The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [112]
Brandon personally led a charge toward the huge scrag. The other monsters deferred to the great creature, who wielded a monstrous double-bladed sword. The Prince of Gnarhelm struck at the thing with his axe, and the sea troll slowly, steadily gave ground.
Hanrald and Knaff the Elder stepped in to guard the captain's flanks, while Alicia turned to look back to her mother, intent on protecting her against any monsters who might break through the rank of northmen. She saw a monstrous sea troll fell a crewman and charge forward with an upraised spear aimed straight at the High Queen's heart!
But Alicia leaped across a slot of churning seawater, getting there first, chopping savagely to hamstring the charging monster before it could cast its weapon. The beast fell and she cut its throat, stabbing hard to penetrate the scrag's scaly armor. Quickly her mother stepped to her side, stamping her staff against the sea troll and starting its incineration.
Brandon and the monstrous scrag chopped and slashed back and forth, the northman swinging his great battle-axe with bone-crushing force, the scrag wielding the massive sword as if he were a lumberjack striving to fell a tree with a single blow. Again and again the two metal blades clashed together, neither fighter able to gain an advantage as they leaped and dodged across the blood-slicked planks of the Manta's deck.
Cries of alarm drew their attention back to the Princess of Moonshae, where they saw a dozen sea trolls scrambling over the sides-the type of attack Brandon had suspected. But the longbowmen were ready, throwing down their missile weapons and meeting the attack with cold steel. The ten Ffolk archers battled desperately to hold the longship, and though three had fallen by the time Hanrald reached them with reinforcements, the scrags were all slain or sent bleeding back to the depths.
The huge scrag battling Brandon lunged for the captain, sweeping his great sword through a great arc with enough force to slice a human body in two if it connected. The northman ducked as the blade whistled toward him, barely evading the strike. As Brandon sprang back to his feet, the double-bitted axe whipped upward, the edge biting deep into the scrag's belly. The monster howled and dropped the sword, which bounced off the deck and vanished into the sea. The scrag spun, ready to dive after the weapon, but Brandon's blade struck again, squarely between the monster's shoulders. It fell to the deck with a thud as the Prince of Gnarhelm chopped it again, this time fatally. In another moment Robyn reached them, touching her staff to incinerate the beast before it could regenerate.
Next Keane and Robyn combined to sweep a surging wall of flame across the last corner of the Manta where they still met resistance, finally clearing the enemy vessel of foes. Fires smoldered in many places where Robyn had torched the bodies of the sea trolls, and the frame of the raft itself burned in several spots.
"Oil!" cried Brandon. "Bring those casks over here!"
Crewmen made ready to cast the longship free as the flammable liquid was poured liberally over the deck of the Manta. Pools of oil caught fire as soon as they touched the smoldering sea trolls, and quickly the surface of the raft was engulfed by flame.
The humans beat a hasty retreat to the Princess of Moonshae and quickly drew in the lines that lashed the two vessels together. Sunset began to shroud the sea as they hoisted sail and caught the freshening breeze, the same breeze that fanned the fires aboard the burning Manta into an inferno of destruction.
The great raft blazed into the night, a shrinking ember on the horizon, as the speeding longship once again followed her course to the southeast.
* * * * *
Talos and Malar watched the unfolding drama through the window of his enchanted mirror, beholding each scene as Deirdre observed it-peering over her shoulder, in effect, at the longship