Free Pirate Wars by Kai Meyer Page A

Soledad as he died. In hisdeath throes he struck and kicked about him, his clawed fingers whirled like shears in front of her face, and he almost tore the diving helmet from her head. But then she succeeded in drawing up both legs and pushing him away from her with a powerful kick. Moments later he’d already disappeared behind a wall of dark clouds.
    Soledad swam through the thick, dark fog. Her vision did not reach much farther than a doubled arm’s length. This hindered her, but at the same time it protected her from the malignant eyes of the kobalins. Nevertheless she was swimming farther upward, toward the danger of leaving the mist and thus becoming visible to her enemies again.
    Suddenly her head struck resistance. In the first moment she was seized with panic and struck about her, fearing that she was being attacked again. But then she realized that it was only a cross brace of the labyrinthine iron-and-coral construction in whose center the anchor chain was fastened. Close by her shimmered brightness from one of the torch shafts in the underside of the sea star point.
    She froze as several silhouettes flashed in front of her, kobalins in search of opponents. But the creatures didn’t notice her, perhaps because their sense of smell failed in the bloody water.
    Soledad pulled herself still farther up into the web of the support structure. Once she saw a second diver. She gave him a short wave and pointed up, but she couldn’t tell if he’d noticed her. He also was concealing himself between the braces, obviously just about to give up.
    She took a break, forced herself to be calm, and changed the bubblestone before her lack of air could save the kobalins the work. Then she began to move away. The light now became more intense and bathed the surroundings in a red glow, through which lighter and darker streaks ran.
    She was aware that she was approaching the true goal of the kobalin attack, the upper end of the anchor chain. If her luck were bad, it would already be swarming with soldiers of the deep tribes who were trying to destroy the fastening.
    Her fear was confirmed when the fog thinned and opened up to a view of the chain. A dozen kobalins were climbing up the mighty iron links like monkeys, pulling themselves up by the floating curtain of plants and the mussel colonies and using the chain itself like a ladder that led up from the bottom of the sea to Aelenium. However, something was still keeping them from covering the last bit. Now Soledad realized that three or four divers had taken positions up there. They received each kobalin who approached them that way with a steel bolt.
    Silently Soledad wished them luck and changed her direction. She had no chance of getting past the kobalins and advancing to her comrades. She must choose another way to safety.
    Again she looked up to the torch shaft and wondered where it led. To the interior of the sea star city, that much was certain. She herself had never been in one of the shafts, but she knew that stairs within their walls wound to the top. From there the countless torches were regularly renewed intheir holders. She might have tried to get to the surface through one of the shafts and run on up the stairs. But the gates to the shafts were barricaded so that no kobalin could get into the city this way. There were probably gratings under the water surface as well.
    Soledad was thinking feverishly and at the same time keeping an eye out for other kobalins, when suddenly an enormous silhouette poked through the murk in front of her.
    In the first moment she thought it was yet another monstrosity of the Maelstrom, a gigantic monster out of the abysses of the sea, which was going to help the kobalins in the destruction of the chain.
    But it was Jasconius.
    The man in the whale and his titanic friend had come to the aid of the divers at the chain!
    The whale plunged into the middle of the kobalin pack and whirled the attackers around with mighty blows of his tail. Even