The remaining eight rock macaques, all veterans of battles in the Wilds, rallied at once. They started spitting acorns at Lord Silurus, but the nuts just bounced off his skin and plowed into the riverbed. Black sand clouded the water until I could barely see his hole. One acorn even blasted at me (friendly fire? Or not?), and I flailed sideways.
Hey! Watch it! I yelled.
“LORD SILURUS IS NOT GOING TO DIE AND REINCARNATE AS A TAPEWORM!” bellowed the catfish. “IF LORD SILURUS COULD NOT BE DEFEATED BY KNIGHTS OR MAGES, HE IS NOT GOING TO BE DEFEATED BY A BUNCH OF MONKEYS!”
The leader of the rock macaques used some of his precious air to shout, “Pull back!” and they kicked away, trying to lure the demon all the way out of his hole. One of them grabbed me, not gently. As she bore me upstream under her arm, I kept up the taunts.
You really think you can’t be defeated? You really think you can’t be killed? Then why are you still hiding in your hole? You know what I think? I think you know you’re going to die!
The rock macaques and I were steadily pulling away, but the size of Lord Silurus’ head wasn’t decreasing.
“It’s working!” the leader bubbled back at me. “Keep going!”
I stared into the shield-sized eyes that were coming up behind us, and I willed myself not to quail.
Right now, Silurus, you’re regretting that you didn’t seize your one chance to learn the secret behind earning good karma. You’re hating yourself for your incredible shortsightedness. Should have thought ahead, shouldn’t you!
Another giant wave bashed into us. When it had settled again and I knew which way was up and which way was down, the water was flowing – upriver?
Not so far away, Black Sand Creek shrimp guards were cartwheeling sideways, waving their legs and antennae, fighting to right themselves but crashing into screaming, fleeing spectators.
And downstream – there was no downstream. Only a teeth-lined maw surrounded by skin as tough as steel.
“He’s almost all the way out!” burbled the leader of the rock macaques. “Just a little more!”
Only almost? Then what was it going to take to bring him all the way out?
I channeled all of my fear and desperation into a shriek. Six hundred years, Silurus! Six hundred years – and THIS is how it ends for you? Execution for your crimes, followed by eternity living life after life as a worm? Is this all there is? Then what was the point? What was the POINT of any of this? Tell me! Is this how it ends?
Incredibly, the demon opened his mouth even wider. I thought he was going to lunge forward and swallow us whole – but he started to suck instead.
The river changed course yet again. Water rushed into his mouth and gushed back out of his gills. Broken tufts of eelgrass, helpless mortal fish, wailing spirits, broken carts, even tiles from the ramshackle gate outside the Black Sand Creek Water Court hurtled at us, past us, into Lord Silurus’ belly.
We were being dragged backwards too. The rock macaques were swimming as hard as they could, fighting to reach the riverbank. The one carrying me was falling behind, and we were getting closer and closer to those rows of teeth –
She released me. I tumbled towards Lord Silurus, waving my legs and screeching.
All of a sudden, a beak stabbed through the water and seized my shell. Then I was arcing through the air, tumbling towards the army on the riverbank. I twisted to see what was happening in the river.
Stripey was flapping upward, the head of a giant catfish rising up behind him, getting closer and closer.
Stripey! Watch –
Two steel whiskers lashed out. The first reached for me, but Stripey’s throw had already carried me out of range. The second wrapped around his body, crunching his wings to his sides. I could hear bone snap. One wing was folded in half the wrong way. Stripey was quacking, straining his neck and biting at the whisker, but his beak wasn’t doing any damage.
Stripey!
I flapped my legs, but I wasn’t a bird or a butterfly or even a bee. I couldn’t do anything except fall along the path he’d set me on.
Below me, shouts of horror rose. Den shot a gust of wind at the monster, trying to distract him.
Too little, too late. The whisker was reeling Stripey in. He was still fighting as hard as he could, straining every feather he had to break free.
The whisker flicked, and then Stripey was sailing between the two rows of teeth.
“NOOO!” screamed Mistress Jek, who as far I knew didn’t even like the bandit that much.
The teeth smashed shut. The catfish head slammed back into the river, throwing up a wall of water that crashed down on the army and toppled the rock macaques who were crawling onto the banks.
Stripey was gone. And I was still falling towards a crash landing that was going to break my shell. His sacrifice was going to be for nothing.
Heeeeeelp!
Den jerked, dropped his vision, pushed his palms at me, and then I was cushioned on a mass of air that slowed my fall.
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I still hit the ground hard. It didn’t break my shell, though.
After a moment, when I could breathe again, I wobbled to my feet. The rest of the duck demons were circling over the river, wheezing mournful cries. Stripey’s second-in-command quacked an order, and they flew away.
In his willow tree, Master Gravitas threw back his head and howled into the orange sky, and the rest of the cat spirits picked it up. “Meow-oooooooo! Meow-oooooooo!” they wailed.
Nearby, Mistress Jek was doubled over, clutching the side of a smoke crock wagon and sobbing. Floridiana petted her shoulder, too stunned to speak. Den stood stock still, shocked that his fellow taskforce member, his party guest, his friend had been murdered right before his eyes.
His friend. Bobo!
I searched for her before remembering that she was back at Honeysuckle Croft with Master Jek and Taila and the boys. Thank goodness she wasn’t here. Thank goodness Taila wasn’t here. Thank goodness they hadn’t had to see – that.
Sir Gil, I noted, didn’t look the least bit sorry that the leader of the bandits who’d plagued the barony was dead. I considered walking over and biting him.
“Iiiis it tiiiime?”
Lord Magnissimus, unaffected by the loss of someone he barely knew, pawed the ground.
Den blinked, composed himself, and blinked again. “Yes. Yes, it’s time.” He raised his voice into a shout that everyone could hear: “Soldiers! He’s out of his lair! Go go go!”
“Finallyyyy!” The wild boar’s eyes crackled and froze into blue-white ice. He charged, followed by rank upon rank of kyaw-kyawing rock macaques.
The catfish’s top fin was still above water. Lord Silurus was so big that the river wasn’t wide enough for him to turn around – he was going to have to swim backwards and then back into his hole. Good. That would slow him down.
At the edge of the water, Lord Magnissimus lowered his head until his snout nearly touched it and exhaled. Twin streams of fog flowed out of his nostrils. When they struck the water, there was a crackle. Two patches of blue-white ice formed, which grew and merged and raced out across the surface of the river. In moments, the ice hit the opposite riverbank and rushed downstream, crusting around the catfish fin.
The river roiled. An enormous tail broke the water and smacked back down, lifting the monster’s front half up through the ice.
“WHO DARES!!!”
Lord Magnissimus huffed at the river again, sending more ice crackling and crusting around the catfish. The monster thrashed again, breaking it up.
“Yoooou will be my diiiinner tonight, fish.”
The catfish lunged for the wild boar – or tried to. Floats of ice were clogging the river and crowding around his sides. He roared as their points grazed his skin and drew lines of frost across it, and he batted at them with his fins, pushing through them to get at the boar.
Lord Magnissimus stood his ground, breathing more and more icy fog into the river. I craned my neck to see what was happening. No one seemed to have the slightest desire to hold me up for a better view, and Stripey wasn’t around to carry me on his back anymore – no, don’t think about that.
The river was turning opaque. The ice was burrowing down, like worms or fingers or icicles, and growing sideways. Lord Silurus thrashed and thrashed, splintering the ice and sending chunks flying. They hailed down on the army. Den flung up his hands and swirled wind around me, himself, Floridiana, Mistress Jek, Sir Gil, Captain Rock, and anyone else nearby to knock away the ice.
“SHIELDS UP, IDIOTS!” Captain Rock jumped up and down, shaking the earth.
The rock macaques raised their shields overhead, trying to overlap them, but where ice made it through and grazed bodies, they immediately began to freeze. Blue-white ice raced outward from the contact point until the whole soldier was frozen solid. The rock macaques kyaw-kyawed and beat at it, and one even hacked off his own leg, but the ice grew too fast to stop.
Some of the pieces striking the soldiers were the ones that Den’s wind had knocked away from us.
“Sor– ” the horrified dragon started to apologize, before he remembered that he was a dragon king and the de facto commander of this coalition (somehow) and that he couldn’t afford to be seen apologizing to anyone. “Lord Magnissimus!” he shouted instead. “How much longer?”
The boar raised his massive head and turned it just enough to cast a wrathful glance out of the corner of his eye. “Iiiit will take as long as it taaaakes, dragonet.”
In the river, Lord Silurus was bucking up and down as the water solidified around and underneath him. Was that what we wanted? Originally, we’d planned to freeze him inside the ice, cut out the section with him in it, lug it onto land like a giant ice cube, melt it again, and then fight him – but I guessed freezing the river under him worked too?
A spear shot overhead, nearly impaling Mistress Jek. Floridiana yanked her out of the way just in time. The spear thunked into a tree trunk, its haft quivering.
“Where did that come from?!” yelped Mistress Jek.
“Get down!” Floridiana was already crouched behind a wagon.
Swoosh.
A battleax spun through the air and buried itself in the ground in the middle of some rock macaques, who scattered with terrified kyaw-kyaaaws.
Crash. Next came a rotted spear with a wavy bronze head, which shattered on impact with a shield.
Thunk thunk thunk.
Weapons rained down on us. Spears and swords and axes and arrowheads in all shapes and sizes. Bronze and iron and stone. Pitted and corroded.
“Mreeeeeeow! Fall back!” Master Gravitas commanded, and cats began streaming out of willows.
The rock macaques had formed a shield wall to protect themselves. Den swirled the wind, sweeping away as many weapons as he could.
Where in the world were they coming from? Crane my head and stretch my neck as I might, I couldn’t see. Lord Silurus couldn’t just summon weapons out of thin air, could he? I’d never heard of such an ability.
Strip– I started to call before remembering.
I set my jaw.
Then I lumbered over to Sir Gil and ordered, Pick me up. I must observe the state of the battle.
The human gulped. “Oh, yes, yes, at once, Emissary!” He knelt, extended both hands, and I walked onto his palms. He stood again and lifted me to his chest level. Not as good as riding on Stripey’s back, but….
A tattered leathery object – a helmet?! – shot at us. Den’s wind whipped it aside.
Where had the cursed thing come from? I squinted through the whirlwind. The catfish lay like a whale beached on a glacier. The wild boar was still snorting freezing fog at him.
As I watched, something long and dark grew out of Lord Silurus’ side. A – scabbard? Gods and demons, he could grow scabbards out of his side?!
No, not his side. His gills. He was spitting weapons and armor out of his gills! All those would-be heroes he’d eaten over the years – he’d stored all their gear inside him, and now he was spitting them out the way the rock macaques spat acorns!
Freeze his gills! I called. He’s shooting things out of his gills!
“His gills!” Den picked up the shout. “That’s where they’re coming from! Lord Magnissimus! Freeze his gills!”
“Whaaaat do you think I am trying to doooo!”
The wild boar was huffing and puffing away, but the ice just wasn’t sticking. No, it was sticking and forming frost, but then the catfish would flutter his gills and the ice would crack and shower off.
“We need to distract him!” yelled Den. “Floridiana, you’re up! Buy Lord Magnissimus enough time to freeze his gills shut!”
Floridiana hefted a smoke crock, eyed the protective whirlwind around us, and stepped outside it. An arrowhead nearly hit her in the shoulder, but she pivoted, spun, and released the smoke crock in one smooth motion.
It sailed through the air, heading the opposite way from all the flying weapons, and smashed against Lord Silurus’ face.
Yellow smoke curled up.