Something closed around the scruff of my neck and suddenly I was moving again, the darkness cascading away. I took the breath I’d been longing for and of course there was nothing but water. When I tried to choke it up, there was nowhere for it to go — and with that realisation, light exploded in my eyes, noise sluiced through me. It could only be dying, though I’d somehow imagined death would be quiet and this was anything but. In hopeless desperation, I tried for one more, final breath…
Air smashed into my chest, just as water gushed out in a great splutter. I took another breath, another, each one pumping what seemed a bucket’s load of seawater back into its rightful home. Only on the fourth breath did the light begin to congeal into a picture, the sound resolve into the pound of waves.
I was further from the boat, which looked almost nothing like a boat now. Even as I grasped what had happened, why I was alive, I swung a little in Saltlick’s grip and he came into view. He was battered and bloody, hanging one-handed from a crest of rock, holding me half-free of the ocean’s savage churn. He gave me one glance, managed the palest shadow of a grin, and began to move.
I’d never felt so helpless in my life. Saltlick’s path was a crude concourse of rocks, some thrusting from under the waves, slick with foam and thrashed with white water, most just beneath its surface. It would have been lethal even without his wounded leg or a sodden thief hanging from one fist. For all Saltlick’s agility, I was sure he’d slip at any moment and plunge us both back into the depths, or else dash my head into jelly against the reef. I’d have pleaded with him to put me down if I’d thought I could possibly speak, or that he could possibly hear.
Then Saltlick finally did let go, and I fell to my knees, still hacking up water — but infinitely relieved to feel something solid beneath me. I’d have stayed that way, probably passed out that way, but the sea was already sucking round my legs and if there was one thing I wanted to be away from, it was the sea. With a hand on Saltlick’s knee, I dragged myself back to my feet, not sure until the last moment that my ankle would hold me.
We were stood upon the beach I’d seen before. Though it ran almost out of sight in either direction, it wasn’t much more than a crescent of gravel flayed by white-edged waves. There were other figures crawling or staggering their way up it, clustering into bedraggled knots, one or two even trying to haul in salvage from the boat before the sea sucked it away. I spotted Estrada nearby, half-supported by Navare, and was surprised by how much relief I felt.
But that wasn’t the time for relief. For seeing Estrada, I saw too where she was looking — saw where the other boat had landed further up the shore, run aground on the dismal shale. Already men were tumbling from its side, their uniforms drab and salt-stained but their drawn swords vivid in the early evening light.
Our party were already gathering themselves, the guardsmen drawing their own blades, the buccaneers producing wicked-looking dirks from the sheaths they wore low behind their backs; even Estrada had a sword in her hand, though I’d never noticed her wearing one. They’d have made an intimidating sight if one amongst them hadn’t been half drowned, or if the palace soldiers hadn’t been closing with such grim and steady composure.
Fortunate, then, that I wasn’t the only one with sense enough to read the odds. “Fall back!” cried Navare — and though his voice was weak against the crash of the surf, everyone turned to look where he was pointing. What Navare had spied, what he was already leading us towards, was a gully in the cliff side, its upper edge breaching onto the higher ground above. There was no trace of a path and it was too hard a climb for men in our state, but about its base were a half-ring of boulders that had slid down in some earlier age, and those offered a better point of defence than anywhere on the beach.
There was a little false bravado at the prospect of so swift a retreat, but mostly everyone seemed glad of a hope, however slim, that they might not have to lay down their lives on that miserable shore. I wasn’t quite the first to arrive at the boulders but I came close, finding unexpected energy in tormented muscles. Even Saltlick failed to outpace me — and I couldn’t help noticing how heavily he still favoured his good leg.
Inside, the crude crescent barrier was less of an obstruction than it had appeared, with a wide gap on one side and considerable space within. Fortunately, its best protection lay on the side the palace troops were approaching from, and even the open span was narrow enough to defend. I climbed a little way up the incline, the better to see what was happening while playing as small a part in it as possible, and watched as the others fit themselves into gaps under Navare’s direction — so that in a mere few moments, the natural barrier really had come to look like a fortress in miniature.
The resulting battle didn’t take long; as long as it took our opponents to realise that, with their crossbow strings wet and momentarily useless from the time at sea, even a few injured and half-drowned men could hold that boulder enclave against them. In fact, from my perspective — and it was true that my only contribution was a couple of thrown stones that came closer to hitting our side than theirs — it all seemed more a sham than an actual combat. There was some rattling of sabres, much shouting, and perhaps a thigh or shoulder nicked somewhere along the line. But the resulting retreat was eager and orderly enough to imply that the palace soldiers recognised a hopeless cause when they saw it.
Then again, what reason did they have to hurry? If their goal was to keep us from our destination then they’d already achieved it. If they wanted us dead, they had time enough for that as well. Fighting an unfavourable fight in the deepening gloom was a risk they had no need to take.
Estrada watched them go, squinting against the darkness as the last ruddy sunlight spilt against the waves and drained into their furrows. She waited until they were back around their own boat, and continued to watch until there was no light to watch by. Navare, meanwhile, posted sentries at the more conspicuous gaps in our defence and set others to looking after the injured — a difficult task when, if you counted cuts and scrapes, almost everyone fell into that category.
Having already clambered down by then, I’d confirmed to my satisfaction that neither the wound on my ankle nor the gash on my forehead were likely to prove fatal. A tentative inspection had confirmed that both were skin deep, and the saltwater had done a decent job of cleaning them. Still, I felt tired unto death — as though a part of me really had drowned out there, and what Saltlick had hauled from the depths was nothing but a tattered shell.
Once Estrada and Navare were confident that we’d seen the last of the palace guardsmen for at least the immediate future, Navare called everyone together. “We’ll need a fire,” Estrada began, “if we’re going to last out the night.”
“Especially since there’s every chance they’ll come at us again before dawn,” Navare agreed. “I doubt we’re the first boat to fall foul of those rocks, so there might be driftwood out there somewhere. After what you’ve just been through I won’t force anyone, but a couple of volunteers would be acting in all our interests.”
“I’ll go.” I wasn’t certain what impulse made me say it. I was dressed for the task, it had to be said, my dark clothes and cloak already disappearing into the twilight. That in itself was hardly a reason to risk my life, however. Then again, perhaps that was just it. I didn’t anticipate much within our enclave besides a drawn-out death. Outside at least I could weigh up possibilities and maybe see something I was missing.
No one tried to argue with me — though I couldn’t help wondering, when Navare sent out a couple of his men who’d also volunteered in different directions to my own, if it wasn’t his way of saying he didn’t expect me back. I was assigned the stretch of beach directly ahead — which meant at least that the death cries of the man to my right might alert me to approaching danger.