Henry Neff - The Maelstrom

And then, almost imperceptibly at first, they began to slow.

Above them, Max beheld a pair of wings, stretched as wide and taut as a glider’s. A gargantuan albatross had snatched up the remains of the balloon and ropes in its talons and was breaking their fall. The bird’s wings were twenty-five feet across, and yet it could only dampen the speed of their descent. The smee squawked with the strain, his voice warbling as the balloon’s trajectory smoothed and they were skimming twenty feet above the lake Max had sighted. Just a little slower and they could safely—

With a screech, the albatross abruptly dropped the balloon and they crashed into the water.

The initial shock of impact was replaced by brutal cold, needle stabs of pain as Max tumbled about in the shallows of the icy lake. He saw stars as his head struck something, a log or fallen tree. He groped for air, felt it rush into his lungs as he finally broke the surface. A hand brushed his and he glimpsed David sinking back below. Seizing his friend, Max raised his head out of the water and began swimming toward shore.

It was hard going. The chain shirt was an anchor about Max’s neck, pulling him ever down into the reedy depths. He kept his eyes fixed on the stars, glittering beyond the billows of his sputtering breath. Gasping and straining, he towed David to shore.

Madam Petra and Katarina were already there, shivering on the banks and sorting through the wet baggage they’d managed to salvage.

“The p-pinlegs?” asked Max, chattering in the frigid cold.

Petra could not speak but merely pointed out toward the lake.

“Get in the woods,” said Max, nodding toward the nearby trees. “Start a fire.”

“The army,” gasped Petra. “They’ll be coming. We have to hide!”

“It w-won’t matter if we die of cold,” said Max. “Can you carry David?”

The smuggler nodded, buckling only slightly as Max slung the boy over her shoulder. She walked briskly to the woods, Katarina staggering along in her wake. There was a coughing sound near Max’s feet. A beaver was waddling out of the shallows, looking cold, wet, and miserable.

“Toby,” said Max. “Are you all right?”

“I think I broke something,” the smee groaned, limping.

“Petra’s gone ahead to start a fire,” said Max, quickly pulling off cloak and hauberk. “I’m going back for the pinlegs.”

Before the smee could respond, Max dove back into the lake, stretching out for the ruptured balloon that was floating atop the icy waters like a lily pad. The cold was like an iron vise clamped about his chest, each stroke squeezing the life out of him. At last his hand touched the balloon, fumbling about until he found a rope. Taking hold of it, Max filled his lungs and dove straight down.

The basket was swinging slowly in the depths like a pendulum suspended by the balloon on the surface. Max felt frantically about the basket’s interior, swimming around inside and groping blindly for the pinlegs tube. After several minutes, his lungs were afire. He abandoned the dive and raced back to the surface.

A glimpse of stars, the rush of oxygen into his lungs, and he dived once again, feeling his way down the ropes to the basket. Once there, he gazed desperately about the water and saw nothing—not even a trace of moon or starlight that filtered through the surrounding blackness.

With frantic concentration, Max enveloped his hands with witch-fire. He’d never tried to do such a thing underwater and wasn’t certain that it would work, but sure enough the eerie blue flames kindled from his fingers, a swirling, incandescent blaze that sent bubbles hissing up toward the surface. Battling the cold, he paddled through the lake’s depths, his hands like two ghostly flares as he searched the weeds and wreckage.

On his fourth dive, Max found it. The pinlegs was peeking out from a nest of reeds on the lake’s bottom, a dim glint of metal at the very limits of the witch-fire’s radiance. Even as Max seized it, he felt the strange creature kicking and scrabbling against the tube’s interior. Clutching it tightly, he rocketed to the surface and swam for shore.

Had Petra not called out to him, Max might have wandered about the woods until he collapsed. He was delirious with cold, his skin blue and his mouth frozen into a horrid grimace as he stumbled about in search of his companions. Taking his hand, the smuggler led him to a small hollow, shielded from the wind by a close stand of pine trees. Some dead wood had been heaped in the hope of a fire, but the fuel was wet and they’d been unsuccessful.

Max was so desperate for warmth he dropped the pinlegs tube and promptly seized hold of two logs. Again, witch-fire coursed from his fingers, bathing the wood with flames. Seconds later, they were hissing and popping, fully ablaze as he stood holding them.

“They’ll burn you!” exclaimed Madam Petra, swatting the wood out of Max’s hands. They fell onto the other logs, catching into a small fire as Katarina fed them with strips of bark and kindling. Max stood right next to the pile, even as it grew to a crackling blaze that sent plumes of sparks and embers cascading over his legs.

Slowly, warmth returned, seeping into his bones to chase away the mortal cold. Gazing down, he saw the others gathered about the fire. Madam Petra and her daughter had undressed down to their underclothes, drying their other garments on an array of rocks and logs that they’d dragged over. Toby was sniffing gingerly at his injured leg, inching ever closer to the heat. David was still unconscious but breathing evenly. Madam Petra had removed his wet clothes as well, and Rowan’s sorcerer lay in naught but his underwear, the firelight dancing on the shiny ten-inch scar that ran down the center of his chest.

Max stood staring at the flames for another five minutes. When life finally returned to his fingers and limbs, he squeezed the remaining lake water out of his clothes and threw them directly on one of the smaller logs. When they began to smoke, he removed them and slipped them on.

“Look after them,” he said, buckling the gae bolga to his side. He nodded to the longsword lying by the smuggler’s boots. “Do you know how to use that?”

Madam Petra nodded.

“Good.” He nodded. “If I’m not back by dawn, strike out for Bholevna. There’s a shortcut near there—a way to get home. David knows where it is and how to use it.”

“But where are you going?” asked Katarina, sounding frightened.

“Back to the lake. They’ll be coming soon.”

Indeed, they were already on the scene when Max emerged from the wood. He saw the riders milling about the lake’s shoreline, a score of dark figures seated on horseback while one waded into the moonlit water and cast a hook at the balloon. When the hook caught, the soldier tied it to his saddle and swatted his horse’s flanks. It trudged forward on the icy banks, dragging the balloon and basket into the shallows. The riders’ attention was fixed on the lake; none were watching as Max slipped from the woods and stole closer, keeping to the brush and bracken.

He was now within twenty feet of the closest, an armored vye sitting atop a destrier bred to handle the creature’s weight. In his taloned hand, the vye held a long spear. He shifted uneasily in his saddle, gazing back toward the trees.

“They’ve fled into the woods,” he growled. “We should be after them already!”

Another turned his dark face at his comrade and bared his jagged teeth. “They’ve fled on foot, fool!” the vye sniggered. “We’ll have them soon enough. You heard the captain; he wants the humans and the flying machine. Start the chase alone if you’re so eager.”

“But the battle—”

“Can start without us. We get a lucky plum of an assignment—one that whisks us from the front lines—and you want to get it over with? Slow and easy, friend—a bit of luck and we’ll rejoin ranks after Aamon’s crushed. You want to be in the thick when those scuttlers are set loose?”