middle measures he might otherwise have taken. He had no choice but to capture or kill. 'You hate him that much?'
'He destroyed my sister.'
Without warning, Inyotef swung his oar. Bak parried the blow, rocking 'the skiff, skewing its path. The vessel swerved sideways to the current and drifted to the right, choosing the channel that could carry them to the island fortress. A likely source of help, Bak thought, trying not to hear the roar of the rapids blocking the first side channel, a siren song to a boat without a rudder.
'You'd cause a war merely to satisfy a misguided sense of family honor?'
'Misguided?' Inyotef's laugh grated. 'He made her love him. While she dreamed of a lifetime in his arms, he walked away as if she didn't exist. He took her life as surely as I'll take his.'
There was no stopping him. He had lived too long with his hate, spent too much time dwelling on revenge.
The fortress appeared beyond the long-island. The traveling ship was moored against the landing, the priests passing through the gate and the gods making their precarious way up the path. Sailors and soldiers were unloading offerings and priestly accoutrements. Most of the flotilla had landed across the channel on the long island, where the passengers would have a good view of the king and his followers. The wait would be long and tedious; the vessel carrying the royal party had not yet set sail.
'Amon-Psaro will soon be safe in the island fortress,' Bak said, raising his voice so he could be heard over the rapids in the side channel. 'You'll never lay hands on him then.'
'I'll die trying,' Inyotef said doggedly.
The skiff swept past the two small islands at the mouth of the channel, sailing faster than before, drawn downstream by the maelstrom at the far end of the island fortress. Bak could no longer wait in the illusory hope the pilot would let down his guard. He stood up, setting the vessel to rocking, and waved to the men on the shore, yelling, hoping they could hear him over the thundering waters.
Inyotef scrambled to his feet, caught his oar in both hands, and swung. Bak, expecting the attack, practically inviting it, ducked away. The edge of the oar slid across his belly, taking a layer of skin, leaving splinters in its place. Bak caught his own oar in both hands, swung it. Inyotef blocked the blow. The skiff bucked like an untrained horse. They stood facing each other, legs spread wide for balance, weapons locked together, waiting for the craft to settle down.
Bak jerked his oar back, tried to step away to give himself room, stumbled over the inflated goatskin. As he fell, he swung the oar. It glanced off Inyotef's oar and smashed into the pilot's good leg, dropping him to his knees. With Bak on one knee, his other knee bent and the foot flat on the hull, with Inyotef on both knees, they lunged and parried time after time, swinging with all their strength, wearing themselves down. The skiff danced and bobbed and bucked, swerving to left and right as the weight inside shifted, but never leaving for long its course down the channel. A palm trunk, maybe the one they had seen earlier, floated ahead of them, its passage straight and true like a pilot fish leading them along the path of destruction.
Bak's arms grew heavy from swinging the ungainly weapon, his legs grew weary from holding himself upright, his belly burned, his teeth and skin felt loosened by the jolts of oar against oar. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed men on the traveling ship, leaning over the rail, gaping at the passing skiff, and soldiers running down the path. Yelling, he thought. The silent voices alerted him to the heightened roar ahead, the cold sweat on his face, like mist blowing off the roiling waters, warned of the vicious torrent.
His body went cold, chilled by fear. He had to stop this insane voyage toward certain death.
Inyotef swung his oar. Instead of parrying the blow, Bak followed its arc with his own oar, letting momentum carry both paddles beyond the hull of the skiff. He mustered his strength and pressed Inyotef's oar downward, holding it against the hull. The skiff tilted beneath their combined weight, threatening to slide out from under them. Inyotef's face grew red with strain, the tendons corded on his neck. Bak felt his own face flush and his muscles scream for relief. He saw a wall of white ahead, water boiling and tumbling over and around the rocky barrier, black granite boulders glistening in the wet, the palm trunk smashing against a boulder, bits of wood flying through the foam.
Inyotef saw the look on his face and took a quick glance over his shoulder. 'Give me your oar,' he yelled, 'I can save us.'
Seeing no alternative, Bak warily released the pressure. Inyotef jerked his oar free and at the same time drew the long dagger from its sheath and lunged. Bak raised his oar, deflecting the blade, and swung hard and fast, slamming the pilot on the side of the head. Inyotef gave him a surprised look, the dagger fell from his fingers, and he crumpled over the side of the skiff. Bak reached out to grab him, saw froth on the water, felt the skiff strike something solid. Horrified, he saw the vessel's seams tear apart and frothing water rush inside. He grabbed the inflated goatskin, more from instinct than conscious thought, and felt himself slide into a river gone mad.
He was seized by the angry white waters, swirling, leaping, falling. His body was thrown and twisted with such, force he was powerless to control himself, unable to tell upstream from downstream or even up from down. He was swept along like a pebble, tossed from torrent to eddy to cascade, scraping rocks and the jagged riverbottom and things he could feel but not see. What little air he held in his lungs was quickly knocked out of him. He was certain he was going to die.
The swirling waters buffeted him, lifted him and slammed him down, and lifted him again. Realizing he still held the goatskin, he clutched it tight against his breast and prayed with the fierceness of desperation to the lord Amon. His head broke the surface. He gulped in air.
Holding the goatskin close, he tried to swim, but he was flung against a boulder and dragged into a vortex that whirled him around and around, giving him a taste of what death must feel like. The eddy spat him out and flung him along the riverbottom, flipping him over and over. He hit another rock, smashed his left arm against a boulder so hard he tried to scream, but he sucked in water instead.
Gasping for air, coughing, he let the current sweep him along a fast but blessedly quiet stretch. When he surfaced, when he could breathe again and think rationally, he looked to right and left, searching for the river's edge. He saw nothing to either side but rocky islets, great craggy boulders, and now and then a pocket of sand supporting a few clumps of grass, or a stunted tree.
A growing rumble downstream and a fine mist rising from the channel alerted him to more rough water. His throat tightened and his mouth turned dry. Too exhausted to fight anotherapid, his left arm afire with pain and close to useless, he set out diagonally across the current, swimming toward the closest bit of land, a tiny pockmarked boulder. The flow strengthened, sweeping him past the safe haven. Ahead the river vanished.
He sucked in a breath, clung to the swollen goatskin, and let the current sweep him over a foaming cascade. The plummeting water drove him down, swirled him around, and flung him out at the head of a stretch of fast but uncluttered water. Gathering all that remained of his strength and willpower, he swam toward what he assumed was an island but prayed was the western shore of the river.
Then he saw Inyotef, limp and pale, beached on a rocky crag, lying across a shallow pool. Wishing he could leave him there to live or die at the whim of the gods, yet knowing he could not, he swam closer. He approached slowly, cautiously, aware of his own weakness, his exhaustion. If he had to fight, he knew he would lose.
He neared the boulder and, from a safe distance, studied the still, pale form. Inyotef was bruised and battered, his breathing labored. His pallor, Bak recognized, was the color of death.
He stumbled onto the rock and dropped down next to the injured man. How could the proud warship captain he once knew bring upon himself so awful a death? 'Inyotef?'
The pilot's eyes fluttered open. He formed a weak smile. 'I guess I didn't…' He paused, took the shallow breath of a man with broken ribs. '… didn't know the rapids as well…' Another pause.'.. as well as I thought.'
'Don't talk,' Bak said, his voice rough and uneven. 'You'll hurt yourself more.'
Inyotef took a slow careful breath. 'Better this way.' Another breath. 'I couldn't face…' A pause, a careful swallow. '… a judgment of death.' His eyes closed, his head fell sideways.
Bak dropped his forehead onto his knees, saddened by the death of a man he had thought his friend yet glad the awful journey down the river had ended as it had. Inyotef had offended. the lady Maat, upsetting the balance of order and justice. He had to die one way or another. To lose his life in the river on which he had thrived seemed fitting.
