Dev lifted the other end and Risala followed with an ungainly armful of paddles and swords. They moved carefully to the dip in the cliff where a dark pool of clear water was sheltered by a greenish-brown outcrop of coral battered by surging waves.
Kheda looked at Dev. The wizard nodded and they threw the raft into the water. Kheda jumped after it, kicking out as the water closed over him, shaking his head to clear his eyes as he broached the surface. The raft bobbed placidly and he pulled himself aboard, lying flat so as not to overturn it. Catching his breath, he rose carefully to his knees.
‘Here!’ Dev tossed the crude paddles down to Kheda.
The startled warlord caught the first two but the third skittered off the knobbly planks into the water. ‘Don’t throw the swords!’ He laid a sweep in the crock of the cross-frame and forced the ungainly craft closer to the cliffs to retrieve the errant oar.
‘I’m a barbarian, not a complete fool,’ said Dev scornfully.
Risala made a neat dive into the sea, swimming around the raft to climb on to the opposite side from
Kheda.
‘Get in as close as you can.’ Dev was lying on the cliff, reaching down at full stretch to offer the swords. Kheda used the stern oar to drive the raft closer to the rocks. Risala reached up and took the swords as an opportune swell lifted them.
Dev jumped into the sea feet first, sending spray in all directions. He bobbed there for a moment, scouring dirt and dust from his reddened chest. ‘Shit, this stings.’
‘Salt water will do a scalding like that no harm.’ Kheda lashed the stern sweep securely into its frame. ‘But the sun will leave me dried out like trail meat without a shirt to cover my back.’ Dev eased himself warily aboard the raft. ‘Let’s have a paddle.’
With Risala and Dev kneeling, fending off gently before paddling furiously against the implacable thrust of the waves, Kheda wrestled the clumsy vessel through the tortuous maze of corals using the stern sweep. There was no respite out in the open water. Some stray thread of the southern current seized the little raft, threatening to sweep them into the wider waters beyond the island. ‘You steer.’ Kheda shook Risala by the shoulder. He kept firm hold of the stern oar as she clung to him, manoeuvring gingerly around the tiny craft. She took the steering oar and passed him her paddle with a resolute nod.
Kheda let go of the steering sweep and knelt to join Dev in driving the raft beyond the merciless current’s reach. The knots and lumps of the tandra wood dug painfully into his shins and the searing sun hammered down on his head and back. He was sweating freely, though the breeze snatched away the beams of perspiration on his forehead and chest. It seemed an eternity before he realised that the pull of the water below the raft had slackened. Kheda felt breathless with relief as much as from the exertion They were within bowshot of the next scrap of island.
‘Do we want to land for a rest?’ Risala was clinging resolutely to the stern oar, feet planted wide on the rough-hewn logs, her bare brown toes gripping the wood. She nodded at a break in the reef that offered access to the beach.
‘Let’s get around this island and see how we’re faring.’ Kheda looked at Dev, who was resting his improvised oar across his thighs, bald head thrown back, his eyes closed. The wizard jerked a single nod of consent.
They made better speed now, beyond the grip of the current, but the new danger was drifting too close to the mottled, foam-wreathed reef running parallel with the shore. They crawled along the shoreline. Kheda stopped looking at it. It seemed that every time he glanced up, the same stubborn cluster of nut palms had barely shifted to mark their painful progress.
‘Let’s land when we’re past the next strait,’ Risala said tightly.
‘And find a spring,’ rasped Dev. ‘We’ll have to wait till it’s cooler before we go on.’ Kheda found he was nearly mute with cloying spittle and swallowed painfully. ‘Or we’ll all end up dead of heat prostration.’ We’ll just have to take our chances with the fleet still being at the rendezvous point.
They toiled on until the raft slipped sideways into the mouth of a channel running between the little islet and a lump of thickly wooded land that tantalised with a moist green scent.
Dev looked down the channel. ‘Shit!’
‘Savages!’ The raft dipped as Risala’s shudder ran down the steering oar.
Kheda dug his paddle deep into the water, fear lending energy that put his weariness to flight. ‘They’re not looking this way.’
Not yet.’ Dev matched him stroke for stroke. ‘It looks like a whole horde of those hollow log boats of theirs.’ Risala kept watch as she wrenched their course around towards the far shore.
The rocky ledge ahead was steeply undercut by the ceaseless waves. Kheda looked desperately for some place to land as wild wordless cries echoed down the strait. ‘What are they doing?’
‘They’re not after us,’ Risala said with breathless relief. ‘They’re attacking some of their own.’
‘Mezai said the trireme crews heard screams in the night,’ Dev puffed.
Kheda pointed urgently with his dripping paddle. ‘There, behind that boulder.’
They pushed the raft through an awkward eddy and on to a narrow shelf of sand behind a tumble of broken rocks.
‘You’d think they’d be too busy running from Chazen swords to bother slaughtering each other,’ Dev observed as they hauled the raft out of the water. Kheda peered out over the water but the trees hid the battle from view. We’d better hide until they’ve gone away. We’ll never outrun them on open water—those log boats of theirs are cursed fast.’
‘We can look for a spring, can’t we?’ Risala set a hand on the hilt of her dagger.
Dev settled his swords in his belt. ‘I don’t suggest we stand and fight if we bump into anyone.’
No, we cut and run,’ Kheda agreed. ‘Let’s try to see what’s happening. Best we know what’s behind us before we go any further.’
He led the way cautiously through the welcome shade of the forest. Defiant yells crushed inarticulate cries of pain that were pierced in turn by desperate screams. Rage and agony struggled for supremacy in the bitter cacophony.
‘This way.’ Dev pushed past Kheda towards the water, where reflected light rippled through the thinner trees.
Risala halted. ‘I’m going to find a spring or some fruit or something. I’m parched.’
Kheda stopped, torn. ‘Shout if you see anything dangerous.’
‘More dangerous than Dev?’ Risala’s half-smile lifted Kheda’s spirits just a little.
Kheda pushed cautiously through a dense screen of tassel-bevy bushes to find a finger of pocked and pitted rock thrust out into the strait. Dev was already lying flat on the rough sandy ground, chin resting on his interlaced hands, intent on the scene before him. Careful of his swords, Kheda lowered himself to join the wizard. The rock was hard and gritty under his bare stomach.
‘It’s the usual mayhem,’ Dev said thoughtfully. ‘The attackers from over yonder are getting the worst of it.’ Some way off, though still too close for comfort, the flotilla Kheda had seen as they rounded the point was attacking an invader’s encampment on this larger island. Not built in the ruins of a Chazen village, that’s something to be thankful for.’ He spoke the thought aloud.
The invaders had merely cleared a wide swathe of trees and brush, using the lumber and leafy branches to fashion crude shelters. There were a few blackened scars where cookfires had burned and some heaps of unidentifiable detritus.
Dev’s dark eyes were fixed on the fighting. The shallow boats that had come over from the outlying island had almost reached this near shore when savages lying in wait had launched their own hollow log boats from the cover of bushes running down to the water. They hadn’t gone straight for their foes but had paddled out to the middle of the channel to cut off their retreat before driving them on to the hostile shore. The wild men fought out on the water, riding their perilous vessels as they stabbed and smashed at each other with wooden spears and stone-studded clubs. The dull thud of bludgeoning and the sharp crack of bone was a counterpoint to aggressive yells and pain-filled screams.