Barbara Hambly - Dead water

Christmas pulled a knife from his belt with his free hand, and January had to twist aside to keep from being eviscerated. His grip on the Reverend's throat broke, and as the outlaw brought up his pistol, January kicked him backwards, down onto the men on the stair.

“Don't let them go!” he yelled, and plunged down after them, crowding them to keep them from shooting. But this time no one followed. Jim and the others were already falling back to the perceived safety of the pilot-house, not understanding how fatal it was to give ground, and January felt a knife rip into the muscles of his back. Then he was falling backwards, down off the stair, clutching and grabbing and then hitting the back of the deck hard.

A fury of shouting and pounding came dimly to him from below as he lay on the boards of the deck, stunned and trying to breathe. Every whisper of air brought stabbing pain in his side—a rib broken, he thought, the pain wasn't where he'd been stabbed and though he felt weak and lightheaded, it was the long burning pain of a slash. Opening his eyes, he saw the last of Christmas's men piling up the stair onto the hurricane deck, surrounding the pilot-house.

Head swimming, January rolled over, tried to get up. Two of the last men up the stairs halted, turned back, and climbed down to him. They had pistols, but spent smoke poured from the barrels—January let himself fall back onto the boards of the deck, and both men stuck their knives into their belts.

“Big bastard,” said one of them, bending to grab January's wrists. The other took his ankles to drag him to the rail, so the kick January delivered to his groin was unexpected, perfectly positioned, and murderous. The man at his wrists dropped them and fumbled for his knife—Mr. Ankles being doubled up on the deck screaming—and January didn't even bother going for a weapon, just pistoned his feet down to the deck and drove his elbow up under Mr. Wrists' chin with a force that smacked him hard against the arcade support.

January heaved first the one, then the other overboard, and was scrambling up the stair to the hurricane deck before either of them hit the water.

From above him he heard Levi Christmas yell. “You might as well give up in there, old man, 'fore we shoot the pilot-house to pieces!”

There were a dozen outlaws, ranged in a circle around the flimsy board structure. From inside, January could hear Theodora Skippen screaming, “Levi, no! Levi, it's me, Dora . . . !”

Oh, that will certainly get him to throw down his guns . . . .

January yelled, “Christmas, the money isn't on the boat!” and all the outlaws turned.

There was momentary stillness. Levi Christmas brought up his pistol to bear on January; then, when January remained unmoving, the Reverend walked toward him on the blood-splattered decking. When he got within two yards of January, he said in a calm voice, “We been followin' this boat since Natchez, and we had a look at every trunk that's been took off it. We ain't seen no gold yet.”

“That gold never left New Orleans,” January told him. “If you've been watching this boat, you'll have seen that every trunk and box in the hold was searched the day before yesterday, and all we found was a lot of underwear and shoes.”

“All that means is that Irish bastard hid it,” replied Christmas evenly. “Wasn't that why he tried to shoot your master? You and that master of yours wouldn't still be on board if the money wasn't here. It's a good try,” he added with a broken-toothed grin. “But that money's here, and I'm gonna find it, if I gotta heat up some irons and toast the titties of every woman on board to get somebody to break loose with a little—”

The whole deck lurched underfoot as the Silver Moon staggered like a drunkard on a spree. January covered the six feet between himself and Christmas with a single leap and wrenched the pistol from the Reverend's hand—when Christmas grabbed for another of the several around his neck, January brought the pistol-butt against his verminous temple with crushing force. A chorus of screams rose from the pilot-house and above them rode Jim's shout,

“We hit a snag! We goin' down !”

The boat was already beginning to list.

January was nearly trampled by Christmas's men as they pelted for the stairway down to the lower decks. Not one of them so much as paused to scoop their stunned and unconscious boss from the deck. Even as January reached the door of the pilot-house it flew open and the women streamed out, Mrs. Tredgold screaming at her husband, “This is all your fault!” and Melissa Tredgold simply screaming.

January tossed his pistol to Rose and dragged Hannibal onto his shoulder like a sack of flour; Rose put her shoulder under Mr. Lundy's to help him along, last of them all, down the steps to the deck. “What happened?” panted January. “Did you hit it deliberately?”

“Hell, no,” buzzed the pilot. “With all the windows but the visor-board shut, I couldn't see, and the river's stiff with towheads . . . it had to happen. You think I was gonna wreck the boat this far from the free states, with all those folks still on board?”

“So you were part of it?”

“'Course I was part of it!” snorted Lundy. He clutched at Rose's shoulder and the stair-rail as they carefully negotiated the steps first down to the boiler-deck, then to the main deck below. “Why the hell else would a spavined old wreck like me be still rasslin' around this river, if it wasn't to help get a flock of runaways north to Canada?”

By the time they reached the main deck, Christmas's men had already taken both the Silver Moon 's skiff and their own and cast off. At the bow the decks were almost awash—Thu and Davis were coolly directing the deck-hands in the ripping-out of doors and bull-rails to provide spars to swim to shore. Water slopped over into the hatchway as they pulled the cover clear for a raft, and January froze.

He said, “Shit.”

“What?” Rose tucked the pistol into her waistband, was preparing to ease Hannibal onto a hatch-cover to paddle to shore.

“Get him ashore,” said January. “I'll be back.”

And he sprang down the ladder-like stair to the door of the hold.

It was still padlocked, but since there was no longer need for secrecy of any kind, January knocked it in with two kicks. Away from the wan light of the hatch the hold was pitch black, waist-deep in water at the bow end already, bobbing with crates and boxes floating about in the darkness like ambulatory islands. More crates were slithering down as the deck slowly tilted. Rats clung to them, climbed on January's back and arms—he thrashed them off and they went scrabbling for the steps.

“Régine!” he bellowed into the darkness. “Régine, here! This way!”

A woman's voice called back out of the abyss, frantic with terror. “Here! Oh, God, I'm caught! Help me!”

January plunged in the direction of the stern. Water heaved and sloshed around his hips, then his thighs, but he could hear it rushing behind him where the tear in the hull was. Ahead of him in the blackness the woman's voice sobbed, “Here, I'm here, oh God please don't leave me . . . !”

The boat lurched as the weight of water in the head dragged it farther down. The deck-boards slithered under January's feet, and something big and square-edged slipped down and struck his shoulder a glancing blow in the darkness, the sudden jab of his broken rib and the wound on his back bringing on a wave of nauseated faintness.

“I'm caught, oh God, somethin' fell on me, I can't move it, I can't push it. . . .”

The shadows showed him nothing, only outlined the edges of the shifting crates. Darkness suffocating, like a wet nightmare of slanting deck-boards and huge things like pyramid-blocks slithering and bumping as they slid, further adding to the weight at the boat's nose. “I'm here,” he called out, “I'll get you. . . .”