The group’s passage, including more twig snaps and foliage rattling than Jev would have preferred, had roused the nocturnal wildlife. He hoped it settled before the other boat came into view, so the watchmen aboard it wouldn’t look in this direction. He believed the dark background of trees and bushes would hide them from view, especially if the watchmen had lanterns lit on their boat so their eyes weren’t accustomed to darkness, but if the crew had magical means to detect people, that was another matter.
Even though Jev was determined to attempt this sabotage, it worried him that Zenia’s powerful dragon tear found their pursuers concerning. As far as he knew, the gem hadn’t been daunted by elven wardens capable of summoning shadow golems, and he well knew how powerful they were.
“We are sure there’s another boat back here, right?” Borti whispered. “I only ask because I haven’t seen it myself.”
“It’s coming,” Jev said. “Zenia’s dragon tear saw it, and so did Hydal.”
Horti elbowed his brother and huffed something that might have been a laugh or a snort. He had some vocal abilities, from what Jev had heard, and he suspected his mutism was selective rather than the result of some physical impairment. He did wonder how he would communicate with Horti in the dark out here and hoped that Borti could handle that.
“My brother wants to know how the man with spectacles saw things I didn’t,” Borti said, somehow discerning all that from gestures barely visible in darkness broken only by a full moon playing tag with the clouds.
“Is he insulting Hydal or you?” Even if Jev wasn’t that class conscious, his hackles stirred at the idea of the ex-monks mocking a zyndar—and his friend and former fellow officer.
“Oh, I’m positive the insult is for me.” Borti shifted his weight and dropped to his knees, perhaps anticipating a long wait.
“You sound accustomed to it.” Jev stayed on the balls of his feet. By the time they had swum to shore and picked their way downriver to this secluded spot with a good view of the water, their boat had disappeared upriver. Since the other boat had been sticking close for days, he expected it to come into sight any minute.
“Oh, I am. If Horti ever starts speaking again, it’ll only be because he’s dying to give me some particularly fine insult that can’t be conveyed with gestures alone.”
“Why doesn’t he speak?”
Borti shrugged. “He did when we were boys. We had some hard times after our father left, and ended up on the streets for a while before finding our way to the Temple. Got beat up real bad a couple of times by the gangs and then stuck working in a factory when we were only ten. That was horrible. Real long hours, and they didn’t care much if you lost a hand or something. You owed money for your uniform and the food they fed you, so you couldn’t really leave. We got stuck there for three years. Horti and I got yelled at a lot. Everyone did. I didn’t care that much, but Horti stopped talking. Eventually, the factory burned down—by accident, the watch said, but I figure some angry employee got tired of it all and lit that fire. We were lucky that we were getting big by then, and the Earth Order Temple saw our potential. They took us in and trained us as monks. It was better, but Horti still didn’t talk, and he never seemed to like the monk training that much. Then we found the rats.”
“Uh?” Jev had heard Rhi saying something about rat races, but he hadn’t been sure if it was literal or not.
“We race them and breed them. You might have seen us trying to collect some new stock—there are big ones down here. Long legs. If they’re at all smart, they’ll be amazing in the mazes.”
“You do this for money?” Jev guessed.
“Yup. Got a dream—no, a real goal—to be able to make our business prosperous enough so we can work for ourselves. Racing and breeding rats that others want to buy.”
“But you just got a new job working for the king?”
“We don’t make enough yet for the business to be full-time, and we’ve had some setbacks lately. We got asked to leave the Temple because monks aren’t supposed to gamble. I don’t see how the rat races are gambling—we always knew ours were best and would win—but the archmage didn’t like that our attention was divided. We’re willing to work hard for people—don’t you worry, Zyndar—but we want more than anything to have the freedom to be our own bosses someday and not to have to answer to others. We’ll get there.” Borti thumped his brother on the shoulder. Horti thumped him back.
As Jev was trying to think of something encouraging to say, a yellow light appeared farther down the river.
“That’s them,” he breathed, leaning forward.
Borti fell silent and shifted back to his feet.
Jev had expected a vessel similar to theirs, but that yellow light was spherical and didn’t seem to come from a lantern. Other identical glowing spheres came into view as the boat came fully around the bend. Jev’s mouth dangled open. It wasn’t anything like theirs.
It looked like a floating piece of the jungle with a grassy deck and railings made from thick green bushes. The cabin itself might have been made from lumber, but leafy vines ran all over the surface and the roof. It almost looked like a craft an elf would build, but it lacked the elegance and beauty typical of their architecture.
“Uh,” Borti muttered, “is that going to have a boiler room and all that stuff?”
“I hope so.” Jev doubted hurling his explosive at those bush-railings would do much to destroy the vessel.
Faint splashes sounded, indicating a paddlewheel before he could see it. He felt a twinge of relief. At least the layout was similar to that of their boat.
The wind shifted, bringing the scent of burning wood to Jev’s nose. It was too dark to see many details on the roof, but he thought he spotted a smokestack. It was hard to be certain, because it was also covered with leafy vines. Still, the smoke scent should mean that burning wood and a boiler powered that paddlewheel, not magic.
Jev was so busy scrutinizing the boat that he almost missed the cloaked figure patrolling the grassy walkway around the central cabin. The person’s hood was down, revealing blue-gray skin and white hair. A troll.
Even if the design of the boat was a surprise, the troll wasn’t. Jev suspected this was the same group that had been watching Zenia’s team since the beach. If not before.
“We’ll have to go soon if we’re going to reach it before it passes us,” Borti whispered.
“Yes,” Jev agreed. The riverboats only traveled upriver at a few miles an hour, but that was faster than they would be able to swim if they didn’t time this precisely.
Another troll came into view, also on patrol. His hand rested on the butt of a pistol belted under his cloak.
The trolls were timing it so one of them was on either side of the ship at any given time, one walking forward and one walking back.
Jev wished they had been drinking and playing cards. The two trolls were all he saw on the deck, but they were far too alert for his tastes. They also didn’t seem distracted by the dwarven ditties drifting down from the other boat.
“We may have to fight right away,” Jev murmured. “Subdue them before they can warn whoever is inside. Be ready.”
“We’re always ready for a fight,” Borti said.
Horti hefted one of his two axes.
Jev stepped into the water, glancing left and right for alligators before wading in more than knee-deep. He didn’t see any movement in the placid water, but the moon had skidded behind a cloud, so it was darker now. Hoping for the best, Jev eased farther into the water and committed to the swim.
He held up the tin and his pistol, which he’d wrapped together in a cloth to help protect them from moisture, as he swam away from the bank. The cold, murky water contrasted with the warm, humid air. As he swam toward the boat, his mind flashed back to the battle with the hydra.
“Focus,” he breathed to himself, water tickling his lips.
The trolls kept walking slowly around the boat as Jev approached from upstream, letting the curr
ent carry him toward the craft and the center of the river. He swam as quietly as possible, trying not to make any splashes. Borti and Horti followed behind him, also maneuvering silently through the water. Good.
Jev reached the hull of the boat without the trolls raising an alarm. He bumped faintly against wood that lay underneath the vines and hoped that meant it was a normal craft under all the foliage.
He gripped a vine and hung on, waiting for the others and trying to decide if he could climb up the vines to reach the deck. The bushes ringing the outside appeared dense. He might have to cut his way through them.
A questioning grunt came from the deck above. The thuds of boots thundered toward Jev’s position. He grimaced, afraid the twins had been spotted. If those trolls looked down… his team was in a vulnerable spot. They would have to submerge and hope bullets wouldn’t find them. If they went under the boat, they risked being caught by the paddlewheel and battered or drowned.
As the footfalls stopped right above Jev, Borti and Horti reached his position and flattened themselves to the hull. Jev risked looking up as he clung on, willing his body to blend in with the vines. If he’d had a hand free, he might have attempted to pull some of the larger leaves over his head.
The trolls’ voices drifted down. Both of them were standing up there, looking out over the bushes. Jev couldn’t understand their dialect, but he caught the gist. One of them had seen something in the water.
The crewmen fell silent. Jev waited, his legs dangling, his fingers cramping where he gripped the vine with one hand. He couldn’t see the trolls from his position and hoped that went both ways. If the bush-railing was as thick as he thought, it might make it hard for those on deck to see directly below.
One troll grunted and pointed. Jev could make out the arm silhouetted against the moon.
Horti tapped him and pointed in the same direction. Two alligators floated toward them.
Jev groaned inwardly. They would have to climb up whether there were trolls waiting or not. He had no doubt those alligators were coming for his team.
The pointing troll arm disappeared, and a rifle extended from the deck. But it was swatted aside right away as some chastisement was delivered. Jev guessed one was telling the other not to shoot since they were following the other boat in secret. An argument started. The alligators swam closer, eyes focused on Jev. Borti and Horti started climbing up the vines. Jev wanted to do the same, but holding his bundle made it hard.
A rifle fired, and he almost flung himself away from the side of the boat. Another shot cracked. The rifle wasn’t aimed at him.
A bullet struck one of the alligators between the eyes. They splashed their tails and wheeled away.
One troll laughed, but the other continued his chastisement. Jev feared the gunfire would bring more trolls out from the cabin, possibly including the magic user they needed to avoid. But the trolls walked away after shooting the alligator.
Borti, higher on the hull, extended his hand for Jev’s bundle.
Jev handed it up to him, then used both of his hands to catch up. When they reached the bush-railing, the vines turned into dense brush bristling with thorns. Of course. Borti handed back the bundle and hacked at the bush with a dagger. Jev stuffed the bundle in his shirt and tried not to think about all the explosive black powder so close to his heart.
The twins worked together, cutting their way through the bush to an actual railing. They grabbed the wood and pulled themselves over the edge. Jev waited for a shout, but it didn’t come. He scrambled over, ignoring the thorns gouging him through his soggy clothing. The walkway was empty when he landed on the grass, but one of the trolls came around the corner of the cabin and jerked in surprise when he spotted them.
Horti reacted first, springing at the troll. Their enemy whipped up his rifle, but Horti was blindingly fast and closed the distance and knocked the weapon aside before the crewman could fire.
He pummeled the troll with lightning punches, and a palm strike to the nose kept him from crying out. Horti grabbed the troll by the arm and the crotch and hurled him over the side. He arced impressively far before landing with a splash.
A loud splash. As much as Jev appreciated Horti acting quickly, he knew the other troll would hear that.
Boots thundered on the deck again, amazingly loud on the grass. Jev winced at all the noise, fearing their stealthy incursion was over.
“Do it again, Horti,” Borti whispered.
The twins sprang into action simultaneously as the second troll rounded the corner, a pistol and cutlass in hand. Jev ran to help, but Borti and Horti downed him swiftly and threw him over the side as they had the first one. Unfortunately, this one bellowed a warning before he hit the water.
A door banged open.
The twins sprinted toward the sound. Jev ran after them, drawing his borrowed sword so he could help. There was no time to unwrap his bundle and extract his pistol. All he could do was hold it to his chest as he ran into another fray with two trolls coming out the door.
Jev worried the tin would drop out of his shirt. According to Cutter, it shouldn’t detonate until Jev lit the fuse and it ran down, but he wouldn’t bet his life on that.
Shouts came from inside the cabin as the twins knocked the trolls to the deck and charged in. Jev glimpsed a sleeping area, the layout similar to their captain’s boat. Would he need to run through dozens of troll crew members to reach the back? Or might he break a porthole to head directly into the boiler room? And where was the magic user?
As he started in to help the twins, who were already battling two more trolls, something invisible slammed into them. They were hurled out of sight to one side, and red light flared inside the cabin. The voices of more and more trolls came to life, angry war cries echoing from the walls.
“Get out of there,” Jev yelled to his comrades, wishing they hadn’t charged in.
Borti roared at the trolls instead of responding to him, then ran back into view, both his weapons raised as he charged toward the red light.
“Wait,” Jev blurted, hoping the trolls didn’t understand his language. “Distract them!”
He cringed at the idea of leaving his comrades, but he doubted they would get past the magic user and all his allies by running through the cabin. But if there was another way in…
Jev ran around the side of the cabin. More vines tumbled down from the roof, half obscuring the portholes. Some of the red light was still visible through them, and it flared brighter as Jev ran toward the back of the boat. His skin tingled painfully as he ran through the energy, and an unearthly fear ran up his spine, kicking every vertebra on the way.
Hoping he wasn’t abandoning his teammates to certain death, Jev ran to the last porthole. A metal door almost concealed by foliage was set into the wall next to it. He yanked on it, but it was locked. He tore away the vines smothering the porthole and hacked at the glass with his sword. The thick pane didn’t break.
A scream tore from a man’s throat. Borti?
Jev growled and backed a couple of steps so he could lunge in and kick the glass. His boot hammered into it with frustration and anger, and the glass shattered. He hacked away the broken pieces with his sword and stuck his head through. The room inside was dark but warm, and the orange glow of fire escaped from a partially open furnace door.
Wishing he had gloves, he pulled himself through the porthole amid a tinkle of tiny shards of glass. He groped his way to an inner door that would lead back to the cabin where the others were fighting. Once he set the explosive, he would join his comrades, if only long enough to warn them that it was time to leap overboard.
The inner door had a lock. He thumbed it closed to make sure nobody would interrupt him, then opened the furnace door to provide more light. A fire glowed cheerfully inside.
Jev pulled his bundle out of his shirt, wincing every time something smashed or broke up front. He removed his pistol, jamming it through his belt, and carefully unwrapped Cutter’s explosive.
&
nbsp; The cylindrical boiler sat upright in the rear of the room, pipes running from the furnace and to the engine that powered the paddlewheel. Jev started toward it, but veered toward the furnace to light the fuse. Cutter had designed it to burn slowly and give him a few minutes to escape; he hoped it worked.
Wishing again for a glove, he grabbed a slender stick with a few dried leaves on the end and stuck it into the furnace. Heat blasted his face and hand. He was tempted to simply stick the fuse directly into the flame but could easily imagine the heat igniting his bomb prematurely.
The leaves caught fire, and he pulled out the stick, using it to light the fuse. It caught instantly and started burning down more quickly than Jev had expected.
Would he have the minutes Cutter had promised him? There wasn’t time to affix the bomb to the boiler, so he thrust it between the bottom of the cylinder and the wall behind it, hoping that would do.
As he rushed for the inside door, intending to help the twins, a red mist curled through the gap under it.
Jev stumbled. Smoke? No, it had to be magic.
He turned for the broken porthole—maybe that would be a better way to go—but something grabbed his ankle. He tried to jerk his leg away, to leap for the porthole, but the grip was like metal, not mist. It yanked him off his feet.
The lock shattered, and the inner door flew open with a bang. A cloaked figure stood there, a glowing red artifact clutched in one upraised hand. Jev scrambled to pull away, but the mist thickened around his ankles and pulled him across the deck toward the figure.
As it did, his hooded enemy looked slowly around the boiler room. If he spotted the fuse burning toward the bomb, he would be able to extinguish it easily with his magic.
Jev realized he couldn’t run away, even if he’d been able to. All this would have been for naught if the shaman waved a hand and nullified the bomb.
“Why are you following us, you ugly dragon humper?” Jev demanded, hoping to command his enemy’s full attention.
He drew his pistol and sword, wondering if he could get through the shaman’s magical defenses. The power gripping his legs stopped pulling him, leaving him on his back on the deck right in front of his enemy.
Dragon Tear (Agents of the Crown Book 5) Page 14