Thirty Floodwaters Rise

THIRTY

Floodwaters Rise

MARY

M uted morning light crept into the road, filtering through the storm that blanketed the forest in our wake, chasing our horses' hooves with the crackling shush of freezing rain. As the storm grew so did my fatigue, until finally the rain slipped my control and overtook us.

For hours we rode as the snow turned to ice, and the cold worked into the marrow of our bones. I could hardly breathe for my streaming nose, let alone coerce my sore throat into another song. Tane, who I might have leaned upon for support, was uncommonly quiet, recovering from Adalia's attack.

Just when I was sure I would topple from my horse, slide into a gully and sleep my final sleep, we began to see signs of a town— literal, helpful signs that pointed us towards what roughly translated to Riverbank, combined with a thinner, tended forest, a few houses tucked among the trees, and the remains of a dead chicken in the snow.

A few minutes later, the forest ended and the town materialized. It looked morose in the rain, its layers of grey cloud and sodden brown wood made worse by a frozen fog rising from the snow and miles of flooded farms. Every fence post, every tree branch, was lined with glistening ice.

There was no light in the settlement, no signs of life. No glowing windows or smoking chimneys. There was not even a wayward goat to stare at us or a dog to bark from the closest farms. The town was a tomb and the farms surrounding it drowned and hushed, save for the patter of the rain, rush of the river, and distant creak of overburdened timbers.

A fresh chill crept up my spine. I glanced back into the forest, sure the town was an ill omen.

"Sam," I murmured. "Can you see if we're alone?"

Samuel nodded, rain dripping from his hood, and sat back in his saddle. Benedict, Charles and I all watched as his eyes became distant and then cleared once more.

"There is an impling in the woods, some distance away. No mages or beasts."

I opened my mouth to point out that that did not mean there were no soldiers or mages with Sooth talismans, but he continued speaking.

"But the Other is darker than usual." Samuel indicated the sleeping town. "The first Black Tide, it seems, is close."

"A week away," Tane said through my lips.

"That is the coastline," Benedict added, his gaze cast north. I squinted, just able to make out a low shore of snow drifts and black rocks. The sea was both a churning blur and an encroaching tide, swelling upriver and turning the entire waterway into an ice-choked monstrosity. It had overflowed its banks as far as we could see in either direction, forcing its way up into the town and turning the surrounding fields into sheets of ice for miles, smeared with snow fog.

"The locals must have been warned," Charles observed. "Pity. Though an abandoned town should still provide some decent pillaging, if we could reach it without drowning."

Benedict perked up at that, but, upon contemplation, made a discontented noise. "We should go back and spend the night at one of the houses in the forest. We will not be getting anywhere near that settlement, let alone finding somewhere dry to sleep and stow the horses."

I couldn't bear the thought of repeating that experience of Benedict puppeteering the woman at the farm. The houses we had passed had still been inhabited. "There must be another way in, some road not flooded."

"The bridges are what concerns me most," Samuel said. From our vantage, I could see that the bridges that connected the eastern and western banks were shattered or submerged, the former little more than stone markers on either shore and the latter beset by mounds of ice and debris.

Samuel sat straighter in his saddle with a creak of cold leather. "I see one intact, to the south. If we are still a week out from the full tide, the water will only continue to rise. By tomorrow morning that bridge may be gone too, and our road to Ostchen blocked."

"So, we cross now," Charles summarized, sounding dubious.

The bridge was too far away to see clearly, but its dark shape appeared whole, if barely above the rush of the glutted river.

"The east bank does look drier," I admitted. "I would feel better with a river between us and anyone following us."

The men descended into debate. I adjusted my hold on my reins, glancing again at the forest track behind us. Snow fog had spread across it, too, as the day drew to a close, playing tricks with my eyes. Was that a pine bough swaying under a weight of snow or a soldier with a musket?

Benedict's voice cut through my pondering. "Meet me in Ostchen when you have made up your minds."

He abruptly spurred his horse down the churned road then off into one of the flooded fields. The sound of cracking ice and sloshing water drifted to us, loud in the twilight hush, but the water was no deeper than the horse's fetlocks.

Sam let out a long breath and gathered his reins, while Charles promptly followed Benedict across the flooded fields. I nudged my horse after him, grateful to leave the forest and its shadows behind.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked Samuel as we guided our mounts carefully down the road.

"I am wondering if Ben was worth saving," he said, just loud enough for me to hear. "Worth putting you through this."

I sat back in my saddle as our horses descended into the field. Icy water splashed up onto the hem of my robe, adding to an already substantial rime of ice and mud.

"I chose to come with you," I reminded him. "You can't think like this, not now—"

"I can and must." He seemed to catch himself and grimaced. Beneath him, his horse dutifully picked her way through the ice, seemingly resigned to the discomfort. "I am sorry, Mary. I am tired and overburdened."

His honesty cut me to the bone. I leaned over the gap between our horses and snagged his hand, holding it tightly. He gripped mine back, and for a moment we were quiet, our breaths steaming in the chill.

Ahead, Benedict and Charles closed on the bridge. Their forms were growing harder to see, the Winter Sea's rapid dusk cloaking the already gloomy landscape.

"If the healer-mage at the Oruse didn't have a cure, where can we look next?" I asked, releasing his hand as my horse navigated a deeper section and I swayed in the saddle.

"Nowhere." The word was like a closing door, firm and final. "We must put that behind us. We make for Ostchen. Reclaim Hart . And then sail for safe waters. That is all that matters."

The shadows that were Ben and Charles had reached the bridge, or as near as they could with the deeper floodwaters. On a quiet day their voices might have reached us, but the rush of the water and the sweep of the wind tore them away.

I fought the urge to look back at the trees again.

"Surely there will be healer-mages in Ostchen," I said. "There is still hope."

"Hope will only endanger us. We focus on finding our ship and crew and escaping with our lives," he countered, a fresh hardness in his voice that warned me he was finished with the conversation. Abruptly, he twisted in his saddle. "Someone is following us."

I turned just in time to see a flash in the gloom. The crack of a musket reverberated at the same moment, echoing and overloud, yet distorted by the rain and fog.

My horse startled and reared. I hit the frigid water an instant later, rolling, twisting away from a cacophony of pounding hooves. Dirty water filled my mouth and ears, ice scratched at my face, then I found my hands and knees.

I tried to stagger upright, but my sodden robes dragged me back down. I tore at my belt, loosing it with shaking fingers, and snapped one of the hidden ties that bound the garment closed. Distantly, I was aware that my horse had bolted—one set of splashing, pounding hooves fading while a dozen others closed.

"Mary!" Samuel's boots landed beside me. I could hardly make him out, but his voice, his presence, that I knew.

His bigger hands grabbed at my sodden robe, snapping the last ties. He pulled the soaked garment off my shoulders, took my hands, and I lunged upright.

His horse, too, must have fled. But the splash and pound of hooves still came to us, ever closer—not at a gallop now, but a more inexorable pace. Another musket cracked in the night, and I heard a voice shout some command.

"Fuck," Samuel hissed, one arm around me, the whites of his eyes pale in the darkness as he stared back. "Hae is with them."

"Not dead, then," I wheezed.

"Mary!" Charles's voice shouted up ahead.

I grabbed Samuel by the robes and urged him forward. One of my legs nearly buckled, numbed by my fall and the cold, but we steadied one another as we raced towards Charles's voice.

A shadow peeled from the twilight—a man on horseback, robed and looming, coming not from the forest but the river.

Benedict reined in as he passed us and turned about, placing his horse between us and our oncoming pursuers. He lifted his chin and exhaled a long breath of steam, closing his eyes.

Another musket cracked, followed by a scream of shock and pain. Then another shot, and another.

Our pursuers were shooting one another.

"Ben!" Samuel yelled. "Enough!"

Benedict wheeled his horse about but remained between us and our pursuers.

A light bloomed up ahead and took the shape of another mounted man, horse prancing nervously. Charles, lit with ghisten light and looking none too comforted by it.

"You are making yourself a fine target!" Benedict scolded as we closed in.

"I cannot make him stop!" the highwayman returned. A musket ball cracked off the wood of the bridge, just behind him, and he ducked.

Ben left us all behind, urging his horse onto the hefty wooden bridge, he and his mount shedding water as they went. "Then move!"

Charles followed the Magni, Samuel and I mere paces behind now. His ghisten light just illuminated the boiling river beneath, where chunks of ice thudded into the supports and the water frothed, dirty and hungry. Even the thick icicles that coated the low rails trembled.

A creaking, lamenting moan sounded as a fresh clot of ice began to build up.

"Stop!" a Mereish voice ripped through the night, so close I stifled a shriek.

Samuel and I lunged onto the bridge, slipping and sliding but somehow managing to stay upright.

Another moan and the whole bridge swayed. Tane prickled across my skin and launched into the wood of the structure, igniting it in the same way that Hart did when he strengthened his ship.

The bridge creaked dangerously, and the thud of hooves sounded behind us.

Samuel and I burst off the structure, passing Benedict and Charles and carrying on for a few paces until I realized Tane had not followed. I spied her light still riddling the wood of the bridge. I felt her strain, felt her intent, and retreated another step.

"Keep back!" I warned.

A great crack and a groan split the night, then the bridge began to move—not crumbling, not buckling, but shifting entirely. One end swung north while the other slid down the bank to the south, and the whole thing spun off into the center of the current.

Mereish soldiers screamed. A horse toppled into the current, and one woman made a wild leap for the eastern shore, only to land short and be immediately swallowed by the crush of ice. The rest toppled to the wood or seized the rails, holding on as the bridge became a tottering, sinking ship.

Tane swirled after me in a cloud of ghisten smoke and leapt back into my skin.

I realized I had the back of one cold-swollen hand clamped over my mouth to stop myself from crying out and shakingly lowered it. Drowning in a river of ice was no kind way to go. But they couldn't cross. We had escaped. We were safe—

Muzzles flashed from the opposite shore. All of them went wide or struck the ground short, but it was enough to banish us farther into the deepening night.

"Time to go." Charles leaned down to offer me one arm and an empty stirrup. Ghisten light still gilded his skin, though much paler than before.

I seized his hand and mounted behind him. Samuel joined Ben, and the four of us left the drowning bridge behind.

I glanced back once, as light flared on the western shore. A lantern had been unveiled, packed full of golden dragonflies, and the face of a man watched us go with an intensity that chilled me deeper than frigid water and sodden clothes.

"Is that him?" I asked Samuel, voice just loud enough to carry. "Inis Hae?"

His only response was a silent nod.