Читать «Rising Tide (зксм-1)» онлайн - страница 5

"Your quest is true, honored one," Thuur gasped as she settled gently onto the ocean's mud floor, no longer able to stand or swim. Silt dusted around her in a small cloud. "May Sekolah grant that you find it."

"And may the Great Shark you take with him into the Wild Hunt that you may forever taste the fresh flesh of our enemies," Laaqueel answered.

"Meat is meat," Thuur said. "Let me make you stronger."

With great speed and care, she raked her claws across Thuur's throat. "Meat is meat. You will never leave us."

Blood misted out at once, spreading through the ocean.

Laaqueel smelled and tasted it even in the saltwater. Hunger pains vibrated in her stomach. She took the dead priestess's knife and began slicing.

"Come, my sisters," she invited. "Meat is meat."

The other two joined her, wolfing down the gobbets of flesh as she sliced them free. More blood stained the water, spreading outward. Even a drop of it in thousands of gallons of water, Laaqueel knew, would draw predators, and they came. Some crawled on multi-jointed legs while others slithered through the water and still more finned their way to the death site.

All stayed back from the sahuagin, acknowledging them as the strongest of predators.

Vibrations through her lateral lines told Laaqueel when the sharks arrived. She glanced up, watching five of the great creatures swim in a circle overhead. She reached out to the predators with her mind, sending out a danger message that would hold them at bay.

The sharks continued to circle until the sahuagin finished eating what they could of Thuur. Meat was meat, and a fallen sahuagin comrade became a meal for the others. That way, the essence of the individual never left the community.

When they were gorged, Laaqueel ordered her party away, allowing the sharks to descend to finish what was left of the corpse. They divided Thuur's possessions and the meager provisions they'd managed to put together three days ago between them. The dead sahuagin was the most they'd had to eat in weeks.

She swam, leading them further south, drawn by the promise of the story she'd discovered almost two years ago. With no other options open to her, the research she'd done offered her the only chance she had at a true and productive future among her tribe.

She had no choice but to believe.

*****

Hours later, Laaqueel stopped the group for the night, camping in the lee of a sunken Calishite sohar. The three-masted merchant ship showed signs of the battle that had sent it to the ocean floor. Blackened timbers thrust up from the dark mud, canting hard to starboard. Wisps of ivory-colored sailcloth still clung to the rigging of the two surviving masts.

Judging from the condition of the wreck and the way the skeletons were picked clean to the bone, the malenti guessed that the ship had been underwater for little more than ten years. Barnacles clung to the broken timbers and sea anemones clustered in small groups. Schools of fish hid inside the broken hold, taking cover from predators.