“It’s stuck,” I told the others.
“You think?” Ket and Benin said together.
I resurfaced and flitted over to them. “It’s caught on a driftwood log that’s wedged into the riverbed. One of the wheel bits has cracked.”
“’Wheel bits’?” Ket’s voice was tinged with as much amusement as concern. “You sure that’s the technical term?”
I located Dovetail and Groove, my carpenter repair team, and immediately sent them both in. Dovetail hopped down from the wagon behind the ark, while Groove waded back into the water from the opposite side.
“How are they going to fix it if it’s underwater?” asked Benin. I could sense his agitation, probably because of Pyra’s presence on the stranded chariot. To his credit, though, his eyes remained fixed on the wagon I’d asked him to watch. Pulled by Helga and led by Hammer, it was the least likely to run into trouble, and was almost at the other side.
“I was hoping you could help with that. Is there any way you could, I dunno, make it not be underwater?”
“Eh?”
“Well, you’re good at fire, and now you can do air and a bit of earth as well. Can you maybe take the water away?”
The mage had finally looked away from his charges. Unlike Coll, who usually addressed either the sky or my gem when conversing with me, Benin’s arcane abilities let him sense my presence and approximate location even when in my god’s-eye form, and he now stared at me in disbelief.
“’Take the water away’? Are you mad?”
“All right then, reroute the river or something. Just for a few minutes.” I pushed down panic as I watched the carpenters struggle, reassuring myself we still had plenty of time.
Bekkit alighted on the mage’s shoulder and the pair began murmuring about displacement barriers and the pairing of something-or-other.
All the time they talked, Benin eyed the water nervously. Then I realized.
“Are you afraid of the water?” I asked incredulously.
He scowled, hands fidgeting inside his sleeves. “Little bit.”
“But you were fine in the marsh!”
“I was crapping my breeches with every step. And it was barely an inch deep in there.”
“You have to overcome your fears,” I told him. “I did.”
“Says the Core who’s afraid of frogs.”
“I am not!” I spluttered. “Ket, you traitor—”
“Something’s wrong.”
My sprite’s voice was hard and deadly serious.
“What d’you mean?” I asked, all levity instantly evaporated.
She’d been watching the rear-most wagon. Pulled by one of the dire badgers, it mostly held non-essential supplies: spare animal hides, shroomwood cast-offs, sticks and other materials gathered from the forest. Swift and Cheer were the only gnomish passengers; still decked out in their owlish attire, they’d been rifling through the wagon’s supplies like the unscrupulous opportunists they were. Now, though, Swift was clutching her netgun in front of her, and Cheer’s knuckles were white around the daggers she gripped in each hand. Both scavengers’ stares were fixed on the water.
“Where’s Garda?” I asked, suddenly realizing that the lone warrior set to accompany the final wagon was nowhere in sight.
“I don’t know,” said Ket. The sprite wrung her hands. “One moment she was there. When I looked again, she’d gone.”
Waves of mounting panic crashed through our bond, and I struggled not to be swept away. A little way upstream, Benin was staring at the place the warrior had disappeared, his eyes wide.
“I’ll take a look,” I tried to reassure them both. “She probably just slipped.”
Once again I ducked into the river. The sky above was even more heavily overcast now that evening was approaching, making the water darker and colder. Mud and silt from the bottom was even more churned up than before, and even with my god’s-eye vision I struggled to pierce the murk. I headed deeper, checking in all directions for any sign of the missing warrior.
A pale hand loomed suddenly to my right.
“Found her!” I told Ket. “Just let me check she’s all r—”
Cold dread filled my entire being as I stared at what I’d found.
“What is it?” Ket almost shouted, having sensed my sudden shock at the sight of the gnome’s hand. Her disembodied hand.
“She’s not all right,” I said faintly.
The ragged flesh and jagged wrist bones suggested her hand had been chewed off rather than cut. Which meant…
There’s something in the water.
Fifty-One
Red Water
Corey
I shot up out of the water and immediately Inspired Gneil to give the signal to retreat. I felt bad abandoning Garda, especially after what happened with Ajax, but it seemed unlikely she was still alive, and right now I had to focus on saving those who could definitely still be saved.
Helga heaved herself onto the far shore, leaving just two wagons and the chariot remaining in the water. The signal to retreat had been passed around, and the scavengers’ wagon was soon approaching the stranded chariot. Its contingent of warriors stood a wary guard around Bruce and the two carpenters, who were understandably struggling to complete repairs since they could assess the damage no better than they could breathe under the near-opaque water.
Where’s Coll when you need him?
Cursing myself for sending the warrior on ahead, I turned to Benin. “If you can’t magic the water away, we’ll have to abandon the chariot. Can you go in there and bring the ark across?”
The mage flinched as something broke the surface beside the chariot, but it was just Dovetail coming up for breath. She’d barely taken her first gasp of air when she was yanked beneath the surface.
Ris’kin, who was doing her best to try and keep Bruce calm, unsheathed her spear and stabbed down in one smooth motion. Graywall, standing beside her, reached down and hauled Dovetail back to her feet. The carpenter coughed water from her lungs, wincing at whatever injury she’d sustained, but she was alive. Graywall and Ris’kin nodded to each other and kept wary eyes on the water.
“We need to get them out of there.” I connected with Gneil again and instructed him and the acolytes to climb across onto
