Captain’s Sacrifice


Meghann McVey
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012


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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 sister. The military conference had made Chatir forget Lillia’s weekly visit.
“Come in.”
Lillia swept in, her alabaster face radiant with recent motherhood. “You sound tired,” she said. Lillia always spoke her mind. 
“We had a conference about the human invasion,” Chatir said. “It worries me.”
“Only that no-account Assan makes your voice sound so. You must not hide behind other problems when the main one is him.”  
It was Lillia who had encouraged Chatir to apply for basic training despite their parents’ disapproval, and she who had supported her through the mersoldiers’ ridicule and lust. Lillia, Chatir had often thought, would guide the merrealm well in Ianoc’s place. Yet there was one piece of her advice Chatir could not follow, no matter how she tried.
“Don’t think about him, Chatir.”  Lillia took up the brush and began to smoothe her sister’s hair. Chatir closed her eyes; still tears escaped. Then Lillia’s arms were cradling her in their soft comfort.

{****}

That night Chatir woke to a sound she had not heard since she was in basic training: alarm bells. 
“Zurolind is under attack!” someone screamed below when she reached her window. 
Chatir grabbed her geluvial and pushed off through the window. It was not her usual way to exit Castle Zurolind, but this was an emergency.
She had expected legions of white-clad humans like ghastly skeletons drifting through the deep, but the courtyard was empty, save for mersoldiers.
A shadow eclipsed the moonlight. Chatir looked up to see the hulking shape of a ship and an orb, shining amber and orange, catapulting through the water! 
A cannonball!
Chatir just had time for that instant of recognition before it smashed into Castle Zurolind. A boom like a hurricane breaker pounded the depths.
Dark silence followed the cataclysm.
In a frantic effort to calm herself, Chatir tried to remember what she knew about cannonballs. 
Assan, expert on all things human, said that being submerged in water killed cannonballs, though if they were lugged to the surface, one would be in for an explosive surprise. 
It did not surprise her that these cannonballs were live. Ever-discontent, humans were always inventing or modifying things with magic. They were the ones who had created the sunshells that allowed communication between air and water dwellers. 
Another round followed, and another, renegade suns stabbing their brightness through Chatir’s eyes. Shockwaves ran through the water and struck her like blows from an unseen enemy. Chatir pressed herself against the castle in the hope that its solidity would offer her some shelter, but to her dismay, the massive bricks themselves were trembling.
Another cannonball crashed into Castle Zurolind, followed by a crack so loud it seemed Chatir’s own chest were being torn apart. “No,” she whispered as a hunk of castle fell away. The oranges and reds of additional shells illumined the silhouettes of merpeople attempting to escape. Chatir darted into their midst and attempted to make herself heard above the panic, to direct servants and nobles to safety. However, she was but one mersoldier in this chaos. 
The Brigades could manage this crowd. But where were they? The captains were in council with the king tonight, Chatir remembered. While she was deemed worthy to pledge her life to Zurolind, she was denied the privilege of speaking directly to the king. The monarchy, Lillia had observed, was the only organization in Zurolind more archaic than the military. 
Chatir almost dropped her geluvial. She had never so much as entered the War Room where the other captains and the king had their discussions, so it had not been on her mind. But the council itself was held on this side of the castle! The king and the other captains were in danger! She had to go to them –
Several cannonballs shot past Chatir, so close they warmed the water around her. It was like feeling the sun through the shallows. Chatir’s pulse leaped into a rhythm as choppy as the water. She darted into the tail end of the mercrowd. Every so often, she would turn back. Still the cannons fired.
“Stop it,” she whispered. “Stop it! Stop!” 
Some in the crowd turned to look at her. Chatir gripped her geluvial so hard that her arm shook. She was drowning in helpless frustration. This foe was beyond her ability to fight. Neither her courage nor desire could save Castle Zurolind.
Chatir drifted to the outside of the crowd and began to overtake them. “You, boy!” she called to a youth wearing the light fish scale armor of a soldier in training. He turned but could not stop; the crowd was sweeping him along with them. Chatir sheathed her geluvial and forced her way through to him. 
“Where are the Brigades?” she demanded. 
“They went to defend the fortress. The humans came back.” 
With his words, Chatir understood the humans’ strategy as clearly as though she had listened to their plans. They had sent humans to the fortress to lure out the Brigades. And now...
The crowd had covered half the distance between the outer fortress and the castle. Looking to the fortress confirmed what Chatir had dreaded: flicker-flashes bright in the night waters, decimating the fragile coral and the fighters who had rushed to its defense. 
Chatir let herself sink away from the crowd. Surely the captains had gone to the fortress too, if any of them had survived.
What could she do, caught in this pincer attack between fire and fire? Chatir turned desperate eyes back to Castle Zurolind. Even after she had looked for several minutes, no cannonballs appeared. It seemed the waters had resumed their usual rhythm. 
Though Chatir made for the castle as fast as she could, she could not outdistance her fears. Suppose Castle Zurolind was entirely in ruins? 
By the lights of the anglerfish, Chatir discovered that the east side of Castle Zurolind still stood. The knowledge filled her with such relief she almost grabbed one of the ghastly light sentries and kissed it.
With the help of a page boy and several anglerfish, Chatir found her way back to the damaged part of the castle. Now that the heat of battle had passed, it was obvious why the west side had taken so much more damage. Merfolk, like most other sea creatures, found the human preference for solid buildings with a definite entrance and exit, confining. For that reason, the king and court had always resided on the west side. Chatir had often wondered if Castle Zurolind had been assailed with cannonfire while it was still on land. She marveled that the west side of the castle was still standing.
Someone tugged at Chatir’s hand. She disentangled herself from her thoughts, but there seemed to be no one before her, at least until she looked down. It was a merchild with her long violet hair caught in two long braids. “My mother was inside the castle when the attack started.” Her lip quavered; her wide eyes pleaded with Chatir to make things right again.
Chatir gazed across the ruins of walls and towers, the court’s scattered ornaments and furniture. Weariness pressed on her as though she had descended to the depths the anglerfish usually called home. 
“It has been quite a night,” Chatir addressed the small group of merfolk who had trailed behind her through the courtyard. “But I am afraid that it is not over yet. Please help me search...for survivors.” 
Chatir’s first priority was to find King Abin and the captains. Although the War Room was intact, no one was inside. When she had searched the rest of the castle without success, Chatir joined the merfolk in the arduous hunt through the rubble. 
Some hours into their search, the merchild found her mother, bruised and shaken, but otherwise well. But clearing the bricks and beams was so slow. Chatir feared that it would be too late for any who were truly buried beneath. Those helping were servants, not soldiers. Several were children, and two were elders. 
Chatir wondered if the attack at the fortress had ended and if so, how the Brigades had fared. She would have to leave Castle Zurolind soon and check. It was her duty as captain to gather the captains and mersoldiers who were left. Then there would be councils to hold. Zurolind faced a critical decision: to fight the humans or flee them. 
Chatir let the stack of bricks she had moved fall to the sand. That was if the king let her attend the meetings, of course.
Light swept over her. Chatir turned. “Egudar!” Several Third Brigade mersoldiers were with him. Relief rushed through her. “I am so glad to see you. Where is Assan?” 
“Where else?” Egudar cleared his throat in a startling harrumph. Chatir had worked with him long enough to know he would say no more. If she had stopped to think, she would have known the answer, too. 
Before acquiring the sunshell, Assan frequently shirked his duty to satisfy his curiosity regarding all things human. These days, his disappearences brought him to the surface, wherever Meyroth was. He was often disciplined for his truancy but never discharged. Egudar was not the only mersoldier who felt Chatir went too easy on the flighty merman. 
“As to the battle, you must have glimpsed the cannons from afar.” Egudar bent to gather an armload of bricks.
“Yes,” Chatir whispered. “I saw their terrible destruction firsthand.”
“The humans destroyed the west fortress entirely. The east one took some hits but still stands.”
“How did the Third Brigade fare? Do you have word of the other captains?”
“I know not of the captains. The Third Brigade, as you may recall, was guarding the east fortress tonight.”
In the mayhem, Chatir had forgotten. With a jaw-cracking yawn, she remembered that by now, she would have swam out to the fortress, heard Egudar’s report, and returned to sleep for a few hours before the morning reports.
“We will know for sure when we have taken a roll call,” Egudar was saying. “There are missing and dead among our soldiers, though nowhere near as many as the First Brigade. They were guarding the west tower tonight.”
These were strange times, indeed, Chatir reflected, in which she would feel grateful for Assan’s stealing off to Meyroth. At least he would be safe with her.
“I took the liberty of instructing the Third Brigade to come here after they have searched the fortress grounds for the wounded.”
“Why aren’t you still with them, Egudar?”
“I thought you might need me, Captain.”
And that was Egudar: loyal, dependable, in short, everything Assan was not.
They worked in silence for a time. Slowly the Third Brigade and the tattered remanants of the First came back and helped comb through the destruction.
Their combined efforts uncovered Captain Xinc of the King’s Brigade first. His forehead was raw and bloody but not beyond healing. 
Eventually Captain Heilios of the Second Brigade swam into their midst. “I see it is fortunate I was late for the meeting.” 
 “Call your mersoldiers,” Chatir said. “We need their help here!”
“You presume to command me, you who are not permitted to keep council with the king?”Captain Heilios’s porcelain-white face remained utterly smooth, despite his disapproval. 
Chatir was reminded of basic training when her instructor appointed her class captain over thirty other young mermen. It had taken months for them to accept her, and many never came to respect her. 
“The two masters both advocated for her to be captain,” Egudar growled. “You would do well to remember that their word comes before the king’s in a time of emergency.”
Although Captain Heilios did obey after that remark, he took his time -- ostensibly. Egudar glared all the while. The mersoldiers arrived later than Chatir would have expected, given the situation’s exigency. 
“He didn’t spare us many soldiers, did he?” Egudar muttered after the mersoldiers had reported to Chatir. “I bet he gave them some fool’s errand to run before they came here, too.”
By this time, a line of pages had formed. Most had come to report the safety of this noble family or that. All concluded their messages with the names of missing merfolk. Chatir posted a soldier in training to take down names. They could not afford to waste a minute; the trapped merfolk were depending on them. There were also the wounded to see to and organizing efforts to clear the wreckage. Naturally, not even an hour later, Chatir was interrupted by the youth calling her name. Ahead of him was King Abin’s majordomo.
“I come from the queen,” he said. “She seeks tidings of her husband.”
“We have not found him yet,” Chatir said. “We began searching shortly after the humans stopped firing. Perhaps he escaped and is hiding elsewhere...”
The majordomo’s lip curled. “I will tell her he is still missing.” His bow to Chatir was too brief. But on this taxing night, such rudeness could be excused. At least he had talked to her this time, though that might have been because no other captains were nearby. 
“I feared it was so,” Chatir murmured to Egudar who had left his work to hear the news. “We will not be able to stop looking until the king is found.”
“Finding Captain Laramas is nearly as important,” Egudar said, though Chatir knew the tacit merman well enough to know he really meant more important.  
The first rays of dawn had lightened the water when they uncovered Captain Laramas.
“I thought you’d never dig me out!” the captain said as he stretched his arms and tail. “Where is the king? I must speak to him right away.”
“We have not found him yet,” Chatir admitted.
Captain Laramas puffed out his chest. “Well, we will soon, now that I’m freed.”  
He was right; in fact, it was Captain Laramas himself who found the monarch. However, King Abin was dead, suffocated under the stones. 
“Highness!” Captain Laramas’s voice cracked. He gathered the king to him, lifted him free. “Curse those humans!” 
Heads turned toward him. Chatir imagined a whisper flowing through the courtyard like an invisible icy current.
“This is war!” Captain Laramas whispered. “War!” he bellowed. “For the honor of Zurolind!”
“Control yourself, Captain!” Chatir seized his arm. “Think of what you are saying!”
For just an instant, she glimpsed the grief in his eyes, and the fear.
“But we must do something!” Captain Larmas clenched his fists above the corpse as though the tenuous line of King Abin’s life were slipping through them. 
Dread turned Chatir’s flesh and fins stony. She had bever seen proud Captain Laramas look so helpless.
“What can we do?” Captain Laramas demanded.
The only answer to his plea was silence. 

{****}
The court returned once to survey the damage to Castle Zurolind. Queen Zenclaire herself came back with a small retinue to look on the king’s body. She gazed on him scarcely long enough to call it a glimpse, rumors claimed in the barracks. With a face white as sun-withered coral, the queen turned away from him. Shortly after, she left Zurolind altogether. Her swiftest messengers went before her to Ianoc and Hasar. It would fall to them to answer Captain Laramas’s question of what was to be done.
Four terse days passed while Ianoc and Hasar debated. By the fourth evening, the plan arrived on pages of seaweed parchment.
In anticipation of the humans’ return and the inevitable battle, the queen, court, and all civilian merfolk would seek sanctuary with several pods of dolphins who were the merpeople’s allies. The King’s Brigade and the First Brigade, as well as Ianoc and Hasar, were to travel with them for protection. 
That left Captain Chatir’s Third Brigade and Captain Heilios’s Second Brigade to guard the castle and the remaining fortress tower. 
Ianoc predicted that Captain Laramas and Captain Xinc would return within three days. 
On parchment, three days were brief, a trifle. 
But in reality, guarding the wounded castle and ruined fortress might be a last stand for them. Chatir tried not to recall old stories of besieged mersoldiers who died hours before their comrades arrived to save them. 
Two Brigades were barely enough should humans attack in great numbers. And what were they to do against cannonfire? So went the muttering of the troops.
And suppose the brigades encountered the inevitable delays that plagued any large body of merfolk?
{****}

Even with her citizens evacuated, Zurolind did not remain quiet. As she watched and waited, Chatir thought she heard snatches of voices in the eerie silence.
So long as the sun spread its golden ripples across the sand, Chatir felt confident in the absent captains and brigades, in Zurolind’s fate. But when those ripples darkened to red, when the anglerfish emerged from their sleep in the castle’s darkest rooms, every movement of the seagrass, every change in the current made her tense.
At the start of the third day, Chatir started watching for the returning Brigades. Using the pearls of far-seeing, Chatir scrutinized the west. The sun was a cannonball frozen above an unseen target. The orange sky dimmed to purple, then to black. And still, there was no sign of the brigades.
Later that night, the sight Chatir had dreaded appeared: ships’ shadows, their wake breaking the night rhythm of the waves.
She touched Egudar’s elbow. Cursing, he signalled for the anglerfish to dispell their lights. However, they had already been spotted. Lights flared from the ships, piercing the water and illumining every crevice and hiding place. 
Through her narrowed eyes, Chatir discerned flashes of silver near the surface.
The humans were coming beneath the waves to fight.
The Third Brigade saw them, too, and drew for their weapons. 
“Forward!” Chatir commanded. In a way it was a relief for the long wait to be over, to face tangible opponents instead of phantoms raised by nerves. 
As she charged out to meet her enemies, Chatir saw that they had changed their weapons from iron blades that the sea would encumber, to the mersoldiers’ slender style that mimicked the roll of ocean waves. Her heart plummeted further at the sight of their garb. The humans no longer wore the white clothes of before, but something silver that resembled fish scale armor! But that could not be! How could they have changed their style so drastically in such a short time? 
Chatir turned, sought Assan in the crowd. He hung back, gaping like a beached fish at these human troops in his home, his face alternating between astonished and guilty. 
Then the rising wave of battle chaos crested and engulfed them all. 
The next hours steeped the water in blood. A raw, copper taste filled Chatir’s mouth. Surely Zurolind’s victory was near! It had to be! The Third Brigade had fought long and well, but Chatir had no illusions that they could survive a protracted battle. 
Her entire body aching with weariness, Chatir broke free of the fight and swam toward the surface. Even here above the fighting, red froth ringed the waves. With the pearls of far-seeing, she scanned the battle and all directions around it. “No,” she whispered. 
There was no sign of aid in any direction. And worse, the Third Brigade was weakening.
Splash! Splash!
Chatir tore her gaze away from the pearls. The humans were sending reinforcements. The Third Brigade had faced steep odds before, but with these swelling ranks, the battle would be decided swiftly: a massacre. 
“Fall back!” Chatir screamed, sweeping above the fight. “To the castle!”  She only hoped Assan had not taught his beloved human girl how to decipher words spoken underwater.
The Third Brigade shot past her. Chatir came last, scanning the area for stragglers. As she did, arrows hummed through the water. “Impossible!” Chatir whispered. For centuries, only mersoldiers had known the secret art of auladil, the underwater crossbow. 
Assan, Assan, Chatir thought as she closed the distance between her and Castle Zurolind. What had that fool done?
As Chatir entered Castle Zurolind’s outer courtyard, her mind raced. The castle interior was not fitted for defense. And why should it be? No shark or other sea creature had ever breached it. And had they, those walls would have been as a reef or sunken ship to them, as they were to the merpeople, an open structure not meant for permanent habitation.
Yet now, somehow, they had to keep the humans out!
Inside, Chatir slowed, her gills burning. Peering over the edge of the wall revealed that the humans were still coming. They did not swim in formation as mersoldiers did. Weights worn on their bodies allowed them to imitate surface conditions, even underwater. Thus, they marched on the sand, and the great clouds they kicked up turned their lights foggy. Suddenly they stopped. Though Chatir wondered at this, there was no time to deliberate! 
In the courtyard, the two brigades were clustered together, with Captain Heilios at the center. The mersoldiers gazed at him in confusion and dismay. Chatir thought their stunned looks were due to battle weariness and the enemy’s advantage until she heard just what Heilios was saying.
“There is no shame in abandoning a game that you are certain to lose,” Captain Heilios said. “In admitting defeat, you are free to begin another game, which may result in a better outcome. If we follow our fellow brigades and families to sanctuary--” 
“That is a coward’s plan!” Egudar roared.
Chatir had never believed that courage was one of Heilios’s attributes. But proposing to flee at a time like this? She had to rally the troops! “It is our duty as soldiers of Zurolind to defend our home with our lives! That is the oath we took as soldiers and again as captains!” she added with a meaningful glance at Heilios.
Several mersoldiers of the Third Brigade nodded vigorously, and in Egudar’s case, shouted their agreement. 
“What honor is in certain death?” Captain Heilios protested. “I warn you,” he said, shaking his finger at the mersoldiers, “should you remain here, you will die! The enemy comes armed to our doorstep in numbers that surpass ours, even if all our Brigades were assembled. If you remain outside, you will be slaughtered! And the castle is a death trap. Are you fool enough to flee into a sunken ship to escape a shark? No? What of a being more cunning than any shark, as these humans are? No, our hope lies in removing ourselves from danger.”
“We are the last line of defense between Castle Zurolind and the humans,” Chatir protested. “Remember, this is the third night. The King’s Brigade and the First Brigade must return at any time, and Hasar with them!” 
A murmur passed through the brigades. Even in the middle of his life, Hasar was regarded as a hero who could change the tides of battle.
“You delude yourself!” Captain Heilios turned his back on Chatir. “It may be many days before they can come! Perhaps they are fighting humans blocking the way to Zurolind! As we are, we cannot hope to win this battle!”
“We don’t need to win.” As she spoke, Chatir edged into the castle interior. “Just survive until they come.”
“She’s right,” Egudar said, perceiving Chatir’s intention at once. “And all of you know it!”
The mersoldiers crowded around Chatir until only Heilios and a few of his loyal favorites remained.
“What idiocy is this? Did cannonballs explode near your heads?” Captain Heilios’s contempt smarted like a skate’s sting.
“I am not obligated to explain myself to you, Heilios,” Chatir answered cooly. “Trying to make you understand honor is a losing game.”
As Chatir swam past him into Castle Zurolind’s interior, she noticed, with considerable satisfaction, the wordless open and close of his mouth, like a gasping beached fish. 
Inside Castle Zurolind’s grand hall, lights darted through the slender windows. Suddenly the castle itself trembled. “The humans must be firing again.” Chatir fought to keep her voice steady. 
For their final stand, the brigades needed a room with a door they could bolt. The idea came to Chatir sluggishly, falteringly. Merfolk did not hide behind doors and walls. But to have any chance of surviving the human attack, Chatir had to think like one. 
But her focus kept returning to those unexpectedly decisive moments in the courtyard. She had thought the most important thing was to prevent Captain Heilios from persuading the brigades to desert, but increasingly, that seemed a mere distraction. If she had only thought to order the brigades to the barracks, they would hold a better position now. 
But perhaps the humans’ fire would have killed them on their way.
Regardless, Chatir’s choice had trapped the brigades, just as the king and captains had been during the last raid.
The king! The War Room!
“Where is the War Room?” Chatir called out.
“Show her the way, boy!” Captain Heilios’s voice gave Chatir a start. So he had decided to come along after all.
The young mersoldier Captain Heilios had designated hurried to come before both captains.
“You must be a recent addition to the Second Brigade. I don’t know your name,” Chatir said.
“Radien is my name, Captain.” His voice still clung to the music of childhood, though it cracked on the word Captain. Chatir guessed he had just completed his training.
“Thank you, Radien. Lead on,” Chatir directed.
“Captain Chatir,” Captain Heilios remarked as they set off down the dark tunnel of corridors, “Must you to enter the War Room? Even in these extenuating circumstances, protocols must be observed.”
“Well if I don’t, you should stand outside with me,” Chatir hissed through clenched teeth. “I may be a woman, but at least I’m not a coward!”
The rest of their trek took place in silence. 
The water around Chatir seemed to turn cold. Suppose Radien had become lost? Castle Zurolind was notoriously difficult to navigate when lighted, and it had not been since the queen left. Having lights now would surely alert the humans to their location. 
Would Captain Heilios let them wander off-course out of spite? What if he just led both brigades around in circles until the humans came and killed them all?
For the entire agonizing trek, Chatir was accutely conscious of the outside noises: splashes, cannonballs sizzling and exploding. Sometimes, though she knew it was impossible, she thought she heard the shuffle of human feet. 
The heightened shaking of Castle Zurolind filled Chatir’s mind with images of cannonballs blasting off pieces of castle and shattering the merpeople’s homes in the reefs. She was on the verge of risking a light when Radien stopped. 
“Here,” he whispered.
Two great doors rose before them. Beyond lay a room filled with relics. The council’s table rested on great stones harvested from the shore during high tide many centuries ago. The tabletop was a turtle shell, a gift from an ancient ally whose fall into obscurity had happened before any now-living could recall. Each merman on the council had his own seat wrought of shells that long-forgotten magic had coaxed and transformed into a stool. The captains, though permitted to enter the chamber, could not occupy the chairs; they had to stand.
In all of Zurolind’s history, Chatir was the only woman to enter this chamber. She was making history in a room filled with it.
“Truly, these are the end times,” Captain Heilios muttered. “A woman in the War Room!” Some mersoldiers, chiefly those close to Captain Heilios, looked uncomfortable. Several gave him disgusted or disbelieving glares. Most paid him no heed.
Chatir bit back her scathing rage and swallowed her sorrow. The battle would not wait. 
She began with an investigation of the entire chamber. The west side of the castle had never been sturdy to begin with, and after the cannonball assault, many “porous” areas had been widened to dangerous-sized holes. The entire outer wall was a morass of cracks. 
“The first thing we must do is secure our position,” Chatir announced. “Gather anything you can to fill in these holes. Do not fear the wrath of the Court. This is a matter of survival.”
“Such disrespect for our objects of yore,” Captain Heilios protested. 
Chatir ignored him. 
Captain Heilios hung back without helping, though when the mersoldiers blocked one of the holes with two council chairs, he made a strangled noise. 
“You have done well,” Chatir complimented the mersoldiers with a nod of satisfaction. “They are the perfect size.”
Small victories could not change the fact that there were too many holes to fill. How did one choose, Chatir wondered. As she inspected the area, a faint gleam caught her attention. It seemed to be coming out of cracks in the wall. How had she not noticed it before? Then she remembered the statue the mersoldiers had dragged away to fill another gap. It had portrayed a merman and several fish, oddly appropriate for the War Room. It was also the only human furnishing in the room that had survived the years underwater.
Chatir ran her hands along the wall. As she expected, she felt a hole slightly larger than her fist. Beyond lay a dome-shaped chamber lit at its periphery by faint silver algae.
“What did you find?” Assan asked.
“A secret room,” Chatir breathed. Hope fluttered its fragile fins in her chest. “We could hide in here,” Chatir murmured. “But say nothing to the others until we are certain. This room might change our fortunes in battle!”
“If there is a way in,” Assan said.
Chatir pushed against the wall. It had a clay-like consistency and gave easily. “Perhaps it was only the statue keeping it in place,” Chatir said. She entered the room; Assan followed. 
In this pale plankton light, Chatir looked around. Assan’s face mirrored her wonder.
The windowless chamber was like a well, its periphery encircled by walkways. These now served as shelves for countless boxes bulging with human riches: crowns, scepters, shields, even gilded birdcages. In places, jewels winked, bright flowers on yellow-green coin hills.
“The treasure of Laselan,” Assan whispered. “So it does exist!”
“I think you’d better tell me what’s going on with you and the humans, Assan,” Chatir said. “Am I right in believing that you are not a traitor to Zurolind?”
The merman hung his golden head. “Meyroth seemed so interested in all I had to say about the merrealm. I never thought my stories would result in this…  But I am certain it is not her fault. Meyroth often speaks of the oppressive, power-hungry nature of human males. I suspect that--”
“Do you know anything that might help us?” Chatir interrupted.
Assan nodded. “The humans must be after the treasure hidden here. Meyroth has asked about it often, the famed wealth that sank into the sea centuries ago.”
Chatir clenched her fists at Meyroth, no, at her people’s long-lived greed. “Thank you, Assan. Please be careful. I don’t want the mersoldiers to hurt you over this.”  
“I understand, Chatir,” Assan murmured.
“Captain Chatir,” a voice ventured at the secret room’s opening. It was Radien, the young mersoldier who had led them to the War Room. “Forgive me for interrupting. The humans have entered the castle! We saw them through the holes in the War Room wall!” 
“What a strange thing to do,” Assan said. “They could be blown to bits by their own cannons.” 
“They stopped firing shortly after we started securing the War Room,” Radien pointed out.
Chatir cupped her hands around her ears. “I noticed the quiet, but I thought the sounds of the cannons simply did not reach this room.”
“If the humans want the treasure, couldn’t we use Assan’s sunshell to tell them it’s here and give it to them?” Radien suggested. “I apologize for overhearing,” he added quickly.
Chatir sighed. “I don’t think that will work. Their strategy with the cannons is to kill as many of us as possible and protect their own kind. I expect they entered the castle to find the treasure. Even if we bestowed every last coin on them, the humans would not be satisfied. They might suspect we were hiding something for ourselves and tear this castle apart brick by brick.”  
Assan, usually so quick to defend the humans, did not deny her assessment of the humans’ avarice. 
The young mersoldier looked horrified. Chatir put her arm around him. “Do not fear,” she said, soothingly as though she spoke to one of Lillia’s children who had awakened afraid in the night. “It will be some time before they find us or succeed in destroying the castle. We may yet think of a way to defeat them.” Chatir smiled at Radien reassuringly. “It may even be you who conceives of the idea. Wouldn’t that be a story to tell your family?”
“Yes, Captain! I’ll keep thinking.”  Radien drifted back to the War Room.
“Assan, tell Egudar to continue bolstering our defenses,” Chatir directed. “I will return shortly.” With that, Chatir swam closer to the surface. The ceiling was painted with serpents, emerald and sapphire-scaled, so immense that they might swallow the ships beside them in a single gulp. No other ceiling in Castle Zurolind had been adorned like this. Curiosity drew Chatir closer, until the tip of her nose skirted the boundary of water and air.
Chatir sank back through the water, more curious than ever. There was something important about the mural, she was certain. However, she was unable to examine it without emerging from the water, a dangerous, painful feat.
As she drifted down, she sighted a treasure chest bulging with sunshells. 
Chatir cupped one in her hand. How smooth it was, and light, considering the great burden it had laid upon Zurolind, and on her. The sunshell had not only allowed Assan and Meyroth to understand one another; it also enabled Assan to assume human form. Polite individuals, of course, refrained from mentioning the union his transformation allowed. 
It was that very transformation that Chatir planned to undergo now. 
The sunshell’s rarity meant that few merfolk other than the human-obsessed Assan had ever ventured above. Chatir raised a hand so the water barely covered her palm. Then, with a deep breath, she breached the boundary of water and air. A chill assailed her skin, intensifying as she pulled the rest of herself free. As her tail entered the stale air, the sunshell transformed it into legs. Despite the obvious potency of the sunshell’s power, Chatir still waited until her lungs were bursting before she took her first breath above the water. 
Shivering, filling her chest with ragged breaths, Chatir inched along the walkway. The coins and bars of gold were cold beneath her feet, and the algae that coated them, slimy. Several times she nearly slipped back into the water. 
Among the riches, Chatir noticed several items that resembled rag heaps. At first she disregarded them, but when it became clear that nothing in the coveted wealth would aid the merfolk, she decided to investigate. With a heavily-ornamented sword taken from a chest, Chatir prodded one of the items. It flopped open. Now she recognized it from the human studies course she’d taken to be near Assan. 
It was a book, the human equivalent of Merwilor, the means of making words stay. Merwilor took two forms: seaweed pages such as Chatir used for her reports and writing carved into coral structures, which often doubled as buildings; in fact, both fortress towers had contained warrior’s wisdom on their interior walls. 
Chatir’s breath came faster when she realized that she recognized the letters, understood the admittedly old-fashioned words and sentences. But of course! It must be that the merfolk began writing after they started to inhabit Castle Zurolind!
Perhaps in this relic from Zurolind’s past, she could find an answer for her people. 
Though Chatir pored over the pages for many precious minutes, any saving insights remained elusive. 
“What am I doing?” Chatir let the book thud to the rocks. Her head ached. How could surface dwellers think or do anything with this perpetual weight crushing them into the ground? 
Chatir’s restless gaze returned to the tome. It had fallen open to a vibrant illustration of the same snakes pictured on the ceiling. 
“I should return to the water and plan our next moves,” Chatir murmured. Somehow, she still found herself reading the pages. 
Zurolind sorcerors, she learned, had wrought a spell to summon the leviathans from the Rift, an undersea canyon that housed the ocean’s greatest depths and most profound mysteries. The leviathans had fought to save Zurolind from a legion of blue whale wizards. It was a story Chatir had never heard, a piece of that past that history itself had forgotten. In the end, the leviathans had fulfilled their purpose, but at a grave price. 
Again Chatir set the book aside. 
Might the leviathans of old help the merfolk now? 
And if they could, did she dare attempt to call them? She knew so little of magic. Ages ago, Chatir recalled from her history class in basic training, Zurolind had been a center of arcane study. However, that lore had been lost, as the merfolk’s few enemies were not magic users.
There was also the price of their help to consider...
She had castigated Captain Heilios in front of everyone for cowardice in the face of duty. But perhaps she was not so different than he, facing the same choice. 
As she deliberated, Chatir remembered things she had long-forgotten. 
Since she was young, something inside had led her to battle. She had never really understood why until Lillian had her children. Her sister always embodied the pinnacle of Zurolind’s feminine ideals: gentle, soft-spoken, nurturing. But her children, Lillian told Chatir, awoke of a new side of her, a protectiveness that could be as fierce and decisive as any man in battle. It was then that Chatir had understood: those she loved, as well as all in the merrealm, were her charges to protect. 
Perhaps the shark attacks during her early years had given her this sense of responsibility. Knowing how fragile others were, how could she hold back if they were in danger? Chatir had known the thought before, but hearing it now was a rebirth. 
Rememory flooded her: how she had told all who wondered that this belief was the source of her courage: the courage to become a soldier; the courage to hone her every strength and strategize where she was lacking; the courage to face risk; and the courage to have conviction in herself, despite many who doubted.
Chatir’s mind wandered. She and Assan were both different, and so they became friends in basic training. He had remained fascinated with humans through graduation. “And I became fascinated with you,” Chatir whispered in the silent cavern. “I told myself that protecting the people and realm was still important, but in reality, I had forgotten.” 
Only now could she open her eyes. “For years, I have shut them to fill with dreams of you…but now… 
“Zurolind needs me.”
Still Chatir feared the unknown, and there were so many unknowns before her: the enigmatic leviathans whose aid she must invoke; the fate of Zurolind; and that greatest mystery, beckoning... 
Chatir closed the book. The hope that called to her heart, was not for herself, nor even her brigade, but for the sake of her people.
 The directionless feeling that had troubled her since Assan had chosen Meyroth fell away before a sense of purpose as sharp as her geluvial.
“I will protect you…all of you,” Chatir whispered.

{****}

To summon the leviathans, Chatir first had to locate the box containing their effigy. The ancient tome described it as “just large enough for a lady’s pearls, its lid embossed with an image of twin leviathans, their tails entwined.”
While the mersoldiers searched, Chatir copied the incantation that would bring forth the leviathans. Her simple letters seemed a child’s work compared to the book’s elaborate calligraphy. Three times, Chatir reviewed her cramped handwriting, finding mistakes each time. Spells, she remembered from her history class, would not work correctly if the caster uttered the wrong words. The fourth time, Chatir found no errors.
Still her doubts persisted. Save for the light spell that all mersoldiers learned, Chatir had never practiced or learned magic, and she doubted she had any great ability. All she had was her own desperate need, and that of Zurolind.
Once the box was found, the mersoldiers stole out of the castle. They took the sunshells with them but left the War Room doors wide open. Chatir still required time to cast the spell and lay her plans. The treasure would provide a crucial distraction. 
They halted a safe distance from castle and ships, though in sight of both.
“Keep your distance,” Chatir instructed the brigades. “When I open this box, I want there to be plenty of room.”
They obeyed with laden glances questioning her yet-unexplained plan.
“Just because a spell is cast doesn’t mean it won’t fizzle,” Captain Heilios pointed out, nodding to his own advice as though he had practiced magic all his life. Nonetheless, as Chatir pulled back the lid, he darted back. Chatir thought of clownfish scuttling to hide in the skirts of an anemone.
Inside, Chatir found a piece of flat metal, barely recognizable as the leviathans. This, she set on the sand. The crucial moment had come for the reading of the spell. Chatir took several deep breaths. 
Into the ancient words, she poured all that she was. Still they tangled on her tongue, and fear swept over her. Suppose the leviathans could not come to Zurolind’s aid? 
A gasp rose from the brigades. Chatir looked up from her paper. An aura, faint like moonlight behind a cloud veil, surrounded the metal leviathans. The light bent and twisted to form coils upon coils, armored in scales like sea-green mirrors. The brigades gaped, even Chatir, who had known what she summoned.
The head was last to take form. It made Chatir think of a pike, only with sharper angles at the jaw and chin, or perhaps the beak of a bird, those fish of the surface. Both sides of the leviathan’s proud head bore curling horns, surrounded by countless spikes that also protruded from its neck and back.
The leviathan’s size alone made Chatir tremble. All her senses screamed for her to flee. Yet at the same time, she was compelled to come closer. 
The leviathan bent to examine Chatir with its eye was as big as her head. 
“Chatir!” Assan and Egudar called at the same time. The two mersoldiers glared at one another.
The leviathan lowered its head. Chatir had not thought her heart could beat faster. Yet the great jaws remained slack, unmoving.
Egudar started to come to her aid, with Assan close behind. Somehow Chatir brought up her hand. “Stay back.” Their faces mirrored her disbelief. What madness had she plunged into?
The leviathan shifted its coils, a subtle movement, as the change of tides. Shock shot through Chatir when she realized the great creature bowed to her. 
“Your power is scant.” The leviathan was speaking to her! 
Chatir’s mouth fell open. Behind her, the brigades said nothing and gave no sign that they had heard or understood. Perhaps it was a special bond between summoned and summoner.
“But your need is as great as it was in that long ago time.”
The leviathan used the ancient form of Zurolind’s language. However, Chatir was only faintly aware of this, as though an unseen translator guided their conversation. 
“My brother could not come,” the leviathan continued. “Not without more power. But I am here to do your will.” The leviathan’s voice was waves crashing against great rocks. 
“Thank you,” Chatir murmured. “Our loss would be certain without your aid.” She turned to the brigades. The time had come to reveal her strategy.
“Zurolind cannot hope to outlast the humans,” Chatir declared. “We have two unexpected advantages: this leviathan and the sunshells. Using them, we will engage the humans on their own ships.”
From the fringes, Captain Heilios sputtered his disapproval.
“I know what you are going to say, Captain,” Chatir said. “And you would be right. Most of us will not return from this mission. But if you ask me, it is better to die with honor in our sworn duty than to flee like a school of minnows. With the leviathan as our ally, furthermore, Zurolind may well live on after us.”
“It is only a chance,” Captain Heilios finally choked out.
“Then let us seize it!” Chatir pointed her geluvial at the two brigades, gazing intently at the faces of friends and acquaintances. “Remember, Second and Third Brigade, you are the hope of Zurolind!” 

{****}

In the end, a little over half of the Second Brigade and the entirety of the Third declared their intention to fight under Chatir’s lead. Captain Heilios and several of his favorites fled while Chatir consulted with the mersoldiers to refine their strategy. Meanwhile, the rest of the Second Brigade hovered nearby in miserable indecision. 
“Suppose they serve as watchmen while we are fighting?” Assan burst out, interrupting Egudar. “Hasar and the others might return!”
Egudar growled at the golden-haired mersoldier. “Most of us don’t consider you a genius, Assan. Your scatter-brained ideas can wait until I’ve finished.”
“Forgive me, Egudar,” Chatir said, laying a consoling hand on his arm, “but I think it is quite a good idea.”
For a few minutes, the discussion diverged as Chatir and the non-fighting Second Brigade arranged their signal, to be given if Hasar and the other brigades returned. When that was settled, they initiated the first part of their plan: sending scouts to determine their enemy’s numbers. This party consisted of Radien and several others, the mersoldiers’ self-professed swiftest swimmers. They returned with wide eyes and pale faces.
“Seven ships lurk above.” Radien’s voice quavered. “There is no wind, but their mages fill their sails.” 
“Six ships are small but swift. The last is tremendous, many times larger than the leviathan. It also carries their cannons,” another mersoldier explained. 
“That is excellent information. Thank you.” Chatir’s throat ached, and her chest felt very heavy. The time for words was nearly spent. “This is the hour, my comrades in arms. I am honored to fight alongside you.” 
With grim faces, the mersoldiers formed three companies. Chatir pulled herself astride the leviathan, which had informed her through their link that it would accept no other riders.
The mersoldiers did not have far to go before the biggest of the human ships rose like a colossus atop the waves. As the leviathan followed them to the surface, its muscles pulsed beneath Chatir’s hands and arms. It seemed in one instant, the seafloor dropped away, and they were breaking free of the water.
Chatir shivered in the night breeze. Under its touch, the sunshell’s magic awoke and changed her violet tail to those bizarre human appendages: legs and feet.
They surfaced near one of the small ships. Wind and spray lashed Chatir’s face as the great sea serpent charged the ship. As they drew closer, the leviathan raised its head, sending Chatir sliding down its neck. She clung for dear life with her arms and legs, praying that the leviathan would not crush her against their target.
For an instant, they came so near the vessel that Chatir saw the humans’ faces on the deck, pale despite the ruddy light their lanterns cast. 
The leviathan opened its great maw. Its scream brought tears to Chatir’s eyes. In the faint lanterns, she saw the humans gape and their eyes turn dark with fear. Chatir shut her eyes against the awful sound, not daring to release her grip on the beast’s neck. The leviathan pivoted so fast, Chatir’s stomach lurched. It seemed that under the heart-shriveling howl, she heard a tearing, crushing crunch, then silence. 
Chatir opened her eyes to amber lights adrift in darkness that intensified the humans’ screams and pleas.
It was well to talk of honor, but this would be a grim night. 
The second ship fell much as the first had. The third, however, greeted them with a rain of harpoons. Chatir managed to duck behind the leviathan, whose thick hide easily deflected the cruel darts. Behind them, cannonfire boomed, louder than it had ever been below the surface. Wind rushed past, the invisible fist of an angry god. “They’re aiming for us!” Chatir yelled over the din. Though every instinct screamed for her to leap for the safety of the water, she clung to the shreds and tatters of her courage. 
“Hang on!” The leviathan ducked beneath the waves. 
Salt water stung Chatir’s eyes, burned in her human lungs. With fumbling fingers, she wrenched the sunshell from her neck. 
“I apologize,” the leviathan started to say.
Above, an explosion shattered the night into orange shards and hissing steam.
“They were quite close.” The leviathan continued its descent into the deep.
“Understood. You did right,” Chatir said. Without a doubt, the leviathan had saved her life. 
“The time has come,” the leviathan said. “We must attack the big ship. The humans realize now that I am your greatest asset. They will target me until I die.”
“But!” Chatir’s heart fought the idea as fiercely as it once had Assan’s indifference. “The ship is many times your size!” She twisted her pearls of far-seeing. Long ago, merfolk had used them to see over time, as well as distance. How useful that would prove now!
“Life and death are meaningless to me,” the leviathan declared. “Should the ship destroy me, I will resurrect in the Rift. It has been so since the hazy dawn of my long memories. But it is not my welfare that concerns you, is it?”
“No,” Chatir said in a small voice. The leviathan’s intimate understanding of her intentions made her feel utterly exposed. “If you return to the Rift, I won’t be able to summon you again,” Chatir said. But that was not it, either. Again, Chatir saw how she had fooled herself. For all her talk of honorable death, she yet clung to life. Slowly she relinquished her hopes that any in Zurolind would hear first-hand stories of this battle.
The narrative the Brigades and civilians pieced together when they returned would have to be enough.
“I understand. It is the only way.” As Chatir voiced her acceptance, the darkness seemed to deepen. Sightless, she found herself aware in an entirely new way of the sunshell’s smooth edges and slight weight in her hand. “Let’s go.”  
“It shall be.” With that, the leviathan increased its speed, so that Chatir nearly lost her seat. She hurried to tighten her free arm around the sea serpent’s neck. The other, she frantically wrapped around her pearls and the sunshell.
They emerged from the water so quickly, the leviathan actually became airborne. Cymbals clashed in Chatir’s head as the surface air inundated her, and she barely had time to throw on the sunshell. 
From this height, it would have been a great advantage to survey the battle through the pearls of far-seeing. However, there was no time. Chatir just glimpsed the large ship below before it rushed up to meet them. On deck, humans screamed and scurried. Some stood their ground and shouted orders. The cannons belched fire and smoke. 
The leviathan twisted in mid-air. Although it dodged several cannonballs, they kept coming. Ten feet above the ship, the first cannonball struck the sea serpent full in the chest. Diamond and sea-green scales clattered to the deck. The leviathan twisted in pain; its pounce changed to a plummet.
Chatir started to leap free just as another cannonball struck the leviathan. She smacked her head on the rails at the ship’s edge and landed ondeck. For several minutes, she lay senseless. When Chatir finally opened her eyes, she found a strange scene before her. 
A crowd of sailors and soldiers had formed, with weapons bared. Despite what must have been grevious wounds, the levithan still loomed tall above them, an ancient god surrounded by puny mortals. The boards where it had landed were splintered and broken. With thrashing tail and teeth deadlier than one hundred of their swords, the leviathan continued to raze the ship.
“Stop that creature!” a black-bearded man trumpeted. 
No one moved.
“Do the soldiers of Joadon have dead eels for their manhood?” the same man challenged the crew.
Several men rushed at the leviathan with desperate cries, only to break their weapons on its scales. Two pulled back, chagrined, while the third was flung overboard. 
Over the shouts and vows of vengeance, the thin notes of a whistle rose, silencing them all.
“Trouble on the Q deck!” The black-bearded man pointed at several of his men. “You see if some additional cannonballs can’t kill this monster. The rest of you, come with me. Though I wonder if I’d fare the same in my own company.”
“You kill the damn beast, then,” someone muttered.
Chatir dropped back to the ground, watching with lidded eyes as the humans tramped past. She waited until the sailors were wrestling with the cannons so they could fire on-deck, then came closer to the leviathan. 
She had not expected a few mere scratches. Nonetheless, she gasped at the sight of the gore-splashed mast – who knew how many cannonballs had exploded against the immense creature? The cannonfire had gouged a hole in the leviathan’s chest. The proud spines that rose, crown-like, from its head, were broken off, and its jaw was bent at a grotesque angle. Blood filled the air with a metallic scent like the heaped coins of Laselan. And still, the leviathan lived. 
Chatir wept for its pain. From across the deck, the leviathan’s gaze settled on her. To her grief, its eye, once so clear and vibrant, was growing dim.
“Our time nears, Captain.”
“No,” Chatir whispered. “No,” she said more firmly. “I will stay until my duty is done.”
The leviathan made a hoarse hacking sound Chatir took for a cough. “I believe you shall, Captain Chatir. Your will is strong.” Again the hacking. “I daresay, you are the most stubborn mortal ever to summon me.” The sea serpent was laughing at her. Laughing! “Go,” it commanded her. “Your comrades – some of them -- must still live.”
“The trouble on the Q deck,” Chatir breathed, suddenly heady with the realization.
“Yes.” The leviathan managed a small nod. “I will use my last strength against this ship.” 
“Thank you, my friend,” Chatir whispered. 
“I will see you in the Rift soon, Captain.” 
Chatir swallowed hard. Was that where she would go when… She forced the thoughts from her mind. 
Chatir slipped away to a quiet part of the deck to survey the battle. Her pearls of far-seeing showed the Brigades’ work. Two ships smoldered in the night. Fire. How many times Assan had speculated about it. The last ship had drifted away from the company. Chatir saw no living beings on its dark deck. 
The mersoldiers had destroyed four small ships, but this one, the biggest, could still reduce Zurolind to memories and rubble. Chatir swept her gaze down the endless decks. Somewhere in this labyrinth of salt-seasoned wood lay the Q deck, site of the deciding battle. 
When she found it, Chatir set off at an awkward, stumbling run, cursing her cumbersome legs. The sounds of battle became louder: steel on steel on wood; shouts, whimpers and screams, the endless hammer of feet on the wooden deck. 
The fray itself took on an almost-surreal quality. Bodies and blood did not float free; they fell, always down to the deck. Sweat ran down Chatir’s face and sides, bringing with it a flavor of salt. Her muscles ached as they never had, even in her most strenuous days of training below the surface. Her breath came faster and faster; as she tried to catch it, Chatir thought she understood the origin of human greed. Underwater she had never faced such a struggle for such a simple thing. 
The battle soon brought Chatir to Assan. He was engaged with a woman, one of the few Chatir had seen that night. Her grand jeweled armor shone with gems and precious metal, vibrant against her night-dark hair. Her skin was brown like Castle Zurolind’s bricks. 
Assan, Chatir knew right away, was in trouble. Close-range fighting had never been his strength, but the greenest mersoldier would have blocked the hits he had just missed. Perhaps the human woman had ensorcelled him, or poisoned him. Chatir had just decided to dash into the fray as the human woman disarmed him. 
“Meyroth,” Assan was saying as he backed away with his hands held before him. “Meyroth, please!”
A lover’s quarrel. Had they been underwater, Chatir reflected, electric sparks would have leaped from Meyroth’s eyes. 
Chatir’s rush caught Meyroth off-guard, allowing her to slash the human’s leg. As Chatir turned back to her opponent, raising the geluvial in a challenge, she imagined they were equally repulsed by one another, green hair and black, green eyes and black. 
Unlike Chatir’s sword, the human woman’s did not curve like the ocean waves, but was rigid and straight. She wielded it with more speed than guile and strength. Together, Chatir and Assan might have subdued her. As it was, Chatir fought alone, weary from the prior fights.
“Assan!” Meyroth rasped. “We might have been king and queen over everything with Laselan’s treasure! Damned fool!”  
Ocean-born geluvial rang against Meyroth’s air and fire-forged blade. Chatir stumbled over her unfamiliar human feet; they were as heavy as heartache. She feared her strength would give out before the battle ended. Still she fought on. She could only block Meyroth’s impassioned blows, seizing no advantage for herself.
“Assan!” Chatir cried out. “Assan, I need your help! Please! Stand and fight!” 
The golden-haired merman made no answer. His eyes were sightless stones, unable to accept Meyroth’s betrayal. Never had such care touched Assan’s innocent face. It mirrored Chatir’s own when she had realized that Assan’s heart was on the surface. Seeing herself in him, Chatir realized the absence of her unrequited love. Already those feelings seemed as distant as childhood tears.
“I see you kept busy in your own realm, Assan!” Meyroth spat his name as though it were gall. “How many others were there? Did I mean so little to you?” With each question, she drove her sword harder against Chatir’s, forcing the smaller woman to give ground. Jealousy gave her wild strength that breached Chatir’s weakening defenses. In moments, Meyroth had disarmed Chatir and driven her against the mast. 
“Well, Assan.” Meyroth sneered, her blade tracing a light line against Chatir’s neck. “How shall I kill your lover? Slit her pretty throat? Gut her like the fish she is and forcefeed her to you?”
“N…no…please!” Assan’s plea was little more than a croak.
“No?” Meyroth mocked. “Hmm. I know what to do.” The sword point slipped down Chatir’s throat to the sunshell’s cord. “I’ll smash this shell she’s wearing. The one you told me was so rare and expensive! And then…”
Now Assan got to his feet. “Please, Meyroth! Don’t do this!”
Chatir was watching from the corner of her eye, so she could not be certain; it seemed Assan was inching toward the geluvial. He would never make it in time, she realized. 
So it would end here, Chatir thought, closing her eyes. She hoped her duty to Zurolind would be fulfilled. Beneath her feet, the wooden planks trembled. Meyroth’s crew, no doubt. She would show them what it meant to die with honor.
“Throw down your weapon!” a familiar voice commanded.
Chatir’s eyes shot open. Egudar! Egudar, not only alive, but standing before her, his double-sided spear poised to attack. And behind him, the last of the Third Brigade, just short of ten in all. Each bore wounds worthy of a tale. Each stood strong.
Chatir’s throat tightened. Part of her was grateful that so many lived, while another part of her experienced her grief for the dead as a sword blow, stunning disbelief at first, followed by crippling pain.
“And if I don’t?” Meyroth challenged Egudar with snapping eyes.
“This ship is ours.” Egudar’s voice was as hard as steel. “Disobey, and we will make an example of you to the other prisoners.”
“You’re lying!” Meyroth screamed. She lashed out with her strange, straight sword.
Egudar raised his spear to meet her and sent her stumbling back. With his usual stern gravity, Egudar motioned the Brigade forth. Meyroth’s dark face turned ghastly pale. She leaped into the rigging. Chatir thought she would pull herself to the safety of the topsails, but instead, a splash sounded. 
Chatir rushed to the side with the rest of her Brigade. Meyroth was swimming for the wreckage of a small ship.
“Why aren’t you going after her?” Chatir started to say. It would be a simple matter for a mersoldier to catch the human woman in the water. “Egudar? What is it?” 
“I left fifteen mersoldiers holding back humans on the Q deck,” Egudar said. “I knew this area had to be clear if I was to fool Meyroth.”
Chatir shook her head in amazement. Leave it to Egudar to tell a lie that she herself believed. 
“Come.” Egudar raised the hilt of Chatir’s geluvial to her. “They will surely rally to learn their captain lives.”

{****}

The battle of the big ship lasted until dawn. The fray took its toll on the mersoldiers, reducing the brigades to less than ten. Assan and Radien were among the fallen. Every time Chatir thought the big ship conquered, another pocket of humans would surge out of a hiding place like rats. At last, in the sun’s light, it seemed none remained to oppose them, or none dared.
“Honored comrades,” Chatir said when she had gathered her remaining soldiers to her. “It would seem that, at last, this day is ours.” Behind her, the sun shone on her skin. It did not burn as she had imagined it would; in fact, the sensation was rather pleasant.
The mersoldiers were too spent to cheer. The most they could manage were weary smiles.
Though Chatir had spared one man to stand watch, he had yet to herald the long-awaited signal. Chatir tried to cheer herself, but she knew without the First and King’s Brigade, Zurolind would be defenseless against human reinforcements, if they came. She had not yet decided if Meyroth was more vengeful or cowardly.
“Captain!” a mersoldier stared at her, his eyes wide with shock. “What is happening to you?”
Chatir looked down at her hands. Sea-green fire raged around her flesh. Yet, she felt no pain, and the flames did not scorch the deck. “Zurolind is safe now,” Chatir whispered.
“Fire cannot survive in water.” Egudar’s brisk tone could not disguise that he was shaken by the sight. He reached for Chatir gingerly. Finding that the fire did not burn him, he lifted her gently, as though he carried her wounded from the battlefield. For an instant, they fell together. Then the sea wrapped Chatir in its embrace, rocked her, murmured a consoling song in her ears. 
“Captain! The flames still burn! Have you any idea what this new devilry can be?” Egudar’s harsh voice grated in her ears. He drew closer to inspect the fire.
“To call upon the leviathans, a sacrifice is required. The summoner must trade his or her own life,” Chatir softly recounted from the great tome. “They are calling me…I can hear their songs from the Rift.”
Egudar shook his head in slow disbelief. Grief pooled in the corners of his otherwise impassive eyes.
“Here.” Chatir reached among the green tangles of her hair and freed the flat effigy of the leviathans. She attempted to hold it out to Egudar, but her hand fell. “Keep this. Should Zurolind ever need it again…” 
“The signal!” a voice called, it seemed from miles away. “The signal!”
Then Egudar was turning with Chatir in his arms, pointing into the distance at mist raised by no wave. Out of the spray winked the jewel-facet flash of tails. Nine times, the mersoldiers leaped free of the waters. Chatir’s own heart danced with them through the blue and white. The Brigades had returned! All her being sang out in gladness, as though she were once again a little merchild.
Mustering all her strength, Chatir raised her head to Egudar. Somehow her hand found his. 
Above, the seagulls mourned, even as they soared. 
“Egudar. Give Lillia my love.”
“Yes,” Egudar whispered. The wetness on his cheeks might have been a mere trickle running down a cliff’s crags. 
“And remember. Zurolind is in your hands.”
Chatir surrendered herself to the leviathans’ fire. As all that she was passed into flame, her lips curved in a smile. 

The end.




The End

{****}

Other stories by Meghann McVey:

Trickster Races the Lightning Wolf (free on Smashwords) 
The Last Rose (free on Smashwords)
His Answer (free on Smashwords)
The Gift not Given (free on Smashwords)

I wrote Captain’s Sacrifice in 2009. Before posting it to Smashwords, I changed many sections and added many more, bringing it up to speed with my current writing abilities and standards as best as I could. I imagine the process is a lot like buying a fixer-upper house. It took a long time to complete, but I feel I have done my original vision justice (and then some). I hope you enjoyed it.

This concludes the unrequited love stories...for now. For the next story, I intend to post a big chunk of my fantasy novel Lachlan of Marinus. Hope to see you there! 

PS: You can find a teaser for Lachlan of Marinus here.