"Vhat'll ve do now, Tham?"
"Join our men and let them know we're still alive and kicking," Clemens said. "That'll recharge their morale."
They arrived just in time to see the last of a large group storm onto the hurricane deck from the Rex. Below them, however, John's men were forcing back the would-be boarders from the Not For Hire. In fact, John's men were boarding his – Sam's – boat on some of the bridges.
Sam leaned over and emptied his pistol into the rear-guard of the boarders below. Two men fell, one going down in the narrow gap between the two vessels. But one of the boarders, still on the Rex, looked up and then shot his own pistol. Sam ducked as the first bullet screamed by his ear. The other missiles shattered against the railing or the hull just below the railing.
Joe was going to look over the railing then, but Sam yelled at him that if he did he'd get his head blown off.
After waiting until he was sure that the boarding bridges below were empty, he looked over and down. The deck below was jammed with struggling, shouting people and was noisy with ringing metal. Sam told Joe what he wanted to do. Joe nodded, lifting his great proboscis up and down like a log floating in a rough sea.
They ran across the boarding bridge, Joe bellowing to the men there that he and the captain were coming.
On both sides of their group were a few of the Rex crew, rapidly backing away before the superior force. These broke on seeing the great head and shoulders of the titanthrop above the crowd of Clemens' men. They ran as fast as they could, some diving into hatches, others leaping over the railing or through the gaps and into The River.
"That thyure ath hell didn't take long, did it, Tham?"
"No," Sam said. "I wish it was always that easy. Okay, Joe, you give them the orders."
The titanthrop yelled at the top of his voice at the men. They had no trouble hearing him. Indeed, at least half of the people halfway down both boats on this side must have heard the thunder. In fact, on one deck below and opposite, the battlers stopped for a few seconds.
The men ahead of Joe cleared to one side. Joe proceeded to the nearest ladder, Sam immediately behind him, and the others following. They went down the ladder to the hurricane deck and along it until they came to the boarding bridges. Here the men spread out, forming lines of two abreast at each of the eight bridges.
Sam checked that everybody was ready. Attacking John's men from behind them, from their own boat, tickled him. They would be demoralized when the titanthrop swung that Brobdingnagian axe upon their heads from behind them.
"Okay, Joe!" Sam yelled. "Go get 'em!"
Joe, bellowing a war cry in his native language, ran across the metal strip. Sam came behind him. There was not room on the bridge for another person where Joe went. Besides, it was more discreet to stay behind him. ,
Things happened so swiftly that only in retrospect was Sam able to figure out what happened.
A great noise deafened him, and a shock traveled through the bridge and hurled him onto it. Almost immediately after, the far end of the bridge lifted up, bending as its hooks kept their hold on the railing, then tearing loose with a screech of metal.
Sam, clinging stunned to the edges of the bridge, both arms extended to their utmost, the fingers clinging to the edges, looked up.
Joe had dropped his enormous axe. It slid along the upward and sidewise tilting bridge and fell off into the gap between the boats.
Joe had not fallen, but now he was bellowing in wrath. Or was it fear? It didn't matter. He was bellowing because both his arms were caught about his body by a noose.
The other end of the rope was being tied to a railing on the deck above. The man who had lassoed Joe from the hangar deck wore a Western sombrero, white enough to gleam in the pale light. His teeth flashed briefly below the wide brim.
Then Joe had fallen off the bridge. But, instead of going straight down into the chasm between the vessels, he swung down and then slammed against the hull of the Not For Hire. Joe quit bellowing then. His head lolled to one side, and he hung like a giant fly caught in the strand of an even larger spider.
Sam cried out, "Joe! Joe!"
It seemed impossible that anything serious could happen to Joe Miller. He was so enormous, so muscular, so . . . invincible. A man the size of a cave lion or a Kodiak bear should not be . . . mortal . . . vulnerable.
He did not have much time for such thoughts.
The bridge continued to tilt upward as the Rex rolled over. Sam clamped his hands on the sides of the bridge, his head turned away from Joe now. He saw men and women on the other bridges lose their holds and, screaming, fall into the narrow well of darkness between the vessels.
How ironic that the fabulous Riverboat Rex, which he had built, should be responsible for killing its builder. What a joke that the first boat should catch him halfway between the second boat and itself. Suspended him like Mohammed between heaven and earth.
Then he had let loose, had slid backward down the bridge, fallen into the angle made by the vertical deck and the horizontal bulkhead, had scrambled up it, and was sliding face down on the hull. He was up on his feet somehow and running down toward The River. Then he was slipping and rolling down the curve and into The River.
He went down, down, struggling to get rid of his cuirass. His helmet had come loose sometime during the struggle. He was terrified now that he could not get the armor from his body in time to keep from being sucked on down by the sinking Rex. That colossal sinking body would make a great whirlpool which, when it collapsed, would take all jetsam and flotsam, all debris, inanimate or animate, deep down with it. And if he was heavily burdened by his armor and weapons, he'd go down, too. Even if he were unburdened, he might sink.
At last, his belt and the bandolier and his chain-mail shirt and the attached skirt were off. He rose then, his chest seeming to burst, the ancient horror of drowning threatening to tear apart his hammering heart, his ears ringing with a tolling from the deeps. He had to breathe but dared not. Down there was the mud, as black and as evil as and far deeper than the mud of the Mississippi, and around him was water, squeezing like an Iron Maiden made of putty, and above – how far away? – was air.
It was too dark to see anything. For all he knew, he was going deeper, heading in the blackness the wrong way. No, his ears would hurt if he were diving instead of ascending.
He could not hold out much longer. Not more than a few seconds. Then . . . the death that his Mississippi boyhood had made him fear more than any other. Except one. If he had to die, he would do it in water rather than in fire.
For half a second, or however swiftly such thoughts went, he visualized Erik Bloodaxe.
At least that nemesis would not get him. The Viking, as a prophet and a nemesis, an avenging human machine, was a failure. All those nightmares of all those years had been wasteful torture. That the man could see into the far future, in fact assure it, was a superstition.
All those people in Hannibal who had prophesied that he would hang had been twice wrong.
Strange how such amusing thoughts could flash through the mind of a man whose only thought should be on the blessed air. Or was he actually drowning, almost dead, had forgotten the horror of having to open his nostrils and gulp in water, was thinking dying thoughts, his body flaccid and sinking, his eyes glazed, mouth open as any finny denizen, a tiny flicker of electricity in some cells of his brain the only life left in him?
Then his head was in the air, and he was drinking in oxygen and glad, glad, glad because he was not dead.
His flailing hand touched a rope, moved back, felt it, seized it. He was hanging on to a rope the other end of which was tied on to a stanchion from the main deck of his boat. He was near the stern. A few more seconds, and he would have found the boat out of reach.
He was lucky that he had come across the line at once. The River pulled at him, forcing him to clutch the line as tightly as he had the bridge. The Rex was gone, but it was dragging along a broad and deep hollow, waters w
hirling and sinking. There was an even greater pull on him as the walls of the whirlpool collapsed.
What had sunk the Rex? A torpedo from the Post No Bills?
He looked up. He couldn't see Joe's body hanging from the rope. It could still be there, but the decks were set too far back for him to see Joe from the surface of The River. Was he still hanging? Or had the man who'd lassoed him cut the rope? If so, Joe might have fallen onto the deck below, a long hard fall but still better than plunging into the water. But he could be dead or dying already. That long swing inward, ending up against the metal bulkhead, could have smashed his ribs, caved in his skull.
Never mind Joe now. He had to save himself.
For some time, while the howling and blasting went on above, and occasionally a man or woman would topple over the railing and fall with a splash near him, he hung on to the line. When the sound of immediate battle died down rather suddenly, he started to climb up. It was not easy, since so much of his strength had been squeezed out of him. He finally got his feet against the hull and, leaning outward above the water, pulled himself up puffing and panting, his muscles hurting, until he was near the railing. He eased himself down until his face was against the hull, and he began hauling himself up by his arms alone. Now he wished that he had not avoided daily exercise so much. For several minutes, as he rested, unable to hitch himself up until he had regained his breath, he thought that his clenched hands would come apart. He would drop back into The River and all would be over.
Finally, he got one hand up to grip the upright to the railing. He got his other hand around it. The long painful pull began. Then it was over, and he had managed to throw one leg over the edge of the deck. Wheezing, he squirmed until he had half his body on the deck. Then he was able to roll onto the deck, to lie there face up while he tried to get all the air in the world inside his lungs.
After a while, his narrow chest quit rising and falling so hard, like a pair of worn-out blacksmith's bellows. He rolled around to look back and up alongside the decks. He still could not see Joe.
Perhaps he was too far away and the angle of sight was too oblique. He needed to get further away, which he could not do, or get upon the same deck.
For that moment, he had to get weapons. And he also had to get at least a kilt. During his struggle his magnetically attached cloths had come off. Naked I came into this world, and naked . . . nonsense. He was not leaving. Not yet.
He got unsteadily to his feet. Bodies and parts of bodies lay along the deck in both directions. The parts of bodies or legs stuck out from hatches. Weapons were everywhere. So were cloths.
Shivering from fatigue or fear or both, he stripped a body. The cloths he made into a long kilt and a short cape. A belt went around his waist, a bandolier, over his shoulder; a loaded pistol, into a holster; a cutlass, into his hand. He was armed, but that did not mean that he was ready for combat. He had had enough today to last him for the rest of his life, even if it were a thousand years long.
What he wanted to do was to get back to Joe. The two of them would round up or join a large body of men. And he would be secure again, or as secure as it was possible to be under the circumstances.
For a moment he thought about taking refuge inside a cabin. He could hole up and then come out when the people from the Rex had been cleared out.
It was a nice thought, one which anyone with a logical mind and common sense would have.
Down along the deck, something struck with a metallic clang. A man cursed softly; somebody else spoke just as quietly but harshly, a reprimand. Sam stopped, his shoulder pressed against the cold bulkhead. Near the prow, the shadowy figures of men were coming down the steps from the hurricane deck. There seemed to be about twenty.
He slid backward, his shoulder against the metal. His left hand felt behind him. When he touched the edge of the open hatch, he turned swiftly and went into it. He was in another unlit passageway which went straight to the hatch on the other side. This was open, showing a pale oblong lit only by starlight and a flickering from the burning flight deck. Sam decided to get to that side, and he started trotting. Then he stopped.
It was his duty to ascertain who the men were and what they were doing. He'd feel like a fool if they were his people. And if they weren't, he should determine what they were up to.
Of course, they would be looking into every open entrance before they went past it. He opened the door to a cabin and stepped inside, leaving the door partly open. From this angle, he could see them but they couldn't see him in the darkness.
He had opened another cabin door across the corridor so he could take refuge in that if he had to. He did not want to be trapped.
There was, however, nothing he could do about his situation now. The first of the party had bounded through the opening, stopped against the side of the hatchway, where he was barely visible, and pointed a pistol. A second man also leaped in and hurled himself toward the other side of the hatchway, his pistol ready.
Sam did not fire. If they would only be content to look along the passageway. They were. After several seconds, one said, "All clear!"
Both left for the walkway, and figures began filing past the oblong. The fourth one went by, and Sam gasped. The profile against the indirect light of the stairs was that of a short broad-shouldered man. The figure walked with John's gait. It had been thirty-three years since he had seen the ex-monarch, but he had forgotten little about him.
36
* * *
Rage overcame fear, a rage that was a compression of all the rages he'd felt on Earth and here. He did not even think about the consequences. At last! Here it was! Vengeance!
He stepped outside the cabin and went softly across the deck. Though he was so exuberant that he was almost dizzy, he still had not lost all discretion. He wasn't going to warn them so they could shoot him before he got to John.
The only bad part about this was that he'd have to shoot John in the back. The bastard would never know who had killed him. But you couldn't have everything. He desired passionately to call out John's name, identify himself, and then squeeze the trigger. But John's men would shoot him down the second they were aware of his presence.
Just as he reached the hatchway, hell exploded outside. There was a crash of gunfire that deafened him and made him pin himself against the bulkhead as if he were a two-legged butterfly. His fluttering heart was the wings.
More shooting. Cries and screams. A man reeled backward into the passageway. Sam leaped for the open door of the cabin, spun, shut it, then opened it again. He looked through the narrow opening in time to see others come into the passageway. One was the bulky form of John, no mistake about that, outlined briefly against the light.
Sam opened the door fully (thank God it was well oiled!), leaned out, and rapped John over the side of the head with his pistol barrel. John grunted and fell. Sam stooped, dropped the pistol on the chest of the fallen man, gripped him by his long hair, and pulled him into the cabin. Once the feet were past the entrance, he shut the door and pressed the locking button. Outside, the explosions of gunfire were loud, but nothing struck the door. Apparently, the snatching of their leader had happened so swiftly and in such confusion and dark that they had not yet noticed his absence. Perhaps, when they did, they would assume that he had been downed in the corridor.
Sam quivered with delight. He was in great danger, but at the moment that meant nothing. By the Providence that did not exist, events had worked out perfectly. Whatever he had suffered, it was worth it – well, almost worth it. To have his greatest enemy, the only person he had ever really hated, in his power! And in such strange circumstances! Even John, when he awoke, would not be more surprised than he. Truth was stranger than fiction, and he could go on quoting many more clichés.
He pressed the light switch plate with one hand, the pistol held in the other. The ceiling globes shed a flickering light. John groaned, and his eyelids fluttered. Sam tapped him not too lightly on the head again. He did not want to kill
him or to damage his brain overly much. John had to have all his senses operating one hundred percent. Otherwise, he wouldn't appreciate to the fullest what had happened to him.
Sam opened the drawers of a chest attached to the bulkhead.
He withdrew some of the thin semitransparent cloths used as brassieres. With these he tied John's hands together behind his back and then bound his feet together. Puffing and grunting, he dragged the unconscious man to a chair bolted to the deck. Managing to get the heavy body onto the chair, he tied John's hands to the rungs of the back. Then he went into the head, drank two cups of water from the faucet, and filled a third cup. As this was done, the faucet rattled, and the flow thinned to a trickle. The water pump had suddenly quit.
Sam returned to the main cabin and threw the water in John's face. John gasped, and his eyelids opened. For a minute, he did not seem to know where he was. Then, recognizing Samuel Clemens, his eyes opened fully, and he drew in his breath with a harsh noise as if he had been struck in the pit of his stomach. Where his skin was not covered with smoke, it became gray-blue.
"Yes, it's me, John."
Sam grinned widely.
"You can't believe it, can you? But you'll get used to the idea in a moment. Though you won't like getting used to it."
John croaked, "Water!"
Sam looked into the red-shot eyes. Despite his hatred, he felt sorry for John. Not sympathy, just pity. After all, he wouldn't let a rabid dog suffer, would he?
He shook his head. "The water is all gone."
"I'm dying of thirst," John said hoarsely.
Sam snarled, "Is that all you can think about after what you've done to me? After all these years?"
John said, "Satisfy my thirst, and I'll satisfy yours."
His skin had recovered its normal color, and his eyes looked steadily into Sam's. Knowing John, Sam could see what strategy the cunning fellow had already formulated. He would talk reasonably to his captor, would talk quietly and logically, would appeal to his humanity, and would, in the end, avoid execution.
R.W. IV - The Magic Labyrinth Page 27