King of Foxes (32 page)

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knife. “They’re not much,” said Tal, “but they are all we have. Now, get this raft in the water.”

The men picked up the makeshift vessel and waded quickly into the sea. With the moons down, the breakers were rolling lightly, breaking at chest height. After getting completely soaked, Tal and Will stood at the mast, and Tal said, “Four men will sit on each outer log, and take turns paddling. The rest of you will hang on to the rear of the raft and you must kick and push. We have less than an hour before sunrise. Zirga and the others will be up within an hour after that, and I want to make sure we are far enough away that they can’t see us from the top of the keep.” He detailed the eight strongest men, including Masterson and Quint, to paddle. The others hung on the back of the raft and let it carry them along until ordered to kick.

The current moved them northward, while the paddlers and kickers made slight headway toward the mainland. Except for Quint and Masterson, most of the men had almost no stamina; so at intervals, Tal had two men change places, coming out of the water to paddle, while those who had just paddled rested on the makeshift canvas deck. He hoped by rotating the duty more men might survive to reach the shore.

The progress was torturously slow, but when at last the sun rose over the eastern horizon, the keep was a distant dot to the southeast. Tal had better eyesight than most men, and he was convinced no one left at the keep would be able to see them from the roof.

At least that was his hope.

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Zirga yawned as he left his quarters and scratched his backside. He saw Kyle standing at the door of the guards’

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room and knew instantly something was wrong. “What is it? Did someone die during the night?”

Kyle shook his head and said, “No. It’s the prisoners.”

“What about them?”

“They’re gone.”

“What do you mean, they’re gone?”

“None of them are in their cells.”

“That’s impossible.” Zirga hurried to look in the cells himself, as if not trusting the guard’s word. After a few minutes, he said, “Someone’s playing a game. Look in all the cells.” He shouted, and in a few minutes Anatoli, Benson, and Royce also appeared, looking equally confused.

Zirga told them to search the entire keep, and when they returned reporting no one was around, he shouted, “Then search the island!”

They took off, and Zirga headed up to the roof of the keep. He blinked at the rising sun and looked around in every direction. For a brief instant he thought he saw a speck to the northwest, just on the horizon, but after a moment, he saw only water and sky. Knowing what he would hear when his men returned, Zirga descended slowly and walked to the kitchen.

As he suspected, there were clear signs that the armory and pantry had been raided. He sat at the small table where Tal and Will ate every night and waited. Within an hour, the men returned, all reporting the same thing: no sign of the prisoners anywhere.

Zirga said, “Who looked at the north beach?”

Benson, a portly man with almost no chin, said, “I did, sir.”

“What did you see?”

“A beach, sir.”

Zirga shook his head. “You idiot! I meant did you see tracks or signs of a boat being dragged up on the sand?”

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“Not so’s you’d notice, but then . . . I wasn’t looking.”

Zirga shook his head, and his expression was one of disbelief.

“I mean, I was lookin’ for the men. You want me to go back and look for tracks?”

Zirga said, “No need. They’re not on the island.”

Anatoli said, “What’ll we do?”

Zirga took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. To Royce he said, “Cook us something to eat.” To the others he said, “We wait.”

“Wait? For what?” asked Kyle.

“For the first ship to show up and take us away.”

“Away? Where are we going?” asked Royce as he moved toward the pantry.

“Anywhere but Opardum,” said Zirga. “When the Duke finds out we let seventeen prisoners just walk off this island, he’ll send another governor and four new guards and we five will be the first new prisoners in this place.”

“I wouldn’t like that,” said Anatoli.

Zirga just shook his head and covered his eyes. “Bring me some brandy. That’s a good lad.”

Anatoli did as he was told, and Zirga sat back, looking around the kitchen. “I’ve got some gold put by, so maybe I can find something to do up in County Conar. I’ve got a cousin down in a village near the border of Salmater. He might have a place for me. Wherever I end up, lads, it’s going to be far from here.” He heaved a regretful sigh.

“But I’m really going to miss those meals.”

The other three nodded and voiced agreement as Royce started to cook.

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By midday Tal judged they had gone farther north than he had anticipated, and it was more difficult moving toward the mainland than Tal had anticipated. They seemed to get no closer to land no matter how hard they paddled.

He could faintly see white water breaking on the shores, so he knew they were no more than two miles out, but for the last hour they didn’t seem to have been closing.

He looked at the men in the water and saw that several were showing signs of succumbing to the cold water.

He ordered the paddlers into the water, then motioned for Will to follow him into the sea. He then told those looking weakest to get out and try to get as dry as possible in the sun as fresh paddlers took up their positions.

There was a breeze blowing, which would help them dry out, but to Tal’s irritation, it was blowing to the northeast, so the primitive sail would be of no use to them.

Tal watched closely and saw that two of the men who had just come out of the water were in serious trouble.

Their teeth were chattering uncontrollably and they could barely hang on as they crouched on the logs. “Sit athwart and let your feet dangle, and keep your hands on the log, so you don’t fall in,” he instructed them. He knew that once their shirts dried they’d start feeling the heat of the sun, but it would be a close thing.

He gauged the progress they were making as best he could from in the water, but after nearly ten minutes, he thought, if anything, they were farther away. To those in the water with him, he said, “Kick.”

He put his one good hand around the pole before him, then started kicking as hard as he could. The others followed his example while the paddlers redoubled their effort.

After a few minutes, he shouted, “Are we getting closer?”

“Yes,” came the answer from one of the men sitting before the mast. “I’d say we were. Keep it up.”

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For nearly half an hour the men in the water kicked, but except for Captain Quint, they were tiring quickly. Tal called out, “Who feels fit to get in the water and kick?”

Four of the men who had been in the water an hour before indicated they were willing to trade places, and Tal organized a rotation of men in and out of the water.

When it came time for him to climb out and rest, he could barely hoist himself up onto the logs without help. He huffed and took several deep breaths until he caught his wind, then he moved forward, scooting along on a log, until he could stand by the mast.

He saw they were making progress toward the mainland. “Another hour!” he yelled encouragingly, “That’s all it will take, and we’ll be in the breakers!”

That seemed to revive the men in the water a bit, and they redoubled their efforts. Tal looked around and considered himself fortunate. He had thought he might lose as many as four or five men getting to the mainland, but at the moment it looked as if all of them would get to shore.

Then he saw the first shark fin cutting toward the raft.

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Tal stared.

In mute horror he watched as the shark fin turned and moved in on the man at the far edge of the raft. Before he could cry a warning, the man’s head vanished under the water, as if he had been grabbed by a giant hand and pulled under.

A moment later he popped back to the surface, his eyes wide in surprise, not quite sure what had happened.

Then he started to gasp, and a low cry came from his throat, rising in pitch to a terrified scream.

“Sharks!” shouted one of the paddlers, pointing to the right of the raft, where more fins were cutting through the water. Tal counted, and three more were coming in from that side, as another joined the one that had struck the first swimmer.

Men started shouting. Tal shouted back, “Don’t try to climb up! We’ll all be swamped.”

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He glanced around and saw that the men were verging on mindless panic, so he screamed, “Kick! Kick as hard as you can!”

Suddenly the water was foaming as men thrashed, trying to propel the raft toward the beach as quickly as possible. The man whom the shark had attacked made eye contact with Tal for moment, his mouth working, although no sound emerged. Then his eyes rolled up in his head, and he went under. When his body bobbed back to the surface, he upended, and both legs were missing.

Then Tal saw the blunt nose of the shark as it rose up from the depths and struck the corpse, seizing it in its mouth and pulling it under.

“Kick, damn you!” shouted Will.

The men who were sitting between the paddlers put their outside hand down in the water and paddled desperately, as if that little bit of effort would somehow help speed them. Tal scanned the waves in all directions, looking for another fin, and saw one coming in from the right.

He shouted, “Shark!” and pointed. Then he told the paddler nearest to the monster, “Hit it!”

The man looked at the shark heading almost straight at him and reflexively tried to stand up. Shouting in panic, he lost his balance and fell over, right into the path of the shark.

“Get out!” Tal cried.

Another shark came in fast behind the first, and the man was abruptly yanked downward, only to come up for a moment, trying to scream but making only gurgling noises as he choked on water, the sea around him churning white water and blood.

Tal leapt into the waves and with one stroke of his arm reached the paddle. He turned and kicked to bring him-

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self back toward the raft. Holding his breath, he kicked twice more and felt hands pulling him out of the water.

“Are you mad?” Baron Visniya cried.

“We need the paddle!” Tal said, spitting out water.

He held it out, and Visniya took it, replacing the man who had fallen. “If they come close,” shouted Tal to those on the raft, “hit them with the paddles!” To the men fran-tically pushing the raft he yelled, “If they get near you, kick them, hit them, gouge their eyes, do anything to make them leave you alone!”

Tal glanced toward the coast and saw they had moved slightly closer, but their progress was still torturously slow. Clinging helplessly to the mast, he stood up and watched the sharks circle. Two or three of them darted in where the last two had pulled the paddler over, drawn by the blood.

Suddenly a third man was pulled under, and the men on either side of him shouted and one tried to climb back on the raft. Captain Quint shoved him back in, shouting,

“Kick, damn you!” then he jumped in next to him and replaced the man who had just been killed.

Will whispered, “Three men, Tal!”

A man sitting to the fore on the left side of the raft threw himself into the water and started swimming to the shore. Tal had seen enough good swimmers in his lifetime to recognize that this man was unpracticed. His strokes were frantic and uncoordinated, wasteful of energy, so he did not have much forward momentum and would tire rapidly. Tal said to Will, “He should have taken his boots off.”

No shark came near the man, seeming content for the moment to feed on the ones already taken, but halfway between the raft and the breakers the swimmer’s head went under and didn’t reappear.

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Tal again judged their progress and saw they were now drawing closer to the breakers. The rise and fall of the raft was increasing as the combers rolled in to the shoreline. “Kick harder!” he shouted. “We’re almost there!”

Then the raft jerked as if it had hit a rock, and two men fell over on the right side. A second hard bump came from below, and Tal shouted, “There’s one underneath us!” Both men were desperately trying to get back on the raft when one disappeared under the water before Tal’s eyes. The other made it to the raft and climbed aboard, his paddle lost. The first man never reappeared, but the water turned dark with blood.

Tal shouted, “Everyone, into the water!”

He leapt in next to the men propelling the raft from behind, put his one good hand on the raft, and started kicking.

With less weight on the raft and more men pushing, the raft picked up speed. In a few minutes the surge of tide picked up the raft and moved it closer toward the mainland. Tal shouted, “Swim for shore!”

Tal had been a powerful swimmer as a boy, but he had never swum with just one arm. He struggled to keep some sort of rhythm and kicked as hard as he could.

Suddenly his right foot touched something, and he reached down with his left and miraculously felt sand.

The waves were breaking shallowly along the coast, no more than two or three feet high. He started to wade in and looked around. Men were still swimming behind him or wading through the surf towards the shore.

Behind the others he saw Captain Quint and shouted,

“Grab the raft!”

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pull it ashore. The two nearest men ignored him, they were so frantic to be out of the water, but another turned and did as told, and soon others joined in and they were pulling the raft into the dry beach.