The Chained Adept (1-4)

Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

Tak Tuzap groped with his bare foot for the next slick rock, careful to keep hold of the cliff wall with both hands. The guards at the top of the gorge were distracted by the boats trying to run the Seguchi Norwan, the great Gates of the Seguchi River. He’d counted on that, sure that they wouldn’t be watching halfway down the southern cliff for movement in the dark.

The shouts that trailed up faintly from the roar of water below him betrayed at least one overturned and destroyed boat. They’re dead. Told them it wouldn’t work.

He didn’t look down. Slide one foot, and then the next. Don’t let the pack pull you away from the rock face. Keep the wet braid from getting in your face.

I guess they couldn’t have gone this route with the little kids. Should’ve stayed and waited. Yenit Ping would be sending an army. There’d be fighting. Getting out then might’ve been easier.

He snorted as he inched his way along. So why didn’t I stay, if I believe that?

The truthful answer came, unbidden. Because Uncle Tak’s dead, and I couldn’t hide anymore. Because whoever’s coming is going to need another way in.

He stopped for a moment at a slightly wider spot in the ledge to rest his muscles. Look at me, big hero. Six inches at a step. This is no way in for an army.

He thought about the hill passes far to the south, the ones he’d heard about but never seen. The border folk had Zannib blood, they said. And there was the pack road over the Red Wall ridges, the one they used to travel before they channeled the river in the gorge a hundred years ago and sheltered the trade road alongside it. Sometimes a peddler came over the old road, instead of going the whole long way up to the Gates of Seguchi.

Gotta keep going. Can’t afford to stiffen up.

It was still dark when the boy reached the last ledge above the river, nearly forty feet up. The wreckage of the boats had long since passed, and he knew the guards would be patrolling the roadway on the other shore, not this side, where the river ran right along the cliff face.

From here the going was easier, but it was almost half a mile before the pass widened enough to leave bare ground on his side. He was confident his dark clothing would hide him if he didn’t do anything to attract attention, but he still moved cautiously, testing his footing with each step until he reached river level and solid, if muddy, soil. He stepped carefully to obscure his footprints.

The invaders ran patrols outside the gorge, too. He’d still have to creep along once he reached the bank, but he wanted to make as much distance as he could before dawn. Then he could hole up and sleep during the day.

He passed bits of broken planks on the left, turning in the little backwaters spun off by the main current, and he didn’t stop to look at them—what would be the point. One time he saw what he knew was a body, floating face down, drifting back and forth as though the river were debating what to do with it.

Fish’ll take care of that one.

The sky in front of him was beginning to lighten, and he searched for a good place to move away from the river into the scattered groves, raised slightly above the flood plain. When he turned and looked behind him, he couldn’t see any guards, and the distant far side of the river, which had broadened now that it had passed its constraint, was still in darkness, shaded by the sheer wall of the north-eastern cliff.

Just as Tak Tuzap was about to turn away from the water, he heard a desolate cry, like the dawn song of a waterbird. He didn’t recognize it but thought of breakfast and moved stealthily left to the river shore to see what it was.

After the second repetition he paused in mid-step. It was a person, a kid, voice hoarse and babbling.

No one could’ve survived the gorge.

For a moment he was tempted to turn around, but then he blushed for shame and crept forward until he could see.

This boat was still floating, despite its damage, and was loosely wedged against the mud of the bank. The only movement he saw was the head of a seated child who was babbling desperately at something in the bottom of the boat, and hitting it with both small fists.

He swallowed, and came out into the open. When the child saw him, she screamed incoherently at him and pointed down. Her bright red face was streaked with tears under her short black hair.

“Shush, now,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Let me see.”

He walked over and looked into the little boat. It was half-filled with water, and he saw the woman he had expected to find, not moving. Her forehead had a deep gash that didn’t bleed.

I can’t take her. She’s too young to toddle all that way. What is she, three, maybe? Four?

Yeah, but I can’t leave her, either.

He ran both his hands through his hair. Then he bent down and picked the little girl up, and hauled her up the bank a ways until he could sit down with her—she was too heavy for him to carry for long.

He held her on his lap and wrapped his arms around her while she hiccuped and clung to him.

He stared at the boat while his mind worked furiously looking for a solution. The stern of the little boat floated up and down, pivoting against the wedged prow.

Do you suppose it still floats, really? If I could hide it somehow during the day, I could launch it tonight and be out of their reach.

She could come with me that way.

The warm, damp weight in his arms drew his look. She was sleeping in exhaustion.

He made his decision. He laid her down gently and shrugged off his pack and put it next to her.

There was no way to bury the mother and, if he could have, the next flood would just have taken her away. So he searched her pockets and took her rings for her daughter, then tilted the half-submerged boat enough to let her body float free downstream.

Once she was gone, he was sickened to discover a baby underneath. His eyes watered and he blinked, then he gritted his teeth and made himself pick the boy up and tuck his blanket tightly around him. Him, too, he consigned to the impersonal mercy of the river.

The oars were gone, but there was one pack still aboard, shoved into the narrow space at the prow and soaked. It contained a man’s clothing and heavy cookware. Her husband.

He glanced over at the sole survivor, asleep like the dead up on the bank. May they all meet together again, and wait for her.

The boat itself seemed to have no serious holes in it, though part of the upper strake on one side had broken off. He could see across the river, now, as the true sunrise approached.

If I can see them, they can see this boat. But if I submerge it in the shallows and weigh it down with mud, I can dig it out tonight and empty it, and we can float away.

I’ll need to cut a long pole to steer it.

He looked up to the grove beyond the crest of the flood line, making plans. The man’s pack up the bank to the kid, first, then sink the boat and scoop mud into it. Then one pack to the trees, kid to the trees, and then the other pack.

Better get moving.