So the officer and The Masked had both known that Lord Telcanor's mission into Nirmathas was to be aided by Telcanor Molthuni on patrol. This was all a big game to them.
She felt her face flaming, and raised her almost-empty mug to cover most of it. These damned men! They were enjoying this! Both were acting like …
Like the very spies she and The Masked were pretending to be.
Or was The Masked pretending? Could he really be a Telcanor spy, or working for the Lord of Braganza? Or even the General Lords?
Tantaerra let a little of the thin, sour beer slide onto her tongue, held it there, and thought hard.
She couldn't tell. She just couldn't tell.
He was keeping secrets from her, details not from his long and colorful past, but rather having to do with this task they'd been set, this Shattered Tomb and the dead wizard and the Fearsome Gauntlet. But how to get him to spill them?
And did it matter, when they might both be dead before morning?
∗ ∗ ∗
Where was Ahrkholm? There'd been no sign of him since back in the hollow, but he was out there somewhere in the night, watching; Tantaerra could feel the cold weight of his sneering gaze.
Yes, even in the numbing cold that was leaving her gasping, too chilled to do more than feebly fight the rush of the river.
The Inkwater was even colder than she'd feared, and was sweeping them northeast at a great rate, as if impatient to leave its headwaters far behind and greet its end in Lake Encarthan.
There was bright moonlight and there were few clouds this night, of course; that was merely the mirth of the gods. So the river was shot through with silver here, there, and everywhere as it flowed, far too strong for even The Masked to pull his fire-raft much across the river. And then there were their clothes and weapons each lashed to one leg, making swimming in this rushing water like hauling along a heavy monster that had its jaws closed around your knee …
Mostly, they were swept helplessly along, and had probably left behind the stretch of river under the Telcanor officer's command long ago.
Which meant, sooner or later, and probably sooner…
"Foul Nirmathi spies!"
Sooner.
That angry shout had come from a Molthuni officer, and his next words were some sort of snarled order that urged his patrol into a gallop along the well-used road that followed the Molthuni side of the river.
Either this was a ruse to make any watching Nirmathi think she and The Masked were Nirmathi-or these particular Molthuni truly thought they were Nirmathi. Her head was starting to ache again. Damn all humans and their trickery and double-dealing.
"Die!" the officer shouted, and Tantaerra ducked down under the swirling water and started to claw her way along the lashings that held her ungainly fire-raft together. It was blazing away merrily, of course, the strong reek of rotting wolf turning to the stronger stink of cooked rotting wolf, but if she could get between the two rotting hulls, or at least put one of them between her and the Molthuni crossbows …
Bolts thudded into the wood above her with strikes she could feel, and plunged into the water around her with surprisingly loud plooshing noises. She could hear them hitting The Masked's raft, too, sharper and louder slammings like cobblers' hammers missing leather and hitting wooden lasts. She kicked and clawed frantically, starving for air now but determined to get past the first hull. They couldn't all miss …
She came up out of the face-slapping water with a gasp, past the hull, the rope she was supposed to be towing the raft across to Nirmathas with now hopelessly tangled around her neck and shoulder and breasts. Gods damn all conniving Telcanors! Why-
Suddenly the leaping flames above her and the starry night sky above them were full of hummings, menacing racing hums, west to east, that tore through flames and charred wood and Molthuni horses and Molthuni throats.
A volley of Nirmathi arrows from the far bank! A hail of racing arrows that just kept coming, hissing and humming through the night like so many angry wasps-arrows that brought crashes and screams and hoarse cries from the Molthuni patrol. Tantaerra saw moonlight to her left, and risked thrusting her head up through that hole into the smoke and sparks and still-hungry flames, to look toward Molthune.
Riderless horses bucked and galloped, tossing their snorting heads in fear. Though the arrows had now stopped, they'd struck home; there wasn't a mounted warrior to be seen anywhere on the riverbank road. The entire Molthuni patrol was unhorsed!
Suddenly, a hand grabbed her from below.
Tantaerra let out a scream of her own that became a gargling, glubbing choking as she went under. An instant later, that same hand rammed her up against the burning boards above her, banging her head and shoulders but slamming a lot of that water back out of her. Helplessly she coughed and wept and spat, writhing in pain as the racing river slapped her across the face again, and then …
She was blinking into a face she knew. Or rather, a mask she knew.
"How-?" she managed to choke out.
"Abandoned my raft," he panted, holding her out of the water so she could drool out the last of what had been flooding her and gasp in air again. "Let's pick the right time …to leave yours."
Tantaerra nodded, or tried to.
She was still trying when The Masked looked into the bright wash of moonlight ahead, pointed at a bend where the Inkwater turned east to carve into Molthune, and gasped, "Now!"
And before she could even protest, he'd hauled at her, easily breaking her numbed grip on wet lashings. Her tow-rope sawed and burned under one breast, tumbling her-
And was abruptly gone, and the raft with it.
Moonlight bathed her as she bobbed, a strong arm hooked under hers. It caught the flash of The Masked's knife as he put it away. Then he was swimming strongly, heading for Nirmathas as the river bend brought it up in front of them like a wall. Dying flames were swept away off to Tantaerra's right as The Masked fought the flow, spume bubbling around them and racing on.
It seemed so close, but root after leaning tree after rock-studded overhang swept past and was left behind as the river clawed them on.
The Masked was swimming more feebly now, stroking in fits and starts and being swept along between them. Would he …
Slimy rocks bruised their knees and hands and they were tumbling again, evil smells rising around them as they rolled in river mud, slammed into the upthrust roots of a tree that had drowned long ago, and …
The Masked was dragging her, no longer swimming but crawling, splashing up onto a slope of mud that was studded with sharp stones and crisscrossed with weed-shrouded roots-and suddenly alive with men and women in leather, swords in their hands and angry glares on their faces as they burst from the dark trees above the riverbank, a dozen or more.
"Die, Molthuni!" one hissed, as they clambered down to meet The Masked.
Tantaerra looked up at the dripping and exhausted man she'd hired and come so far with, as he hurriedly let go of her and snatched at his daggers.
He could run, she thought. Without her short legs slowing him down, he might make it to the trees. Yet he placed himself between her and danger, time and again.
She reached up and touched his side. He looked down at her, eyes curious behind the dark mask.
Then he turned back to meet the oncoming Nirmathi.
Chapter Ten