Kynan Rhys Gower was a strong swimmer. But when the raft broke up, throwing him into the water, something heavy caught him a grazing blow across the temple, stunning him. He floundered in the breakers, swept away from the wreckage by a powerful southerly current. Kynan managed to keep his face above water and let the sea carry him, too dazed to struggle and wise enough to marshall his strength before trying for shore.
Lightning flares showed him the curve of Delagoa Bay and the wretched little settlement he'd first seen seven weeks previously. The current swept him past it, inexorably southward. By the time he'd recovered enough to move his arms and legs against the current, Kynan estimated he'd been swept several miles south of the settlement on the wide bay-which meant Margo and Koot were trapped north of it, on the wrong side of the bay to reach the gate.
Kynan struck out for shore, wincing slightly at pulled muscles in his shoulder, and finally groped his way onto a rocky beach. He pulled himself on hands and knees above the line of crashing breakers, then collapsed to catch his breath. Rain pelted his back. He hadn't eaten a proper meal in days, felt dizzy and weak from hunger and his struggle with the sea.
Am I going to die here? And where am I, really? he wondered bleakly. Africa, Margo had said, but Kynan had only the haziest idea where Africa was-somewhere far south of Wales-and he hadn't known how to interpret the glowing chart she'd shown him on her "computer." He knew the men in the bay settlement were Portuguese. Kynan shivered. No love was lost between Welshmen and Portuguese.
The other men who lived here ... The pictures Margo had shown him were difficult to credit. Black men in strange garments, carrying long, wicked spears he wouldn't have wanted to face one-on-one, not even on his best day. Which this clearly wasn't. Slowly Kynan sat up, squinting into the rain and dark wind. Lightning flares revealed the sea, lashing furiously at the coast.
As alone as he'd felt in the time station, the isolation he felt now paled that into insignificance. He was lost a century after his own time and five centuries before "TT-86" would exist, in a land where he looked nothing like the native people and where the only men born in Europe were his enemies. He had no food, no water, no weapons, and no way of reliably obtaining more. Without so much as a knife, he couldn't even make a bow to hunt game. Of course, he could probably find the gate again, if he stumbled around long enough looking for it.
Kynan grimaced. Never thought I would long to crawl back into hell ... .
Of course, he'd begun to doubt that TT-86 was hell over the past few weeks. He'd begun to change his mind about the girl, Margo, too. She was a young fool sometimes, but she had courage to match a warrior's. He didn't understand why she had left her grandfather's protection to hunt diamonds, any more than he understood the reasons any "'eighty-sixer" did anything, but he thought her grandsire would have been proud to see her on their journey down the river to the sea.
The last he'd seen of her, she'd been struggling in the sea, same as him. Kynan spat sand out of his mouth and stumbled to his feet. He'd accepted her leadership of his own free will. Kynan Rhys Gower did not abandon his leaders when they were in trouble. Margo was somewhere to the north. It was up to Kynan to find her again and help her bring Koot van Beek back with them through the gate.
He started walking and kept doggedly on, pausing to rest only when his legs threatened to buckle. Each time he rested, weariness urged him to just lie where he'd fallen and sleep, but each time, he forced himself back up. He kept going through the night and the long, steaming day which followed, moving steadily northward along the wild strand. Kynan caught the scent of the Portuguese settlement before he came within sight of the ramshackle little town: wood smoke, hogs, refuse.
He skirted inland past the broad bay where the Portuguese fort was, fighting exhaustion and thirst and trying to edge his way northward without raising an alarm. Kynan closed his hands, longing for some sort of weapon to defend himself, but he had none. He had only a sense of duty to drive him forward, step by aching step. Which did him no good at all when he staggered, unwitting, into an ambush.
One moment he was alone beneath a steaming forest canopy. The next, he was on the ground with Portuguese shouts in his ears and hard hands on his arms and legs. Kynan heaved and broke loose. He rolled and came to a crouch with his back against a tree trunk. Then swallowed hard. He faced half a dozen snarling Portuguese, all of them armed with guns or crossbows.
Honor demanded he fight. Duty demanded he try to escape and rescue his lost comrade and commander. A strong sense of practicality told him he could do neither, given his exhaustion and the unwavering weapons trained on him. One of the men grinned slowly and said something Kynan didn't understand. Then, in bad English: "Witch..."
Kynan's blood ran cold.
They'd found Margo or Koot van Beek or the raft they would torture and burn him alive-
He groped behind the tree trunk, closed his hand around a chunk of stout deadwood. He'd rather be shot with gun and crossbow than burn. Then another, worse thought came to him. They would burn Margo, too, and the sick Afrikaaner who had taught Kynan to shoot the semi-magical rifle. If Kynan let these men kill him now, the others would have no chance of escape at all. If he let them take him alive ...
They had to get free only long enough to gain the gate.
Kynan caught a ragged breath.
Then quietly surrendered
Kit and Malcolm gained the gates in time to see the search party return with a bloodied, bruised prisoner. Vines secured his wrists behind his back. The Welsh soldier was ash-pale but he stood erect, facing his doom with all the bravery in him.
One of the soldiers still inside the fort called out, "Looks like he put up a fight!"
Kynan's captors grinned "Naw Looked like he might for a minute, but he surrendered quiet as a lamb."
Kit narrowed his eyes. They'd beaten him afterward, then, badly, from the look of it. Why had he surrendered? That didn't fit the image of the Kynan Rhys Gower who'd attacked both Kit and Margo with single-minded, near-unstoppable fury. Kynan kept his gaze stonily on the ground, clearly aware that he faced his doom.
The Portuguese were gloating.
"Put him in the stocks,' the governor crowed.
"No," Kit countered, allowing weariness to color his voice. "Put him in the cell with the woman. Father Xabat and I must examine him for Satan's mark."
Kynan flinched visibly at the word "Satan." He didn't quite struggle when the Portuguese shoved him toward the stockade, but he cursed them under his breath in Welsh. One of the soldiers struck him across the mouth, splitting a barely scabbed-over lip. Kynan stumbled and glared at his captors, but made no further sound. Kit and Malcolm exchanged glances.
"Brave man," Malcolm's look said
Kit just nodded, then followed. Malcolm fell into step behind him. Their heavy cassocks dragged in the mud. Sergeant Braz unlocked the cell and shoved Kynan inside, then stepped aside for Kit and Malcolm. Once again, Malcolm shut the door. Margo sat in the corner, alert and silent. She took one look at Kynan and swallowed hard, but her eyes had begun to shine with hope. Kynan swayed, clearly at the end of his strength, but he said in broken English to Margo, "I ... I look you. Portuguese," he snarled, spitting blood onto the dirt floor, "find me. I-I come, no fight. We run gate. I help, yes?"
Margo's eyes widened. She looked past Kynan to Kit, who had difficulty finding his voice. Kynan had surrendered, knowing what the Portuguese would do to them .....hat had happened during the past seven weeks, to change Kynan's opinion of her so thoroughly?
Kit cleared his throat. "Kynan Rhys Gower."