The Skeleth

Chapter 27

The Elder gasped in fright. Tom's heart leapt into his throat. He started paddling furiously, driving the nose of his boat in between the pilings of the bridge.

The sternsman goggled. "What's—?"

"Ambush!" Tom hissed. "We're under attack!"

The Elder called upward as their boat slipped under the span of the bridge. "Warbur—sister, if it is me you want, I will come quietly! These folk are innocent of all that might be between the two of us."

The answer came muffled from above: "Oh, sister, if only you had read a little more and spent fewer of your days nursing injured sheep. How many times have I told you, through the years? There is no such thing as innocence."

The Skeleth awaited the boats on the other side of the bridge, standing in two lines along the banks. They sprang to the attack in utter silence, flinging themselves onto the boats without the slightest care for themselves. Blades flashed, coils writhed, and screams did not last long. Tom was nearly sure that the one busily slaying people left and right in the boat nearest the bank was a mild, kindly faced man he had last seen in the castle at Harthingdale.

"To the banks, to the banks!" The sternsman of Tom's boat whispered it in fright. "We've got to beach and run, it's our only chance!"

"No, into the middle." Tom looked back. "We must get through—and the Elder could never outrun one of those things."

The sternsman nodded once. He jammed his paddle in to turn them, steering them to the very center of the current. The other boats passed on toward the ambush, helpless to stop themselves before they drew level with the rushes.

Tom paddled as hard as he could, watching the Skeleth leap onto the other boats. He had one hope—that the man inside the monster still had to breathe, and that there was a limit to how far they could jump.

"We cannot leave them!" The Elder grabbed his shoulder. "No, Tom, we can't leave them!"

Tom did no more than glance back at the sternsman. They did not slow their pace. Their boat shot out under the bridge, right in the middle of the river. They braced themselves, but none of the Skeleth seemed able to reach them from the banks, though no few of them tried. They failed, though, flopping into the water yards from Tom's boat. The rushes fell back to either side. Waves struck the bow as river gave way to lake.

Then a thump rocked the boat, nearly turning it over. Something landed heavily right behind Tom, nearly throwing him out into the water. He turned around, his paddle held up to block the blow that he knew must be coming—and looked into the face of the Skeleth standing over him.

"Master Marshal."

John Marshal's face loomed dead above him, mindless and unfeeling within the reaching, grasping glow. He kicked the Elder down beneath him, then raised his sword.

Tom did not know where the thought came from, but it seemed to him that, if he was about to die, he did not want to die trying to kill the nearest thing to a father he had ever had. He lowered his paddle.

"It's me." He stared up. "It's Tom. I will not fight you, Master Marshal."

John froze at the apex of his swing. His face twitched, and then his eyes fixed and focused.

A surge of wild hope ran through Tom. He thought of every time that John had ever been kind to him, everything John had ever done to ease the burdens of his life. "Master Marshal, it's Tom." He thought of the evenings he had spent, once a month, eating at John and Katherine's table. He remembered how he had stored those evenings up inside himself, doling out their joys over the hard days in between. An image formed in his memory, John Marshal feeding him and Katherine a stew so bad that they could hardly choke it down—and all of them laughing at it, all of them smiling, one instant when it felt as though he had had a family. "I won't fight you."

The face came alive. "T . . . Tom." John Marshal lowered his sword. "Tom." The waving limbs around him shuddered, pulling away from his body. Pain crossed his face—effort. He shook himself, like a man trying to wake from a nightmare.

The sternsman leapt from the back of the boat and swung his paddle hard across John's back. All trace of recognition vanished from John's face. He turned, leaping over the Elder with his sword held high.

"No, wait, please!" Tom reached out, but too late. The sternsman died without making a sound, tumbling backward into the water. The creature that was John Marshal turned, stepping lightly in the stern to come back around, blade at the ready—but then he stumbled and tripped.

"Paddle, Tom!" The Elder jammed her walking stick between John's legs and twisted it—the glowing limbs flowed around it, but not the flesh beneath. John Marshal flipped into the river with a loud splash.

Tom had no time to grieve or fear. He took up his paddle and jammed it into the water, on one side, and then the other, to keep them going straight. The boat leapt forward, from the river out onto the lake.

"Kill them! Kill all of them!" Warbur Drake shouted from atop the bridge behind them. "That boat, there! Kill!"

The Elder scrambled to the stern of the boat and grabbed the sternsman's fallen oar. Tom took the opposite side and drew water with all his might. More of the creatures leapt from the rushes, stretching themselves to the very limits of what sinew could bear, but none of them reached the boat.

Tom lunged out and drew hard, through water that was much less forgiving than the river had been. Currents crossed and roiled under the boat, slowing their progress out onto the lake. He dared not glance back. Castle Garafraxa loomed ahead, across a stretch of choppy black. Helmeted men moved along its battlements, and a murmur of alarm sounded over the water.

"Isembard!" The Elder raised her voice to a scratchy scream. "Isembard, it's Thulina Drake! It's Thulina! We are under attack!"

Tom spared a glance up at the walls of Garafraxa. The men atop them knew that something was wrong, that was plain enough. They shouted and moved along the battlements in ever greater numbers. A gate winched up ahead—if only Tom could keep them on course, they could paddle right through to safety.

"The dock's just past the gate." The Elder spoke between huffing hauls of breath. "Go right in, right in and we're safe." She had skill, but little strength, forcing Tom to double-paddle. They were not half so fast as they had been with the sternsman at the paddle, but they were moving.

Tom spied men rushing out onto the landing, hauling boats along a dock and leaping into them. One man seemed to direct them, an old man dressed in green, with a shiny bald head fringed by short white hair.

"Into your boats, men, hurry!" The bald man waved his sword from the gate of the castle. "Bring them in safe. Cast off, cast off!" As soon as the first boat had been loaded, he leapt into it and cut the line that held it to the dock.

Tom's bangs fell damp with sweat across his eyes. His shoulders screamed with every pull, and the castle ahead grew closer slowly, so slowly. It already felt as though he had been rowing all his life, but they were almost there.

"WATER SHALL BE DEATH IN THE VEINS." Warbur Drake's voice took on a terrifying resonance, seeming to hiss and leap along the surface of the lake. It came in bursts, an awful cadence: "BETWEEN EARTH AND METAL I SHAPE WATER INTO DEATH. WATER CHOKES YOU, WATER WILL HAVE YOU, WATER SHALL BE DEATH IN THE VEINS."

Tom gaped and froze. A snake rose from the lake before him, a snake made of nothing but water.

"Goodbye, sister," Warbur Drake called out across the waves, ragged and breathless from the exertion of her spell. "Your kind cannot be permitted to exist. You are not part of our plans."

The snake twisted upward in a fume of white water and lunged for the Elder.

"Leave her alone!" Tom leapt backward over the Elder's cowering form, swinging his paddle out in a wild arc at the snake. The paddle splashed through the coiled column of water without effect—and the snake bit him instead of the Elder, sinking its fangs into his side where his shirt had ridden up from his hip.

Pain ripped through Tom, ice in his veins, spikes in his mind. He let the paddle slip. His vision twisted until he saw only sky. Everything in him was agony, everything his body did—breathing, heartbeat, thought.

Jumble leapt up and started barking from the middle of the boat, each sharp noise a molten torture to Tom. He felt the boat begin to slew around, rocking sideways on the waves. Everything in him ached to slip into the water, to drown and end the pain.

Warbur Drake cursed, her voice shrill with anger and exhaustion. She began the chant of another spell.

Tom heaved himself up again, though it felt as though his flesh were coming off his bones. He found the paddle—such utter torment even to touch it—and drove it back into the water. He did not know whether the Elder was helping their course across the waves. He did not really know anything anymore, save for the pain, and what he meant to do before he died.

"Oh, Tom." The Elder sounded very far away. "It's not far. Hold on."

The chanting rose in rage, and then there sounded a chorus of hissing splashes. Tom could not tell if he had been hit by another spell. Jumble's barking seemed to get farther and farther away, growing dim, as though he had jumped inside a sack. What a funny thought . . .

Tom remembered that he was supposed to be paddling the boat. Shapes bobbed over the waves before him, men in boats up and down, up and down. The pain in him seemed to turn to sleepiness.

"We are almost there, Tom. Keep going."

Tom kept moving his arms, but could not quite remember why. It seemed much better to go to sleep.

"It's not far, Tom."

The shapes ahead drew closer. Tom saw the face of the old, bald man—then it smeared and melded with the clouds in the sky.