“Yeah!” Sn?fte shouted back to him. “It is! It’s her, Serafina!”
At the edges of camp, a lethal chaos reigned, and the death riders used it. Mer and goblin soldiers rushed out from under the thorn thicket, searching the darkness for foes. As they did, arrows sliced through the water from above. Frightened civilians, their tails thrashing, were hurrying for the safety of the thorns. Sera heard the screams of terrified mothers, the wails of children. The lights from illuminatas, hastily cast, flashed all around her—to her left, her right, and sometimes directly in her face, blinding her. She swooped down low, blinking the light out of her eyes, dodging rocks, tents, other Black Fins. She needed a weapon; she was useless without one.
“Get everyone under the Devil’s Tail! Hurry!” a voice shouted.
“Civilians into the caves!” another yelled. “Songcasters to the gates!”
“Medics to the south court! We’ve got fighters down!”
“Des, Yaz…where are you?” Sera shouted. “Neela! Ling! Becca!” But none of them answered her.
An arrow buried itself in the chest of a Black Fin next to her. He was dead before he hit the seafloor.
Sera dove down to the body. There would be time to honor the fighter later. Right now, she needed a weapon. She tugged the ammo belt free of his waist, buckled it around her own, then took the crossbow from his lifeless hands.
The attackers are shooting from above, and from the camp’s perimeter. They’re everywhere! she thought. Panic threatened to overwhelm her.
Stop, Sera, she told herself. Think. Figure this out. She closed her eyes. Listened hard. Turned in a circle. Her ears told her that most of the noise was coming from behind her, toward the south side of the camp. She spun around and shot off that way. Seconds later, she heard her brother’s voice. “Crossbows to the south gate!” he was yelling. “Speargunners, defend the roof!”
“Desiderio, what’s happening?” Sera shouted, swimming up to him.
“Death riders! They ambushed Sophia and her troops in the Darktide Shallows!” he shouted back. “The Black Fins fought their way free and bolted for camp, but the death riders followed them.”
“How many?”
“At least a hundred. Most of them are at the south gate.”
Hope surged in Sera’s heart. The Black Fins vastly outnumbered the death riders.
As if reading his sister’s thoughts, Des said, “We can beat them off, but we need light.” Then he was racing off, yelling, “Songcasters! Get the lights on! Now!”
Sera bolted for the south gate, crossbow raised. A horrible sight met her eyes when she reached it. The bodies of at least two dozen Black Fins were strewn across the court. Dead hippokamps lay among them. In the mouth of the gate itself, death riders, protected by shields, were firing upon the Black Fins trying to defend it.
Some of the Black Fins were down on their bellies, elbows planted in the silt to brace their weapons. Others shot from behind rocks. Sera saw that a few more had positioned themselves behind wagons, some upright, some overturned.
The wagons! she thought. Sophia got them back to camp!
Sera did a quick count. There were nine. That meant the death riders had only gotten one wagonload of their weapons. Thank the gods!
An arrow whizzed by Sera, missing her head by mere inches. She ducked behind a rock. Breathless, her heart slamming in her chest, she loaded her weapon, then peered out and started firing.
An instant later, light rose over the court. The songcasters had succeeded in casting an enormous illuminata.
More Black Fins, able to see their foes now, joined the fray. As they did, a shrill whistle pierced the water, and the death riders fell back. Moving with the speed of sharks, they swam out of the gateway, launched themselves onto the backs of their hippokamps, and rode off into the night.
As quickly as it had started, the attack was over.
A pair of guards hurried to the gates, pushed them closed, and locked them. A group of speargunners swam up behind the guards and angrily demanded that they reopen the gates. They wanted to chase the attackers. Sera swam out from her cover and stopped them.
“It could be a trap,” she said. “There might be more death riders out there, waiting for us. Put your weapons down. Help the wounded. Collect the dead.”
At that moment, a shout for help came from one of the overturned wagons. The speargunners swam to it. Working together, they lifted the wagon off the seafloor and set it upright.
As they did, a bruised and bloodied mermaid swam out from underneath. She was dazed and moved crookedly; her eyes were glassy.