Free Ice Crypt (Mermaids of Eriana Kwai Book 2) by Tiana Warner Page B

“We had strategies.”
    Spio flipped back over. “I heard a rumour.”
    I raised my eyebrows.
    “I heard you fought women.”
    I relaxed. Someone this far south wouldn’t know that I had saved Meela’s life in front of everyone. Still, word spread like algae.
    “It’s true,” I said. “Eriana Kwai is training girls.”
    “That must have sucked.”
    “It was easier when we just lured the warriors.” And when one of them wasn’t Meela.
    “How’d you get ‘em in the water?”
    “Careening their ship. But the girls had their own strategies. We had to take them down in combat.”
    “Awesome.”
    “Not awesome! If you’d seen the way it was up there—”
    “All right, all right,” he said. “I was picturing a bunch of girls wrestling around together, but if you want to take that away from me …”
    I shoved him.
    The army broke the current to catch a stronger one pushing southeast. It helped pick up our pace, but we moved slower than when we’d started. The surrounding chatter had grown quieter.
    “Why are we moving south?” I said, steering the conversation back to my question.
    “Part of the king’s plan,” said Spio. “He has three army divisions below the surface. One’s stationed at the Ice Channel, where they probably spend most of their time beating away polar bears. The biggest army’s moving west. Those poor cods have to poke their way around all those human-infested islands and the Mariana Trench. Then there’s us, heading down to the sea of crazy fish and tropical babes.”
    I envisioned Adaro’s plan on a map. The first army trickled through the cracked ice across the top of North America. The second swelled across the Pacific into Asia, where my brother was stationed. The third pushed towards South America.
    “They’re all closing on the Atlantic,” I said.
    Spio grinned. “Sharp, Lysi.”
    Adaro had been planning to take the Atlantic from Queen Medusa for a while, but I never knew how close he was to actually taking it. The troops stationed up north were probably instructed to wait on the defensive until the rest of us had pushed as close as possible to Medusa’s cities. I imagined once we rounded the tip of South America, Adaro would tell the northern troops to attack, and the assault on the Atlantic would begin.
    “We’ve got a long ways to go,” I said.
    My energy dropped thinking about the journey. The strong currents at the equator would be no easy feat to swim through. After that, we still had an entire continent to pass.
    “One bite at a time,” said Spio. “We’ve got an army to slay, first. There’s one coming from the south.” He made a wide swing with an invisible weapon.
    “How’s their skill?” I said.
    “It’s numbers you should worry about. They’ve got three times the soldiers.”
    “So? In the Battle for Eriana Kwai we outnumbered them by a tidal wave. It didn’t matter. Their skill and weapons …” I grimaced, remembering how many comrades had been killed.
    Someone shouted up ahead. Voices rose. The water churned. I reached for my weapon in Spio’s bag, but something shiny flew past.
    Spio pumped a fist. “Mackerel!”
    Sure enough, the army ahead closed around the glistening swarm of fish. The smell of blood wafted over.
    “Let’s get in there before it turns into a frenzy,” I said.
    Already, the fish spun like a whirlpool, trapped between the army and the surface. Gulls dove in and snatched their meals from the top. The school tightened into a huge baitball that could have sunk a ship.
    Mermen jostled for a place, elbowing each other out of the way even though there was plenty to go around. Spio and I ducked beneath the baitball to snag our share from the bottom.
    A tuna shot past as I ate. Turbulence hit me as several more joined in. I was hungry enough to eat a tuna, but these ones were as big as me. Maybe I could have caught one on an ordinary day, when I wasn’t such a sleep-deprived mess.
    I looked on with jealousy as a