Chapter Seventeen

 

 

One vital factor became instantly obvious as the first of the hooks rattled against the spray-slick timbers. The force of the Tennessee River and the weight of the raft were both far greater than the attackers on the flimsy bridge had realized.

 

Four or five hooks made good, solid contact, but the rushing motion of the heavy craft was hardly checked. Three of the men jumped as the bridge was pulled even lower, one of them landing off balance on the side of the raft, slipping and tumbling helplessly over the edge. He vanished into the tumbling foam with a muffled scream of despair.

 

The other two landed safely on the raft, one on top of the cabin, the other near the front, where Ryan was standing and waiting.

 

He leveled the SIG-Sauer and shot him at point-blank range through the upper chest, the force of the 9mm full-metal-jacket slug kicking him off his feet, where he also slipped over the side into the river.

 

Krysty shot the man off the cabin roof, putting two bullets into him from her Smith amp; Wesson, the heavy .38-caliber rounds rolling him onto the deck, where he lay screaming, both hands clutched at the double wound in his stomach. Krysty and Mildred heaved him off into the racing stream.

 

Ryan looked away, seeing no further threat from any of the three attempted boarders.

 

There were six men still hanging on to the bridge, four with their barbed grapnels dug into the raft, finally slowing its racing progress. But they had looped their ropes around the spidery bridge, which was now dipping perilously low, the cords that built it strained like banjo strings, singing above the deep thunder of the river.

 

"Gaia, it's coming down!" Krysty screamed at the top of her voice.

 

Jak had moved from the steering oar and was busily crabbing around the raft, trying to cut through the cords that snared them. But they had become wet and taut, like bars of iron, almost impossible to slice.

 

Another of the men jumped from above, landing awkwardly, close to Doc. He turned his ankle as he fell, with a dry crack, audible above the bedlam. He shrieked once, showing a completely toothless mouth. Doc was holding the Le Mat in his right hand, but he hesitated to waste a valuable shotgun round. Quickly holstering the commemorative cannon, he drew the trusty swordstick.

 

The attacker reached up and grabbed at the honed rapier blade, but Doc tugged it away from him, cutting the man's palm clear to the bone. Blood spouted over the wet timbers.

 

"Chill him!" Ryan called.

 

Doc stumbled, steadying himself for a moment against the low roof of the cabin, and two more men dropped onto the raft, one of them slashing at the old man with a billhook with a vicious beaked blade.

 

There was a high twanging sound, and the bridge suddenly collapsed into a tangle of broken ropes and splintered wood, tearing away from both sides of the gorge. It fell into the Tennessee just astern of the raft, dumping the last of the doomed men into the river.

 

Released from the restraint, the raft shuddered like a hound dog ridding itself of fleas and began to race downstream once more, slowed only by the snarled weight of the wrecked bridge.

 

Three of the enemy were aboard, one with the broken ankle and horribly cut hand, and two others, one attacking Doc who was parrying for his life, the slender Toledo steel ringing against the clumsy cleaver.

 

The last of the locals had dropped to hands and knees, a slender dagger gripped in each hand, and was crawling toward J.B., who was still wrestling at the back with the long, clumsy oar.

 

Ryan was vaguely aware that there was white water ahead, with jagged boulders sticking above the roiling surface of the river, threatening further disasters.

 

Doc finally slip-parried a powerful thrust from the billhook, and turned quickly to thrust the needle-tipped blade of his sword between his opponent's third and fourth ribs, slicing through heart and lungs as he twisted his wrist before withdrawing the blood-slick steel.

 

Mildred had managed to find her balance long enough to put a bullet through the forehead of the man with the wounded hand, blowing away half the back of his skull, emptying a grue of brains and blood into the waiting river.

 

Which left the man with the pair of knives, making his way toward the rear of the raft and the helpless Armorer, unable to let go of the steering oar as they plunged into the raging rapids at the heart of the shadowed gorge.

 

Ryan snapped a shot at the man, but the craft was tilting and rocking and he was forced to throw himself down onto the bloodied logs and hang on for dear life.

 

Jak saved J.B.'s life.

 

Not trusting to his own lack of skill with his big Colt Python, the albino went for his beloved throwing knives, drawing one of the leaf-bladed, weighted weapons from its hiding place in the small of his back, gripping it by the taped hilt and throwing it in a snapping underarm motion.

 

Despite the shifting platform, the teenager's aim was as accurate as ever.

 

The knife hit the crawling man on the side of his throat, clinging there like a glittering insect that suddenly spouted bright crimson from the severed artery. The doomed attacker pulled it out with his right hand and threw it down with a curse, not realizing that he was already dying.

 

He spotted Jak and threw one of his own knives at the red-eyed youth, who ducked away at the moment that the raft, despite all of the Armorer's efforts, struck the fanged spur of a submerged rock and tipped sav agely to starboard.

 

Jak was thrown into the icy water of the Tennessee River.

 

Mildred and Ryan both saw the accident, the woman scuttling to the rear of the raft, ready to try to help the teenager if he surfaced from the churning maelstrom.

 

Ryan faced the last of the surviving attackers, who was standing in a stooped crouch, arterial blood gushing from his throat, glaring from side to side like a stubborn beast trapped in the shambles.

 

It was only a matter of time, but Ryan wanted him down and out. He crawled on hands and knees toward him, gasping at the pain from his thigh, the SIG-Sauer held out toward the dying man like a crucifix toward a vampire.

 

"Cut head off, you shitter outlander!" the attacker grunted, waving his dagger.

 

"No," Ryan said, shooting him carefully through the center of the chest, seeing a chunk of flesh burst from the exit wound between the shoulders, flecked with the white splinters of ribs and spine.

 

The turbulence was growing worse, and only the dragging wreckage of the ruined bridge was helping to hold the raft on course in the main current, stopping it from swinging completely around, out of control.

 

There was a loud crack as the main steering oar snapped in two, leaving J.B. holding a useless stump of wood barely four feet in length.

 

"Where's Jak?" Ryan yelled, trying to make his way toward the stern, kicking one of the flailing corpses out of his way, clinging onto the pitching, sodden timbers.

 

"In among the cordage," Mildred replied, pointing with the barrel of her own blaster. "One of the bastards is caught in there with him."

 

Ryan saw Jak's flaring white hair, like a beacon among the frothing dark green water. He was hanging on to the mass of tangled ropes and planks that had been the bridge, waving with his free hand to show that he was alive and well.

 

"Gets quieter ahead," Krysty shouted, her mouth close to Ryan's ear. "Should survive."

 

But Ryan had also seen the man that Mildred had spotted, only a few feet behind the teenager, working his way toward Jak with a rusty cutlass gripped in his rotting teeth.

 

The raft was shuddering, and Ryan noticed that several of the main bindings had come apart, loosening the timbers so that they moved against one another, rubbing and chafing. If they didn't get into calm water soon, Ryan guessed that the whole thing was about to fall apart.

 

"Jak hasn't seen the other bastard," J.B. shouted, still holding the stump of the oar.

 

Though Jak was a couple of yards nearer than the enemy, they were almost in line with each other, making a shot far too risky to attempt.

 

The Armorer managed to balance for a moment and pitched the remains of the oar over the stern, aiming at Jak's attacker.

 

But the hunk of wood overshot by a dozen feet.

 

Krysty was gesturing to the albino, pointing behind him, giving the traditional signal for danger.

 

At last Jak realized, shaking hair from his eyes, glancing over his shoulder. The attacker was now close enough to him to take the sword from his teeth, clinging to the knotted wreckage with his left hand, trying a violent slash at the teenager, missing him by scant inches.

 

The others could only watch helplessly as the deathly struggle began less than twenty feet away, yet it might as well have been on the dark side of the moon.

 

The man was stout, in his forties, with thinning hair and a red complexion. In among the dashing spray, Ryan noticed that the enemy's ears were on backward.

 

Jak had drawn another of his knives, using it to peck at his attacker, but it seemed like a child using a toy blade against a grown man with his powerful cutlass.

 

"Gaia, help him," Krysty muttered, barely audible above the roar of the Tennessee through the steep gorge.

 

But Jak didn't need any help when it came to hand-to-hand fighting.

 

The other man was slow and clumsy, terrified of losing his grip on the tangled wreckage of the fallen bridge, aware of the corpses of several of his colleagues that were being dashed on the rocks around him or sucked under in whirlpools.

 

Jak was constantly on the move, always hanging on by one hand, once vanishing below the surface of the river, emerging directly beneath his opponent, cutting up at him, severing the tendons in the man's right wrist. The old sword vanished into the water, leaving him one-handed and weaponless.

 

"Now," Ryan said, holstering the SIG-Sauer, seeing that it was all done.

 

The man was trying to back away from his fate, but it was impossible to move safely with only one functioning hand and he was almost paralyzed with terror.

 

The watchers on the raft could see his mouth opening and closing as he begged for mercy from the red-eyed teenager.

 

But mercy wasn't a word that featured large in the vocabulary of Jak Lauren.

 

"Rain on him boy," J.B. said.

 

Jak feinted with his left hand, but the blade had switched to the right. It thrust out like a tongue of a snake, faster than anyone could see, burying itself in the socket of the man's left eye, hilt deep. For a moment there was a splash of pink among the foam from the river.

 

The teenager pulled the knife free, watching as his opponent writhed for a few moments in his death agony, finally letting go of the ropes, slipping away into the hungry waters.

 

"Haul him in," Ryan called.

 

The cliffs were becoming lower, the river widening, slowing its churning passage as they began to leave the gorge.

 

It was easy to pull the teenager in off the snarled, twisted cords and shattered wood, back to the relative safety of the damaged raft.

 

"Need to get to shore and do some repairs," Ryan said, aware as the tension passed away that his injured leg was hurting him like fire.

 

 

 

FORTUNATELY THEY HAD plenty of spare ropes to make the raft secure again, using the mass of cordage hooked on from the ruined bridge. But it was a long process.

 

By the time they had finished and were ready to push off again, the sun was way past the middle of the day, just visible through ragged cloud, and they were all thoroughly tired.

 

"That last meat?" asked Jak, who had been sitting by the river's edge, using a stone to renew the honed edge on his throwing knives.

 

"Yeah." Ryan had finished reloading the automatic and the rifle. J.B. was still fieldstripping his own blasters, though he hadn't fired either of them, making sure they were dry and clean and oiled.

 

"We look for food now?"

 

"Mebbe. Haven't thought much about that."

 

"Or wait until we stop?"

 

"Could do that also."

 

"How far Shiloh?"

 

Ryan looked across the clearing at J.B. to answer Jak's question.

 

"Not sure. That gorge wasn't on any map. Must've been some big earth movements."

 

"No bridges," Mildred said, rubbing her hands together. "No towns. No cities. Not even a dirt-poor frontier pesthole to give us some clue where we're all at."

 

"My guess is not far from Savannah," the Armorer said. "But that could be another forty or fifty miles. And Shiloh's a little way past that."

 

"Not far. Forty or fifty miles." Mildred stood and looked at him, hands on hips. "Jesus, John! The river's slowed right down again. Four or five miles an hour, I'd guess. So it could be way late this evening."

 

The Armorer smiled, the watery sun reflecting off his glasses. "True enough, Millie. All we can do is launch her and see where we end up by evening."

 

"Will that oar do duty as a replacement rudder?" Doc asked from the shade of a bushy eucalyptus. "I assume it will."

 

Ryan had tested it, throwing his weight against the makeshift binding. "Should do fine."

 

"Want me to take another look at your leg?" Mildred asked. "Took a pounding during that fight."

 

Ryan shook his head, trying not to lean too heavily on his stick. "Caught it a couple times. But it feels like it's getting better."

 

Krysty narrowed her eyes. "When it comes to lying, lover, you're strictly little league."

 

He hobbled quickly to the raft, ignoring her, stooping to loosen the mooring line. "Less talk and more sailing, friends. Let's do it."