“When they start coming, dive. It’s our only chance,” murmurs Conor.
It’s not a chance at all, and he knows it. If we dive they’ll rain the spear down on our backs.
Ervys surveys his followers and then swims a little closer to them. Slowly he holds up his left arm and stretches out his hand. He beckons Mortarow, and for the first time I realise that Mortarow is carrying two spears. One for him and one for …
Yes. Mortarow lifts one of the spears, balances it above his shoulder, draws back his arm and sends the spear soaring through the water towards Ervys. The spear does not travel fast, but its aim is sure. Ervys moves aside. The muscles of his arms and shoulders ripple as he reaches forward, catches the falling spear by its shaft, lifts its weight and holds it high in triumph.
He wants to be part of the killing. He isn’t going to leave it to his men. If there is blood guilt for Faro and Elvira’s deaths, they will be able to put it on him. How clever Ervys is. The answering roar from his men is much louder now. He is their leader and they will follow him, as soon as he gives the signal.
Ervys turns, balancing the spear’s shaft across the palm of his hand. He controls its weight perfectly.
“They’ve been practising,” mutters Conor.
Suddenly Ervys jabs the spear towards us. I can’t help flinching away. Ervys catches the spear again, and laughs. He’s playing with us.
“Not so brave now, when it comes to it,” he taunts.
“You have more to fear than we do,” calls Elvira. “Death is better than living with the curse of having shed your brothers’ and sisters’ blood.”
“You’re no sister of mine!” shouts Ervys angrily, but I see his tail twitch, and another ripple of unease among his followers. I am mesmerised by the dull gleam of the spear’s point. It sways a little in the water as Ervys changes his grip on the shaft.
“I wish he’d get on with it,” mutters Conor. “Listen, Saph, I’m going for the shaft. If I can drag it down he won’t be able to aim.”
“No, Con, he’ll kill you!”
“He’s going to kill us anyway.”
Ervys’s muscles are bulging. He is lifting the spear. His powerful tail lashes from side to side. He isn’t going to throw the spear. He’s going to charge us, with all the power and weight of his body behind the thrust—
“Ervys!”
A voice slashes through the tense, waiting silence. “Ervys!”
We all turn. To the right of us, leaping through the water, comes a dolphin with one of the Mer riding on its back. There is something in the Mer man’s hand: a three-pronged weapon with a short shaft. A trident. I can’t see his face because his hair swirls across it as the dolphin leaps again. But I know the dolphin – I am sure it’s her—
“Ervys!”
The voice is hoarse, desperate but commanding. All over my body the skin tingles. Ervys hesitates, spear in hand, looking at the dolphin, then quickly at us as if to judge whether or not he has time for the charge, then back at the dolphin which is almost on him now.
Yes, it’s Byblos. Dear Byblos, coming back to our rescue with one of the Mer on her back. She swoops down through the water and at that instant Ervys makes up his mind. He raises his spear and plunges it into the dolphin’s breast. The next moment he has disappeared in a thrash of foam as Byblos arches, trying to pull herself off the point of the spear.
I see Ervys’s arm, bulging with muscle, still gripping his weapon. There are a few seconds of tumult, and then Ervys is free. He has his spear in his hand and it is crimson up to the shaft with Byblos’ blood. I stare, horrified, as the crimson dissolves into the water. A plume of blood is pouring from Byblos’ wound. Her body convulses.
The man on her back has slipped off and has his arms around her. He clings to her side as she heaves and shudders. I think he’s trying to whisper into her ear. His back is to me and I still can’t see his face. There is uproar among Ervys followers and his voice rises above it, shouting them down, rallying them. But dolphin blood fills the water and we can hardly see them. Byblos arches one more time, heaving for breath and life, and then collapses.
“Ervys!” shouts the man once more. “You have killed the dolphin!” and he swings around so that we all see his face.
“Oh my God,” whispers Conor. “Saph, it’s Dad.”
“D
ad.”
Dad doesn’t even glance at us. He has his back to us and the trident raised, ready. Dad’s tail lashes as he edges sideways. Ervys is moving into position too. They start to circle, prowling through the bloody water. Byblos’ body is already sinking away to the sea bed. Some of Ervys’s followers hang back, raising their hands to their foreheads in the traditional sign against evil. But others are gliding forward, spears at the ready.
“Sapphire, they’re coming!” says Elvira.
“I know.” I can’t take my eyes off Dad. He must have sprung on to Byblos’ back as soon as he heard we needed help. He came straight to our rescue. For the first time, his Mer body doesn’t look strange and alien to me. Dad belongs here in Ingo, but he is still my father. He’s ready to battle with Ervys for our sake.
Their circling has brought them round so that Dad is facing me. His eyes track every shift in Ervys’s position. I can’t see Ervys’s face now, but muscles bulge threateningly in his arms and shoulders. My heart thumps with tension. The spear is so
much longer than the trident, but Dad is moving in, challenging Ervys.
“Look, Sapphire, look!” Elvira clutches my arm and points, and I tear my gaze away from Dad and Ervys. “Our people,” cries Elvira triumphantly. “I knew they would come.”
Our people. Mer men and women plunge towards us, hair flying through the water. Dolphins stop dead, flinging their riders straight into battle, and then the dolphins themselves charge, hurtling into Ervys’s men from behind before the spears can turn to strike them. Bull seals rear up, showing teeth and claws. Far behind them comes the lumbering shadow of a basking shark and ranks of jellyfish. A herd of seahorses skitters through the water and around the heads of Ervys’s warriors, half blinding them. Velvet swimmer crabs advance, snapping their claws. Byblos has roused Ingo. Oh Byblos. That plume of blood – the way you arched in the water …
“All Ingo is on the move,” murmurs Elvira. Her eyes glow. “More will come, Sapphire!”
But we’re still heavily outnumbered. Where is Saldowr? Surely he’ll come soon. He’s got to. Ervys’s followers have swung round to face the new challenge, but they haven’t hurled a single spear yet. The dolphins and bull seals fall back again, waiting. Even the sea horses retreat and hang in a cloud by the head of the basking shark. An eerie silence fills the water.
“Forward!” yells Ervys. “Forward! Attack them, you fools! Use your spears!”
But still no one moves. It’s as if Byblos’ blood has cast a spell
on them. Or maybe they’re hypnotised by the slow circling of Ervys and my father. Maybe the battle is suspended until those two have finished their duel.
My father has his trident and Ervys has his spear. But a spear has a longer reach than a trident. They are not equally matched. Dad never takes his eyes off Ervys’s face. He anticipates every move Ervys makes. Each time Ervys jabs with his spear, Dad has already slipped sideways. He’s waiting for his chance. He needs to get close in, under Ervys’s spear arm, in order to thrust the trident into him. Ervys knows it too, and he keeps parrying Dad’s trident with the shaft of the spear to hold him off.
Suddenly the spell breaks. One of Ervys’s army rushes forward in a thrash of foam, spear at the ready, poised to attack Dad. Conor and I hurl ourselves forward, but Ervys is too quick for us.
“Leave it, you fool! Get back! He’s mine!” he yells, and the Mer man falls back.
Conor’s still pushing forward, but Faro grabs his arm, “What are you doing?”
“I’ve got to help Dad.”
“No. You’ll get in the way and Ervys will kill him under your arm. Sapphire, don’t move. Your father will take his eyes off Ervys. Wait.”
The two men continue to circle each other. Thrust, parry. Thrust, parry. The muscles on their arms stand out in knots. Their faces are drawn with concentration. The Mer stand
watching, fists clenched, lips drawn back so that their teeth show. Suddenly I recognise Mellina among them. Her face is anguished and she’s clutching a lump of rock, with which she clearly intends to smash Ervys’s skull if she gets half a chance. For the first time, I like her.
I don’t even see the shark coming. It’s behind me, and all I hear is a strangled cry of warning, I don’t even know where from. A split second sixth sense makes me turn. It’s a single shark, and a small one, aiming straight for my chest. I hurl myself sideways, and the shark just fails to turn in time. I’m thrown aside, my arm and shoulder seared by the shark’s skin, but I’m alive. The next second the shark whips round, seizes me in its jaws and starts to shake me like a puppet. I’m so shocked that my brain stops telling me what’s happening. There’s another blow, so close that my head snaps back and the water explodes around me. I’m falling down and down, helpless.
Faro and Conor catch me. My eyes are full of blood, but I feel both my arms being grabbed. My vision clears and I see them, Faro on one side, Conor on the other. Through the turmoil of the water I see four dolphins attacking the shark, beating it off. There is blood in the water: my blood, and maybe the shark’s too.
“It’s all right.” Elvira’s voice drifts out of the blackness that is filling my head. “She’s not badly hurt. They’re just surface wounds.”
“She was lucky that it was a bull shark, not a Great White,”
says another voice, Faro’s I think, but I’m so sick and dizzy now that I can’t be sure.
Surface wounds … a bull shark …
The words echo as I come back to consciousness. But where’s Conor? Faro is beside me, supporting me. Elvira’s binding thongs of weed around my arms. Where’s Conor?
“Can you swim, Sapphire?” Faro demands urgently. “Help her, Elvira, I must get to Conor,” and with a powerful swerve of his tail, he disappears into the boiling mass of water, blood, Mer, seals, dolphins and spears.
Ingo echoes with cries and screams and groans. A long bellowing roar explodes above my head. A bull seal staggers back, blood pouring from his flank. I cling to Elvira and we swim as fast as we can, back to where Dad was before.
But there’s no sign of Conor. I stare desperately through the mass of fighting bodies, searching. Somehow I’m sure that wherever Dad is, Conor will be with him. A spear glides through the water in front of me, its force almost spent. Elvira darts forward, grabs it, then hurls it to the sea bed. A dolphin surges past me and charges into a knot of Ervys’s supporters, scattering them. A seal rears up and rakes its claws across the chest of the man Faro called Mentenour. Blood springs out in bright crimson stripes. I turn away.
“Elvira, where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
Two of the bull seals charge towards us. Even though I know they’re here to help us, I can’t help being frightened of
them. They press in, one at my left hand, the other at Elvira’s right.
“We are the Guardians of Limina,” says one in a deep, gravelly voice.
“We will guard you as we guard our dead,” promises the other.
Ahead of me, two Mer men sink down towards the sea bed, arms and tails entwined, still wrestling. Through the gap where their bodies were I see a three-pronged flash of metal.
“Dad!” My sickness and fear vanish as adrenaline surges through me and I hurl myself forward. Before the gap closes, I’m through it. I see Faro and Conor in the distance, riding dolphins into battle, their hair flying and their hands reaching out to seize an enemy spear in the swoop of their passage.
Dad has done it. He has got in close. With one hand he fends off Ervys’s spear, while with the other he struggles for space to thrust with his trident. He’s going to do it! Little by little he forces his trident round. Ervys’s face is set in a snarl of battle. I don’t know if he even sees Dad any more. His muscles bulge with the effort of trying to free his spear, but he can’t do it. The angle is wrong and all the force of Dad’s tail drives down against him. The trident’s prongs gleam again as Dad twists it a little more, ready for the final thrust.
“You tried to kill my children,” he says to Ervys. Ervys doesn’t reply. He’s looking over Dad’s shoulder.
At that instant three things happen. I look beyond Dad, where Ervys is looking. A Mer man bearing a spear charges out
of battle, his yell of triumph cutting across a scream from one of the watching Mer women.
And Mortarow stabs my father in the back with his spear, before Dad can thrust the trident into Ervys.
The woman’s scream is cut off. The attacker’s yell of triumph ends in a grunt. My father slumps forward, and the trident falls from his hand. As it does, one of the dolphins wheels round. Faro is on its back. In a long dive he swoops under the trident, catches it and holds it high. His face contorts with rage and he charges straight at Ervys.
“No!” A cry rings out, and the dolphin swerves. “No! He is mine, Faro. Give me the trident!”
It’s Conor. My frozen terror melts and I plunge forward towards Dad. He has fallen through the water, but the Mer are there to catch him. Four women surround him, supporting him. Mellina is one of them, holding my father’s head.
“Dad! Dad!”
Dad’s face is pale, but he’s conscious. “Sapphy,” he mutters, “get Conor back.”
“Are you all right, Dad? Are you badly hurt?”
One of the women is packing sea grass into the wound, but it keeps on bleeding. Dad coughs, then tries to smile. “I had him. I’d have killed him. It was a dirty trick.”
“I know.”
“But you’re all right, my girl.”
“I’m fine. Don’t try to talk, Dad.”
“Where’s Conor?”
“I don’t know. He’s somewhere up there with Faro …”
I daren’t tell Dad that Conor’s fighting Ervys. I’m desperate to get back and do anything I can to help Conor, but I can’t leave Dad. He looks so pale.
“You go, Sapphy,” says Dad, as if he understands everything. “I’m all right here. Mellina – these others – they’ll look after me. But come back.”