“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.
Rix kept going down; it would make it easier to stay under. He had to do the swim of his life this time. He pushed on past the first pain barrier, then the second. Past the moment when his lungs began to heave and the only urge he had left was the desperate need to breathe in. Another five seconds, he told himself, and when that was up, just another five seconds.
He was out of the zone of flames now, and praying that the enemy didn’t guess what he was up to. They would hardly think he could swim so far with such desperate purpose. At least, he hoped they wouldn’t.
Glynnie couldn’t last much longer and neither could he. Where was the dinghy? Ah, he saw its shadow not far ahead. He swam beneath. Just five more seconds. Just four. Just three.
He curved up to the surface. The men in the dinghy were standing up with their backs to him, staring into the gyre, which was a roaring vision of Hades. There was no time to tell Glynnie his plan. He pushed her away, swam to the dinghy, put his hands on the gunwale and heaved with all his strength, as if to haul himself aboard.