teardrop shape was beginning to emerge from the weapon. If anything, it promised to be larger than its predecessor.
One of the soldiers thrust his pike at the looming predator. Extending its jaws beyond its lips, the great white ate it. Left holding a length of useless wood, the soldier sensibly threw it away, turned, and sprinted for the nearest door.
“Hold your ground!” Bewaryn Beckwith commanded from the vicinity of his throne. “Fight back! They are only fish, like the ones you see every day on the streets of the city.”
The Count of Laconda North was half right. They were only fish, but they were most assuredly not like the ones the soldiers saw every day. They were not decorative, they were not inoffensive, and they were hungry. And now there were three of them, with a fourth on the way as the fecund sword gave birth yet again.
To their credit, the soldiers responded to the appeal of their liege. They tried to encircle two of the sharks and attack with their long pikes. Several thrusts struck home, and droplets of red shark blood spilled in slow motion to the floor. But the wounds only enraged the sharks. With their great curved tails propelling them explosively through the air, they snapped at whatever happened to come within reach, be it pike, soldier, or unfortunate furniture.
One great white the soldiers probably could have contained. Two and then three forced them into a holding action. When the sixth emerged full grown from Ehomba’s sword, the reception hall dissolved into general blood and chaos.
Soldiers broke and fled, pursued by unrelenting carnivorous torpedoes. The fortunate escaped down corridors of panic while their slower, less agile comrades were actively dismembered. It was not long before limbs littered the floor and the fine furnishings and papered walls were splashed with crimson. Convoyed by a close-packed detachment of desperate soldiers, Bewaryn Beckwith, Count of Laconda North, escaped through a secret bolt-hole