"What's going on?" Salina whispered hoarsely in the Primiad tongue, her eyes wide with wonder as she looked at the big creatures escorting them.
"I've just had a conversation with an entity that calls itself 'Qu'en'ak the First Observer'," van Joss whispered back, turning his head slightly. Other than a look down to see what they were doing, the Sea Wolves now ignored them.
"And it has agreed to help us by staging an assault on the Primiad fleet."
"What? How did you manage that??" the princess wanted to know.
The slender operative shrugged as they came around a final pile of concrete pieces to find themselves facing a large pool of seawater that came in under the wall and into the building itself.
"Other than the fact that the Cetacea, Qu'en'ak's people, have a moral problem with sapient beings trying to dominate other sapient beings instead of everybody being equal, I have no idea why they're going to help. Or how I managed to convince them to help."
"A stroke of good luck," Longspear husked and van Joss had no choice but to nod in agreement.
The surface of what looked like a very, very deep pool began to ripple as something underneath began to move. The ripples grew as that something approached the surface. Then, with the soft tinkling of falling water, a full dozen smooth gray heads pushed out of the cool liquid.
"What is this?" Longspear husked, having noticed the heads first. Van Joss turned to look, his eyes narrowed.
At first glance, he thought they were just like the Sea Wolves that still towered around them, black and white towers of menace with their oversized halberds. But a second look quickly yielded the difference. For one thing, they were much smaller, almost human sized, though they had the same dexterous fins as the Sea Wolves, which quickly came into focus as they began to work. They used their broad, flat hands to pull off pieces of wood from a pile that sat nearby, using rubbery looking seaweed to lash them together.
The gray heads were almost much sharper in profile than the bulbous ones belonging to the Sea wolves. It was almost as if they had beaks, like a duck or some other waterfowl. However their eyes were also on the sides of their heads and they spoke to each other with low toned series of clicks and whistles.
"Workers?" Longspear asked softly and van Joss nodded, having come to the same conclusion. Considering how fast they were putting that platform together, now easily recognizable as such, it only made sense.
- It will take a while before the dolphins are finished their work. - Qu'en'ak indicated into van Joss's mind, both explaining what the workers were called and what they were doing. - Perhaps you and your people can take a rest and eat some food. Once we are out on the water, it will be much more difficult to do so. -
"A good suggestion, Qu'en'ak. Thank you," van Joss responded, turning to indicate to Longspear that they were going to build a fire and have something to eat. She immediately nodded and took hold of a couple smaller pieces of wood that the dolphins had ignored and began assembling a fire pit. Again the Sea Wolves looked at them to see what they were doing but beyond that, did nothing.
Using her knife, Longspear quickly whittled some shavings off the wood chunks and made a small pile of them behind one of the concrete slabs set close to the pool. Considering that these creatures were water dwellers, seeing fire might just be a little traumatic. And so she tried to shield it from the dolphins as best she could.
Once her heap of shavings was big enough, the female human operative fished her flint and steel from her pack and sparked a fire, quickly adding larger pieces as the fire took hold. Van Joss joined her at that point, pulling a small pot from his pack and adding water from his water skin to it before putting the pot over the small fire to boil. Between them, the two operatives then retrieved a number of ration packs, slipping a couple of the dried bricks into the hot water to make a soup.
With a final look at the rapidly growing surface the vessel the dolphins were putting together, Salina joined the two humans.
"What is happening, van Joss?" she asked softly in the Primiad tongue as she helped divide the rations that van Joss and Longspear had pulled out equally between the three of them.
"We've come in contact with a sapient race that calls itself the Cetacea," van Joss explained as he checked the condition of their makeshift stew. It was almost ready.
"The big black and white ones are soldiers called Sea Wolves. They form the Cetacean military arm. The smaller ones that are building that platform are called dolphins, a labor class of some sort." He paused to glance over at the Primiad princess.
"I've discussed the situation with one of their observers, a being called Qu'en'ak and he's passed that information on to their governing body, something called the Circle. A decision was made to help us by attacking the Primiad fleet, hopefully still in harbor on the northern coast of Suudama." He looked back down at the pot of soup and, seeing that it was ready, he pulled it off the fire and began spooning steaming portions into the bowls that Salina held out to him.
"The dolphins are going to make some sort of boat with that platform, which will carry us to where we can observe the Cetaceans attacking the Primiad fleet. And they're doing that so we can assist in coordinating the assault from the viewpoint of a surface dweller." The slender operative ended his explanation there, stopping his speech to spoon a mouthful of hot soup into his mouth before chasing it with a bite of dense, black bread.
Seeing that the human was done, Salina nodded her understanding before turning to her own bowl of thick soup. It paid to quickly finish meals when traveling with humans. Especially these two, since they were just as likely to resume their journey immediately after finishing. And van Joss and Longspear fairly wolfed down their food, often leaving the more sedate Primiad far behind.
This time, however, the humans actually relaxed after their meals were finished. And that let the tired Primiad princess finish her own meal at a much more leisurely pace. Once she was done, everything was cleaned up and, after making sure the fire was doused, the two humans curled up in their cloaks on the hard ground and went to sleep.
Mystified by this behavior, especially with the Sea Wolves still looming nearby, Salina leaned over to gently shake van Joss by the shoulder. His eyes immediately opened and he focused a hard look at her.
"Is there a problem?" he quietly asked and she quickly shook her head.
"Then what do you want?"
"I, . . I don't know what you're doing," she replied after a slight hesitation, abruptly feeling stupid for asking.
Oddly enough, the lean human didn't seem to mind.
"Catching some sleep," he replied, closing his eyes and crossing his arms once more across his chest. "You never know when you'll get the chance again."
"Oh," Salina said, the logic of it hitting her like a run away wagon. She quickly pulled out her own blanket. As she wrapped it around her, a wave of tiredness washed over her and suddenly the humans' idea was revealed as pure genius. For Old Men, these creatures were uncommonly intelligent and wise, if a little barbaric. She curled up on the ground near van Joss and was quickly asleep.
It seemed that Salina had just closed her eyes when she felt a shake. Eyes flickering open, she found herself looking into Longspear's expectant face.
"It's time to go," van Joss said from somewhere close to her feet in the Primiad tongue. A glance out a hole in the outer wall showed that it was late afternoon, going towards evening. She had actually managed to sleep several hours, much to her surprise.
"They've finished the boat?" she asked, sitting up and quickly rolling her blanket into a tight cylinder. It was just as quickly slipped into her pack.
Van Joss nodded and he led the small group out from behind the concrete slab back towards the sea pool. And there, waiting for them in the sea pool surrounded by a couple dozen bobbing gray heads, was the surface vessel that Qu'en'ak had promised.
It wasn't anything special, a simple hull with a rudimentary cabin built in the center of it. But it floated. And that's what counted in this situation.
- Sorry it isn't more. - Qu'en'ak apologized, sensing van Joss's impression of the vessel the dolphins had thrown together. - But we are more used to underwater vessels, used to carry cargo and materials over long distances without the need to be buoyant. I had to cobble this design together from racial memories of human vessels. -
"It's adequate, Observer," van Joss assured the distant creature. "Are we getting underway immediately?"
- Ah yes, the vaunted human impatience. I had almost forgotten it. Yes, we must get underway as soon as possible. Despite the method of locomotion this vessel has, we have a significant distance to travel before we can come within range of the Primiad shipyards. -
Van Joss nodded in satisfaction as he walked across the crude gangplank to step onto the simple vessel's forward deck. The sooner they got this little side trip over, the sooner they could get back to their primary mission. That being said, he then took a moment to take a look around the boat they had just boarded.
From bow to stern, it was no longer than twenty metres and was about eight metres across at its widest point. Again, it wasn't anything special, now that they were on it. But it was floating. He looked back at the gangplank in time to see Longspear and Salina come aboard quickly after him. Then the gangplank was being cast aside by one of the Sea Wolves before it moved off to the side of the pool.
There it was joined by the rest of the squad that had kept the humans and the primiad company. Together they began to work some sort of rope and pulley system while the boat began to slowly turn around. Curious, van Joss glanced to either side. The boat had no sail or oars of any kind. In fact, it lacked any kind of visible means of propulsion. So what was turning it and making it move?
"Hidden doors. How clever!" Longspear said out loud with a smile of appreciation as large doors swung to the side, pulled in that direction by the Sea Wolves' ropes and pulleys, revealing a large opening in the outer wall.
Now facing the doors, the vessel abruptly sped up, literally leaping out of the building and onto the restless waves of the bay. Caught off guard, van Joss nearly lost his footing at the sudden acceleration, silent and relentless. Salina and Longspear too had to fight to remain standing as, behind them, the doors swung back into place and the Sea Wolves got wet with loud splashes. A heart beat later a spume of air and water went high into the air to the vessel's right without warning. That was quickly followed by a second spume to the left.
Still stunned by how quickly the makeshift vessel, all three land dwellers twitched in surprise as, throwing salt water spray in every direction, a pair of Sea Wolves that they had left behind leapt right out of the water to clear the vessel's low gunwales. Their legs parting as they sailed through the air, the big creatures hit the deck with loud 'thuds', dripping wet. They were quickly joined by a full dozen more, the black and white soldiers quickly dispersing around the vessel to take up points all around the perimeter, staring hard at the gray water that now rushed by the vessel's sides.
"That was impressive," Longspear muttered as she recovered her composure, shaking her head at the display of raw and naked power and speed the Sea Wolves obviously possessed.
Now in the vessel's bow, van Joss's eyes narrowed at his fellow operative's quiet observation. It had been impressive. He could only hope they never got on the Sea Wolves' bad side. Then he was pushing that aside to let his eyes scan the distant bay mouth.
It was relatively smooth sailing at this point. But things could get rough once they passed beyond the bay's protection. Even a relative newcomer to water travel could understand that.
Van Joss glanced back at the cabin. Yes, it had several slit windows in its front face. They could take refuge in there if the water got too rough, and still be able to see what was going on in front of them.
A glance at the sky confirmed the time. Of course, they shortly wouldn't be seeing anything so the point was moot. Darkness was only a couple hours away. He just hoped that whatever was pushing them along, knew where they were headed.