by Arthur Stone
But I couldn’t sleep until evening. A half hour later, we returned to the raft and pushed off.
The route from the day before was repeated. We barely paid attention as we pushed off with our poles and directed our craft to the middle of the current. Inertia took it from there.
“Look! What are they doing?” Beko asked, watching the shore.
I turned to see two people rushing away from the fishing shed. It was Tatai, one of the Carps, and Romris himself—cousin of the Carps chief. The latter was clearly chasing the former, who was dodging and bolting, waving his hands wildly for some reason.
“I think he’s trying to tell us something,” I wondered.
At those words, Beko tossed the anchor into the water, and it uncoiled its rope and found its place quickly.
Romris had just caught up with Tatai and grabbed him, hauling him up from the ground—then, he froze, staring at us maliciously. I had never liked the way he looked at us. Now, that disgust was amplified by an order of magnitude.
He grabbed Tatai’s neck and squeezed, beginning to chock the boy. Even from such a distance, I could all but see the boy’s eyes bulging from their sockets.
“Bastard! What are you doing?” I yelled.
Romris showed his teeth and continued his abuse of the child.
Boiling over with anger, I seized the anchor rope. “Help me, Beko. It’s time to take that monster down!”
“Let them sort it out,” the ghoul responded, clearly reluctant to engage with his nemesis.
“Do what I say, or he’s going to kill the boy! He’s gone mad!”
The rope came up far too easily. No anchor was attached. Only then did I realize that we had not in fact stopped—the current continued to bring us along down the sandbar.
I seized the pole, but it failed to reach the bottom, as the river here was deep. Beko understood what we needed to do and grabbed the oar, shoving it into the water.
With a crunch, the blade of the oar snapped off and began floating away. I tried in vain to reach it. “Genius, Beko. Genius!”
“I... I don’t know what happened,” Beko blinked. “It just broke on its own, before I knew what was happened.”
Romris continued strangling Tatai’s crumpled body with one hand—and waving goodbye with the other. Once more, my hatred multiplied.
“We have to get off of this!”
We were only fifteen yards from the rock atop which the trading post was built—but that distance might as well have been a hundred yards. The river was too strong here, and too deep. I could jump—abandoning all of the goods on the raft, and the raft itself, to the mercy of fate, and risking getting attacked by a swarm of the kotes with which the waters teemed in early summer.
Beko sat down gloomily. “The rope was cut.”
“I figured. That bastard broke our oar, too. But why? If he has killed Tatai, everything is over for him. He’ll be lucky if all they do is break both his arms.”
“Yes,” Beko said, an evil joy in his voice. “We’ll be back before long and tell Hugo everything. They’ll break his arms right then and there. And maybe they’ll hang him!”
I looked downriver and shook my head. “This will take us a while. The right bank here is a cliff too tall for us to climb. And we’re far from the left. The river is deep. Also, there’s no bridge from the other side—we’ll have to shout and wave our hands in order to get those blind tower sentinels to notice us.”
“Blind?” Beko blinked.
“They never seem to notice anything. They didn’t see what just happened. Unless... Maybe Romris somehow knew that they wouldn’t see it.”
“How could he know that?”
“I have no idea. He was so sure of himself, attacking Tatai out in the open like that. He’s never behaved like that before, has he? I don’t know what’s happening here, but one thing I do know: Romris never struck me as crazy.”
“You don’t know him at all!” Beko said, as if offended. “He’s always been a nasty man. Always.”
As we continued to float downriver, the right shore continued to offer us no opportunity to ascend it. Vertical rock, plunging from high above us deep down into the water. My fishing talents showed me that our poles were useless here. Not that we could climb well, anyway.
“Unless we get to shore fast, Beko, we’re going to have to spend the night on the raft.”
“No,” the ghoul answered calmly, “see that turn up ahead?”
“Of course.”
“Around the bend, we can climb up the right bank. There’s one place where a creek has cut through the cliff, all the way down to the water. In the spring, it brings rocks with it. In the summer, it brings sand. And so there is a sandbar that stretches out, nearly to the middle of Blackriver. Everything floating down the right side runs over it. One time, our fishermen were out here drunk. They set out the nets and took a nap. They ended up hitting the sandbar, and so will we. Then, we’ll head up the creek. There’s a trail leading from there.”
I grabbed the scooping net and started rowing.
“What are you doing?” Beko cocked his head. “Just sit and relax. Soon we’ll be ashore, and we’ll walk up to the bridge. We’ll tell them everything about Romris.”
“We can’t let ourselves be stuck on that sandbar.”
The ghoul was taken aback. “Why not?”
“They’ll be waiting for us.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know who, but I do know they won’t be waiting with floral wreaths. Don’t you see? Romris was one hundred percent sure we would be unable to ruin him. They intend to catch us. This was all planned out. I bet that Tatai found out about their evil plan and ran to warn us, but he was too late.”
“Who’s waiting for us?” Beko insisted.
“Someone looking to rob us, kill us, enslave us, I don’t know. I just know that we must not end up on that sandbar. Help me row.”
“With what?”
“With your ears, if you have to. Quickly!”
* * *
They were indeed waiting for us.
Three men stood on the sandbar, which was clear on one side and swamped with debris on the other. In the darkening twilight, it was difficult to discern any details, but they seemed to be adult men, clad in discreet apparel. One had something that looked very much like a large bow.
The rope had been severed very close to the anchor itself. Thanks to that, we had a lot of rope left, and we used that to wrap the net and turn the scooping net into little less than a full-fledged paddle. No matter how strongly the current fought against us, we resisted, working in shifts, and thus we managed to draw the raft away from the right bank and into the middle of the river. Now, we would pass about 40 yards away from the tip of the sandbar.
A bow, in capable hands, could shoot a good deal farther than that. I had heard stories of archers with astronomical numbers behind their shots. Able to skewer you through the heart from hundreds of yards away. Those were only archers of vanishingly rare skill, of course—but far be it from me to presume on the weakness of my enemies.
I turned to Beko. “Row us around so that the stern points towards the sandbar. I’m going to move the baskets.”
“Why?”
“They might be able to protect us from any arrows. The sky is growing dark quickly, but we are moving quickly, too. It won’t be dark enough to cover us entirely.”
Twelve baskets were filled to the brim, and two others partly filled. With the containers so packed full of fish, I doubted an arrow could punch through. Especially with the archer dozens of yards away—with each yard, the arrow’s penetration power would decrease.
Never before had I moved heavy objects so quickly. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins. I moved those baskets as speedily as I would have if they had been empty. Mercilessly I shoved them together, allowing no gaps for death to reach between. Once I was done with this task, I ripped the topmost layer from the center of the platform and put it up as an additional obstacle
.
I was just in the nick of time.
As soon as we took refuge behind our cover, screams rang out from the sandbar.
“There they are!”
“Chaos take them, why aren’t they near the sandbar?”
I could not help myself from responding, “Because we know this river, unlike you worthless idiots!”
“Biqo, step aside. Aside, I said! I’ll show those street rats who’s worthless!”
A nasty twang rang out, and our basket barrier took a hit so solid it splashed us with fish innards.
“Hey, boy! How’d that feel? Well?”
We weren’t about to provide them the satisfaction of a reply. We both knew that it was dark enough now that the archer was unable to discern our position on the blackening surface of the river. He hoped to pinpoint us by the sounds we made.
We showed no further desire to communicate, despite this provocation. The archer began to fire blindly.
One arrow hit, then another—and then one whizzed past my hair and buried itself in the deck, which a second ago had seemed impossible.
Before, I had cursed our speed. Now, I called hellfire upon our slowness. A dozen more times the archer fired, and finally hit.
Beko screamed after a projectile punched through the barricade, and then started whimpering.
A cheer came from the shore. “I got one!”
“Nail the other to the deck!”
“I can’t see shit now. We have to make our way downriver and cut them off.”
“We’ll never beat them. The river will take them to the Grove in no time.”
“To Chaos with them, then. That’s where they’ll die.”
“What’s wrong, Beko?” I asked quietly. “Sit up—they can’t hit us anymore.”
“My... my... my eye.”
“Your eye? He shot you in the eye?”
Thankfully, Beko’s words were founded only on pure panic. A wide-tipped arrow had punched throw the barrier and grazed the poor boy’s cheekbone. It had lost most of its power by then, but blood still sprayed from the wound like water from a hose. Most leaked through the gaps between the logs of the raft, dripping into the water and frenzying the nearby kotes. Their splashes intensified.
I made my friend pull his hand away from the wound, and I put my palm there instead. Activating my healing talent, I watched my chi shadow drain rapidly.
Then, I moved my hand away. “Done. You can stop shaking now, Beko. Your eye is OK—he just slashed your cheek. I just healed it.”
“H... healed? You’re a healer?”
“Not a very good one, but yes, I am. I can only deal with scratches and close up small wounds while they’re still fresh. You’ll probably have a scar.”
Beko cheered up and started washing his face. “I don’t mind a scar.”
You have treated a wounded person. Wound healed!
You receive: Lesser Symbol of Chi x1
Huh, I even got a reward from the ORDER. What a lucky day. Hurray.
“Those monsters wanted to move downriver and catch us, but then one of them said we’re going to die in some grove anyway.”
Beko nodded. “If he’s talking about the Black Grove, then yes, we will die there. Even Stubs doesn’t go there. It’s a very bad place.”
“Then we have to get this raft to shore. But how? Before the darkness really settled in, I saw a cliff just beginning opposite the sandbar. It didn’t look very high, but I’m not sure we can climb it.”
“No way. That’s clay, which no one can climb. This is a tough stretch. Maybe there are some promising places, but I don’t know about them. From here on, the river becomes a death trap.”
“You do realize what just happened, don’t you?”
“What?”
“That archer who shoots people in the eye was attacking us.”
Beko looked up. “What? How do you know that?”
“He almost hit you right in the eye. I had an arrow whiz right past my skull. Even when he shot through those baskets of fish, he somehow knew where our eyes were. A mighty marksman, for sure.”
“Wow, that was really him!” the ghoul exclaimed. “And we’re alive. Our eyes are fine. All of our eyes!”
“I’m glad you’re happy, but...”
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“It’s dark, and the river is sweeping us away. We can’t even see where we’re going. And you just told me that the Black Grove is up ahead—and that not even Stubs goes there. He’s a million times stronger than us.”
“A million? How many is that?”
“We could spend all week counting, Beko, day and night, and we wouldn’t reach a million.”
Chapter 34
On the Blackriver
No Stat Changes
Blackriver was a wild, fast waterway. Its shores were cluttered with vegetation, and sometimes large trees piled up to block parts of the river. Even during the day, navigating it could be perilous. Nighttime river trips were utterly foolhardy.
We had no choice, of course. Somehow we continued to pass by every obstacle, running into nothing. Keeping the raft pointed forward did little but waste our strength. It was a precaution, in case of collision. Any dry trees would crush our fish barrels before they could strike our bodies. This barrier had already saved us once today, and we hoped it might again.
The darkness became complete. Clouds blotted out the moon and the stars. I had trouble seeing my hand in front of my face, and I was unable to activate my fishing talent. Not because it was dark—it still worked in the dark, if poorly. No, it was because I barely had any chi shadow left. I had spent so much fishing, and then nearly all of the rest healing Beko. It was recovering slowly, and I decided to save whatever I could regain for emergencies.
My ears picked up the characteristic murmuring of river water encountering an obstacle in its way.
“I hear something,” Beko said, tense.
“So do I, but I can’t see anything.”
“Neither can I.”
“You’re not a very good ghoul, then, if you can’t see in the dark.”
“I know that,” Beko agreed. “Ged, listen. What’s that humming up ahead?”
I concentrated, trying to discern the same sound beyond the burbling river.
A few seconds later I replied, but I was not sure of myself. “You’re right, there’s something I don’t recognize.”
“We must have reached the Stone Shelf Rapids. That must be what’s humming.”
“Rapids? Can we get through them?”
“I’ve heard of a boat getting through, when the water was high. But this is no boat, and it’s nighttime. The raft might be smashed to bits on the rocks. This is bad. Worst of all, there’s nothing we can do about it. Except maybe start paddling blindly, but why? That might bring us to shore, but it might push us into the very rocks, or into a barrier made of fallen trees. A river teeming with kotes is not the best place for a swim.”
The noise was growing rapidly louder, and Beko was most likely right. I had no desire to encounter such a massive challenge in the darkness. I tried to steer the raft blindly, focusing on nothing but the sounds of fast-flowing water.
After a few minutes of work with the makeshift oar, it hit something solid. I hardly saw anything, but I reached out to feel cold stone.
“The cliff!” Beko exclaimed as he also reached out. “We’re at the cliff!”
“But we can’t disembark here,” I said with annoyance.
As we were floating along the cliffside, though, the water was rather deep here. Any vegetation, rocks, and other obstacles were far enough below so as not to concern us. Even experienced alpinists be fools to try to climb the slippery cliff blindly, in utter darkness.
“I’m beginning to see things,” Beko said. “Dawn is coming.”
“It’s still too dark,” I mumbled back. “If we hit the rapids while the sky is like this, we’ll come closer to drowning than ever before.”
The raft hit the cliff agai
n—and once again, we were unable to grab hold of anything. Hopefully the current was weaker here, and we should try to stick close.
