“Uh-oh,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She pushed him off her and passed him an anchor line. “Tie off,” she said with a shy smile.
Bradok tied the line around his waist and leaned back against the side.
“Now lock arms and hang on,” Rose said.
Bradok locked elbows with Rose on his right and Tal on his left. A moment later his stomach dropped and he knew the boat had reached the end of the tunnel. Screams erupted in the semidarkness as the ship shot out, unsupported, into the empty depths.
They were falling.
“Hold on!” he heard himself shout as much to himself as to anyone else.
The eerie sensation of weightlessness seemed to go on forever. Bradok knew the suspense couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of seconds, but it seemed to be an eternity. Just when Bradok decided they would never stop falling, the ship slammed into water. The impact smashed him down into the bottom of the boat.
Purple spots swam before Bradok’s eyes, and it seemed like a long time before his senses worked again. When he finally tried to move, he found himself in a tangle of arms and legs. He levered himself up, only to find he’d somehow landed on Rose again.
Tal grabbed Bradok’s shoulder and hauled him to his feet then bent to help Rose. “Really, Bradok,” he said good-humoredly once Rose was back on her feet. “If you’re going to keep doing that, I’m going to have to ask what your intentions are regarding my sister.”
“I, uh,” Bradok stammered, blushing to the roots of his beard.
“If he does that again, he’d better send flowers first,” Rose said with a sarcastic grin.
Both she and Tal laughed while Bradok tried to find his tongue.
“Too bad, sis,” Tal said, his grin widening. “This one doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor.”
“Bradok!” Chisul’s voice rang out. “Stop dillydallying. We need some help over here.”
Bradok turned, surveying the ship in the bluish light of the lamps on either end. He could see the pregnant Lyra holding on to her daughter, Jade, who clung in desperate terror to her mother but seemed to be otherwise unharmed. Kellik’s younger son, however, was leaning against his father, his face a mask of pain. Even from such a distance, Bradok could see that the lad’s arm was bent at a funny angle where it should have been straight.
“Did you say you have some healing skills?” Bradok asked Tal, pointing at Kellik’s son.
Tal nodded, already pulling a small brown kit from his pack.
The ship seemed to be slowing, and Bradok was able to stand with ease. Tal brushed past him, walking with a smooth grace that bespoke time spent at sea.
“Who has bad injuries?” Bradok called out, picking his way along the long edge of the ship toward Kellik.
“I’m bleeding,” an older dwarf with a long, white beard replied as he passed. “But ‘tain’t nothing.”
There was a long, bloody scratch on the old-timer’s arm, clearly left by the nails of the dwarf girl who sat on his left. Without a word, a matronly dwarf on his right ripped a strip of cloth from the hem of her dress and bandaged the wound.
When Bradok reached Kellik, the burly smith cradled his son in his lap. “It’s broken,” he said glumly in answer to Bradok’s unasked question.
“Then we’ll need to set it,” said Tal, who had followed Bradok closely.
The boy’s pale face went absolutely white. Tal put his hand on the lad’s shoulder and looked into his brown eyes.
He unslung his heavy pack and dropped it at Bradok’s feet, pulling it open almost before it hit the boards of the barrel’s bottom. His hand emerged a moment later with a small, round case, painted blue with tarnished brass hardware. Tal opened the case, revealing a rare white glowstone that was held before a reflector in the device’s lid. The resulting light shone out in a bright beam and illuminated the contents of the backpack.
“Now then,” he said easily, pulling out a bottle of red glass. “What’s your name, son?”
“Hemmish,” the boy said.
“My youngest,” Kellik said, still cradling the boy. “But he’s a brave one and strong as they come too.”
“I’m sure he is,” Tal said with a genuine, reassuring smile. “Now you just rest easy, Hemmish, and we’ll get you taken care of.” He unstoppered the red bottle and pressed it to the boy’s lips. “Take a swig of this,” he said.
As Hemmish drank, Tal turned to Bradok. “See if you can find me a splint. Any piece of wood will do, so long as it’s small and stout.”
Bradok turned and retrieved a scrap piece of dowel, about an inch in diameter, which they had used to make pegs when building the ship.
“Anyone got a hand axe?” he asked the group. Several hands went up, and a grizzled dwarf with an unkempt beard and a glass eye passed Bradok a short axe from his amply laden belt.
Bradok stood the dowel on its end, and after a few taps, the metal blade bit into the dowel. Then he raised axe and dowel together and brought them down on the planks of the bottom of the boat. The axe bit right through the dowel, splitting it into two thin strips of wood about the length of Hemmish’s arm. Bradok passed both the strips to Tal.
“Those will do fine,” he said, giving them a quick once-over.
Hemmish had drunk from the red bottle, and the boy’s cheeks were rosy and his eyes were moving unsteadily in his head.
“Papa,” he said in a dreamy voice. “Where’s Mama? Why isn’t she here with us?”
A look of pain crossed Kellik’s face. It looked so out of place on the strong man that if Bradok hadn’t been looking right at the bulbous-nosed mountain of a dwarf, he’d have sworn an oath that such an expression never had darkened Kellik’s face before.
“She’s gone, lad,” he said in a gentle voice. “Gone to a better place, I reckon. We’ll be with her again one day, but not for a long time.”
“That’s too bad,” Hemmish said drowsily. “I miss her.”
“Me too,” Kellik said in a voice too soft for Hemmish to hear.
While Hemmish had been rambling, Tal laid out several strips of cloth and the splints Bradok had cut.
“We’re going to set the bone. I’ll tie it up good and tight,” he said. “Hold him.”
Kellik tightened his grip on Hemmish as Bradok grabbed the boy’s feet. Tal took hold of Hemmish’s arm and, after carefully aligning it, jerked it into place. Hemmish cried out in pain, but his face quickly resumed its happy, oblivious look. Tal swiftly and expertly tied up the arm and splinted it. Within minutes, the doctor had slipped the broken arm into a sling made from two handkerchiefs tied together.
“That should do just fine,” he said, smiling at Kellik. “We’ll check it in a few days.”
“That’s assuming we’re still alive in a few days,” Chisul’s voice sounded behind them, echoing through the semidarkness. Silas’s son stood, leaning against the rounded side of the ship.
“Why wouldn’t we be alive?” Rose said from the far side with deliberate loud cheerfulness. “Reorx didn’t inspire your father to build this magnificent craft to be our coffin,” she added, rubbing her hand reverently along the wooden side of the ship.
“You still don’t get it.” Chisul laughed. “Reorx had nothing to do with the design of this boat.” He waved his arm around. “This is a barrel without one side,” he said. “One-half of a barrel, just like hundreds of others that he made during his life. It’s just bigger. The biggest barrel that he ever made.”
Bradok frowned.
“You don’t think it’s just a tiny bit convenient that we’re here in this ship, being swept away from Ironroot at the very moment it was destroyed?” returned Rose. “If that wasn’t Reorx who opened the passage in front of us, then who was it?”
A murmur of assent ran through the barrel’s passengers.
“I don’t know how we ended up here,” Chisul retorted. “And neither do you. What I do know is that we’re lost, cut off from civilization with precious few supplies, and with no idea where we’re going. Don’t you see,” he added. “This giant half-barrel boat isn’t saving us; it’s taking us further away from help every minute.”