'It's all right,' he reassured her, not sure if she heard him, 'nobody's gonna' hurt you.'
Suddenly, he felt her stiffen, her hands gripping him.
Over her father's shoulder, she had seen Pyke getting to his feet.
Gabe whirled, but he was at a disadvantage, on his knees, one arm still round Loren.
The thick walking stick came down heavily and he just managed to get his left arm up to block the blow. The stunningly sharp pain paralysed his arm right up to the shoulder and he gasped at the shock of it. Ignoring his numbed arm he forced himself to his feet.
Pyke faced him, the walking stick wielded before him like a sword, keeping Gabe at bay. There was sheer malice in his narrowed eyes and the engineer wondered how he had ever thought those same eyes were kindly. Gabe's injured arm hung uselessly by his side and Pyke realized his own advantage.
Gordon Pyke was a big man and, despite his years, he still had a big man's strength. He was also swift, and when he drove at Gabe's lower belly with the walking stick the engineer was not quick enough to avoid the unexpected move.
Gabe doubled over, the wind taken out of him. He felt as though he had been kicked in the gut by a horse. He stayed on his feet, hands clutched to his stomach, but he was vulnerable.
Raising the stick high over his head, Pyke brought it down with all his might and it splintered and broke in half against Gabe's half-turned back and left shoulder.
Gabe staggered with the blow, but he refused to go down. He tried to straighten up to be ready for another assault and only just managed to dodge the next strike. But he was dazed and he reeled backwards, unbalanced, then fell to the floor to sprawl helplessly in the dust.
Loren screamed again and tried to go to her father, but Pyke, the remainder of the broken walking stick still in his hand, stood in her way. He held it like a knife, its jagged, splintered end pointed towards the ceiling. She gazed up at the tall, bearded man and he was smiling queerly, his sharp eyes blazing into hers. She tried to duck away so that she could get round him to her father who lay on his back on the other side of the well. But Pyke, who certainly was both quick and strong for a man in his seventies, easily caught her, grabbing her arm and dragging her back to the edge of the deep, dark pit.
Below, the loud turgid river surged upwards and around the well's stone wall, creating a spinning, black- centred vortex that rose and fell with changing pressures.
'Please let me go!' Loren pleaded, but Pyke merely took pleasure in her panic and pushed her closer to the low circular wall.
The big man took time to look across the dingy chamber at Gabe, who had risen on one elbow, pain evident on his creased features.
Although the lighting was feeble, Gabe could see the gleam in Pyke's eyes skittering between insanity and excitement.
'If you harm her I'll kill you,' Gabe said in a low growl. A fine warning to give, but the engineer knew he was helpless to stop Pyke. The pain across his back and shoulder was now excruciating and his left arm was useless for the moment.
'Don't think of this as a sacrifice,' Pyke returned. 'Think of it more as a demand accommodated.'
Gabe didn't know what the hell the man was talking about, or if he'd heard him right, and he didn't care. He had to do something and he had to do it fast. But what? Even if he got to his feet and rushed Pyke there would be no time to save Loren. The lunatic only had to give her a small shove and she would be gone.
He shifted his position slightly, getting ready to charge Pyke anyway, and his elbow nudged something that scraped metallically against the stone floor. In desperation, he glanced down and saw that the object by his elbow was the same length of thin but heavy iron, a small round hole at its centre, he had casually tossed aside when Cally had called him from the top of the stairs five days ago. In a flash and quite incongruously, given the circumstances, it came to him that the metal bar was the blade of the old Flymo hover-mower he had seen leaning against a wall in the garden shed. Someone—probably Percy—had brought it down to sharpen its edges, then discarded it.
Pyke was pushing Loren closer and closer to the edge of the well, while she did her best to resist, screaming and digging her bare heels into the floor, the struggle hopeless against the big man's superior strength.
In the blink of an eye, Gabe was on one knee, his body crouched forward, the heavy blade in his right hand, held in his fingers by one end. He skimmed it through the air and it spun like a boomerang. He had aimed high for fear of hitting Loren and his aim was true.
It seemed to take an impossibly long time but it struck Pyke squarely on the forehead, sending him toppling backwards, his grip on Loren released.
Unfortunately, she was leaning too far over the opening and she teetered on the brink, her arms flailing the air to prevent herself from falling.
But it was no use. She began to drop.
76: DESPERATION
Those brief but vital moments of trying to save herself were just enough for Gabe to spring forward like a runner off starting blocks and dive towards Loren.
With a heart-piercing scream she fell, her arms outstretched, the whirlpool below eager to receive her. Even as he landed on the low wall encircling the well, Gabe was reaching out to grasp her wrist as she went. Unfortunately, he had to use his left arm, the fingers of the right wrapping themselves over the top of the wall for support, and the agonizing wrench almost forced him to let go of his daughter. But he hung on, taking her weight with his numbed arm and injured shoulder, straddled face down on the wall, half his body hanging over the edge, only his right knee pressing into the outer stonework and his right hand clenched hard against the top of it keeping him there.
Loren dangled perilously, her bare legs kicking air. The small desperate cries she uttered were lost in the cacophony made by the rushing water. The deep centre of the whirlpool rose as if to meet her halfway, but fell back again when river currents below the surface shifted. Panic-stricken though she was, Loren tried to help her father by swinging round and reaching for the wrist of the hand that held her own. Her fingers tightened around it and Gabe grunted with approval: his hold on her was more secure.
Yet her weight was beginning to drag him off the wall.
She must have heard him, for she raised her legs and searched for a jutting stone or a shallow indent with her feet, but her toes kept slipping off the slimy, mossy stonework of the well's interior wall.
Gabe was strong, but the balance was all wrong; he couldn't get enough leverage to pull her up. Even so, at any other time, he would have scooped his daughter out of the well with ease—her weight would have meant nothing to him—but now his arm was numb from shoulder to fingertips and there was little power in it. It was all he could do to maintain the grip.
Time and again, he attempted to draw her up, but whenever he brought her closer to him, his strength failed and she was lowered again. A thousand red-hot needles seemed to prick his shoulder with each effort and the stone he sprawled upon pressed hard against his cheek and chest. Gritting his teeth, his body tensed, he tried to lift Loren once more, his numbed arm trembling with the exertion, more than half his body now drawn into the opening. When she reached up with her free hand and managed to clutch at his shoulder, the added pain there was almost unbearable. Her fingers slipped away and she hung over the void, her teeth biting into her lower lip so that she wouldn't scream. She looked up and saw the desperation in her father's eyes and she was even more afraid, if that were possible.
Her weight was gradually and inexorably dragging Gabe over the brink, no matter how hard he resisted with his other hand and knee pushing against the outside of the circular wall.
'Never,' he grunted in a strained low murmur, more to himself than his daughter. He would not let her go. Even if it meant falling in with her, he would not let go of Loren.
