'Where's Sasket?' Daiv said. Roran kneeled near one of the dead bodies – the reek was unimaginable. He placed his hands together and closed his eyes, mumbling something, then lifted the crossbow from the man's cold hands.
'He went in amongst the buildings. As long as he's safe...'
'Roran.' Daiv stood away from the wall and spread his feet to balance on the rocking floor. 'I think that the teacher may have suspected Mr Sasket of being one of them.'
The boy pointed to the lake monster. Its motionless corpse was several times larger than the one that had attacked Ferran. Clearly more than a baby.
'Nonsense,' said the other rider. 'Darrin Sasket has been with the village since before I was born, since your teacher was barely as old as you.' The man's head wavered side to side. He weighed the crossbow in his hands, aiming through the building's doorway.
'He might have been taken even before that...'
Roran ignored Daiv's comment, though his eyes flicked about warily. 'Do you hear that?'
'There's nothing,' Daiv said.
Roran stood up. 'Right. If anyone was still fighting, we should have heard them as soon as we got here.'
'Shouldn't we keep going?' the boy said. His voice cracked. 'I mean, I'm not trying to –'
'Grab the other crossbow,' Roran said. Feeding his own bow, he tossed Daiv an unusual ten-bolt clip. 'Shouldn't take you too long to figure out.'
Throughout the known world, there had never been a single exponent of industry. Instead, various inventors and tinkerers had risen and sparked out, leaving behind a patchwork of ideas. Some of these were easier for blacksmiths and farmers to replicate a dozen times over – others, much like the Quandu technology they were based on, were one of a kind.
What Roran failed to mention was that setting a crossbow was hard. These weren't like the hunting bows they'd used in the forests around Yerz. Daiv could handle those. What ruined him was that Hem had made it look so easy on the boat.
'Get a move on!' Roran hissed. 'We'll make our way to the central plaza.'
Without warning, Daiv invented.
***
The one called Darrin Sasket passed between two larger buildings into a wide open space that was strewn with debris from a burnt-out battle. Several stalls in the village's plaza had exploded into wooden splinters and bits of people. The sheer physical energy expended here made him nostalgic. He swung the crossbow at his side.
Time was moving on, so he wandered across broken bodies of both species to a pontoon that had sunk slightly. The corner was dipping into the circle of water that formed the centrepiece of the plaza and a heavy breathing caught his attention.
In the central pool, the head of one of his soldiers' bodies was balanced on the pontoon's edge. A human was trying to push its neck back into the water but stopped when Sasket arrived.
'Hark... a rippling wa...' the human began.
'Summer flows,' Sasket replied. The human slumped beside the soldier, whose heavy drawl echoed around the buildings. With the rudimentary lungs they were granted, the one called Sasket thought, they were lucky to breathe at all in the low pressure air above the water. This one would not survive much longer if it couldn't submerge its gills.
'Soldier,' Sasket continued, 'what are you doing?'
The human took a deep breath, and the body behind him did likewise. Sasket knew the answer that the mindswapping soldier would give him.
'I need somewhere... to return...' the soldier said. 'Don't I?'
The one called Darrin Sasket realised that the soldier's new body was not in top condition, but Sasket had been around enough wounded humans to hedge his bets. He raised the crossbow and aimed at the weak spot between two cartilage plates on the soldier's original body, straight into the central nerve cluster. He fired once, lowered the bow and took the time to load another bolt. Then Mr Sasket fired again. The laboured breathing stopped.
The soldier stood up, clutching at his side.
'What have you done? I...' But the pain was too great and he fell again.
Sasket wrapped the man's arm around his shoulder and helped him up.
'I've freed you,' he said. 'The human is dead. This is your body now.'
***
Down an alley that rocked to some far off wave, Daiv and Roran circled each other back-to-back. They came across a darkened door hanging ajar.
'We can cut through here,' said Roran. 'Stay alert. Some of the invaders might still be here.'
The space was barely a shack, a low maintenance home that might have drifted its way to the centre of town from the poorer districts near the wharf – likely the Floating Village's form of social climbing. A bed was broken and dark fluids were sprayed on the walls. The battle had reached here. A scraping noise outside attracted Daiv's attention and he waved to Roran to follow him through the opposite door.
Daiv was not very knowledgeable in subtlety, especially not in dangerous situations such as this. He poked the end of his modified crossbow past the doorway and towards the scraping noise, then peaked around the corner.
There was a huge mass blocking the right end of the road outside the door, comprised mainly of matted seaweed, but Daiv recognised the shape as that of a puppethead. Without thinking, he leapt from the shack and fired a bolt into its back. The creature groaned but kept trying to drag itself away. Daiv levered the custom loader with his left hand and another bolt slotted into place.
A voice rang out from beyond the beleaguered creature. 'What are you doing now? Come to finish us off?'
A human boy, probably younger than Daiv, had scrambled on top of the heap that covered the puppethead's flesh.
'You can't steal me!' the boy said, dancing left and right with his hands flat beside his ears. 'March, they're coming, get to the water!'
'Stay where you are, or I shoot again,' Daiv said, aiming his next bolt at the boy.
Roran rested his arm on Daiv's shoulder.
'Easy there, I think we have to calm down.'
Daiv turned to face the other rider without lowering the weapon. 'I know what you're thinking, but these things will do anything to trick us.'
'I'm just saying we should stop yelling –'
Roran was interrupted by a scrabbling on the rooftop to their left. Before either rider could do anything, two men had jumped down to the street, one in front and one behind. Both carried multiple injuries, at least superficially.
'You are our prisoners. Come to the main plaza,' said the one behind them.
The boy down the street stamped his feet. 'Run! Get on your feet... legs... whatever!'
The puppethead beneath him struggled to move faster away from the group outside the shack, but the man in front of Roran and Daiv was on top of it in three quick strides.
'I think I understand.'
'Quiet!' the man behind them flipped a knife into his hand and pointed it at Roran. He continued regardless.
'They start a battle to bring out the strongest warriors. Strong bodies to steal.'
'I said be QUIET!'
Daiv and Roran turned for a better view of their apparent captor. They hadn't made a move when, like lightening, he snapped their heads together, knocking them both out.
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