5. The River Grave #2
The shortsword clipped his arm. Imalroc parried, trying to see through the torrent of water pouring from overhead.
He lunged blindly, steel found steel, and the shortsword ricocheted out of Vativa’s hand.
He tried to step forward fast enough to catch her with a second strike, but the wet sand trapped his feet, and she dove for her sword, just beyond his reach.
Froth bubbled up to his knees. Imalroc cleared his eyes, searching for his target.
Vativa emerged with her weapon tilted into a low attack.
Imalroc flung himself into a frantic counterattack, the Draalish blade blurring as he went after an enemy he could hardly see.
She blocked him clumsily and hunched down below the roiling white surface.
His lungs constricted with cold shock as the water churned around his waist.
When Vativa did not break the surface, he backed away along the wall.
She could swim around all she wanted, but he was getting the fuck out of here.
In the middle of the battlebox, the ship stood tall above the swiftly building tide, but it was too far.
Imalroc’s attention landed on a dark, flat form bobbing to his right.
He blinked water out of his eyes and realized that he was looking at the wooden platforms he and Rerdas had seen when they walked the box. Only they weren’t platforms.
They were rafts.
He ran, ignoring the burning sensation of the wound in his leg, sloshing frantically toward the raft.
Water surged against his chest as though it wanted to push him backward.
He stumbled and kept running, heaving his sword over one shoulder to keep it out of the water.
Half-running, half-swimming, he propelled himself toward the raft.
Imalroc had one hand on the wood when he lost his footing and staggered. Vativa lunged up from behind him, and the shortsword aimed for his spine raked across his ribs instead. His howl choked out when he went beneath the water, ramming into her as he fell.
For a moment, he had her pinned beneath him, but she wriggled loose.
He instinctively stabbed toward the sand.
The knuckles of his sword hand and the hilt of the sword crushed into Vativa’s cheek.
She thrashed away, letting go of the shortsword.
Imalroc climbed to his feet, gulping for air.
His head was just above the water’s surface, one foot stamped on the hilt of Vativa’s sword.
She had abandoned it for good reason. The Draalish blade was heavy as an anchor in his hand, and he could not bring it up quickly enough to block her when she attacked again. Vativa dove beneath the too-slow sweep of the blade. Her skull crashed into his stomach.
He buckled and threw the sword at her. Vativa arced away to avoid it, giving him just enough time to lunge for the raft. He clawed into the wood, but then icy hands coiled around his injured leg and yanked.
The raft slid out from under him. He was dragged beneath the choppy water again. Vativa elbowed him in the ribs, trying to drive out the last of his breath, but he moved with her and evaded the full force of the blow. A powerful arm latched around his neck.
Blinding panic surged through him as she hauled him to the sand below the water’s surface. His fighting jerkin was a vise on his ribs. Sand and bubbles clouded the water from his flailing limbs, but Vativa held fast.
She had one knee on his chest, forearm crushing down on his throat with impossible strength.
He forced his eyes open, just enough to make out the shape of her head above him and smashed the heel of his hand into her nose.
Her head snapped back, bubbles streaming from her lips, and the pressure of her forearm eased.
Imalroc knotted his hand in her hair and yanked her aside. He bolted for the surface.
He came flying out of the murky water and banged his shoulder on the raft as he dragged himself onto the safety of the floating wood. He lay on his stomach, spitting water, lungs already burning.
He had almost drowned. His blade was somewhere on the sandy floor of the battlebox, the water was still rising, and she’d almost fucking killed him.
Euphoric cheers alerted him to Vativa’s appearance. He rolled over, sitting up slowly. She had broken the surface only a few lengths from him, her cheek swollen and a bloody scratch across one eye. Still, she smiled. “Come down,” she hissed, “Come down and fight.”
His own words thrown back in his face. A white-water flood still poured from the open portholes in the battlebox walls, and he clutched the bumpy wood of the raft as it rocked on the turbulent surface.
Bloodthirsty cheering assaulted his ears, and he looked up, searching for Rerdas and some sign of why the crowd had shifted.
Rerdas’s face was an ashen speck, his gaze directed somewhere beyond the fight, up at the top of the battlebox.
Imalroc followed the line of his attention, and his blood curdled.
A guard stood on the lip of the nearest wall, holding a massive bow with an arrow already tight against her bowstring. She dipped low, and the arrow disappeared behind the wall for a moment. When she rose, the long, slim bolt was ablaze.
He had to get close enough to jump to the ship. The open water between him and the skeletal wooden shape would give Vativa far too much opportunity.
Imalroc threw himself to the corner of the raft, running his hands along the edge until he found the slimy rope attached. He hauled on the rope as hard as he could, tugging the raft closer to the ship. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Vativa tracking him from the water.
His back bent to his task, shoulders already boiling with the pain of effort. The air shivered with the building roil of drums, but he did not dare look back.
The crowd began a countdown, their screams mingling with the roar of the river still gushing into the portholes.
It was twice his height now, boiling toward the upper water marks high on the walls.
Hand over hand, his back straining, he pulled the raft forward.
The ship’s shadow washed over him, blackening the greenish surface of the water.
The countdown dissolved into an incoherent, euphoric cry.
Something thudded into the raft, and he whirled to see sparks flying from the far corner, blue and gold flames licking at the oil-soaked surface.
The fire raced toward him. He dropped the rope.
The distance to the ship was still too far, and he had only moments before the flames reached him. He would have to swim.
Imalroc ripped the buckles of his fighting jerkin loose and shed the heavy leather. Rivulets of flame licked at his boots as he kicked them off. Four strokes, four strokes and he could touch the ship.
Vativa’s dark head vanished as she submerged.
Heat scalded his back. Imalroc leapt into Navona’s river grave.
One stroke, and he was clear, kicking off the burning raft.
Two strokes and he coursed through green-tinted darkness.
Three strokes and he could see her rising from the depths below him, her hair spread like ink around the pearl-pale skin of her face.
Four strokes, his fingers smashed into curved wood, and he ripped his head clear of the water, filling his lungs with as much air as he could hold.
Vativa rebounded off the side of the ship and caught him around the waist, flinging him down toward the invisible floor of the battlebox.
Imalroc opened his eyes again, in time to see her somersaulting through the water, both feet aiming for his head.
He curled into himself. Her feet struck his back like a battering ram.
A stream of silver bubbles broke from his mouth.
He thrust away from her, up toward the black bulk of the ship.
She reversed course, gliding in his wake, but he thought only of the surface. He was running out of air, and she was too agile beneath the surface. For a moment he lost sight of her, and then she reappeared, palms pressed flat to cut through the water as she streaked toward his exposed chest.
Imalroc arched and kicked wildly. Her arms and torso missed him, and for a moment it was as though she had misjudged her target. And then her leg snapped back, and his throat was trapped behind her knee.
Black spots danced in his vision, and he ripped frantically at the solid muscle of her leg. Bubbles poured out of him as he struggled, but Vativa had hold of her own foot, pulling her leg tight around him.
In the ice-laced dark of the water, he realized he did not have long.
His feet felt distant from his body. He did not know if they were still moving.
This could not be his death. He wanted air.
Freedom. Air. Vativa held him in an iron embrace, and his scrabbling, useless fingers raked down her leg and struck something familiar.
Imalroc poured the last of his energy into his fingertips, bending them around the shape of the dagger at the inside of her ankle.
With the slender knife braced in his hand, he flailed his arm up, back, into his enemy, ripped down, down from her ribs into the unprotected skin of her stomach, and sliced until he gouged the bone of her hip.
The water bloomed scarlet. He was freed. Exhausted, he struggled upward even as water poured down his throat.
Through a cloud of red, he broke the surface. Water and blood and bile leaked from his mouth, and he draped his arms across the broken spars of the mast, his head sagging against the wood. One pure breath of air, and then darkness flooded him, cold as the river itself.