Captain's Sacrifice



  Captain’s Sacrifice

  Meghann McVey

  Copyright 2012

  Captain’s Sacrifice

  The humans came during the Third Brigade’s watch at the outer fortress. Captain Chatir sighted them first; their identical white tunics stood out like tumors against the rainbow-hued coral. All ten carried a harpoon or spear.

  “Strange.” Chatir gazed into the translucent pearls of far-seeing which were hers as captain. “Humans don’t usually venture this far beneath the waves.” But sure enough, the surface dwellers were making for the twin coral towers that marked the outskirts of Zurolind, city of the merpeople.

  “What could they be doing?” Chatir checked her pearls again, seaching for clues. The humans’ cheeks resembled pufferfish without the spines. She guessed they had trapped bubblefish in their mouths to aid in holding their breath for this dive. Leather thongs secured stones around their waists, legs, and feet to help them sink faster.

  “Perhaps they are testing some new technology. Meyroth says that in these times, not a day passes on the surface without progress.” Smiling, Assan stroked the sun-colored beard which his human lover had convinced him to grow.

  Chatir scowled. “I begin to think Meyroth should be made an ambassador between Zurolind and the surface,” she said.

  “Captain Chatir!” Egudar interrupted. “Those humans do not have permission to be here!” The spines on his tail had risen in his agitation.

  “I shall inquire what they want,” Chatir said, though she could not think how they would communicate. A bubblefish could only give its user a reserve of emergency air if kept in their mouth, and it could not give surface dwellers voices underwater. “Be on your guard.”

  “You’re both being paranoid,” Assan remarked as the mersoldiers shouldered their spears and swam to the seafloor. “It isn’t as though humans eat merfolk.”

  A flick of her violet tail brought Chatir to the front of the Third Brigade. She drew herself up so her tail just brushed the sand, in the hope that assuming a similar posture to the humans would put them at ease.

  Their heads jerked toward her, but Chatir could not read the expressions hidden in their swollen cheeks. They were as alike as a school of fish, clad in identical white knee-length tunics. Whether the thick material were a mere uniform or armor, Chatir could not determine. The uncertainty almost moved her to draw her geluvial, a sword made for battle underwater.

  “Greetings, surface dwellers.” Chatir bowed to the humans.

  The humans simply stood there, staring.

  “This isn’t working,” Chatir muttered as Assan and Egudar swam up beside her.

  “I’m sure it’s alright,” Assan said. “I mean, there’s more than one way to communicate. Meyroth and I had to figure it out when we first met – before that alchemist sold me the sunshell.”

  Chatir bit her lip. She remembered that day well; Assan’s joy had its equal only in her despair. Wearing the sunshell allowed Assan to walk, to breathe surface air and made his voice comprehensible to his beloved with her surface ears.

  “Let me try them,” Assan said.

  “Assan, wait!” Chatir called as the impetuous merman came closer to the humans, too close, in her opinion.

  “He’s just like a sea lion pup,” Egudar muttered. He and Chatir both went after Assan, reaching for his golden-muscled arms. They had just seized him when a human lashed out with his spear. The point nicked Assan’s arm; blood hung cloudy in the water.

  “Get back, you fool,” Chatir started to say just as she realized that all the humans’ weapons were pointed at them.

  “This is no peaceful mission!” Egudar’s scowl deepened.

  Chatir drew her geluvial. “Third Brigade, defend!”

  Assan raised his auladil, an underwater crossbow. Meanwhile, Egudar moved away from the brigade to better utilize his spiny tail. He also assumed a fighting stance that let him attack with his spear, which was pointed at both ends.

  Despite their grim faces, the humans, with their surface-styled weapons and water-weak lungs, proved no match for the Third Brigade. Chatir cut down two. When the waves had dispersed their blood, five human bodies floated upward. Their comrades fled back to the surface.

  “We should pursue!” Egudar urged. “They are a danger to our realm!” He hefted his spear as though he would launch it and skewer the escaping surface dwellers.

  “Let them go,” Assan protested. “We are soldiers, not sharks.”

  “We will leave them,” Chatir decided.

  Egudar glowered but lowered his dual-sided spear.

  “They have spent many minutes below the surface. Want of air will finish them.” Chatir gazed toward the surface, that strange realm of sun and sky. The last humans had become mere silhouettes to the naked eye. “Return to the fortress,” Chatir ordered. “And report to me if you made a kill.”

  {****}

  Chatir’s account, inscribed into only three seaweed pages, halted Zurolind’s military routines. All soldiers were summoned to a meeting in the heart of Castle Zurolind.

  Chatir herself was called before the two masters of the deep Hasar and Ianoc. Before he was appointed Master of Weapons, Hasar was famed for his skill with the geluvial and many other weapons and fighting styles. His counterpart Ianoc was Master of Strategies. In his youth, he had outwitted the sharks that threatened the entire reef community.

  “Why worry if some humans come?” Hasar said. “We are more than a match for them. They will keep the mersoldiers in practice and prevent boredom. Maybe we can send the trainees against them as a final test.”

  Ianoc glanced at Hasar, his expression a mirror of the feelings Chatir did not dare exhibit. Hasar’s skill in battle was undeniable, but his strength needed guidance. All the merfolk knew that Ianoc’s humility had tempered Hasar’s arrogance through the years.

  “Perhaps…” Ianoc fingered his own pearls of far-seeing. Their range, Chatir had heard, was ten times that of her own. “They could not have known we were down here,” Ianoc said with the faint voice that meant he was still considering the facts. “Assan,” Ianoc sad unexpectedly. “You are in a relationship with a human woman. Do you have news from the surface?”

  As the young merman gave his answer, Chatir could not look away from the blue shadows that were Assan’s eyes. “I do not. However, Meyroth is a woman of great intelligence. It would not be difficult for her to deduce there are others like me.”

  “Would she act on her inference by sending men to invade our realm?” Ianoc said.

  “No,” Assan answered. “Meyroth would never do such a thing. When I go to the surface again, I will ask her if she knows who sent the divers.”

  “We cannot ignore this situation,” Ianoc said. “I advise that the next time humans come to Zurolind or its outposts that we capture some for questioning. Assan, your sunshell may prove useful for something other than youthful dalliances.”

  Nervous laughter filled the hall. When it subsided, Chatir said, “It was my oversight that has shrouded this situation in mystery. I apologize.”

  “Be at ease,” Ianoc said, suddenly sounding like a reassuring father, rather than Zurolind’s top-ranked general. “There is no guarantee that the humans will return.”

  {****}

  After the council, Chatir returned to her room in the castle barracks. Unlike most buildings in Zurolind, the castle was not formed from living coral; it was a human building that somehow came to occupy the sea bottom.

  “I much prefer coral,” Chatir said to her reflection in the mirror. Captain though she was, her chamber remained a woman’s. Nowhere was this more apparent than her dressing table with its multitude of combs, pins, and brushes, all arranged in tidy rows
.

  With an expert twist, Chatir unwound the bun that bound her long sea-green hair. The waves tumbled past her shoulders, cascaded beyond her waist, ending just above the center of her tail. At the end of the day, she always found it relaxing to brush her hair and think, though sometimes – often, of late -- the thoughts were sad.

  “Coral, coral,” Chatir murmured to take her mind away from Assan, from strange human invaders. “Coral lives, not like this dead stone. It’s colorful and delicate, a rainbow of lace. Why would anyone want to live beneath these hideous bricks, their dull colors, their exact geometry? Stupid humans.” Suddenly her hand was trembling so that she could not hold the brush. Chatir let it drift to the dressing table.

  Assan. She had loved him since basic training. But masculine youth, for all its vibrant beauty, strength and virility, brought with it inevitable insensitivity. Could the pearls of far-seeing enable her to view the heart that beat beneath Assan’s golden chest, Chatir suspected she would see a thick brown brick covered in dull green algae.

  The voice at her door could only be her