24 Trouble Down River

WHEN AIYANA AWOKE, her head felt stuffy, with a thunderous sound in her ears. Stones ground into her hips, and her body felt frozen.

She lay on her back smelling mud. Her eyes teared up as she squinted through a gap in the bushes. The sky was light blue, though rain clouds smudged the edges. Turning her head, she saw water foaming and spitting.

Shivering, she attempted to rise but keeled over, no feeling in her limbs. She tucked her hands into her armpits and rocked. The worker’s clothes and tattered cloak were soaked. After regaining some feeling, she stood up and scanned her surroundings.

She spotted a broad boat, abandoned, tilted to the left on its keel with the stern inches from the water. Had she been in that boat? Her mind felt sluggish. Sand dunes rose behind her, some twelve feet in height, covered in patches of brown stringy grass and the odd tall cottonwood.

She stumbled towards the boat and peered inside. It was of dubious quality the overlapping strakes rotten and cracked, with various bits of fabric clogging holes. Several rivets were missing. Folded blankets and coarse bags littered the bottom between the curved ribs. There were three oars. There should’ve been four.

It all came back to her.

She recognised the boat as a batav or riverboat for transporting light goods. It had been waiting for them a mile south of the river’s headwaters at Willow Lake. The Noy was notorious. In places, traders offloaded goods and transported them by land to another point on the river. It was, however, the quickest route south while remaining unseen. The road to Lame, which lay on its western bank, was a dangerous option. Where were Cathya and Turol?

One sack began twitching and kicking.

As she fiddled with the rough copper wire, she realised she could now return to Icarthya. She hoped her Darken was okay but she needed to get back. A kecc emerged, emitting a whine. Leather straps binding its muzzle had loosened. Four legs and a tail followed a long face as it knocked her onto her back.

A type of dog, kecci were closer to slinkts. Icarthian ancestors had crossbred dogs with the predator after innumerable attempts to domesticate slinkts failed.

She wrestled with it. ‘Shush, shush. I’m not going to hurt you.’ What sort of imbecile put an animal in a sack? Then she remembered having that argument with Turol before he’d also stuffed her into one. She’d argued that too, kicked and spat, but her Darken had made the decision in the end to let her out. Since when did she decide everything? Probably around the same time she decided to kidnap me. Oh, Cath.

The creature’s straps were wet and frayed. She kept a tight grip on its muzzle to prevent it reaching full pitch. The creature calmed as she petted it. She’d owned one once but it had kept getting sick. Two months later, her father had forced her to get rid of it. Presently, as she relaxed her grip, it leapt away and ran off.  

Both kecci and slinkts could whine to a pitch that damaged hearing. Food was a good reason to have one but that didn’t excuse its treatment. Their whines knocked small creatures unconscious, but all kecc owners kept small wads of wax to plug their ears.

She spotted wads in the bottom of the boat along with a leash. Searching the other bags, she discovered meagre supplies of double-baked bread, dried fish, and a thick wedge of hard cheese.

Leaning against the boat, squinting in the sunshine, she tore off a piece of fish and chewed. There was no sign of Cathya, the captain, or the smuggler who owned the boat. The current might have carried them downstream. That her Darken was alive was a given. Cathya was headstrong, disobedient, irritating to a fault with a warped logic but indestructible.

She remembered the thud of the batav scraping over rocks, four of them struggling with the oars. The boat had lurched and toppled. The world had gone dark.

Patches of grass dotted dunes to the east. Beyond them rose an undulating grey line, which she believed were the Wunn Mountains.

She’d just decided to start looking downriver, when the ground shook. An intermittent thumping resonated beneath her. The vibration bled into her bones. An earth tremor, she thought, but it didn’t feel right. Tremors didn’t produce such a rhythm.

A lone figure broke the horizon, scrambling over the dunes. Aiyana shielded her eyes with one hand. As the figure descended into the shadow of the dunes, she saw it was a man. He wore a filthy barely-blue coat. A scarf concealed the lower half of his face.

‘About time you inconsiderate laggard,’ she snapped, hands on hips. ‘And don’t think I’ve gone and forgotten about—’

‘Get in the boat,’ Turol shouted.

‘What?’

‘Okay then, don’t get in the boat.’ Reaching the batav, he shoved it into the water, grunting. It was no easy task with such a heavy vessel. Batavs were small but broad. He appeared desperate, and then she realised why. Licking dry lips, she turned to look upwards at the dunes.

‘You getting in, princess, or not?’

A thunderous reverberation reached them, much closer now, its cadence equal to those earlier ones. Nephilim. I would’ve preferred an earth tremor. Oh, a grolg’s piss on it anyway, she would’ve settled for a full-blown quake.

She sloshed into the water, clambered over the side, and landed in a heap at the bottom. Several stuffed leaks reopened.

‘Grab an oar.’ The captain glowered at her. He tugged on the scarf and spat over the side. ‘And plug those.’

‘Where’s Cath?’ She tried to stop the leaks, her hands numb from the cold water, and how dare he speak to her that way? Was everyone forgetting who she was? Well, perhaps the act of kidnapping her, not to mention lugging her over his shoulder, had obliterated a few barriers. All the same, her talk with Cathya was going to be unpleasant. For her.

‘I don’t know. I lost sight of her.’

‘We must find her.’

There was a snapping boom. Shapes arced out over the dunes, towards them.

‘Get down!’

The river exploded. The batav lurched violently. ‘We cannot leave without her.’ Another strike sent spumes of water across them, almost swamping the boat.

‘They’re not giving us a choice now, are they?’ Turol glanced back as he guided the boat into the rapids. He pulled at the mask and spat. ‘Grab that spare oar. Don’t sit there gawking at them. You’ll be no good to anyone if you get killed.’

Aiyana felt at a loss, but grabbed the other oar. The sun in her eyes, she struggled to see as silhouettes crested the dunes. The Nephilim held long poles. She’d read once that their spawn, imps as a vapidly minded historian once named them, trained for war as soon as they could walk. They started out with staff slings. Nephilim births were said to be rarer than human, but upon reaching adolescence, the children were blooded. Children, she thought, almost laughing. Those imps were as tall as most men, taller.

She couldn’t make out details, but those poles would have ropes attached. Two of them stooped while the staff wielders waited, with another snapping boom followed by yet another.

The batav rocked as it rode the turgid waters. If one struck the boat, they were done for.

She then spotted another figure below the dunes, within the gloom. Flame haired and lithe, she raced towards the river, weaving in and out. She moved with a speed that seemed unnatural.

Cath!

It was clear now why most missiles had landed short, their boat not the main target. Aiyana struggled to see as the batav lurched again. A spear fell towards the fugitive. It missed by a foot. Another arced down, then another, each closing the gap to within inches. Arrows peppered the sand, missing by a hair. Cathya now varied her dodges left and right, but maintained her incredible speed.

‘Turol, over there,’ Aiyana yelled, pointing.

He angled the boat towards shore. The Darken splashed out into the river as several arrows fell towards her. She reached the boat, and they hauled her in. Two arrows thudded into the side of the batav, followed by eruptions of water.

‘Yana,’ said Cathya teary eyed, though it was hard to tell with water streaming down her face. ‘I’d feared you dead.’ She was fawning over her charge, checking her for injuries as though she’d not nearly died herself.

‘Damn it,’ yelled Turol, ‘use those oars. We’ve no time for girlish kisses. We’re not out of this yet.’

As the river swept them out of danger, Aiyana glared at his back. The soldier’s attitude had deteriorated. He needed a lesson in proper decorum. Perhaps it was just their situation, but she wouldn’t tolerate it for much longer.

She stared at the retreating dunes as their course veered into the dying day. The Noy ended in Lamedon, where it met the sea, but there were falls ahead and they would need to leave the river soon. She glanced at burgeoning grey clouds, the weather fast turning. Forest loomed on either bank, ancient trees stretching branches out over the water. Though more of a heavy mist, the odd fat drop escaped the latticed overhang. Aiyana flinched when one landed on her cheek.

‘We must turn back,’ she said. ‘We must return to Icarthya. If you refuse, I will jump back into the water right now.’

‘What, no,’ Cathya cried. ‘There’s no going back. Yana, I didn’t bring you out of there just to let you go back.’

‘Is it any safer out here in the wilderness, with giants trying to kill us?’

‘You can rest once we reach Lamedon. Then we will travel overland through a mountain pass. You’ll be safer beyond the borderlands. Listen to me; you’re tired, you’re not thinking straight.’

‘My thinking has never been clearer. The borderlands are just as dangerous. There’s no love there for the imperium. It won’t be much safer.’

‘No one will know who you are. We can hide you.’

‘She’s right, you know,’ said Turol from the bow of the boat. ‘We’re just trading one set of dangers for another.’

‘No one asked you,’ Cathya snapped. ‘Yana, I got you out of that city for a reason. Liviana wants the throne and she’ll murder you to secure it. And don’t forget there’s an army of Nephilim that will soon descend upon us. Didn’t you just see what happened? They’ve got scouts all over the place.’ The Darken’s short red hair was matted to her skull in dark clumps. Her eyes looked haunted. Cathya rubbed Aiyana’s arms to get warmth into her, but she remained cold.

‘Liviana already has the throne,’ said Aiyana. ‘If she wants me, she can send assassins to hunt me anytime. Running accomplishes nothing.’

‘I told you; we can hide you.’

‘To what ... what end?’ She felt odd, and a glance at the chagrined look on her Darken’s face said it all. ‘You, you did it again. I ... I don’t believe ... stupid ...’

‘A smaller dose. I can’t risk giving you too much too soon, but I also can’t risk you trying to escape. I’m sorry.’

‘When ...?’ It had to have been when they’d gotten Cathya into the boat. Spectrum above, she’d not waited a second. The woman was nothing if not dedicated. ‘You ... bitch.’

‘Guess I’ve earned that.’ Cathya watched the riverbank for any sign of their pursuers.

Aiyana lay back, one arm gripping the rail. It was a smaller dose, the effects slower. She vowed she’d never hug the woman again. She wouldn’t. Slap her, maybe.

‘We will return one day, and you will take the throne back from that usurper, but we need time to organise.’

‘What time ... do you think we ... have?’

‘Why won’t you trust that I know what’s best?’ Cathya sat back, watching the captain guide them through the swift grey waters. ‘This is all much bigger than you realise, you know.’

Now what was that supposed to mean?

Black ungainly cormorants perched on skeletal trees close to the river. At the water’s edge, among tall reeds, were crested grebes with their dagger-like beaks and dark head plumes. Loud guttural calls followed them downriver as Aiyana fell fast asleep.