Under Fallen Stars - Mel Odom [9]
Slowly, the surface dwellers disentangled themselves from the manta ray, partly hidden from sight by the cloudy blood swirling around them. They swam fearfully, uncertain of what to do next.
Huaanton raised his great trident again, then turned the tines down.
Immediately the sahuagin guards closed in, fanning through 'the water with their webbed hands and feet. The humans tried to flee, but they didn't have the speed and there was nowhere to go. With a practiced toss, the closest sahuagin to each man snared their prey with the barbed nets they carried. They pulled the nets tight, sinking the hooked barbs into flesh and binding their prisoners.
Even winners didn't make it out of the amphitheater alive. It wasn't the sahuagin way. The spectators cheered again, bloodlust filling them.
The human who'd first attacked the manta ray was brought before Huaanton. The sahuagin king regarded the bound figure at his feet with contempt. The human spat out curses that Laaqueel knew few except her understood. She listened as the man alternately called out to his gods for help and for vengeance.
Huaanton ripped away the barbed net in a practiced fashion. Small trickles of blood ran from the dozens of wounds covering the surface dweller's body and mixed with the sea, creating a sensory explosion to Laaqueel. She knew the king's Royal Black Tridents, his personal bodyguards, and the other priestesses were affected by the taste in the water they breathed.
In a show of amazing defiance, obviously knowing what was to become of him, the surface dweller plunged his blade toward the sahuagin king's broad chest.
Before even the hardened members of the Royal Black Tridents could move to intercept the strike, Huaanton lifted the royal trident. After deflecting the knife, the sahuagin king reversed the trident and swung the tines at the human's neck.
Blood exploded into the water as the jagged edged tines ripped through the pale flesh. Even as death claimed the surface dweller, Huaanton grabbed the man's head, cracked the spinal column with his great strength, and finished the decapitation. Holding the head, he shoved the corpse back to the guards.
"Share the bounty of this brave warrior," the sahuagin king commanded. "Let his flesh impart to you his courage and cunning. Meat is meat."
"Meat is meat!" the crowd responded.
Huaanton stripped flesh from the head, savoring it with obvious gusto. He ate while the remains of both prisoners were distributed through the spectators. Other guards carved up the manta ray, then emptied the creature's stomach and disbursed the meat from its victims.
Laaqueel waited, but none of the flesh was offered to her despite the fact that nearly all of the king's personal priestesses got some. She bore her hurt and anger quietly. As a malenti she'd become accustomed to such treatment, but as senior priestess to a prince, there were few she'd accept it from these days. Joining with Iakhovas even though she had her doubts about him had benefited her in rank. Having to trust in Sekolah to guide her through the treacherous currents that lay ahead had made her even stronger.
Finishing with his impromptu meal, Huaanton threw the stripped skull from him. A shark hovering overhead glided down and snatched the skull less than an arm's length from the sahuagin king. Bone crunched as the shark bit its prize and swam away.
"We are come upon great times for our people," Huaanton stated. His clicks and whistles carried strongly to the amphitheater spectators. "Only two tendays ago, we staged the most magnificent raid ever in the history of our race against the hated surface world. Waterdeep, their prize gem, located in the stronghold of the humans, suffered our wrath. We killed them