Chapter 18

  What though the field be lost?

  ? All is not Lost; the unconquerable will,

  ? And study of revenge, immortal hate,

  ? And the courage never to submit or yield.

  - John Milton, Paradise Lost

  Akkama’s mind often went to strange places in desperate times. Sometimes when in danger she discovered herself thinking of music, or of poetry. Now, as the sharks closed around her and dragged her down into the waters, certainly her most desperate situation yet, she thought of Captain Shard. What would she, the legendary hero, do in this situation? Had she ever been in such a scrape? If there was a story like that, Akkama could not at the moment recall it.

  Jaws clamped on her calf, her shoulder, her hip. She burned in retaliation, burned with every ounce of strength, with all the might of her song and her fury and her fearless determination. The jaws released her, her blood too hot, her arda like molten metal. Water boiled around her, charred through her soaked leather armor, and the steam seared her exposed skin.

  The impossibly keen edges of the dragonsteel blade glimmered with light as though splitting apart the molecules of the water itself. Though Akkama could barely see through bubbles and blood and darkness in the roiling depths, she struck out at her attackers. She felt tug after tug as the blade carved into sharks. But always there were more. They feared her heat, but a blood frenzy drove them. A large one, daring greatly, came at her from the side like a battering ram and bit deep into her torso, its teeth carving arcs of deep puncture wounds into her chest and stomach. Pain piled atop itself, screaming to be heeded, but Akkama paid it no heed. The momentum of the shark carried her down and aside into the dark waters and slammed her into rough stone with enough force that her head smacked against the rock. Her vision exploded white and grey. The shark received for its effort a dragonsteel blade through the skull. It released her, but hot red blood poured from the jagged wounds into the water.

  She was losing blood. Far too much. She had little air left. Far too little. Several sharks remained. Far too many.

  What would Captain Shard do? And how, in the end, had she died? Akkama could not recall that story.

  Dizzy, delirious, her lungs burning with need for air, she turned in the water, planted her feet on the stone, and dove down into the darkness. Away from the sharks, away from the surface, away from Rosma.

  Down she went, her swimming clumsy and awkward. She found the debris from the surface—huge chunks of rock that had churned a path through the water.

  Air. It became her greatest need. She needed to breathe something, and if she could not find air in the next few seconds, she would inhale a lungful of water.

  She found a handhold in the rock, pulled herself down. Iron jaws clamped around one of her feet. Teeth scraped the bones of her leg. She screamed, releasing the last of her air, and put all her energy into a burst of heat. The water inside the shark’s mouth exploded, probably killing it, and water expanded into steam with such force that it shoved her further down into the rocky debris.

  She felt a huge curved chunk of rock against her back, part of the arched ceiling of this cavern before it had fallen. It occurred to Akkama, as the edges of her vision began to fade to nothing, that a pocket of air may have been trapped beneath this curved stone.

  She pulled herself down, found an edge, slithered through a gap between two stones, now in deep red darkness. She reached up, found the stone above, realized she could not tell from touch whether air existed there. With a final effort, Akkama created a tiny spark of flame at her fingertips. She saw it come to life there: actual fire. Air.

  She pressed her face up against the stone and gulped a deep breath. Life at once surged through her and her vision cleared, but she was not out of trouble yet. There was only a small pool of air here. One more breath, maybe two, and she would have to leave. And air was still only one of her problems.

  Think!

  She had seen a pit at the bottom. A deeper darkness, illuminated by her red glow, free of debris from the collapsed roof. Where had the sharks come from? There must be a way out.

  She took another deep breath and slithered back out of the debris, into the waiting jaws of the sharks. Her blade flashed in the water, fending them off. She dove. Down into the darkness, trailing steam and blood.

  It was a tunnel of some kind which descended below sea level before correcting its course toward the sea. Probably how the sharks had arrived in the cavern. One more of those beasts got its jaws into Akkama before she saw a surface above her—still dark, still in the depths of the earth, but a surface nevertheless.

  She breached it and heaved herself out of the water, up onto a narrow shelf of wet rock dimly illumined by her crimson arda. Her blood burned like oil on the water and splashed flame around her as it fell to the damp stone. The impact of nearby waves vibrated the tiny space, and the fins of sharks, slick, reflecting the guttering firelight, cut the waters nearby. Nowhere to run. But she was safe from the beasts for the moment, and with enough air to last a while.

  Akkama snarled and hissed with wordless rage. She spit blood; it spattered fire where it landed. She cursed Rosma with every curse she knew as she settled herself on the stone, careful to keep her extremities as far as possible from the water.

  The narrow shelf was slick with her blood; she didn’t have much left. Almost exsanguinated. It was the power of her arda keeping her body alive now, and that power was worn thin, its light flickering dimly like a guttering candle flame. Akkama took the blade, which had never left her hand, and used some of her power and rage to heat it. It took little effort, for the metal was still hot. Her blood runes glimmered on the blade. She made it glow brighter still, and then systematically pressed the hot metal against all of her major wounds, searing the flesh shut. She hissed with the pain.

  It was a temporary solution. She would die here without help.

  She raised her left wrist, brought the comm band to her mouth. It was partly melted, partly adhered onto her own seared skin. Akkama prayed to the dead gods it would still work. “Fiora,” she rasped.

  After a pause that seemed far too long, it connected and made the call. Fiora answered quickly.

  “Hi, Akkama!”

  “Fiora,” Akkama replied, struggling and failing to keep her voice casual, playful, neutral. “Come here.”

  “Is everything okay? You sound strange.”

  “Fine! I’m just…fine. I just nee…I just could use a…just get over here. Fast.”

  “Well, but, Rosma just called me and she needs my help…”

  “She’ll be fine. You’re coming here. Now.”

  Fiora gasped on the other end of the line. “You did it, didn’t you!”

  Akkama’s nice act suddenly broke. The pain, the frustration, and the knowledge that she had maybe only seconds of coherent thought left made her hiss in anger. “Listen Fiora, you need to come right to my location right now, or I swear to the dead fucking gods I will call Jeronimy and tell him everything. And keep this between us, huh?” She severed the connection so that Fiora would not hear her hack up blood.

  A timeless span crawled by—a time of confusion, pain, unbearable anger, but never fear. The sharks lost interest, but they were still there in the water. The water began to rise with the tide outside; slowly it crept up the thin shelf on which Akkama sheltered. She edged as far as she could from the water, yet soon it touched her, and it kept rising. Soon the sharks, who could still smell her blood leaking into the water, could strike. Akkama considered an attempt to escape through the tunnel to the waters outside, but it was useless. Her entire body was so stiff and sore she could barely do more than shift her weight.

  The water rose. Akkama was an inch deep, three inches, six. Any enterprising shark could have lunged up out of the water to strike at her, but these were either too stupid to think of that or not motivated enough to try.

  She did not release the sword, not even for a moment. “Nemesis,” she heard herself say. Nemesis: the name of Captain Shard’s vessel. That’s what she could call this sword, if she survived.

  Akkama was dozing in a fitful delirium, remembering the pleasant heat of the Forge of the Storm, and the less pleasant heat of the Ephathic attack that had wiped out the Red Hand, when a shark surfaced in the water next to her. The sudden movement and noise made her coil back against the wall and bring her sword up despite the crippling agony that speared through her at this motion. If she were about to die, she would die fighting.

  But a light had come with the shark, a green light. Fiora’s head emerged from the other side of the beast. “Akkama,” she said, “what…” Her eyes widened. She squealed in horror.

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  Akkama didn’t need to see herself to know what she looked like. She grinned, but her grin was lopsided and weak. Her vision swam. She clung to consciousness, fought against the darkness trying to creep across her vision. This would be the one, she thought. This would be the sleep from which she would never awaken.

  Fiora sprang atop the shark and bounded from it to the submerged shelf of rock. Fiora was so small that both she and Akkama could occupy the tiny space.

  Although she fought against it, the first icy blast of healing from Fiora shoved Akkama’s fatigued mind into dark oblivion.

  She awoke only a moment later, or so it seemed to her. But when she awoke, the most grievous of her wounds had been healed, and Fiora lay stretched out upon a shark in the water, exhausted. The water had receded.

  “You are awake?” Fiora asked.

  Akkama sat up. Her muscles felt like cold jelly. She was lightheaded, desperately thirsty, and she desired nothing more than rest.

  “Let us get out of here,” said Fiora, a hint of pleading in her voice.

  “What,” said Akkama, her own voice weak and frail in her ear, “afraid of the sharks?” It was a silly thing to say. A stupid thing. Fiora was using a shark as a bed while it swam around.

  Fiora just sighed. Disappointed? Upset? Still lying on the shark, she made a vague gesture with one hand. “Grab on.”

  Akkama did not hesitate. She tumbled into the water, and with her remaining strength threw an arm around the shark. She clutched at its rough hide.

  “Deep breath,” said Fiora. She sounded exhausted.

  Akkama took a shaky gulp of air, and then the shark was off. It dragged them through darkness at what seemed a great speed. Akkama’s feet collided against rock at a few points, but soon she sensed that they had come into open water. The shark pulled them up, up, to the surface. Twilight, the stars beginning to show overhead.

  The shark towed them to the rocky shore, where a huge golden elk-like creature stood waiting in the dimness. The waves pummeled the rocks, and Akkama was about to bring up her concerns about this when the vesta bent down and did something, its head hidden by stones and spray. A circle of calm spread from where the vesta stood, radiating out until an area fifty paces across contained water as placid as a mountain lake, immune to the rolling waves nearby. The shark pulled them in, then vanished into the depths.

  The vesta stepped into the water, gently bit the back of Fiora’s coat, and hauled her in a graceful arc to his back. He laid her lightly onto his fur, glanced disdainfully at Akkama, and plodded up the slick slope to the area where the battle had taken place.

  Akkama grumbled, staggered to her feet, and followed after. It seemed as though her muscles had to re-learn every aspect of walking. Each step was easier, but even when she made it up the slope and trudged toward her slider, she limped on both legs.

  Fiora and the vesta were there, waiting for her. Watching. Fiora sat up on the vesta and stretched. “Put it away, Akkama,” she said. “Please. Catch does not like it. He is really mad about what you did to Thaevrit, and I am asking him not to hurt you, but…”

  Put what away? Akkama looked down at herself and realized that she still held the dragonsteel blade, Nemesis, clutched tightly in one hand. She lowered it and looked toward her slider. The night lights were on, illuminating the area. Someone had gone through her things, leaving them discarded like trash on the damp rocks. Akkama spotted her erhu among the detritus. She gasped.

  Nemesis rang brightly as it fell to the stones. Akkama stumbled to the erhu, dropped painfully on her knees beside it, scooped it up into her arms. She cradled it, turned it over and over, inspected it for damage. Nothing beyond a few minor scratches. She breathed a shaky sigh of relief.

  She stood again on trembling legs and found the water tank on the slider. She filled a canteen and drank all of it in a long draught.

  Fiora and the vesta were still watching.

  “What?” asked Akkama. “Not going to ask what happened?”

  “I can see what happened,” said Fiora. She slumped back down onto the vesta. “I am just sad about it.”

  Akkama noticed something else on the ground, illuminated by one of the slider’s night lights as though a spotlight shone on it: her journal, splayed pages-down on the muddy rocks. The sight of it like that shocked Akkama. She was torn between horror at the thought that Rosma might have read it and anger at the thought that it had been so casually discarded. She quivered with fury. But she didn’t want to draw attention to the journal, not in front of Fiora, so she ignored it for the moment.

  After a quick look around, Akkama concluded that Rosma had taken little to nothing of value. Akkama thanked all the dead gods she hadn’t kept Thaevrit’s mind stone on the slider.

  “Fiora,” she said, “I need your com band.”

  “Wha-? Why?”

  “Just give it to me.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘no.’”

  “Why?”

  “Because all you want to do is get back at Rosma. Just stop it, Akkama! You are lucky you are alive!”

  “She didn’t play fair.”

  “It does not matter!” Fiora was near tears. “Please, Akkama! Think about what Anthea would say.”

  That sparked a new anger within Akkama, the more so because it swayed her. The thought of disappointing Anthea made her stomach churn. But she forced out a scornful laugh and said, “She’s not my Shogun. I don’t care what Anthea says. Now give me your comm band or I’ll take it from you.”

  The vesta didn’t actually move. He didn’t even shift his weight. Yet somehow at that moment his presence became very large, very weighty, very significant. Akkama’s innate sense for danger informed her that the vesta in front of her was as great a threat to her life, right at this moment, as Rosma and all her sharks. His silver eyes shone; starlight refracted in soft rainbows from crystal antlers.

  Akkama snarled at Catch, looked toward her sword lying on the ground five paces away. “Do not,” said Fiora softly, crying green tears. “Do not do it. P-please.” She hugged the back of the golden vesta fiercely, as if trying to pin it down. Akkama began to respond, saying something about how she’d let Catch off easy this time, but Fiora went on without even listening. “D-do not kill her. Please, Catch. Please.”

  Akkama spat fire, stomped her feet, ran a hand through her hair, which was all clumpy from blood and salt. “Fine,” she said. “Give me the comm band, or I tell Jeronimy.”

  Fiora hesitated. She sniffed. She slipped the comm band from her wrist and tossed it to Akkama.

  “You can go.” Akkama dismissed Fiora with a wave of her hand.

  The vesta turned away. “Please,” said Fiora as she twisted to look at Akkama one last time. “I know you do not care what Derxis would say, or—or anyone, but whatever you are thinking is a bad idea.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Akkama had already stopped listening; she began working through the menus on the comm unit.

  “It is not worth it!” shouted Fiora as the vesta suddenly sprang into a gallop.

  Akkama watched them go. Food. Food then sleep. But first…

  She picked up her journal, wiped every page clean. She put it and the erhu back in their places on the slider. Then she called Lex, her ally and one of the few remaining members of the Red Hand after the Remnant attacked.

  “Meet me at Prax,” she said with a smile. “Bring the mind stone.”