CHAPTER FORTY ONE

The sight of the dwarf and the stallion being wrenched up into the cyclone had ruined Jane. Stunned and numb, she rode up abreast of Trinket who had dropped her hard breathing horse into a walk.

Trinket didn’t care to talk about the disappearing dwarf. She was focused on getting to the river. There was no time to search for a dwarf. Trinket sounded flippant and brutal in the way she dismissed the idea. Although Jane understood this, from a practical position, she still felt an immense responsibility toward the dwarf and the horse.

A few moments of riding and the horses and their riders moved from the weird lemon sunlight and rode into a thick, almost solid, mist that continued to Grime’s Crossing. Here, below overhanging willows, the Milkstone river turned through an elbow bend. The river was a sullen and furious giant, roaring and punching fists of water into the riverbank.

Trinket wheeled her horse. She swung a long leg over the head of her horse and landed on her feet.

Jane’s horse had a vibration running along its back, and steam rising from its hot skin. It snorted and swung its head up and down, straining at the bit. Jane could hardly move, welded to her horse by fatigue and aching bones. The yellow syrup that had kept her going for the past few hours had worn off. She felt like a fossilised stump.

Presently, with stiff movement, Jane dragged a leg over the horse’s shoulders and slid down its belly to the ground. Her ankle creaked and groaned.

The earth steamed and the leaves drooped. Water droplets made sad lines down the long grass.

Through the mist Jane could see a suspension bridge spanning the river. The bridge had a narrow timber walkway suspended from grey ropes.

‘Tether the horses to this log,’ said Trinket.

‘Shouldn’t we send them back to Gibor?’

‘Not yet … in case we have a problem boarding the ship.’

‘How are we boarding the ship?’

‘From the bridge … We centre ourselves and drop down onto the roof of the brig.’

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Jane must have had a look of disbelief because Trinket laughed, right in her face and said, ‘I have done this before.’

They looped a rope around a gnarled root of a willow, then tied the rope to the horses’ neck straps.

Then they heard the sound of the approaching river ship: the thrum of oars splashing and the creak of big timbers shifting against one another and the gurgle of water parting from a bow and roiling into riverbanks.

A moment later the ship emerged from the mist, its prow standing high above the flood, its bow slicing the water with two bulbous waves. Lanterns swayed along the gunwale, their light making halos against the mist.

The ship ran forward on the powerful thrust of oars, and the swift moving water.

Jane slumped. They were too late.

‘Run,’ said Trinket, and she took flight, her legs like wings, her feet barely brushing the ground. Water slapped into the air around her as she burst through the grass.

Jane took three running steps, but a splintered pain ran up her left leg and she fell and landed on a sharp stone with her knee. A bone pain drummed her kneebone, a boss of pain that ran hard over the top of the pain in her ankle.

She rolled to her side and groaned. Will power brought her stumbling back to her feet. She could see that there was no way she would hit the suspension bridge before the ship got there. Trinket wouldn’t either.

But Trinket didn’t stop running, as though she didn’t accept the laws that governed time and motion. If she had been back on Earth she could win the sprint race in the olympics, running right past that Australian, Marjorie Jackson.

The nose of the river ship went under the suspension bridge, and it slipped past, squeezing through the turgid waters at an alarming pace. The ship had nearly cleared the bridge when Trinket arrived at the entrance to the bridge.

Jane could see, on board the ship, figures crowding the main deck and peering into the gloom. Near the stern of the ship, standing high above the raised quarterdeck, the helmsman was spinning a giant wheel, trying to control the ship against the straining river. The helmsman had soil coloured hair that struck out in every wind blown direction.

Looking back at Trinket, Jane was captured by a sight that brought dismay to her heart.

Although a lifetime's worth of savagery had happened since Jane had arrived in Paris, there was a part of her brain that justified the violence as being necessary. She felt it could be explained through the principles of right and wrong; attack and self defence; evil versus good. But her heart sank when she saw Trinket stop at the entrance to the suspension bridge. With the swift movement that Jane had now seen on multiple occasions, Trinket unslung her bow and fitted an arrow and pulled back.

Jane’s sense of right and wrong reared inside, and she shouted ‘no.’ She looked across at the ship and saw that Trinket had a line on the helmsman. An innocent man.

With her right arm cranking back an inch more force on the bowstring, Trinket breathed out, and her green eye squinted and held solid. The arrow leapt.