by Ian Irvine
“Have I given us away?” she whispered.
“They know we escaped, and since they haven’t found us in their drag nets, or ashore, there’s only one place we can be.”
“What are we going to do?”
Die, he thought, and that will put an end to all pain.
“Keep going. There could be a storm… or we might find a boat in the rubbish. You never know.”
They were in an impossible situation and she knew it. He was about to swim on when a dinghy emerged from a mist bank, barely thirty yards away. A man at the bow held a lantern up on the end of a pole; a yellow halo surrounded it.
Rix pulled her down until only their eyes were above the water. “Don’t look at the light,” he whispered. “They’ll see it reflected in your eyes. Look down.”
He did the same, one arm around her chest. He could feel the thumping of her heart, her chest rising and falling with each breath. The lantern man swung his light from one side to the other, scanning the debris-littered water. The boat passed through a banner of low-hanging mist. The light made a brighter halo, then disappeared.
“Another boat behind us,” breathed Glynnie. “They’re searching in a pattern.”
Rix rotated. The second boat was mere shadow and rainbow-ringed light, moving steadily through the mist, then gone.
“The next pass will come right through here. And that close, nothing can hide us. Come on.”
He set off towards the line the first boat had followed. Glynnie followed for a while, then stopped, and when he turned to check she was going under. He raced back, hauled her up. Her face and hands were mottled blue and purple from the cold and she was shuddering fitfully.
“Leave me,” she said dully. “Can’t go – any further.”
“I’m not leaving you. Shh! You’re breathing like a walrus.”
He towed her across, taking advantage of the cover of a drifting sideboard here, a dead donkey there. Rix was very cold now and an icy lethargy was creeping through him too. If they stayed in the water much longer Glynnie would collapse from exposure. He pulled her against his chest but this time no warmth grew between them, not a trace. He was numb from cold, save for his right wrist, which burned with fire.
“We’re going to die, Lord,” she whispered. “Right here.”
Better we do than the enemy take us, he thought. “Not yet, Glynnie. You’ve got to hang on. We’ll beat them yet.”
He played hide-and-seek with the three boats for another few minutes as they crisscrossed the gyre. It was almost dark now but the fog was lifting and Rix was losing hope; he could feel Glynnie slipping away. The water was taking her body heat faster than she could generate it.
They were in the meagre shelter of an almost submerged log when the three dinghies came together in an open space forty yards away. The leader of the searchers stood up in the dinghy and swept his arm out in a circle that seemed to indicate the circumference of the gyre.
“I don’t like this,” Rix muttered in Glynnie’s ear. “What Cythonian devilry have they got in mind now?”
Glynnie’s head lolled onto his shoulder. She was fading fast, and if he couldn’t warm her she would die. He pulled his shirt up, and hers, pressed his bare chest against her and crushed them together. A faint warmth grew there.
After a minute or two, Glynnie roused. Her head wobbled, steadied. Her eyes drifted open, unfocused, then suddenly widened.
“Lord!” she croaked, trying to pull away. “What are you doing?”
He held her. “Saving our lives. Shh!”
Clots of mist drifted by, momentarily obscuring the three dinghies, then cleared. They separated and were rowed out in widening spirals, each lantern man now supporting a barrel on the transom. From the bung holes, an oily liquid gurgled into the water.
The enemy were masters of the alchymical arts and had developed all manner of terrifying new weapons. Rix had seen more than enough of their effects in the first days of the war and did not want to experience them here. He went backwards, using just his feet.
“Is it poison?” said Glynnie.
Every possibility Rix could think of was horrifying. “I don’t know.”
“They’re trying to kill you.”
Glynnie would have been safer if he’d left her behind. Being with him was a death warrant. “We’ve got to get out of the gyre. Hold tight!”
The dinghies were rowing quickly now, as if they did not want to be anywhere near the gyre when their mission was completed. They would reach the outside before he and Glynnie were a quarter of the way, and he could not swim any faster without alerting the enemy. His wrist was so painful that he could scarcely think. It felt as though acid was eating through the bones.
The stuff from the barrels gave off fumes that burned his nose, and Glynnie’s eyes were watering. The dinghies reached the outside of the gyre, equally spaced around it. The last of the fluid was emptied out. The oarsmen rowed another ten yards, then stopped and the lantern men returned to the bow and stood there, watching the gyre.
Glynnie threw her hands up, clutching the sides of her head.
“Head feels like it’s bursting.”
“Try not to breathe the fumes.”
They had gone another thirty yards when the captain swung a brawny arm, hurling a glowing object hard and high. It wheeled over three times before smacking into the water. Nothing happened for one, two, three seconds.
Then flames exploded up and raced across the gyre from one side to the other.
CHAPTER 11
Glynnie’s knuckles were white where she gripped the edge of the floating door. She was staring back towards the lake shore as if expecting to hear someone cry out that they had found a body. Benn’s.
In the other direction the edge of the wheel of flotsam, thirty or forty yards away, stretched further than Rix could see. Mist was rising everywhere now, banners streaming up into the icy air to be drifted into fog banks by the breeze. It would soon be dark.
He had lost sight of the dinghies, though he could hear the searchers talking and the gunwales knocking together. They must have anchored above the outlet to the drainpipe, sending divers down to see if any of the escapees had drowned there. The search would not take long.
“We’d better abandon the door,” said Rix. “It’s too easily spotted.”
“Don’t think I can last much longer.” Glynnie’s teeth chattered. She clenched her jaw.
Rix didn’t have much left either. Between the cold, the pain in his wrist, the lack of sleep and the battering his body had taken in recent days, his strength was fading.
But he wasn’t beaten yet. “Come here. Put your arms around me.”
“Lord?”
“It’ll keep the cold away.”
She bit her lip. Was she afraid of him? No, Glynnie was still in awe of House Ricinus, and the mighty lord that Rix was in her eyes, rather than the dishonoured man he was in his own. He pulled her against his chest with his free arm and held her tightly, and after a while she put her arms around him and clasped her hands behind his back. The pain in his wrist faded a little.
“You’re warm!” she said in amazement.
“I was swimming hard.”
As warmth spread between them, Rix found himself clinging to her for comfort. All his life he had known where he belonged – the heir to a noble house – and where everyone around him fitted into the vast entity that had been House Ricinus. Now he had no house, no family, no place, and in this savage land a man who belonged nowhere was prey to all.
They pulled apart at the same moment. Pain lanced into Rix’s wrist bones.
“Can you swim out to the flotsam, Glynnie? You’ve got to be able to do it by yourself…”
If I’m killed, lay unspoken between them.
She looked that way and her small shoulders hunched. “I – I’ll try.”
It was little more than a dog paddle at first, but as she swam Glynnie’s stroke changed to imitate his. She was painfully slow; he could have
towed her there in half the time, but she was a good learner. Her courage and determination were an inspiration.
They limped thirty yards before they reached the edge of the slowly wheeling gyre of debris. Glynnie was tiring, starting to thrash.
“Can’t go – any —” She was gasping, making no progress.
Rix pushed a floating plank to her. She clung to it the way she had clung to him earlier.
He surveyed the gyre. There were scores of uprooted trees, a timber yard’s worth of lumber, hundreds of pieces of furniture – some broken, others unmarked – empty bottles of many sizes, shapes and colours, an inflated wine skin that might have been used as an emergency float, a white china teapot with a red rose painted on the side, bobbing its handle and spout. The water seemed thicker here and had an unpleasant red-brown tinge. And a smell Rix did not want to dwell on.
Dead seabirds, white wings spread upon the water, eyes pecked out. A drowned goat with bloated belly and four legs standing vertical. And bodies, some broken by the force of the tidal wave, some apparently unharmed, but all dead and eyeless, as if they could not bear to look upon the horror that had befallen them.
The gyre might have been a hundred yards across, or thrice that far. He could not see the further edge through the mist. It was the best hiding place they had, though only a miracle could save them from a determined search by three boats.
Rix looked over his shoulder but the mist had closed in along the shore as well; he could not see anything there. He could hear the faintest rasping though, the rhythm unmistakeable to one who had spent his youth in boats.
Glynnie caught the direction of his gaze. “What’s that funny noise?”
“Rowing. They’ve packed sacking into the rowlocks to muffle the oars.”
“They’re coming after us?”
“Yes.”
Rix caught the drifting wine skin. “Put this under your shirt. It’ll hold you up…”
She held onto it to support herself. “If the cold gets me, a float isn’t going to help.”
They headed towards the centre of the gyre, passing more broken timber, more dead animals, more bodies. One was a boy, floating face down with his arms and legs rigidly outstretched. And he had red hair —
“Benn?” said Glynnie in a cracked voice.
She sagged on the wine skin, her weight pressing it beneath the surface, then let go and it shot out of the water. She began to thrash towards the boy, making little progress and far too much noise. Rix caught her by the shoulder. She swung around and punched him in the nose, then flailed off. He caught her by the hair, holding her until she exhausted herself.
“It’s not him, Glynnie.”
“How would you know?” she sobbed. “I got to be sure.”
He didn’t want to look at any more bodies, and definitely didn’t want to see what time and predators had done to an innocent child, but there was no help for it. He swam with her to the body and turned it over.
She gave a muffled shriek, then turned away and clung to him, desperately. “That poor little boy.”
Rix turned the lad face down again. It seemed more respectful. He swam away, carrying her with him, to a pine table floating on its side.
“How did you know it wasn’t Benn?” said Glynnie, hanging onto the edge of the table.
“This gyre must have been here since the tidal wave, and the wind isn’t strong enough to mix it up. Any body in the middle of the gyre must have been here for days.”
She seemed to take comfort from that. It allowed her to keep hoping. Rix rubbed his nose, which was throbbing from the blow, and found a smear of blood on his hand.
“Lord, I’m sorry,” said Glynnie, hanging her head. “You must think —”
“I dare say I deserved it.” He stiffened. The muffled sound of rowing was louder than before and coming from several places at once.
“Have I given us away?” she whispered.
“They know we escaped, and since they haven’t found us in their drag nets, or ashore, there’s only one place we can be.”
“What are we going to do?”
Die, he thought, and that will put an end to all pain.
“Keep going. There could be a storm… or we might find a boat in the rubbish. You never know.”
They were in an impossible situation and she knew it. He was about to swim on when a dinghy emerged from a mist bank, barely thirty yards away. A man at the bow held a lantern up on the end of a pole; a yellow halo surrounded it.
Rix pulled her down until only their eyes were above the water. “Don’t look at the light,” he whispered. “They’ll see it reflected in your eyes. Look down.”
He did the same, one arm around her chest. He could feel the thumping of her heart, her chest rising and falling with each breath. The lantern man swung his light from one side to the other, scanning the debris-littered water. The boat passed through a banner of low-hanging mist. The light made a brighter halo, then disappeared.
“Another boat behind us,” breathed Glynnie. “They’re searching in a pattern.”
Rix rotated. The second boat was mere shadow and rainbow-ringed light, moving steadily through the mist, then gone.
“The next pass will come right through here. And that close, nothing can hide us. Come on.”
He set off towards the line the first boat had followed. Glynnie followed for a while, then stopped, and when he turned to check she was going under. He raced back, hauled her up. Her face and hands were mottled blue and purple from the cold and she was shuddering fitfully.
“Leave me,” she said dully. “Can’t go – any further.”
“I’m not leaving you. Shh! You’re breathing like a walrus.”
He towed her across, taking advantage of the cover of a drifting sideboard here, a dead donkey there. Rix was very cold now and an icy lethargy was creeping through him too. If they stayed in the water much longer Glynnie would collapse from exposure. He pulled her against his chest but this time no warmth grew between them, not a trace. He was numb from cold, save for his right wrist, which burned with fire.
“We’re going to die, Lord,” she whispered. “Right here.”
Better we do than the enemy take us, he thought. “Not yet, Glynnie. You’ve got to hang on. We’ll beat them yet.”
He played hide-and-seek with the three boats for another few minutes as they crisscrossed the gyre. It was almost dark now but the fog was lifting and Rix was losing hope; he could feel Glynnie slipping away. The water was taking her body heat faster than she could generate it.
They were in the meagre shelter of an almost submerged log when the three dinghies came together in an open space forty yards away. The leader of the searchers stood up in the dinghy and swept his arm out in a circle that seemed to indicate the circumference of the gyre.
“I don’t like this,” Rix muttered in Glynnie’s ear. “What Cythonian devilry have they got in mind now?”
Glynnie’s head lolled onto his shoulder. She was fading fast, and if he couldn’t warm her she would die. He pulled his shirt up, and hers, pressed his bare chest against her and crushed them together. A faint warmth grew there.
After a minute or two, Glynnie roused. Her head wobbled, steadied. Her eyes drifted open, unfocused, then suddenly widened.
“Lord!” she croaked, trying to pull away. “What are you doing?”
He held her. “Saving our lives. Shh!”
Clots of mist drifted by, momentarily obscuring the three dinghies, then cleared. They separated and were rowed out in widening spirals, each lantern man now supporting a barrel on the transom. From the bung holes, an oily liquid gurgled into the water.
The enemy were masters of the alchymical arts and had developed all manner of terrifying new weapons. Rix had seen more than enough of their effects in the first days of the war and did not want to experience them here. He went backwards, using just his feet.
“Is it poison?” said Glynnie.
Every possibility Rix could think of
was horrifying. “I don’t know.”
“They’re trying to kill you.”
Glynnie would have been safer if he’d left her behind. Being with him was a death warrant. “We’ve got to get out of the gyre. Hold tight!”
The dinghies were rowing quickly now, as if they did not want to be anywhere near the gyre when their mission was completed. They would reach the outside before he and Glynnie were a quarter of the way, and he could not swim any faster without alerting the enemy. His wrist was so painful that he could scarcely think. It felt as though acid was eating through the bones.
The stuff from the barrels gave off fumes that burned his nose, and Glynnie’s eyes were watering. The dinghies reached the outside of the gyre, equally spaced around it. The last of the fluid was emptied out. The oarsmen rowed another ten yards, then stopped and the lantern men returned to the bow and stood there, watching the gyre.
Glynnie threw her hands up, clutching the sides of her head.
“Head feels like it’s bursting.”
“Try not to breathe the fumes.”
They had gone another thirty yards when the captain swung a brawny arm, hurling a glowing object hard and high. It wheeled over three times before smacking into the water. Nothing happened for one, two, three seconds.
Then flames exploded up and raced across the gyre from one side to the other.
CHAPTER 12
Glynnie screamed.
The captain bellowed, “There they are. They’re mine!”
Fire was racing towards Rix and Glynnie. It wasn’t orange like normal fire, but an ominous, chymical crimson. He could not see the other boats through the flames, but he had no choice. He had to take the fastest way out of the gyre even though it led directly to the captain’s dinghy. If it was the last thing Rix ever did, he was going to save her.
He hissed, “Deepest breath you can, now!”
Glynnie was used to obeying without question. He pulled her under, fixed the position of the dinghy in his mind and dived deep. Flames rushed across the water above them. The light turned an unpleasant red, tinged with black.
