Then he heard another sound—the heavy splash of many oars moving in unison, and a voice calling the time. “With a will, and a way, that’s a stroke and a lay, with a will, and way . . . oars up and in!”
There came a shout, so loud and close it almost made Sam flinch.
“What vessel, and where are you bound?”
“The Clayr’s boat Finder,” Lirael said, but her voice was lost in the rush of the river. She forced herself to shout, surprised by the strength of her own voice. “The Clayr’s boat Finder. Bound for Qyrre.”
“Oh, aye, I know Finder,” replied the voice, less formal now. “And she obviously knows your hand, Mistress—so you may pass. Will you be stopping to climb up to town?”
“No,” said Lirael. “I travel on urgent business for the Clayr.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” replied the guardboat commander, nodding at Lirael across the forty feet of water that separated the two vessels. “There’s trouble brewing, for sure. You’d best beware of the riverbanks, for there have been reports of Dead creatures. Just like the old days, before the return of the King.”
“I’ll be careful,” shouted Lirael. “Thank you for the warning, Captain. May I go on now?”
“Pass, friend,” shouted the guard, waving his hand. At that motion, the oars dropped in again, the men straining at their benches. The steerswoman put the rudder over, and the guardboat drove hard away, bow slicing through the current. Lirael saw something metallic glisten under the water as the galley rose up, and she realized it was a long steel ram. The guardboat clearly had the means to sink any craft that didn’t stop at its hail.
As they passed, one of the guards looked at Lirael strangely, and she saw his hand creeping to the string of his bow. But none of the others so much as looked at her, and after a moment, the strange guard turned away, leaving Lirael with a feeling of unease. For a moment, she felt she had smelled the metallic tang of Free Magic. She looked at the Dog, and saw that she was staring back at the same guard, all the hair on her back on end.
Sam listened to the steady swish of the oars as the galley drew away, and the receding voice of the cantor. “Are they gone?”
“Yes,” said Lirael slowly. “But you’d better stay hidden. They’re still in sight, and we’re coming up to High Bridge now. And there was something not quite right about one of them. I caught the hint of Free Magic, as if it might not have been a man at all.”
“It can’t have been Free Magic,” said Sam. “The river is flowing too strongly.”
“Unlike the Dead, not all things of Free Magic turn back from running water,” said Mogget. “Only those with common sense.”
“The cat speaks truly,” added the Disreputable Dog. “Running water is no bar to those of the Third Kindred, or anything infused with the essence of the Nine. I would not expect such things here, but I did smell something of that ilk aboard the guardboat, Prince Sameth. Something that had only the semblance of a man. Fortunately, it did not dare reveal its presence among so many. But we must be on our guard.”
Sam sighed and fought back the temptation to peel the blanket aside just a little bit. It was very hard to lie in darkness going into possible danger. And he’d never seen High Bridge from the water, and it was supposed to be one of the most spectacular sights in the Kingdom.
Lirael certainly thought so. Despite the increasing current, she was content to let Finder steer, choosing to gape, instead.
High Bridge had originally been an enormous natural bridge of stone, resting upon the cliffs of the gorge, with the Ratterlin rushing under it four hundred forty feet below. Over the centuries, the natural grandeur of the bridge had been augmented by the human buildings upon it. The first of the buildings constructed there was a castle, built to take advantage of the protection offered by so much deep running water beneath it. No Dead creatures could come against its walls, for they must also pass above the river’s swift waters.
This had proved to be an enormous attraction during the years of the Interregnum, when the great majority of Charter Stones in the Kingdom were broken and the villages that depended upon them for safety destroyed, leaving the Dead and those in league with them free to do as they chose. Within a few years, the original castle had been surrounded by houses, inns, warehouses, windmills, forges, manufactories, stables, taverns, and all manner of other buildings. Many were actually dug down into the bridge itself, for the stone was several hundred feet thick. The bridge was more than a mile broad, too, though not very long, the distance between the eastern and western cliffs once being famously covered in a single bowshot by the archer Aylward Blackhair.
Lirael was staring up at this strange metropolis when she heard a woman’s shout, seemingly from the figurehead at the front of the boat. At the same time Finder’s tiller shot out of her hand, pushing hard over to the left. Instantly, the boom swung violently across and the boat heeled over to the right, her starboard quarter almost in the river, spray and water foaming in across the side.
Sam found himself piled up against the starboard rail. Somehow both Mogget and the Dog had ended up on top of him, along with what felt like everything else. And water was pouring in on him in bucketloads.
Sam thrust his hands out of the blanket and clawed along the side of the boat, reaching out for the rail. But his hands went straight into rushing water, and Sam realized that Finder was heeled over so far she must be about to capsize. Desperately he struggled to free himself of Mogget, Dog, baggage, and blanket, at the same time as he shouted, “Lirael! Lirael! What’s happening?”
Chapter Forty
Under the Bridge
Lirael was too busy pulling herself back into the boat to answer. The boom had caught her on the shoulder, knocking her overboard before she even knew what was happening. Fortunately, she’d managed to grab the rail and hang on, looking up fearfully as Finder’s hull towered above her, so far over it seemed certain the boat would capsize—with Lirael underneath.
Then, as quickly as she’d heeled over, Finder righted herself, the sudden lurch helping Lirael fling herself back in, to end up in a terrible tangle of blanket, Sam, Dog, Mogget, lots of odds and ends, and sloshing water.
At the same time, Finder passed under High Bridge, moving out of sunlight into the strange, cool twilight, as the Ratterlin streamed into the vast tunnel made by the bridge of stone high overhead.
“What happened?” spluttered Sam when he finally got free of the wet blanket. Lirael was already by the tiller, completely drenched, her hand gripped around something projecting from the stern.
“I thought Finder had gone mad,” said Lirael. “Till I saw this.”
Sam shuffled back, cursing the blanket that was still tangled around his legs. It wasn’t exactly dark under High Bridge, because light did come in from either end, but it was a strange light, like sun slowly breaking through fog, soft and diffused by the water. The Dog rushed over to look too, but Mogget sniffed and padded to the bow, to begin the long process of licking himself dry.
The Dog saw what Lirael held before Sam did, and growled.
There was a splintered hole through the port side of the stern, under the gunwale, where Lirael had been sitting before Finder had knocked her over with the boom. In her hand Lirael held the crossbow bolt that had made the hole. Its shaft was painted white, and it was fletched with raven feathers.
“It must have just missed you!” exclaimed Sam, as he put three of his fingers through the hole.
“Only thanks to Finder,” said Lirael, stroking the tiller gently. “Look at what it did to my poor boat.”
“It would have gone straight through you, even if you’d had armor on,” said Sam grimly. “That’s a war bolt—not a hunting quarrel. And a very good shot. Too good to be natural.”
“They’ll probably try again on the other side—or before,” said Lirael, looking up with alarm at the stone high above them. “Are there any openings above us, do you know?”
“No idea,” said Sam. He followed her gaze and could see only unbroken yellow stone. But the bridge was several hundred feet above them, and the light bad. There could be any number of dark openings he just couldn’t see.
“I can’t see any, Mistress,” growled the Dog as she craned her head back, too. “But we’ll be through in a few minutes, with this current.”
“Do you know how to cast an arrow ward?” Sam asked Lirael. The current was indeed taking them along at a rapid rate, and the bright, sunlit arch that marked the other side of the bridge was getting closer all too quickly.
“No,” said Lirael nervously. “I was probably supposed to. I skipped fighting arts quite a lot.”
“All right,” Sam said. “Why don’t we swap places? I’ll sit here and steer, but with an arrow ward at my back. You get ready with your bow, prepared to shoot back. Mogget—you’ve got the best eyes—you spot for Lirael.”
“The Horrible Hound, or whatever she calls herself, can do that,” declared Mogget, from the bow. “I’m going back to sleep.”