Chapter Twenty-One. The Snake and the Grave.
Twenty-One
The Snake and the Grave.
Furious at the unfairness of a reptilian counterstrike, I bat at the snake, but it’s tenacious, wrapping around my head and falling down my shoulders.
I look to Merc for help, but he’s got his own problems—and they’re all about protecting me.
He’s put himself between me and what’s now a ring of balas, his arms spread wide, that broadsword at the ready as he treads water to stay afloat.
The countdown to the attack has started, and the predators are focused now, no longer biting at each other.
As the one coming at me from the right opens its jaws into an evil smile, full of filthy yellow teeth, I grab at the snake and yank it off me—
What’s in my hand makes no sense.
While the rope comes into focus, a male voice from above says, “I shall pull you out! Hold on!”
In the back of my mind, I know I’ve heard the man before, but I’m too confused to make the connection. All that matters is that maybe this is a way out.
“Merc! A rope!”
I grab a length of his hair and yank back. He doesn’t shift his position, but he as glares over his shoulder, I shove the rope in his face.
“Start pulling!” I holler at our savior.
Taking the loose length, I wrap it around myself, well aware that I haven’t the strength required to hold on.
Instantly, I’m rising out of the water, and the scum, green and brown and viscous as old treacle, clings to my hair and body as if the moat is possessive—or at the very least on the side of the balas.
“Take the rope!” I yell at Merc as he turns back to our attackers. “Merc!”
Higher and higher up I go, but now I’m fighting the rescue, trying to backpedal against the slippery stones.
“Merc!”
Just as I reach the lip of the walling, the first of the balas goes for him.
Hard hands grab me and yank me up onto the embankment, and the instant I flop onto the dry ground, I crawl back, throwing myself over the lip.
Just as the biggest of the balas lunges forward with a foul splash, jaws wide open and trained on my mercenary’s head.
“Merc!” I fight against whoever’s holding me in place. “Merc—”
“You must stop,” someone says crossly. “This is no good. At least you are safe—”
The balas strikes with deadly accuracy, the teeth clapping together on the arm he raises to cover his face with—and then the feral beast goes under the surface and takes its prey with him.
Merc is gone.
The horror of it silences me, and in desperation, I search the churning water for anything, well aware that what I will see could certainly break me: A leg.
A hand. Fates preserve us … a head, where I can finally meet those mismatched eyes because death has already taken the most extraordinary man I’ve ever met—
I fall into the moat, my body tumbling forward.
Instantly, I’m yanked back up again and shaken as a rag doll. “Stop it! He’s not worth your life!”
The golden aura imprints on me first, and then the handsome, virtuous face and the royal insignia come into focus. “Julion? What are you doing here?”
“You are all right,” he says in a gentle way.
I have a thought that I’d love to hear that tone from Merc. And this snaps me back to attention.
“Not without him, I’m not.” Freeing myself from the rope I wrapped around my body, I throw the length back over the lip and lean out once more. “Merc, the rope! Take … the rope…”
My voice trails off. So far below me—an impossible distance down from where I lie, coated with scum, soddened and saddened—the moat water is restless, but the water bubbles are ceasing.
No matter how desperately I look for those black braids and that harsh face, the broadsword and broader shoulders, all I get is an occasional balas tail that slices up and curls back into the murky depths.
And then everything begins to still.
A kind hand lands on my shoulder and I jump. “Fear not. I shall protect you.”
Except I don’t want the knight in shining armor. I want the mercenary.
“Merc…”
Putting my head in my hands, I fall backward and weep as though I’ve known him all my life. We were so close to getting away. If only he had—
“Fates!” Julion barks.
As I drop my slimed hands, I … can’t believe what I’m seeing.
For reasons I cannot fathom, Merc appears to be riding on the back of a cresting balas, the broadsword like a bit between those jaws, his powerful body straddling the back of the neck as he steers the forward motion by jerking on the hilt or the tip by turns.
Meanwhile, the balas is in an absolute fury at its passenger, and this anger is the propeller that sends them both on this hellfire ride—
He’s coming right for me. Right … at the wall.
Like he’s going to drive that beast—and himself—directly into the stones.
“What are you doing!” I scramble to my feet. “Merc—”
With an athletic surge, Merc jumps up and plants his boots on the knobby spine, balancing as if he surfs upon a board.
And then at just the right moment, he yanks the broadsword free of that mouth full of teeth, whips it around—and stabs the balas in the rear.
As the ugly, red-eyed head arcs up and the body of the monster breaks out of the water, its master leaps forward, one step, two steps, three steps—
He jumps off the nose of the balas, throwing himself at the lip of the moat’s walling.
Fates, he’s not going to make it. As the other balas retrench their positions, and form another circle, he’s going to smash into the stonework, knock himself out, and fall back into that horrible water and all those yellow teeth.
“Merc!”
At the last moment, when surely he’s going to make a full-body impact, he trains the tip of the broadsword at a mortared fissure. The penetration is spot-on, and he double-grips the hilt, lithely swinging his legs up and around—
Just as one of the balas launches out of the water after him.
As those jaws snap at nothing but air, Merc is flying free, a perfectly executed tumble planting him upon the grass with both boots under him, and that sword still in the grip of his very sturdy palms.
He’s breathing heavily. But he’s utterly alive, and smiling like a god.
“Well,” Julion remarks, “I did not know one could ride those wretched creatures.”
I don’t even think. And that, of course, is a fault of mine when it comes to the mercenary.
With a cry of joy, I launch myself at him, and Merc catches me with one arm easily, his laugh so deep and masculine, the satisfaction in it is warmer than the sunlight itself—and he keeps laughing as he swings me around and around, my legs spinning out as I find myself sharing in the happy release.
And then comes the moment of pause, our silly spinning stilling, our faces almost too close together, our bodies totally too close together.
The way Julion clears his throat, we might as well be naked.
As I push myself out of Merc’s arms, I flush and then panic about having shown myself. Except there’s no worry on that. Punching out my arms, I see nothing of my skin, just muck from the moat. From my face to my feet, I’m covered with congealing slime.
Cloaked in it, one might say.
“So I gather you two are of acquaintance,” Julion says with disapproval.