Ocean Of Fear (Book 6) by William King

opportunities like this does a man like myself get in one lifetime?” He sounded sincere but Kormak wondered if he had another motive.
    A man ahead shrieked. Kormak raced to his side. “What is it?” he asked.
    The marine looked pale. “I saw something.”
    “What?”
    “A monster. A green-skinned monster.” The captain had joined them. “What did it look like?”
    “Like a monstrous lizard, but not like a lizard, like a man, and not like a man, like an insect...”
    The soldier’s voice broke. Zamara slapped his face with a cold precision. The man started, then clenched his fists. He straightened his back and pulled in his stomach. When he spoke again it was in the dispassionate tone of a warrior making a report to a superior. “It was green-skinned, somewhat man-like, sir. It had six limbs and it was moving on four of them. Its face was like that of a toad with a great crest that started on its head and seemed to run down its back. I caught sight of it from the corner of my eye and then it vanished into the canal.”
    The captain looked at Kormak and then the priest.
    “It sounds like a Triturid,” Jonas said.
    “An Old One, sir?” the soldier asked.
    “One of their spawn,” Kormak said.
    “It was watching us, sir. I think it left those prints we saw awhile back. Its feet were webbed and it sort of glistened, sir...”
    “Glistened?”
    “Like its skin was slick or slimy, like a fish’s.”
    “Where did it go?”
    “The canal, sir. At least I think so.”
    Jonas nodded. “That explains how they follow us without being seen. They’re under the water.”
    “We’re surrounded by canals,” Zamara said. He looked worried.
    “The Triturids use them like we use streets.”
    A soldier nearby gave a small shriek. Kormak turned to see him pointing at something. “Eyes, sir, eyes in the water.”
    Kormak turned and saw what the man was pointing at. Two huge orbs gazed up at him from the water. Before they might have been mistaken for a ripple, or just overlooked entirely but now that he knew what he was looking for, he saw them clearly. The eyes submerged and vanished.
    “Well,” said Zamara. “We definitely know we’re not alone.”
    Kormak thought of the hexagonal pools he had seen on the building roofs. He thought about the possibility of underwater entrances and connecting tunnels. It would be easy for them to be ambushed if the natives proved hostile. And he did not doubt for a moment that they would.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    A SCREAM RANG out. A man fell clutching at his neck, his face already green. Froth bubbled from his mouth. Kormak pulled a stone dart from the marine’s neck. Traces of the poison paste smudged it. The man’s body heaved. The veins bulged on his neck. Stillness settled on him. The rest of the soldiers backed away as if death might prove contagious.
    Jonas stretched out his hand for the stone weapon and took it with the tips of his fingers. He held it the way a man might grip a poisonous reptile. Sweat glistened on his brow. Dark circles stained the armpits of his robe. He brought the point up to eye level and inspected it then moved it just under his nostrils and sniffed.
    “Swamp snake venom,” he said. “Kills in instants, stops the heart.”
    Kormak cocked his head to one side. Now did not seem to be a good time to ask the priest how he had come by his knowledge of esoteric poisons. He tried to judge the direction from which the weapon had come. It must have been fired from the canal. From one particular spot circles rippled out, as if someone had lobbed a stone into the water, or a large object had just submerged.
    “Anybody see anything?” Kormak asked. “The attack came from the water. Somebody must have noticed something.”
    The soldiers’ shook their heads. Frater Jonas held the dart up between two fingers. “It’s very light and very sharp,” he said.
    “Something still threw it and I doubt it was invisible,” Kormak said.
    Frater Jonas shook his head, a