The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [66]
"It came from beneath the water!" shouted the princess, as others witnessed the sudden appearance. Men cursed, shouting to their gods for aid. Bowmen nocked missiles into their strings, while Brandon's northmen stood to their oars and their weapons, waiting for the prince's command.
"What's that?" Alicia asked as numerous small objects came into view atop the huge platform. They wiggled and moved like living things.
"Barnacles?" inquired Keane, without much hope.
"Sahuagin-fishmen!" Tavish announced, squinting. Obviously the bard's eyes didn't suffer any from her age. Soon the others could make out the scaly humanoids swarming all over the thing that now began to look like an oval platform of some kind.
"You are only partly right," added Brandon, his tone grim. "Look more closely. You'll see that the little ones are sahuagin, but…"
"By the goddess!" gasped Alicia. "What are the others, then?"
"Scrags-sea trolls, by the look of them." Several dozen hulking shapes, nearly twice as large as the human-sized sahuagin scattered across the broad deck, moved among the smaller beasts with an unmistakable air of command.
"Have you seen them-these sea trolls-before?" Unconsciously Alicia gripped the hilt of her sword, drawing it several inches from her scabbard before tensely slamming it home again.
"Never. Few have, who've lived to tell the tale," announced the Prince of Gnarhelm, not very reassuringly. "Full sail!" he shouted next, turning to the sailors nearest the mast. "Starboard rudder!"
The Princess lurched as the surface of the sail was turned to catch the maximum force of the wind. The longship reeled around to the north, but none of them questioned the involuntary course change in light of the circumstances.
"They can't move that thing through the water, can they?" inquired Alicia as the changing course of the longship carried the strange apparatus around to the stern.
As if to challenge her statement, the princess soon saw numerous long-handled paddles appear in the hands of the sahuagin who were clustered on top of the great, raftlike craft. She saw several long poles running the length of the hull, each straddled by dozens of the scaly humanoids. Below each pole, a narrow gap lay open to the sea, allowing the creatures to paddle not only from the edges but also right through the raft's hull. All along the vessel's stern edge and sides, the waters churned as scrags kicked with their powerful legs and webbed feet.
"It not only moves," observed Brandon. "It goes damned fast!" Indeed, the ungainly-appearing object raced toward them with surprising swiftness, trailing a foaming wake. A white wave split before the thing's bow, but the flat shape seemed to ride higher and higher out of the water as it continued to pick up speed.
"Can they catch us?" asked the princess, staring at the huge craft, trying to analyze whether it closed the gap between the two ships. It didn't, as far as she could tell-but neither did it get any farther away.
"If the wind holds," the prince announced between clenched teeth, "then we might be able to make it. If not…"
"What is that thing?" demanded Alicia, determined to find some means of dealing with this challenge.
"It seems to be nothing more than a flat platform, probably with a neutral buoyancy-it neither sinks nor floats on its own." Keane had obviously been thinking about the object, for he answered without hesitation.
"Why would they use it? Why not just swim?" persisted the princess.
"Look." The mage pointed. The broad raft skimmed across the surface of the water, bouncing through the swells in clouds of spray, breaking a broad, foaming wave to either side of the blunt prow. "I think it lets them travel faster on the surface than they could otherwise swim. See? A number of them can rest, while the craft still makes good time."
"Excellent time," noted the northman captain grimly. More than two hundred sahuagin manned