"KOOT!"
The raft slammed around into something hard. Kynan yelled and barely hung onto her arm. Margo sobbed for breath and used toes to dig for the severed cable behind her. She found it and scooted one knee forward until the broken end was under her cheek.
"Kynan! Hold on!"
She drew a breath for courage -then let go with one hand and snatched the cable. Kynan yelled
Margo flung the cable around him.
He grabbed for it as his grip on the raft broke loose.
Margo hung onto one end and Kynan clung to the other. Please... Margo sobbed under her breath. She rolled over and scooted backwards, hauling with the leverage of arms and legs this time. Kynan's arms appeared over the edge. Then his head and back appeared. He slithered forward, clutching at the cable, the PVC, anything he could grasp Margo pulled until Kynan had wriggled completely onto the raft. Then she fell backwards, panting.
Grimly, Margo tied herself to a lifeline and tied one around the gasping Welshman. Koot was fighting to secure the raft to another tree, braced on one foot and one knee while he struggled with coiled cable and vicious wind and current.
"KOOT! TIE A LIFELINE!"
Before he could respond, another tree went CRACK! The raft lurched underfoot. Margo fell flat. She caught a glimpse of Koot in a strobe-flare of lightning. He was sawing frantically at the other cable with his own knife. Then they spun free. The river sucked them downstream. Margo whimpered, but forced herself to crawl forward.
"Get a lifeline on!" she shouted at him.
Koot, looking numb and shaken, fumbled for a rope.
Then lightning flared and Margo caught sight of the rapids.
"Oh, God ... Oh, GOD..."
Margo groped blindly for a paddle, a pole, anything she could use to shove off those looming rocks. The river spat them at those rapids like a watermelon seed in a millrace. Margo found breath to scream just once. Then she was fighting for survival in the strobe-lit night. Every time lightning flared, she shoved the paddle at anything that looked dark. Usually the paddle connected sickeningly with solid stone, jarring her whole body with bruising force. The raft spun, lurched, plunged through the darkness. Spray and rain battered them. Margo couldn't hear anything but the roar of water. If anyone yelled for help, she'd never hear them.
Another shock shook them. A rock nobody'd seen. The whole raft shuddered, bounced off, rocked sideways over a lip of water, dropped sickeningly. The impact jarred her breath out, then they plunged on. She had no idea half the time if she faced upriver or down. Another jolt shook the raft It can't take much more of this, it'll come apart on us ...
The raft lurched-then either it or Margo was abruptly airborne. Margo screamed. She came down in the water. The muddy Limpopo closed over her head. Margo fought to find her lifeline. The current was savage. She couldn't move against it She swallowed water, strangled, knew that if she hit a submerged rock, she would die.
Her face broke the surface. She was moving...
Kynan Rhys Gower grabbed her hair and pulled. Margo groped for his arm, his waist. She slithered forward into his lap. The raft rocked violently, spun in a new direction ...
Then quieted.
They still raced through the darkness like a cork over Niagara Falls, but they'd made it alive through the rapids.
Margo quietly threw up in Kynan's lap, disgorging the water she'd swallowed. He pounded her back, helping her cough it out. Then he helped her sit up and made sure she'd suffered no broken bones. Margo winced a few times, but the worst she'd endured was bruises. Koot watched silently.
She finally met Kynan's gaze. "Thank you."
The Welshman pointed to himself then the river, then pointed to her and the river.
"Yes," she shivered. "We're even now. Thank you, anyway."
He spread his hands and shrugged, then busied himself checking for damage. Koot watched her without speaking.
"Are you all right?" she called over the storm.
"Yes. You?"
"I'll live. Maybe," she qualified it.
He grunted. "You're damn lucky, English. I'm going to sleep."
Without another word, he collapsed, not even bothering to crawl into his sleeping bag. Margo glanced at Kynan. He gestured for her to rest.
"My watch," he said in his careful English.
Margo just nodded, knowing she'd have found the strength to stand watch if she'd had to, but thanking God and every angel in the heavens she didn't have to. If another emergency threatened, Kynan would wake them. She fell asleep before her cheek even hit the sodden sleeping bag.
Five days into their wretched journey, they ran out of food-and Koot van Beek fell seriously ill. He woke with a high fever and terrible chills.
"Malaria," he chattered between clenched teeth.
"But we took anti-malarials!"
"Not ... not a sure-fire prevention. G-get the quinine tablets."
Margo dug out the medical kit with trembling hands. She read the instructions again to be sure, then dosed him with four tablets of chloroquine and covered him with one of their sleeping bags. They had no food left to help him regain his strength. The river banks were barren of anything that could be shot and fetched back as food.
Where are all those stupid animals when we need them? I'm hungry-and Koot may be dying!
She'd have shot anything that remotely resembled food in a heartbeat. She'd even have cooked one of those lousy drowned carcasses, if she could've gotten close enough to one to snag it. She bit her lips and tried to cope with an overwhelming sense of failure. When they stopped for the night, pulling the raft onto the flood-ravaged bank, Margo sat in her miserable corner of the raft and held her head in her hands and started admitting the hardest truths she had ever had to face.
I am not smart. Or particularly clever. Or honest, not even with myself. Kit and Malcolm, everyone was right. I was crazy to think I was ready to scout.-...
Proving herself to her father seemed utterly pointless now. What had she expected him to do? Take her in his arms and weep on her neck? Tell her the three words she'd wanted to hear all her life? Fat chance.
Sitting there in the darkness, Margo had ample time to review every mistake she'd made, every selfish word she'd uttered, every lamebrained, dangerous risk she'd run because she hadn't learned enough: She'd nearly let a Cape Buffalo kill her because she was too busy thinking how picturesque it was to realize her danger. Koot had warned her and she'd chosen to ignore him. What was it Kit had told her? Don't put wild animals on some moral pedestal bearing no resemblance to reality?
And she'd nearly killed Malcolm in St. Giles. And in Rome, completely on her own ... Margo had come to realize she'd come close to being killed in Rome, too, without ever realizing it. She could've stumbled into far less scrupulous hands than Quintus Flaminius' -- and his care of her could easily have soured. That lancet they'd used to bleed her could've infected her with something awful, or they might literally have bled her to death, or ...
Margo's whole experience as a time scout was one unmitigated disaster after another, with some impatient guardian angel finally throwing hands in the air in disgust and going back to whatever heaven guardian angels come from.
All of which left her utterly alone with no supplies on a flooded river miles from help, with a dying man and a scared down-timer on her hands. The only thing that kept her going was her sense of responsibility. She hadn't left Achilles completely without resources and she wouldn't give up on Koot and Kynan, either. Somehow, she'd get them out of this mess she'd made.
Six hours later she woke Koot and dosed him with two more tablets. He complained of a raging headache and fell asleep again. Margo dug out her information on malaria and a flashlight. When she read the list of potential symptoms, Margo felt a chill of terror. The Plasmodium falciparum strain of malaria, which included among its symptoms severe headaches, could be quickly fatal Not treated properly . They were several hundred years as well as a hundred or so miles from the nearest medical clinic.