by Geoff Rodkey
“Food and water’s this way!” I said, yanking her back toward the head.
She stumbled, unsteady on her feet. “No, it isn’t!”
“Yes, it is! Tons of it!”
“Pffft!”
Guts got the idea and joined in. “Oh, yeh! Seen it! Cakes and all. Big feast!”
Once we’d gotten her staggering in the right direction, I left her to Guts and rushed ahead with the stone block. When I got back to the head, I brought the block down hard against the wood surrounding the hole.
It made a terrible racket, and I felt the shudder up through my feet. But the wood didn’t budge.
I panicked and started to bang on it so wildly that when the wood finally gave way, I fell forward and almost dropped the block into the water. With a few more shots, I managed to open up a hole big enough to fit through.
By this time, Millicent had figured out she’d been swindled.
“That’s the loo!”
As I stepped out of the head, I heard a voice calling down from the top of the ladder.
“Mr. Birch! Need ye up top!”
“Through the hole! Quick!” I told Millicent.
“You’re not serious! People poop out of that!”
“Mr. Birch…!”
“Go!” I said to Guts.
He squeezed past me and vanished through the hole.
I heard feet on the ladder.
“Come on!” I begged Millicent.
She looked offended. “If you think for a moment I’m going to jump in a privy—”
I picked her up by the waist, swung her around, and dropped her through the hole. By the time I went after her, there were feet pounding across the deck toward me.
The ship was moving fast enough that I didn’t hit Millicent when I came down, but as I kicked back up toward the surface, I conked my head pretty good against the passing hull and had a panicky moment of fear that the rudder would knock me cold as it went by.
I started kicking and paddling in the direction I thought was sideways to the boat. It seemed to be taking an awfully long time to break the surface, and I realized my shoes were dragging me down, so I kicked them off.
Finally, I surfaced and started gulping air, and there was light—far too much of it for the middle of the night—and I turned to look around and discovered why.
The boat was on fire. Even as it continued to move out to sea, its two topsails were burning out of control.
I treaded water, which was harder than it should have been, and looked around for the others. There was no trace of them.
“Millicent! Guts!”
Someone broke the surface about ten feet away. I swam toward them, and as I did, I could feel my pants sucking me downward. I was about to shed them, too, when I realized the problem was the silver coins Millicent had shoved in my pocket. I quickly dug them out and let them sink.
“Guts?”
“Help!” he gurgled, and I realized he had Millicent in his good hand and was trying to pull her head above water.
I got a hand on her as well, and we struggled together for a moment until we managed to get Millicent’s head up. She coughed water, so I knew she was breathing. But she was heavy as a stone.
“Swim!” Guts urged her.
“Trying…!” She grunted, and as I readjusted my grip on her, my hand scraped against something hard near her waist, and I realized her clothes were still packed full of the silver coins.
“The coins! In her pockets!”
I felt around until I found a pocket and started pulling coins from it.
“Need those!” she protested.
I ignored her. “Kick your shoes off!”
“Need them!”
Instead of arguing, I dove under and pulled her shoes off, getting a hard kick in the cheekbone for my trouble.
After we got her shoes off and the coins out of her pockets, she seemed able to stay afloat on her own, so we started to swim. The boat had been anchored in a wide inlet, and while most of the area was swamp, there was a stubby finger of land nearby that had some elevation and looked dry.
When we first started for it, I thought I saw a light flickering on its shore, like there was a fire burning, but when I looked again, I didn’t see it.
Guts and I swam as fast as we could, but we quickly began to leave Millicent far behind, so we flipped over on our backs and slowed down to let her catch up.
The ship was a couple hundred yards out to sea by now. But the flames had eaten most of the sails, and it was drifting to a stop.
When Millicent caught up with us, she was panting hard.
“Stop awhile,” she gasped.
I wasn’t keen on the idea, but I might have agreed to it if I hadn’t seen movement in the water off the ship’s stern.
Guts saw it the same time I did.
“Somebody’s swimmin’ for us!”
“Come on, Millicent!” I urged her. “They’re following us!”
She just looked at me helplessly with those wiped-out eyes.
“Hang on to my shoulders,” I ordered her.
She grabbed hold, and I started to swim with her hanging on my back. It was tough going.
“Can you at least kick?”
She tried to kick, but I don’t know how much good it did. Mostly, she just seemed to get her legs tangled in mine.
Within a couple of minutes, I was panting hard, and the shore didn’t seem to be any closer. So when Guts growled, “Gimme a turn,” I was happy to let him.
After Guts took over, I flipped onto my back to check the progress of whoever was swimming after us. They’d closed a third of the distance already—and back at the ship, where the last burning shreds of the sails were peeling away from the mast, I could see a davit swinging out with a rowboat attached.
“They’re putting a boat in. And the swimmer’s closing on us,” I told Guts.
He grunted. He was having as much trouble towing Millicent as I had.
“Millicent, can you swim? They’re going to catch us,” I said.
“Okay,” she said.
She did her best. But it wasn’t good enough to stop the swimmer from continuing to close the gap. A minute later, when I chanced a look back, he was just fifty yards from us.
Behind him, the rowboat was in the water and pulling hard in our direction.
“Faster!” I yelled.
Guts and I gave it everything we had, and soon I felt my hand brush the sandy bottom.
I stood up and ran splashing through the water toward shore. Guts was just ahead of me.
Up near the tree line at the top of the beach, I could see flames licking out of the ground like there was a fire burning in a pit, but I didn’t see any people around it.
I looked back over my shoulder for Millicent. She was still twenty yards out. The swimmer was coming up fast behind her.
I waded back out toward her. I was waist deep when she reached me, and I pulled her up by the arms so we could run.
But it was a mistake, because it was even slower going than if I’d let her keep swimming. We struggled together, our legs churning against the water, and I didn’t dare look back because I knew the swimmer was almost on top of us.
I could see Guts up ahead in the moonlight. He was standing by the little fire on the ground, yelling at us, but I couldn’t hear him over the surf.
Then the water was just shin deep, I had Millicent’s hand in mine, and I thought we were going to make it when suddenly she fell, dragging me down with her.
We were on our backs, scrabbling backward through the shallows. The swimmer was looming up over us, shirtless, barrel chest heaving with his breath. He was taking his time, not even bothering to reach out and grab us because he knew we were trapped.
Then I heard a whoooosh in the air behind us, and his chest exploded in flames.
He plummeted backward into the surf, and when he hit the water, whatever had struck his chest quickly fizzled out.
For a moment, I thought I’d just imagined
he’d been on fire.
But then there was another whoooosh, and a second fireball sailed over our heads and struck something in the rowboat.
“RUN!” I heard Guts scream. I got up and grabbed Millicent’s hand, pulling her to her feet, and we stumbled across the beach toward the trees.
We were halfway to Guts when I realized there was a second person next to him, crouched over the pit of flames, wreathed in smoke and kneading something on the ground.
Then she rose up, and I saw her face.
It was Kira. She held some kind of twinned rope in her hand. A smoking, fist-sized object dangled from the end of it.
“Move!” she yelled, motioning us aside.
As we ducked out of the way, she took a few quick steps toward the water, then cracked the rope like a whip.
I heard the whoooosh again, and I turned just in time to see the fireball ignite as it whistled through the air.
This time, it sailed wide of the rowboat and fizzled into the sea.
She cursed in a strange language, then crouched down again.
“Fire another!” Guts yelled to her.
Kira popped back up, her hands full. She handed Guts a fat skin of water, then hoisted a large woven bag onto her shoulders.
“I don’t have more,” she said. “We have to outrun them.”
I looked back at the rowboat. The men in it were crouched low, so I couldn’t tell how many of them there were, but two sets of oars were still pushing through the water. It was less than fifty yards out.
I turned back in time to see Kira disappear, crashing through the thick scrub of the trees. Guts followed her.
“What’s happening?” asked Millicent in a bewildered voice.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I think we’d better follow her.”
IN THE REEDS
I had to follow Kira and Guts mostly by sound—not just because it was dark, but because I was holding one arm in front of my face so my eyes wouldn’t get poked out by one of the stiff branches we were crashing through.
I had to practically drag Millicent behind me with my other arm. She was still so loopy she couldn’t seem to get it through her head that we were running for our lives, and she complained with every step.
“Ow…! Will you let go?! Egg! Quit snapping the—OW! Stop…!”
“Quiet!” Kira growled at us from somewhere up ahead.
“Who is that?” Millicent whined.
“She’s an Okalu,” I said.
“She’s a snot.”
Kira and Guts stopped to let us catch up, and we nearly bowled them over when we did.
“Will you quit—” Millicent started to say.
“Shhhhh!” Kira’s hiss was so fierce that even brain-fogged as she was, Millicent shut up.
We all listened, frozen in place.
From somewhere behind us came the sound of snapping branches.
Kira took off again, holding her pack in front of her as a battering ram against the thick brush. The seriousness of the situation must’ve finally sunk in with Millicent, because she stopped complaining, and I didn’t have to pull her along anymore.
It was slow going for another fifty feet. Then the brush began to thin out—but as it did, the ground under my bare feet turned squishy and slick.
All of a sudden, the brush fell away, and I could see past Kira and Guts to a vast, moonlit swamp full of thick reeds looming up out of the water.
I was wondering how we were going to cross it when Kira plummeted out of sight. There was a loud splash. Then Guts disappeared with a second splash.
I tried to stop myself, but the ground was too slick, and I slid off the edge of the embankment just like they had, plopping down into the swamp with Millicent right behind me.
We were waist deep in water, the tall reeds so thick it was hard to push my feet down through them. Kira headed off at a sharp right angle. We followed her, and the reeds quickly swallowed us, reaching a foot or more over our heads. We were about thirty feet from the embankment when I heard several splashes, and I knew whoever was following us had hit the swamp, too.
Kira led the way, zigzagging through the thick reeds. Pretty quickly, I got disoriented—I kept my ear tuned to the sound of the surf hitting the shore, but it was hard to tell if we were heading toward it, away from it, or something in between.
I had faith, though, that Kira would lead us to safety. I’d never seen anything like those fireballs she’d cooked up back at the beach, and when you added that to the fact that she’d managed to track our kidnappers, when they were on horseback and she was on foot, carrying a heavy pack, over a full day and night…
I didn’t know if her powers were magical, or just beyond my understanding. But they were awesome enough that at that moment, I would’ve followed her anywhere.
Which was why, as the water got deeper and deeper, it took me a while to get worried.
The water was up to my rib cage the first time Kira stopped. We were clumped together so tightly that I bumped into Guts before I stopped, too.
We could hear the splish of the men somewhere behind us.
I expected Kira to start moving again right away. But she didn’t.
The seconds stretched out.
I felt Millicent’s hand press down on my shoulder. When I turned to look back, her eyes were questioning and afraid.
The men were getting closer.
I was about to nudge Kira when she finally started to move, at such a sharp angle that we were practically going backward.
For a couple minutes after that, the water didn’t get any deeper.
Then it did.
It was nearly to the top of my chest when Kira changed direction again.
When she turned us a third time, it was up to my neck.
Then she stopped for good.
In the dim moonlight, I could see the water lapping gently against the back of her head. The pack she’d strapped to her back was completely underwater.
She turned to look at us. The water was at her chin, and for the first time since we’d left the beach, I got a good look at her eyes.
There was fear in them.
Just like that, I knew there was nothing magical about her powers.
And she hadn’t stopped as part of some grand plan.
She’d stopped because if she kept going, she was going to drown.
And she didn’t know what to do next, any more than we did.
We could hear the men moving through the water behind us.
I looked at Guts. The water was nearly to his chin, too. His eyes twitched as he stared back at me.
Millicent’s hands were pressing down on my shoulders.
The sound of the men kept getting louder.
Kira began to wrestle with her pack, agitating the water. I couldn’t tell what she was working at, but the soft splashing noise made me grit my teeth with worry.
Then her arm rose up from the water, holding a foot-long machete in a sheath. She held it out for Guts.
He raised his arm and took the knife by the handle. As Kira started digging in the bag again, he turned toward me, jerking his chin urgently. He wanted me to unsheathe the blade.
I slid the sheath off. Guts raised the machete over his head and stepped around me, in the direction of the men.
Then Millicent’s hands slipped off my shoulder, followed by a plunk that sounded like a gunshot in my ear.
I twisted around, grabbing her under the arms to hold her up as I heard a voice call out:
“That way!”
The sound of the men in the water instantly grew twice as loud. They were headed our way fast.
We stood frozen in place, not daring to move. Guts was in front of me, the machete by his ear. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Kira had a machete of her own now, poised to strike.
My arms were tangled up with Millicent, and I could feel her body trembling.
The splash of the men got more measured—they’d slowed down a bit—but they were headed
straight for us.
They were close now.
Ten feet? Less?
The reeds began to wave gently. The water rippled toward us as the movement of the men stirred it up.
A few more seconds and they’d find us.
Guts raised the machete higher.
The ripples got bigger.
I felt something bump against my neck. It was the sheath from Guts’s machete—I must have dropped it when I turned to help Millicent, and now it was floating on top of the water right beside me.
Almost without thinking, I raised my arm out of the water, grabbed the sheath, and threw it off to the right, on a high arc over the reeds.
It came down about twenty feet away, with a rustle as it fell through the reeds, then a loud plop when it struck the water.
I heard a whispered voice in the reeds, not more than an arm’s length from us.
“Wassat?”
The water stopped rippling toward us.
“There.”
“Sure?”
“Listen!”
The silence that followed was agonizing.
Millicent took a hand off my shoulder. I was afraid she was going to fall again, but a moment later, her hand rose up from the water and threw something in the same direction I’d tossed the sheath.
As it tumbled through the air, I caught a glint of it in the moonlight. It was a silver coin. Guts and I must have missed it when we emptied her pockets.
The plop when it landed was even louder than the sheath had been.
I heard the voice again, practically in my ear.
“There!”
They splashed off to the right.
We waited and listened.
I felt a sharp pinprick on my cheek. A mosquito was biting me.
I twitched my face, trying to make it fly away. But it didn’t budge until it drank its fill.
The sound of the men was fading away.
We stood there, frozen and silent, until a long time had passed since we’d last heard them.
Then we started moving. I took the lead, walking us back to where the water had only been up to my chest. By then, I was trembling from hunger, and we stopped so Kira could pass around a water skin and a few packets of food—corn pancakes, wrapped in banana skins, that were so soggy from the swamp water I could barely tell what they were. But I was glad for them just the same.