Windwalker - Elaine Cunningham [19]
Liriel gave her a shake. "One way or another, I intend to get an answer. If you can talk, now would be a good time."
For a long moment the genasis stared at the drow with hate-filled eyes. "I was called to battle," she admitted in a voice like wind and water. "Before the appointed time and against my will."
"Called to battle?" Ibn echoed incredulously.
The drow shot a glance over her shoulder. The captain stood over the females, his face red with fury. "Battle? What battle? This your doing, you damned elf?"
Liriel blew a lock of hair off her face. "First, I'm a drow, not a damned elf. Second, if I'd called this thing, don't you think I would be the first to know?"
The captain puzzled this over for a moment, then his eyes widened with panicked understanding. "The men in the water!" he bellowed. "Pull 'em in, and step lively!"
Several sailors charged to the rail and threw knotted ropes into the sea. Every rope but one fell ominously slack. The sole successful rescuer pulled his rope in, hand over hand and with frantic speed.
Not fast enough. A shriek of pain rose from water. Two more men seized the rope and hauled. A thin young man slammed against the rail, a sun-browned boy with a fragile wisp of mustache. He shrieked again with the pain of impact, and kept howling as a pair of sailors lifted him over the side-a task complicated by the wicked spear impaling his thigh.
"Hold him," Ibn said grimly. He seized the barbed point with both hands and tugged. The youth screamed as the shaft slid through his leg then slumped, mercifully silent, between his rescuers. The two sailors dragged the unconscious lad into the shelter of the aft castle. One man stood guard over him with drawn cutlass. The other returned to the deck to join his battle-ready mates. Fyodor stood with them, his black sword resting on one shoulder as he awaited the fight.
Liriel intoned a minor spell designed to hold the genasi in place. Once again, magic slid off the creature like drops of water.
The drow shrugged off this failure, made a fist, and drove it into the genasi's face. The creature's sea-blue eyes rolled up, and her head lolled to one side.
Liriel sat back on her heels and looked to Ibn. The genasi obviously had powerful defenses against magic, yet something out there possessed magic strong enough-or unusual enough-to circumvent these wards.
"What summoned Princess Blue?" she demanded, tossed her head toward the unconscious genasi.
"You'll see soon enough." With a curved sword, the captain pointed to the night-black sea.
Liriel rose, took a harpoon from the rack, and came over to the rail. Her eyes were keener than the sailors' and more sensitive to subtle differences of light and shadow. She studied the large, dark shape swimming just below the moonlit surface. Something about its movements was disturbingly familiar.
The creature reared up in a sudden surge, sending moonlit waves skittering off like startled spiders. A large, bulbous green head broke the surface, a hideous visage that resembled a giant frog.
"Kua-toa!" Liriel breathed, naming an Underdark monster and vicious foe of the drow.
"Bullywug," corrected Ibn grimly. "They got a shaman. Where there's a shaman, there's a swarm."
Several more heads crested the waves, and suddenly the monsters were leaping for the rails. The sailors rushed to meet them, weapons high.
Liriel ran toward the nearest bullywug, hurling her harpoon as she went. The monster lifted its spear like a quarterstaff and blocked, a quick twirl that sent the barbed weapon clattering harmlessly across the deck.
The bullywug whirled its spear once again and then snapped it into attack position: shaft level, point leading. Liriel skidded to a stop and danced away from the creature's long-armed lunge. Her arms crossed over her forearm sheaths and flashed open. Twin daggers gleamed in her hands.
From the corner of her eye Liriel noted a crablike object, inexplicably airborne, spinning toward the bullywug. The monster's long tongue snapped