Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

“Two hours if we’re lucky, and we generally aren’t.” Sumael slid out her hatchet. “Yarvi, find the rope, then look for some wood that might make a paddle. Nothing, when we’ve felled the trunks, you trim the branches.”

Nothing hugged his sword tight. “This is no saw. I will need the blade keen when Shadikshirram comes.”

“We hope to be long gone by then,” said Yarvi, too much water sloshing in his aching belly as he rooted through the packs.

Ankran held out his hand. “If you won’t use it give me the sword-”

Faster than seemed possible the immaculate point was grazing Ankran’s stubbled throat. “Try to take it and I will give it to you point first, storekeeper,” murmured Nothing.

“Time presses,” hissed Sumael through her gritted teeth, sending splinters flying from the base of her chosen tree with short, quick blows. “Use your sword or snap them off in your arse, but trim the bloody branches. And leave some long so we have something to hold on to.”

Soon Yarvi’s right hand was cut and dirty from dragging lengths of timber, his left wrist, which he hooked underneath them, riddled with splinters. Nothing’s sword was slathered in sap, Jaud’s fuzzy growth of hair was full of wood dust, Sumael’s right palm was bloody from wielding the hatchet and still she chopped, chopped, chopped.

They sweated and strained, snapping at each other through bared teeth, not knowing when the Banyas’ dogs would be snapping at them instead, but knowing it could not be long.

Jaud heaved up the trunks with a grunting effort, veins bulging from his thick neck, and nimble as a dressmaker sewing a hem Sumael weaved the rope in and out while Nothing hauled out the slack. Yarvi stood and watched, startling at every sound and, not for the first or the last time, wishing he had two good hands.

Considering the tools they had and the time they didn’t, their raft was a noble effort. Considering the surging torrent they would have to navigate, it was a terrifying one-hacked and splintered timbers bound with a hairy tangle of wool rope, their moose-shoulder shovel as one paddle, Jaud’s shield as another, and a vaguely spoon-shaped branch Yarvi had found as a third.

With arms folded about his sword, Nothing gave voice to Yarvi’s thoughts. “I do not care for the look of this raft and this river together.”

The fibres in Sumael’s neck stood out starkly as she dragged at the knots one more time. “All it has to do is float.”

“No doubt it will, but will we still be on it?”

“That depends how well you hold on.”

“And what will you say when it breaks up and floats out to sea in pieces?”

“I imagine I’ll be forever silent by then, but with the satisfaction of knowing as I drown that you were killed first by Shadikshirram, here, on this forsaken bank.” Sumael raised one brow at him. “Or are you coming with us?”

Nothing frowned at them, then off into the trees, weighing his sword in one hand, then he cursed and threw his weight in between Jaud and Yarvi. The raft began to grind slowly towards the water, their boots sliding in the shingle. Yarvi slipped into the mud in panic as someone came springing from the bushes.

Ankran, his eyes wild. “They’re coming!”

“Where’s Rulf?” asked Yarvi.

“Just behind me! This is it?”

“No, this is a joke,” hissed Sumael. “I have a war galley of ninety oars hidden behind that tree.”

“Only asking.”

“Stop asking and help us launch the bastard!”

Ankran flung his weight to the raft and with all of them pushing it slithered down the bank into the river. Sumael dragged herself on, her kicking foot catching Yarvi in the jaw and making him bite his tongue. He was up to his waist in water, thought he heard shouting behind him in the trees. Nothing was on now: he seized the wrist of Yarvi’s useless hand and hauled him up, one of the torn branches gouging his chest. Ankran snatched their packs from the beach and started to fling them onto the raft.

“Gods!” Rulf burst from the trees, cheeks puffing with every huge breath. Yarvi could see shadows in the woods beyond him, could hear wild calls in a language he did not know. Then the barking of dogs.

“Run, you old fool!” he screeched. Rulf charged down the shingle and sloshed out into the water and between them Yarvi and Ankran hauled him aboard while Jaud and Nothing began to paddle like madmen.

The only effect was that they began to slowly spin.

“Keep us straight!” snapped Sumael as the raft picked up speed.

“I’m trying!” growled Jaud, digging away with his shield and showering them all with water.

“Try harder! Do you know any decent oarsmen?”

“Do you have any decent oars?”

“Shut your mouth and paddle!” snarled Yarvi, water washing across the raft and soaking his knees. Dogs spilled from the forest-huge dogs, the size of sheep they seemed, all snarling teeth and drool, bounding up and down the shingle, barking.

Then men came. Yarvi could not have said how many in that snatched glance over his shoulder. Ragged shapes among the trees, kneeling on the bank, the curve of a bow.

“Get down!” roared Jaud, clambering to the back of the raft and huddling behind his shield.

Yarvi heard the bowstrings, saw the black splinters drifting up. He crouched, fascinated, his eyes fixed on them. They seemed to take an age to fall, each with a gentle whisper. One plopped in the water a couple of strides away. Then there were two quiet clicks as arrows stuck into Jaud’s shield. A fourth lodged shuddering in the raft beside Yarvi’s knee. A hand’s width to one side and it would have been through his thigh. He blinked at it, mouth open.

There the difference between one side of the Last Door and the other.

He felt Nothing’s hand at the scruff of his neck, forcing him to the edge of the raft. “Paddle!”

More men were spilling from the trees. There might have been a score of them. There might have been more.

“Thanks for the arrows!” Rulf bellowed at the bank.

One of the archers let fly another but they were moving out into swifter water now and his arrow fell well short. A figure stood with hands on hips, looking after them. A tall figure, with a curved sword, and Yarvi caught a glimpse of gleaming crystal on a dangling belt.

“Shadikshirram,” murmured Nothing. He had been right. She had been tracking them all along. And though Yarvi did not hear her make a sound, could not even see her face over that distance, he knew then she would not stop.

Not ever.

They might have escaped a fight with Shadikshirram, but soon enough the river was giving them more fight than even Nothing could have hoped for.

It showered them with cold water, soaked them and all their gear right through, made the raft buck and twist like an unbroken horse. Rocks battered at them, overhanging trees clutched at them, caught Ankran’s hood and might have plucked him from the raft had Yarvi not been clinging to his shoulder.

The banks grew steeper, higher, narrowed, until they were hurtling down a rocky gorge between broken cliffs, water spurting up through the gaps between the logs, their raft spinning like a leaf in spite of Jaud’s effort to use his arrow-stuck shield as a rudder. The river soaked the ropes and tore at the knots and began to work them loose, the raft flexing with the current, threatening to rip apart all together.

Yarvi could not hear Sumael’s screamed orders over the thunder of the river, and he gave up all pretense of influencing the outcome, closed his eyes and clung on for his life, good hand and bad hand burning with the clenched effort, one moment cursing the gods for putting him on this raft, the next begging them to get him off it with his life. There was a wrench, a drop, the raft tipped under Yarvi’s knees, and he squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the end.