It was hard to hold myself to small breaths, hard to walk slowly when there were monsters all around, and I could feel the air sack getting smaller and smaller, but I had no idea how long it would take me to reach the shore or whether it would even be safe, at that point, to get out of the water. I was pretty certain Niloch would be watching for me to surface. He might even be waiting when I reached the riverbank, since it didn’t take a whole lot of smarts, even by the standards of infernal nobility, to realize what I was trying to do.
I had just kicked away a few larger specimens of the crabs with faces—the bigger ones looked both less human and more expressive, if you can imagine that—and was really beginning to wonder whether I had enough air to make the shore, when I saw another large, long shape coming out of the murk in my general direction. Certain it was another one of the plated monsters or something even worse, I crouched down in the mud and froze in place, trying not to let the bubble of air in my lungs escape and give me away. But what came toward me out of the clouds of silt, heading out toward the deepest part of the river, was not the prehistoric monster I expected, but . . . a parade. Humanoid shapes walked along the river bottom in a line, kicking up the gray ooze so that they seemed to be moving in a fog, like a vision of fairies in the Irish hills. Then I saw that they were walking along the bottom because they were chained together.
Slaves. Somebody’s slave ship had been chased by a faster ship, or perhaps merely sunk. Whichever it had been, these poor damned souls had wound up at the bottom of the Phlegethon, too heavy because of their chains to reach the surface. I could only guess how long they had been down here, trudging through the mud, but it had been long enough for the river to take its toll. Several of the slaves were all but gone, only bones and a few rags of skin still tangled in their chains, but many of the others looked almost whole except for the places where fish and other river creatures had gnawed at them. The leader, whose grim determination seemed to have drawn the rest along after him, had lost both eyes, one arm, and most of the fingers from his remaining hand, but still he moved forward through the dark water, one bony, tattered foot in front of another, his fellows stumbling or floating behind him, depending on how much of them remained. When I saw all those empty eye sockets I understood why the poor bastards were headed in the opposite direction from the shore.
I moved toward them as quickly as I could through the slippery ooze, trying to get their attention by waving my arms, but my cannonball sinker made me no faster than them, and even though I got closer I couldn’t attract the attention of any of them, least of all the blind leader. He marched past me, and the rest of the chained, doomed group followed him. I got close enough to grab at one of them, but the arm came away in my hand and the one who had lost it didn’t even seem to notice.
Too far gone, I realized. However long they had been down here, there was not enough left of them, either in body or in thought, to survive on the surface. The kindest thing I could do was leave them marching on as they were, to be pulled apart by fish or to rot gently into pieces and become one with the river.
One of the most profound lessons of Hell was how little an angel could actually accomplish. I had learned that lesson again and again since I’d been here, but never as clearly as this.
The chained slaves hobbled slowly away, vanishing within moments into the floating murk of the river bottom, invisible to my stinging eyes.
If I was a different kind of guy, I could probably spend an entire career studying the life (well, you know what I mean) to be found in the rivers of Hell. But I’m not. All I really wanted to do was just find my way out of the river, off this level of Hell, and down to the Neronian Bridge. Still, it was hard not to notice when I saw something thrashing in the mud and, instead of the fishy monster I expected, discovered two animated corpses, little more than bones, trying to murder each other.
Let me reiterate: I had to step over a pair of skeletons, which were struggling in the silt a couple of dozen feet beneath the surface of the Phlegethon. Both of them were missing most of their lower halves, and their bony hands were wrapped around each other’s throats. The throats in question were little more than vertebrae and a few rags of rotting flesh, and they were, I repeat, at the bottom of a river, so it wasn’t like one of them was going to suffocate the other. But there they were. I guess that’s why it’s called Hell.
Anyway, like I said, I could tell you lots more, because there’s lots to tell—carnivorous river worms, lobsterlike beasts that vomited out their own sticky stomachs and reeled them back in like fishing nets, things with the bodies of sharks and the heads of insane horses, all teeth and rolling eyes and, of course, more bodies of the humanoid damned in various states of decomposition, not all of whom seemed to be in the river against their will. In fact, more than a few seemed to have chosen lying in the acid mud at the bottom of the Phlegethon, slowly turning to living mush, over whatever they had experienced on land. Hell’s version of committing suicide, I guess.
I reached the shallows just as my air ran out. I shed the vest and its weight, saving Riprash’s flask, then let myself float to the top. I lay there for long moments, trying to look as much like another suicide as possible until I could take a discreet look around. I spotted the Headless Widow, but saw to my relief that it was still some way out in the river, still waiting near the spot I’d gone down, and there was no sign of Riprash’s ship at all. So far, so good.
I paddled gently forward until I could touch the bottom, then climbed the bank in the darkest and least visible place I could find, in case somebody on Niloch’s boat had a telescope. When I found a comparatively safe spot, I stole a moment’s rest and deep breathing, but was roused by the sound of distant voices.
The Widow appeared to have given up on its vigil over the spot where I’d sunk and was pulling to shore, fires stoked and oars sweeping like centipede legs. I knew that even in this darkest part of the day there would be eyes on board that could see better than mine, so I unwrapped the pistols Riprash had given me from their protective oilskin bag, slid them and the dagger-sword into my belt, and began to make my way up a low bluff, away from the river. But the bluff quickly proved to be only the base of a larger hill, and I was even more exposed on the slope than I would have been on the riverbank, so I had to keep climbing. As I did so, I could look down on Niloch’s ship anchored in the bay, and the landing boats coming ashore. Unlike the Bitch’s little dinghy, these were good-sized craft with several oarsmen in each and room for soldiers and mounts and even Niloch’s hellhounds. It was easy to tell where the hellhounds were, because everyone else was crowded at the other end.
To my dismay, instead of making camp on the shore, the commissar’s troops immediately began to follow in roughly the same direction I’d just come, as though they’d already picked up my scent. I did my best to hurry my pace, although it was dangerous climbing in the dark. As I got nearer the top, I could see my pursuers beginning to flag: the horses, or whatever the hell they were riding, were having trouble with the steep, rocky slope. At last they reached a relatively flat spot several hundred feet below me and began scouting for an easier way up.
I took advantage of this pause to find suitable rock where I could rest and also keep an eye on them. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but I could tell Niloch was furious. I could hear his shrill tones echo out over the river valley. While he scolded his minions, I watched the hellhounds pace nervously on their chains, each one held by two or three keepers, but I soon wished I had chosen something else to watch.