Albert gave a sob of dismay. “He’s left us! He’s sailed away!”
“Of course he hasn’t.” Scarlett craned her neck left, following the current of the river. “There! The old fool’s done something right for once! He’s already cast off. Come on!”
Just visible beyond the reeds, nine or ten yards from shore, the raft was a grainy slab on the surface of the river. Joe could be seen at the pole, gesticulating, calling.
Scarlett jumped from the side of the jetty onto the shingle of mud and stones. Behind them, pale forms ran from the shadow of the woods. She pushed her way amongst the reeds to the water’s edge. “Hurry up, Albert! We’ve got to swim to him.”
“No!” It was a shout from the old man. “No!”
Albert waved desperately. “Joe! Come closer into shore! They are right behind us!”
“No time for that.” Scarlett stepped into the water; black ripples spread silently into the dark. She hesitated. The old man was shaking his head, shouting something; he made frantic pointing gestures at his mouth.
“What does he mean?” Albert was almost crying, looking back. Swift white shapes were advancing along the path.
“Don’t know. We’ve got to wade out to him.” She took another step.
“No!” The old man set about a frantic screaming. He pointed at his chest, then mimicked the act of blowing. Faint on the wind, the words came: “My otter whistle! Blow it! Blow it!”
Was that movement beside them in the reeds? Wide-eyed, nostrils flaring, Scarlett snatched at her pocket, pulled out the silver whistle, and jammed it into her mouth. She blew and blew again.
The reeds became still. On the raft, the old man was dancing like a madman. “Now wade to me! Quick! If you hesitate, you are lost!”
Still blowing, Scarlett plowed deeper into the water, pistol in one hand, the canister in the other. Albert followed behind, Ettie cradled in his arms. Brown water pooled against their thighs. They plunged on, splashed across the shallows—and all at once were beyond their depth and floundering.
“Just keep blowing the whistle!” the old man called. “Blow it for your life!”
He had steered the raft toward them from the center of the river. He stood at the oar, working hard to keep the craft level with the edge of the rushes, where the shore ran unimpeded into the river. Scarlett tossed the canister aboard; she pulled at Albert, helping him support the little girl so that her head was well above the surface. Beyond the reeds, up on the bank, thin white figures came clustering. Whooping and screaming, they bounded across the shingle, making for the clear space between the reeds, where they had a perfect view of the raft. Some splashed into the shallows, arms raised high. A spear sliced through the water close to Scarlett’s head. She grappled Ettie close, shielding her with her body. Albert reached out, caught hold of the raft’s side. The old man was there, stretching out his hand. In a flurry of ungainly movements, first Ettie, then Albert, and finally Scarlett were hoisted aboard. Albert bundled Ettie to the far side of the raft. She began to wail. A spear struck against the wood.
“Now you can stop blowing the whistle,” the old man said. He stood at the pole, making slight adjustments to counter the force of the current.
Scarlett spat the whistle from her mouth. “Pole off! We are too close to shore! They will reach us!”
“You—fill the fuel tank. Boy—keep Ettie’s head down. Do not let her look to shore.”
A host of white shapes was splashing through the reeds, their skins almost luminous in the rising moonlight, their eyes black hollows, heads lolling, mouths agape.
Scarlett worked with feverish speed, unscrewing the fuel cap, tilting the petrol down. Still the old man waited, motionless, his hand upon the pole. He was faced toward the figures on the shore, but he wasn’t watching them. He was watching the surface of the river.
The Tainted could see the raft was motionless. They thrust themselves forward. A collective cry of triumph rose from many throats.
Darkness pooled beneath the water. It slid up, broke clear. A sleek brown head, long and tapered and large as a man’s torso, erupted in a shower of spray. It struck one of the figures and pulled it sideways into the reeds. There was a piercing scream, a great thrashing. The other pursuers halted—before they could act, a second vast brown mass had whipped amongst them, carving through the water, as sinuous as a snake. Teeth snapped, tore, and shook. A white body was tossed skyward like a piece of rag and caught again. The margins of the river frothed red, and the raft bucked and swung on the surging water.
Only now did the old man use the pole, nudging them out into the current.
“What about the motor?” Scarlett said. “Shall I start the motor?”
No one answered her. Albert had shushed the child. He led her to the old man.
“Your granddaughter,” Albert said.
The old man nodded. “Could you take hold of the pole for a moment?” He passed it across to Albert, ruffled the little girl’s hair, then walked slowly across the deck to where Scarlett stood, alone and dripping. Then he slapped her hard on the side of the face. “That is for taking Ettie,” he said.
He turned away. Scarlett stood there. She said nothing. The raft drifted below the black hill of Bladon Point and its fort of horrors. It reached the confluence with the northern stream of the Thames and, joining this, was carried with greater force eastward into the deepening night.
For three days, they continued traveling down the Thames. The floodlands fell behind them; soon they reached the wide agricultural belt known as the Land of Three Borders, where Wessex touched Mercia and Anglia to the north. It was a populated region. The Frontier Wars were long over; ferryboats organized by the Ancient Company of Watermen crisscrossed the widening Thames, linking important highways north and south. Workshops and small factories dotted the riverbanks, and the natural silence of Britain was interrupted by the sounds of hammers and pistons. Otters, wolves, and foxes were hunted in this area and the Tainted generally kept at bay.
It was Joe’s contention that their shortcut through the Barrens had achieved its objective, and that the boat containing Dr. Calloway and Mr. Shilling was still somewhere in the floodlands. Nevertheless, word might have spread ahead of them, and they proceeded cautiously past a succession of prosperous towns—Reading, Henley, and Marlow—where the spires and domes of the Faith Houses sparkled beneath the sky. By night, they slipped beneath the river walls, slicing quietly through the dancing lights reflected on the water. By day, they holed up at a distance. The old man taught Albert how to fish and cook food on the griddle; Scarlett spent time repairing weather damage to the raft. Ettie, who was none the worse for her visit to the fort, played with Albert and sometimes even sat near Scarlett, watching her with big wide eyes.
Curiously, after the escape from Bladon Point, it was easier between them and Joe. Albert, who had his own ways of gathering information, perceived the root of it well enough. In the panic and terror of that final desperate effort, with the Tainted and the blood-otters closing in, he and Scarlett had protected Ettie and carried her to safety under the eyes of her grandfather. Outwardly, Joe remained as truculent as ever, but there was a shared understanding that had not been present before.
Other effects were less welcome for Albert. Even as someone with much experience of suppressing unpleasant memories, he found his encounter with the Tainted hard to shake. In particular, there was the figure he’d seen at the end of the passage in the trading post. A stick-thin creature, haggard and bloody-mouthed. A vision of hatred and raving hunger. A monstrosity, a parody of a human…
A girl, about his own age.
“Yeah, there are terrible things in this world,” Scarlett said. It was the morning after their escape. Albert had been sitting between the crates, listening to the river’s flow beneath the deck boards and staring out at nothing. She handed him a cup fresh from the pot and pe
rched with hers on the crate beside him. “You got to drink your coffee, forget all about it. That’s what I do.”
He wasn’t trying to look at her thoughts, right then. He’d even turned away. So he only got the barest glimpse of an open hillside, a row of men in uniform firing, a crowd of thin white shapes haring up the slopes…running with holes blown through them, their insides trailing, intestines flapping like red flags…
He shut the image off. So much for her forgetting. He studied her face, the green eyes, the faint half smile. Her hair was tied back, and there was a pinkish glow about her that suggested she might have even washed that day. “You’ve seen them before,” he said.
“I’ve seen them.” She took a leisurely sip of coffee. “But I’m not going to talk about it, and if you try to sieve me, I’ll boot you so far across the river, you’ll reach the other side.”
“Fair enough,” Albert said.
“Got to say, though,” Scarlett went on, “I’ve been thinking about last night. Us hiding there, running for our lives. That would have been a prime moment for your…other talent to show, like it did at the wharf. The Fear, you called it, right? You said it happens when you’re panicked and upset….”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Yes. And you can’t still have been exhausted from the wharf….” The eyes were on him, the half smile broadening. “So: last night. Why not? What happened?”
The misery and frustration that Albert always experienced whenever he thought about the Fear swelled again inside him. He stared into his cup, at the friendly, bitter twirls of steam. “I did feel it,” he said, “up in that corridor, when I was on my own. There was a minute or two when I began to panic. I thought it would definitely kick in.”
“But it didn’t.”
“No.”
“Even though we were being chased by a pack of cannibals who were going to catch us, kill us, and eat us raw. It didn’t ‘kick in.’ ” She grinned at him. “That’s pretty bloody useless, Albert. What good is a lousy, half-baked power like that?”
Her goading stung him; he felt his cheeks flush. “I never said it was any good. You’re the one who said it was amazing. I hate it. I can’t control it, which makes Dr. Calloway angry. Sometimes I can’t do it at all, and then she whips me with the flail. When I do max out, bad things happen, and that’s no good either. You should think yourself lucky you’ve not seen it. That’s why they like to hurt me. That’s why they lock me away.”
“ ‘Max out,’ ” Scarlett said musingly. “Like at the wharf?”
“That wasn’t maxing out.”
“Like on the bus, then?”
All of a sudden, Albert felt annoyed. It was one of Scarlett’s imperfections that she insisted on dwelling on his past while carefully ignoring her own. “Actually, I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Like with you and the Tainted. Maybe I’ll end up booting you across the river.”
She laughed, gave a lazy shrug. “They’re just questions. But fine, if that’s the way you want it. You know, you running off to these Free Isles of yours is all very well, but you can’t run from yourself, Albert. You should consider opening up a little. Talk about your powers. Talk about Stonemoor. Think about it. Questions don’t hurt anybody, after all.”
She would have gotten up and sauntered away, but Albert was frowning. “Well, if that’s how it is,” he said, “maybe I’ve got a question for you, too.”
“Yeah?” She swallowed the rest of her coffee. “Go on, then.”
“Last night…something I saw in you….” Caution almost stopped him, but his irritation drove him on. “It wasn’t the first time, was it?” he said.
Her eyes narrowed. “I told you, I don’t want to talk about the Tainted.”
“I’m not talking about them.” He looked at her, caught the hesitation in her face. “Losing a child,” Albert said. “That had happened to you before.”
Just for a moment, she didn’t move. Then she smiled, patted him on the shoulder, pushed herself forward off the crate. “I’ll get you to the isles,” she said. “Drop you off there. In the meantime, do me a favor and don’t ever read my mind again. OK? Because I’ve still got that metal restraint thing in my bag, and believe me, I’d be quite happy to use it on you.”
“Actually, you wouldn’t,” Albert said. But he muttered it into his coffee, and she’d already gone.
* * *
—
Beyond Marlow, the character of the landscape changed again. The Thames began to broaden; on either side, the woods and fields devolved to scrublands, then to wispy mudflats. Mercia was bypassed; to the north stretched the wastes of Anglia. They were moving beyond the kingdoms into the estuary on the edge of the lagoon. There were no more towns, only fishing villages on little islands, with low-slung terraced cottages arranged below the smokehouses and the endless metal racks where herring hung like giant pegs to dry. A hot wind blew out of the east, from the Burning Regions across the sea; the clouds were towering agglomerations of strange colors, yellows, oranges, and browns.
The raft glided past it all—part of it, yet separate. Flotillas of white birds blocked the side channels, squalling and thrashing in the shallows. Bristle-coated hogs roamed the mudflats; the main channels were choked with lazy shoals of silver fish, packed so tight and deep, it looked as if you could climb down them like the rungs of a ladder to the bottom. As ever, the wildness and desolation gave Albert a strange joy. Though Britain was a land of ruins, there was no place truly empty. The people had retreated, but the land was alive and teeming with vitality. The country was maimed and broken—but full of strange fecundity and strength.
There was a tidal pull beneath them: he could feel it quickening against the logs, hear it in the sound of the straining water. With the river’s every turn, his eyes looked more avidly to the east. The isles were not far away.
Joe knew the estuary well and had friends on many of the islands; on the fifth night out of Lechlade, he moored the raft on a crescent-shaped islet that supported only a handful of blackened buildings and allowed them all ashore. That night they ate with three dark-haired families in the pungent, shadowy communal room below the smokehouse, its ceiling an arching vault of dangling fish. Ettie played with two other children; the old man spoke quietly with the parents. Scarlett and Albert sat near the door. No questions were asked of their purpose; they were welcomed soberly and without fuss. They ate well, drank malt beer. That night they slept under blankets on solid ground.
The following morning, they left at sunrise. The people of the house came out to see them go. Albert noticed Scarlett hanging back at the door; for a moment she slipped alone inside. When she emerged, she was reattaching the cuss-box to the string around her neck. It dangled differently, as if empty. She glanced across at Albert as she passed him, but he took care to look away.
The raft proceeded between the islands, heading as far as possible due east. The outer shores drew back, arched away steadily into the blue distance. Noon came. They were at the mouth of the lagoon.
Joe called Scarlett and Albert to where he sat at the tiller. “A few pole fishermen venture farther out to snare the biggest fish, but this is where all sane folk draw back. Ahead is open water and, eventually, the Great Ruins. In a life spent aboard this raft, I have always hugged the coastal islands, and I dislike the idea of risking the blank sea. Albert—is it still your intention to reach the Ruins?”
Albert’s eyes shone. He was looking eagerly out to the horizon, where the sunlight broke through the bank of clouds. “If you mean the Free Isles, yes, it is!”
“Very well. Now, my friends tell me that odd craft have been seen these last two days, cruising past the fishing villages without stopping. Men in bowler hats among them.”
“Faith House men,” Scarlett said. “Calloway’s still after us.”
Joe nodded. “Luckily for us
they went away to the north, following the coast. And that means”—he opened the motor fully; the raft jerked, sped out onto the open water—“we shall now leave them behind.”
All afternoon they continued east. The shores receded, became low, gray ribbons, then hazy pencil lines that faded and were gone. The lagoon was entirely flat, a measureless expanse. Ettie seemed to find it oppressive; she retreated under the awning. Scarlett kept silent watch for giant fish, the rifle in her hands. Albert sat in the deck chair near the front of the raft, looking straight ahead. A bulb of excitement was growing steadily inside him. Once he thought he saw, far off, a group of impossibly tall, thin structures—faint gray lines that stapled sea to sky…. He rose from the chair, held his hands above his eyes. The vision faded; he could no longer discern anything rising against the clouds.
The light began to fail, straining westward like milk sucked between clenched teeth. The wind picked up; white-crested waves struck against the raft, pitching it awkwardly sidelong.
“There’s a rainstorm coming,” Joe said. “We may be swamped or capsized or turned to matchwood. But the upside is: it’ll keep the really large sharks away from the surface, so at least we won’t be eaten.”
Albert felt fretful, and there was a dull ache in his head, probably due to anticipation. “What about the Free Isles?” he asked. “I thought we’d reach them today.”
“In the morning, if we’re in one piece. Help me get the tarpaulin ready.”
* * *
—
It was a bad storm, one of the unnatural ones. The night fell early. Clouds like black rags moved in from the north. A squall struck the lagoon, fretting the surface and making the timbers of the raft sigh and groan. Joe pulled the awning wide on guy ropes, and they sheltered there together, watching the rain cascade off the edges of the tarp and drain away through cracks between the logs. It was impossible to light a fire. Albert hung the lantern from the frame to see by. They ate smoked fish and rye bread. Joe produced a hip flask of whisky and passed it round. Ettie crept beneath the eiderdown, wedged between Scarlett and Albert, and presently went to sleep.
The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne Page 23