-
The first light of dawn gave a green tint to the dark water, and Cerce watched as a broken board floated by the ship. She'd slept poorly.
The small set of islands they'd come to were pleasant looking, green and shady and filled with small inlets and tiny untouched beaches. For all purposes they seemed a nice place to lounge on rocky sands, away from the mainland, but a knot of tension was lurking in Cerce's gut that wouldn't shift.
The crew of the Adamas ate quickly and sparingly, and around the ship proceedings were underway above and beyond the usual. Cerce watched, chewing on a hunk of salty dried pork, as rows of metal poles were brought up from below deck and placed in lines facing out from the middle of the deck. Nasty looking hooks tipped the end of every pole, and some crew were smearing a foul looking concoction upon the barbs of the poles they manned.
Earlier, Tom had overseen the unrolling of a great net from the topsail, that now hung a dozen feet above the deck like some great hammock in the wind.
"It's for the flyers." Tom declared as he saw Cerce staring up at the net. He came over to stand by her side. Tom had advised Cerce carry her weapon with her from the moment she awoke, and he too was already strapped for war. Beneath his jacket, his normally bare chest was instead covered by a dirty red boiled leather breastplate, decorated with chainwork around the upper body. At his hip was a long curved saber, and he absently tapped on the bronze hilt as he spoke. The blade was unscabbarded, and the metal was an odd whitish hue.
"Merrow attack three ways. Flyers don't really fly, of course, but you'd be fooled. They get up a speed and jump like devils out the water, come down on you with rocks, shells, rusty old blades they stole from the last poor fucker to sail by. Then the lurkers, they usually come last, when you're trying to regroup. Remember, it's not safe in the hold. Never put your back to the hull."
"And the third one?" Cerce asked. She ripped at the meat and touched her fangs with her tongue. Tom gestured to the sides of the ship.
"All the rest. They'll come up the sides, and you better be ready for them, because they'll be ready for you. They're smart, they're not animals. But they don't parlay, and they won't listen if you try to talk to them."
Cerce just nodded. The quiet was stifling, regardless of the wind on her face.
"You need a breather, get as close to the mizzen as you can, get up to the rigging. Even the little ones are heavy as hell, they can't pull themselves up. Or get behind Ben."
Ben the Black was hanging from the rigging, staring down into the water. From his free hand dangled one of his axes, swinging back and forth.
"Not too close behind, mind you."
As the ship sailed between the islands, there was a weight that came down upon Cerce. It was familiar, and she gripped the shaft of her halberd firm. She'd felt that weight before. The moments in the quiet before it all kicks off. It always reminded her a little bit of Belerion. Of her dad's smithy, and her old friends, the ones she'd never see again. Everything had been calm then, before everything happened all at once.
Tom pulled a little green flask from his belt, one she hadn't seen him drink from before, and took a quick swig. He went to replace it to the spot on his belt, before he instead offered it to Cerce.
"Here, little sip. Little, yeah?"
Cerce nodded and took a quick pull. The liquid tasted like pineapples and fire and Cerce couldn't help but cough and heave a deep breath as she handed the flask back. She felt a tingle down her throat and a shudder ran through her body, right down to her fingertips
"Strong, is what it is." Tom replied, replacing the flask and taking up his sword.
There was a moment of absolute silence aboard, with just the creak of timber and the splash of waves, before an explosion of noise rocked Cerce's senses.
Pirates yelled as a shape sailed over the side of the ship fast as a bird in flight. As the great shape flew over the ship, an enormous curved conch dropped from it and shattered to the deck, sending hundreds of fragments of razor sharp shell across the ship.
"Look lively lads, the ladies have arrived!" yelled Red Tom. The pirates gave a roar of assent. The longest and wildest scream came from Ben the Black, who brandished an axe in each hand, his eyes rolling madly. Tom raised the hilt of his sword up before his face and whispered a word to it. Cerce wasn't sure what happened, but the blade suddenly become painful to look at, her brain discordantly insisting that it was moving whilst she could see it was held still.
Two pirates hurled themselves aside as a coral spear came shattering into the deck, splintering into pieces, followed again by another high sailing shape. This one came slightly lower, and both the shape and the huge projectile they carried landed snatched in the net supported by the mast. The figure within thrashed wildly as it turned to look down at the men below it.
Huge wide eyes, black and empty, peered down from a sloping face. She bore no nose, but a mouth filled with pointed little teeth gaped. Her top half was that of a lithe and slender woman, her flesh a deep red, and her belly pale. Her breasts were so close to that of a human woman's that it seemed some grotesque imitation. At the waist, the body continued into a thick and powerful fish tail, her fins flashing in the early sun.
The Merrow looked down at the pirates below her and screeched. As one, three pirates jerked up their spears and pierced the Merrow through. She was barely dead when the ship was rocked by impact. There were yells from below as the last pirates still readying themselves for war rushed up.
The first of the attackers swarmed over the side of the deck starboard side, a tall and angular Merrow bearing a blue head fin and white nipples pierced through with brutal barbed fishhooks. Her small and circular mouth bore a ring of teeth that pointed inward, and her long snakelike body reared up to lurch at the nearest pirate, a rusty scimitar swinging. More soon followed, clawing up the side of the ship and rearing up on powerful torso muscles, some as small and lithe as children, others twice the size of a burly deckhand.
A startling rainbow of colours, the Merrow swarmed the deck. Blue and red, white and black, their claws gripping the shafts of coral spears or lugging great shells to hurl like cannonballs. Each was decorated or adorned with warlike jewelry and trophies, necklaces of teeth and bones, jagged metal rings, bangles and piercings. Some had the flesh of their arms or breasts tattooed in black ink with patterns and designs, the markings of their tribes. Not one was identical, and together they swarmed towards the crew of the Adamas, blades and teeth flashing. As one, a row of pirates knelt, yelled a joint command, and raised the long spears to meet the oncoming surge. Spears bit into multicolored flesh and tore bellies, and the pirates rallied to take up more spears from their placed spots. The fast movers made it, but the slightest hesitation was pounced upon. One pirate was snatched up in the arms of a muscular Merrow with a great white fin atop her head. Her powerful arms twisted his shoulders revoltingly out of place. The pirate screamed, and she slapped him into the ground where he went limp as a cloth doll. Picking him up, the Merrow effortlessly lifted the unconscious pirate over her head and tossed him into the waiting teeth and claws of her sisters in the waters below.
Rising at the fore of the ship was a long and sleek Merrow, the size of Cerce, whose shoulders were armoured in gleaming coral pauldrons. From her head hung white sinewy tendrils that dragged to the boards of the deck. Her scales were a blinding silver, reflecting the light of the dawn like a blazing torch, and the flesh of her long stomach and soft underarms was the rainbow shine of gleaming pearl. Raising one arm high, The Silver One brandished a gleaming coral spear, and gave a screech that echoed over the sea.
The Merrow warriors moved unlike anything Cerce had encountered before. So much of their body's weight was in their lower halves, that they swayed almost drunkenly at will, listing and leaning from side to side yet able to dart up and forward with immense force. The first Merrow who rushed at Cerce had bulging eyes and horrid white flesh, translucent in the dawn light, and she lashed with broad strokes of a curving hook gnarled with barnacles. Cerce backed up a step, then a second quickly as the Merrow lurched forward, arms raised high to bury the brutal weapon into Cerce's gut. Cerce's knee came up to meet the thing's midsection, and twisting her hips, Cerce kicked out a boot into the underside of the Merrows flat jaw. The bones within crunched audibly. Continuing her momentum, Cerce let the cool black metal of her Halberds shaft slide through her hands, snatching it tight at the last moment to swing the heavy blade into the Merrow before it could twist or lean. The monstrous swing bisected the Merrow completely and buried itself in the chest of the next one that was approaching Cerce from the other side. Launching another high kick up at the face of the new attacker, Cerce tugged her halberd free, leaving a huge gash that promptly emptied the entrails of the Merrow across the deck. The smell of the Foul Mouth market at dawn filled the air.
A few feet away, Tom gave a great yell as he leapt towards a broad red Merrow with a rust crusted metal gauntlet strapped to her arm. Tom was an agile combatant, ducking and weaving with his whole body, and the blade he carried practically sang as it rattled off the side of the Merrow's gleaming coral helmet. With a spin, Tom turned and launched forward, spearing his opponent through the chest. His blade cut so clean and so deep, the cross-guard met her collar bone, then neatly slid back out without the slightest difficulty. Tom nodded to Cerce.
"You'll never smell a fresh fisherman's catch the same way again girl." He laughed. Cerce had no time to choose or to focus, she simply had to move to the next warrior who lashed across the ship towards her. The deck of the ship was already a complete bedlam of clashing bodies, Merrow slithering across the boards to clash their weapons with pirates who danced between the rusty hooks and coral spears.
There was blood across the deck from slashes, bites and cuts that the crew had taken, gashed faces and smashed teeth. Several men were gripping injuries with spare hands as they fought, or bearing distressing read stains that were growing across their shirts. Tom's men were doubtless skilled fighters though, and it was clear they'd tangled with Merrow before. There was a handful of the seafolk warriors down and gurgling on slit throats and pouring thick oily blood from sword wounds. Crawling over their dead or dying comrades, the Merrow continued the assault.
Ben the Black fought like a man possessed. Leaping from the rigging, the man came down screaming upon two Merrow, an axe in each of his calloused hands. One after the other the axes lashed into the scaled bodies, again and again Ben's arms pumping, cleaving hands from wrists and deep into heads. When the two Merrow he'd fallen down upon were nothing but a bloody ruin, he immediately moved on, his chest heaving with deep breaths.
The Silver One pointed her spear and gave a guttural screech, and Ben the Black faced her, his arms wide, axes extended either side of him.
"Oh yeah, yeah you got the right idea love," he said. Ben's speaking voice was quiet and cold. He talked to himself, not to the Merrow who stared him down.
The two warriors launched at one another in a flurry of movement, Ben taking a heavy step forward and leaping, axes swinging, and the Merrow rushing forward low, her muscular tail bringing her up to meet Ben with speed.
Her spear thrust missed the leaping pirate's gut by inches, and as her nimble shoulders dodged his first swing, Ben followed the momentum through by cracking his skull into her forehead with a sound like a splitting watermelon.
The Merrow reeled, her senses rattled, and Ben immediately pushed the attack, kicking up a filthy boot into her lower abdomen and swinging again with his brutal axes. One of his axes finally caught the Merrow commander in the side of her torso and she shrieked, losing her grip on the spear, she grasped at the burly pirate with claws. Dragging them both down to the deck, they rolled in the blood that coated the boards.
Clamping his thighs down either side of the Merrow's torso, Ben locked himself in a straddle above his opponent, and his elbow snapped back repeatedly as he pummeled at the keening Merrow's face with fast jabs, ignoring the claws that were rending the sunburned flesh of his shoulders. With a last punch Ben sent the Merrow's head crashing back against the deck, and her arms flopped to her sides.
Ben half sat up, his bloody face split with a grin filled with chipped teeth and madness in his wide white eyes.
"Got me a lively one here boys!" he yelled into the madness around him. Leaning forward to where the silver warriors heavy breasts were heaving, he promptly placed his mouth over a pearly coloured nipple and sucked on it loudly.
With a cry of rage, the Silver One lunged up and crunched down with a mouthful of razor teeth on the side of Ben's head. Her long body roiled and threw the pirate from where he straddled her, and tilting her head, she spit Ben's severed ear to the deck. After finding his feet, the pirate gave a hoot of laughter and, blood pouring down his shoulder from his maimed head, rushed straight back towards the snarling silver woman warrior, their matched screaming lost in the smash of bodies and scales and clashing steel and cracking coral.
Cerce's feet were spread wide in her usual stance, and it helped her retain her balance on the unfamiliar ground of the deck as she swung her halberd around to take a blue Merrow in the side as it weaved towards her, tongue out. The creature was cleaved neatly in half by the weight of Cerce's halberd, the humanoid top half flying to the deck to writhe while the serpentine lower half flopped entirely of its own accord on the deck.
Ducking under the swipe of another Merrow that rushed towards her, long jaws snapping for her face, Cerce shoved out her weapon to jam it into the gut of her attacker. The silvery Merrow doubled over in pain, tongue hanging from her great mouth, wide glassy eyes rolling on either slide of her sloping head. As the Merrow began to rise, Cerce jerked forward her forehead to butt the thing in the face and while it reeled in surprise, she sent it tumbling tail over tits over the side of the ship with a great shove of her armoured shoulder.
More Merrow claws appeared on the deck, dragging bodies up and over onto the ship, and with them was coming a chant, a battle song that began to rise from the mouths of many of the aquatic warriors. With the aid of a few already aboard, a great Merrow with purple rubbery flesh was being pulled from the depths. As she crested the side, massive muscular arms rose, and an awful horizontal jaw wide as a longbow appeared. Huge breasts dangled to the deck as she finally crawled aboard, the entire ship leaning under her weight, dragging behind her a sinewy eel-like body as big as a draft-horse. In one arm the creature brandished a curved metal club that was clearly a repurposed anchor, green with barnacles and brown with rust. Beyond her huge mass, more Merrow appeared, every one of them some new horror from the depths. Pirates roared and there was another surge in the defense.
Near the fore of the ship Cerce found Red Tom at her back once more, his arms moving as he engaged a slender little Merrow with vibrant orange and white flesh. She was stabbing at the pirate captain with quick little jabs of a rusty old blade, and Tom parried each neatly and skillfully, and with a quick feint stepped forward and put his blade clean through the little Merrow's gills. She gripped at her throat and, eyes bulging, came crashing dead to the deck.
Near the fore of the ship Cerce found Red Tom at her back once more, his arms moving as he engaged a slender little Merrow with vibrant orange and white flesh. She was stabbing at the pirate captain with quick little jabs of a rusty old blade, and Tom parried each neatly and skillfully, and with a quick feint stepped forward and put his blade clean through the little Merrow's gills. She gripped at her throat and, eyes bulging, came crashing dead to the deck.
The pirates were giving as good as they got, organized into a line but slowly being pushed back. The slow slug-like approach of the great purple siege Merrow was pushing them back, her huge wide mouth open and a deep gargling warble echoing from behind thousands of needle-like teeth. She brought her anchor club overarm and with a great crash put a hole the size of a man into the boards of the deck. One man tried to get behind her, and with a brief roll of her massive body, she struck him in the hip with her tail, sending him flying clean over the rail towards the sea.
"We're about to get crushed, Tom," Cerce said frantically. Tom brushed fish guts from his blade onto his filthy trousers and nodded.
"We bite at them till the last dog dies, girl," He snarled.
Cerce looked around, the battle raging aboard the deck obscured most of the view from the ship, but the island they had drifted nearest to kept drawing her attention.
"The cove. What's in there?" Cerce asked, pointing. The crashing waves partially hid the little sheltered cove from sight, nestled as it was in the grey cliff rocks.
Red Tom followed the line of her arm, and gave a great shrug.
"Dunno, sea cave. There's thousands of them. Too shallow. Not big enough to hide a ship in, not worth knowing."
"We'll see," said Cerce.
She tugged roughly at her boots, pulling them off and letting them fall to the deck. She next went at the straps of her armour, the heavy metal pauldron, and soon threw off what she could struggle loose from.
Red Tom turned his back to Cerce, swinging his glimmering blade and taking the hand off a bright blue little Merrow that was slithering across the deck towards him brandishing a broken chisel. The creature let out a hideous gargle of pain and threw itself overboard.
"You go in there, you're dead, greenie. It might look shallow but those waves will smash you to shreds against the cliffs. If the 'maids don't chew your tits off first anyway."
"Got an anchor haven't I?" Cerce said, as she threw down her clothes to the deck and hefted her halberd.
"You'll fuckin' drown!" yelled Tom at her back, as Cerce took off sprinting. Hefting the halberd high she planted it hard onto the deck with a mighty crack, vaulting over the side of the ship at speed. Hair flailing, she flew fifteen feet from the ship before she hit the water with a crash, and instantly began sinking into the dark.
Red Tom followed the line of her arm, and gave a great shrug.
"Dunno, sea cave. There's thousands of them. Too shallow. Not big enough to hide a ship in, not worth knowing."
"We'll see," said Cerce.
She tugged roughly at her boots, pulling them off and letting them fall to the deck. She next went at the straps of her armour, the heavy metal pauldron, and soon threw off what she could struggle loose from.
Red Tom turned his back to Cerce, swinging his glimmering blade and taking the hand off a bright blue little Merrow that was slithering across the deck towards him brandishing a broken chisel. The creature let out a hideous gargle of pain and threw itself overboard.
"You go in there, you're dead, greenie. It might look shallow but those waves will smash you to shreds against the cliffs. If the 'maids don't chew your tits off first anyway."
"Got an anchor haven't I?" Cerce said, as she threw down her clothes to the deck and hefted her halberd.
"You'll fuckin' drown!" yelled Tom at her back, as Cerce took off sprinting. Hefting the halberd high she planted it hard onto the deck with a mighty crack, vaulting over the side of the ship at speed. Hair flailing, she flew fifteen feet from the ship before she hit the water with a crash, and instantly began sinking into the dark.
-
