The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [110]
"Now!"
On Brandon's command, Knaff brought the longship into a tight turn to port, cutting across the Manta's path. The monsters howled as they surged forward, once again closing the gap while the Princess of Moonshae veered across the raft's bow. Gradually the ungainly Manta began to swerve after them, but now the longship cut back, carving a broad S on the sea before the plunging raft.
Both vessels had slowed considerably during the maneuver, and when Brandon gave the command, his northmen plunged a dozen oars into the water, bringing the Princess of Moonshae to a sudden stop. As the Manta surged alongside, humans cast hooks and harpoons, each attached to a long line anchored to the longship's hull. Some twenty of these grapples stuck, and in the blink of an eye the two huge vessels lunged together, hulls grinding, lashed in a battle to the death.
Bowmen poured volley after volley into the monsters at the edge of the raft. Keane called upon lightning and fire, raking one bench with a lightning bolt that blasted two dozen sahuagin to pieces. He sent a great fireball to blossom in the middle of the enemy troops, sending many more of them hissing and shrieking into the sea. Next Keane pounded the Manta with meteors, huge stones that splintered pieces of timber from the hull, crushing the scaly warriors struck by the magical bombardment.
"Phyrosyne!" cried Alicia, stamping the base of her staff against the hull, hoping the tree creature could maintain its balance better than it had the first time she had summoned it in the longship. Immediately the shaft began to grow, and as the twin feet appeared, the being braced them to either side of the hull, growing taller and taller until the leafy, branching form rivaled the height of the mast itself.
No earth elemental could serve the Great Druid here, but Robyn's powers drew from a broad arsenal. She barked a command, again calling on the power of her goddess, and this time her servant arose from the sea itself. A foaming, manlike shape grew from the waves beside the Manta, scrambling onto the raft and bashing several sahuagin overboard with watery-but very solid-limbs. Humanoid in shape, it grasped the Manta with two arms, pulling itself aboard the pitching craft where it stood up on two broad, sloshing feet.
The lurching figure of frothing brine possessed real crushing power in its Whitewater fists. The elemental scrambled across the raft and crushed any of the scaled monsters foolish enough to come within reach. Even the scrags tumbled away, battered and broken, from the summoned creature's powerful blows. Under the onslaught, the first rank of monsters fell back, leaving fifty or more of their number dead on the deck.
"Let's go! The path's as clear as it'll get!" cried Brandon, whooping and raising his battle-axe as he scrambled over the gunwale, followed by his crewmen and their Ffolk allies.
Brandon led his shouting northmen, with Hanrald, Alicia, and Brigit in their midst, against a mass of fishmen who had evaded the elemental and surged back to battle human foes. The two forces met in violent melees of hacking and stabbing, chopping, snarling, and hissing bodies. The cursing of wounded northmen mingled with the reptilian gasps of battered sea creatures.
The lurching figure of Alicia's changestaff lifted itself methodically over the rail of the longship, and though it staggered on the planks of the pitching raft, it picked up a squirming sahuagin and snapped the creature's spine with a twist of the tree's great limbs.
From the afterdeck of the longship, Tavish took up her lute and sent forth a martial song. Her fingers struck the strings of the enchanted instrument, a treasure from the tomb of Cymrych Hugh himself, bestowed upon the bard by the will of the goddess. Now she called upon those strings for all the power at their command.
Chords resonated in the wooden box, rolling across the combatants with different effects. The music attacked the creatures of the