The Sleeping Army Awakes

Part 62 Snubbing

The fishing boat was already heavily laden, and despite the fact that the tarpaulin had kept the torrential overnight rain out, there was just a hint of water in the bottom. Sir Percy had boarded clumsily, and had come close to capsizing the craft in the process, adding to the water sloshing about.

Sir Percy was followed by Honza Malik and three of the lightest, rather than his best guards, and of course there was Vladimir. The boat sat very low in the water, if they had tried to fit another couple of people aboard then the boat would have been overwhelmed and would almost certainly have sunk like a stone where it was moored. For the first time perhaps in his life, Vladimir was frightened to catch too many fish, just in case it over-loaded the boat.

"Ask him if he is sure that he needs his guards in the same boat?'" Vladimir asked Malik. "Simply I don't want to sink boat. We have another identical one just sitting there at jetty. They could follow us there in that!"

"What's that bloody man saying now?" Sir Percy asked, without giving Malik a chance to translate.

"He's worried that the boat will sink if we take everyone in the same boat sir!" Malik said. "He says that the guards could go in the other boat.

"I've left half you guards ashore already!" Sir Percy said irritably, "Tell him to get on with it. We don't need the other Fredding boat! The cheeky bastard is just trying to double his fee."

Sir Percy's reaction was so negative that Vladimir wouldn't have needed a translation even if he hadn't been telepathic, Vladimir swore copiously, pulled the cord to start the engine and steered them expertly from away from the jetty.

Sir Percy was foolishly standing up in the middle of the boat as they moved off and so he lurched backwards and nearly toppled before they were five metres from the jetty, when the boat began to accelerate. It gave Vladimir great satisfaction to see Sir Percy flounder he had to turn his face away because he was laughing so much.

Malik and Tony quickly moved in and steadied Sir Percy but he shook them off ungratefully, as if their actions had been unnecessary, though he did have the sense to sit his vast bulk down for the rest of their trip out to the centre of the lake.

"Damned fella is trying to kill me!" Sir Percy complained. "I'm convinced that he is laughing at me!"

"Surely not sir!" Malik interceded, not wishing for Sir Percy to turn sour this early in the day. "I think that he is coughing sir. They smoke something really strange around here!"

Sir Percy grunted his disagreement with the analysis, but took the matter no further because he was looking forward to the fishing so much.

The strange leaves that Vladimir Horník was smoking in his home-made clay pipe, wasn't the only strange smell pervading the boat. The sputtering outboard motor, seemed to run on some strange fuel, that smelled vaguely of apples, but nevertheless easily powered the shallow bottomed, but heavy, clinker built boat to some waist-deep waters near the centre of the lake, next to a place where there had once been an island, which had been washed away in a particularly violent storm years before.

Once Vladimir was satisfied with their position, he theatrically licked his finger and whilst holding it skyward, to gauge the direction and strength of the wind, he silenced the engine and threw the seemingly over-sized plough anchor down into the water with a flourish in the opposite direction of the gusts, this was all part of the pantomime. The current was clearly visible because of all the things floating on the surface. Frogs basked upside down in the sunshine, drifting on a lazy, hesitant, flow towards the exit, which could easily be outpaced by a meandering ant without a map.

Although the anchor seemed over-large for the relatively small craft; a smaller anchor would gain no purchase on the muddy bottom. Vladimir had not been boasting idly concerning his knowledge of the lake. He knew that he needed to keep the boat from drifting too near to the place where the lake cascaded into the river and there was a waterfall with a ten metre drop.