The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [68]
Hanrald, holding his great longsword in both hands, cleaved his way through a pack of the sea monsters, slicing a huge scrag into pieces small enough that he could kick them over the side. The lack of armor, which he would have worn for any battle on land, didn't slow his aggressive tactics in the least. He shouted and roared, leaping this way and that, muscles tensing for each bone-crushing blow.
But not all of the attacks went the way of the humans. Three northmen in the bow fell, fatally wounded in the first rush before they even had time to draw their weapons. Others felt the kiss of sahuagin steel-hooks and spears, scimitars and tridents-as more and more of the creatures spilled into the longship's hull.
Alicia's keen longsword drove through the shelled breastplate of a scale-faced fishman, and then she gasped as the creature fell, for beyond it loomed a much more formidable foe.
Nobody had to tell her that this was one of the scrags. A wide mouth, like a shark's, gaped open to reveal many rows of short, barbed teeth. Stringy hair, like strands of pale kelp, straggled across the monster's smooth scalp, while pale, dead eyes stared with all the emotion of a fish.
But there was plenty of threat in the creature's actions as it raised a double-pronged spear and aimed it at the unarmored princess. Powerfully clawed feet gripped the gunwale as the creature loomed, monstrously huge.
"Incendrius!" Keane barked the single word that cast one of his most powerful spells, a magical command that caused a tiny pebble of flame to burst from his finger and drift, with a deceptively gentle and wavering flight, like a seed borne by a gentle breeze, toward the gunwale of the Princess.
"Down!" shouted the mage, then watched as Alicia scrambled back from the looming horror of the scrag.
The fireball exploded with a white flash that, for a split second, seemed to outshine the sun. The mage had pushed the center of the spell well past the longship's hull, but tongues of flame sizzled outward in a seething hellfire that licked along the gunwale and singed a corner of the sail. Several scrags perched on the rail vanished, incinerated to ashes in less than a second, and the following wave of sahuagin perished, shrieking, in another moment.
The respite gave the princess enough time to climb to her feet. She thought of her staff and immediately seized the shaft of wood, stamped it on the deck, and shouted the command: "Phyrosyne!"
The shaft began to grow, extending upward in shoots of green branches, planting feet to either side. The tree creature reached out with its tough, branchlike hands-and promptly fell over as the longship rocked on a gentle swell. The flailing branches knocked sahuagin and northmen down together as the magical being struggled to gain its balance on the unstable platform.
Exasperated, Alicia raised her sword against another scaly, fang-bristling face that appeared at the gunwale. She could hear the crunching and creaking of timbers as the two wooden hulls scraped together, a sound broken by the screams of sahuagin and scrags crushed between the vessels.
She sliced the head from one of the fishmen, ignoring the gore that spewed from its neck. The corpse toppled backward, and then once more she faced a huge sea troll. The creature sprang to the gunwale, balancing on its clawed, webbed feet while it brandished a trident over its head and thumped a fist against its solid, heavily muscled chest.
The princess darted forward to attack, deflecting the monster's forked weapon and gashing its thigh with her silver long-sword. The creature bellowed and thrust, driving the prongs of its trident into the deck beside Alicia's foot. It struggled momentarily to pull the three-pronged spear free, and this was all the opening the princess needed.
Alicia aimed a wicked slash at the thing's scaly belly, watching as her keen steel sliced halfway through the vulnerable area. The sea troll gagged and choked, slipping backward as green blood spurted into the longship, across Alicia's legs. She