"Realms of the Deep - Philip Athans.2.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthologies)

Hard ChoicesHard Choices
Lynn Abbey
19 Ches, die Year of the Gauntlet

"What happened here?" the gray-bearded merman asked.
"Sahuagin," Shemsen replied.
Yesterday there had been twenty-two sentry posts out where the Waterdeep outflow
channels cut through the sea shelf. Today there were twenty-one.
The merman frowned, all shifty shadows in the soft, greenish light of the living
lanterns he and his companions strung from the reins of their seahorse mounts.
Forty fathoms up, through wisps of plankton, the moon danced on a becalmed sea.
It had been different at dawn.
"They came riding a squall," Shemsen explained. A sea elf refugee from warmer
water, he'd been swimming Waterdeep for a decade, long enough to master the
local underwater dialect. "We looked up, and there they were."
Sahuagin weren't the only sea-folk who hid in the heavy water that fell from the
sky. Any hunter with wits swam with the rain: merfolk, sea elves, selkie,
dolphins. Though the sahuagin were, perhaps, the best at hiding their stench in
freshwater torrents.
"We were outnumbered from the start."
The merman's frown consumed his face. "You survived."
It wasn't something a man liked to admit, but one-on-one, sahuagin over matched
both mermen and sea elves. If Shemsen's patrol had been ambushed and
outnumbered, there should have been no survivors.
Gashes in Shemsen's silvery green flesh winked blood as he shrugged. "What
happened, happened." Fatalism was bred in salt water. "They were in a hurry,
bent on destroying the beacon. They didn't stay to feed."
The gray-beard's second levered his trident against a mauled sea elf corpse.
Shemsen closed his eyes, remembering how Peshhet, trailing his own blood and
gore, had come between him and death. Shemsen turned away before reopening his
eyes and found himself facing the charred remains of the outpost beacon.
"We heard it shatter," the merman said, guessing Shemsen's thoughts. "It will be
a tenday before the Waterdeep mage-guild enchants a new one-more than a tenday
with Fleetswake on the tide. There'll be a blind spot now, till it's replaced.
Not a big one, but a gap in Waterdeep's defenses all the same. And sahuagin!
What are they doing so far north?"
Shemsen turned; they faced each other. A vagrant current-an underwater breeze
thick with plankton- passed between them. Krill swam with the plankton, a school
of young menhaden swam after the krill. Conversation stopped as Shemsen and the
mermen each snatched a menhaden meal.
Umberlee's will: Only a fool ignored what She provided.
"Can anyone of us claim to understand the sahua-gin mind?" Shemsen asked
afterward.
"Well said, sea elf," the merman second said. "Eadro watches!" He touched the
blood-coral amulet of his private god. "We thought Waterdeep was beyond their
reach."
Shemsen didn't know the four mermen. If they'd all been in their native
water-their balmy, crystal clear southern seas-they'd have swum around each
other's wakes. Instead sea elves and mermen alike had been driven north by
shadowy enemies that were not sahuagin, or not exclusively sahuagin.