Morgain's Revenge - Laura Anne Gilman [51]
“Sir—” Gerard started to protest again, but the older man cut him off.
“Go, boys.”
When they simply stood there staring at him, he shoved his free arm back and hit Gerard square in the chest with full force. “Go!”
The squire staggered back, his arms windmilling slightly, reaching for anything that might stop his fall. Unfortunately, the only thing available to grab was Newt. Unprepared for the hand snagging his sleeve, Newt fell backward as well. Suddenly the air was whistling past their ears, mingling with the sound of Sir Caedor shouting his battle cry, a clear “come and take me, if you can” taunt to the sea-beast.
And then they each hit the ice-cold water with a sharp and terrifying slap, and everything went dark.
Newt resurfaced into achingly crisp air, with a waterlogged Gerard still clutching his tunic. Holding his friend’s head above water, he set out in slow, awkward strokes, heading toward the nearest islet. He didn’t think, didn’t wonder, didn’t do anything except swim, lugging his burden with a dogged single-mindedness until he felt something bump under his legs and he was able to stand for a moment. He let go of his companion and collapsed to his knees. Newt discovered that the surface under him was slippery rock, and that the wavelets only came to his shoulder. They had made it to the islet.
“Come on, come on,” he encouraged himself, slogging across the last distance until they were actually on solid, barren land.
He heaved Gerard out of the water and examined him. Gerard had a set of nasty bruises on his face that were already turning a sort of greenish-purple, and there were scrapes and cuts everywhere his skin was exposed. Newt suspected, from the sting of salt water everywhere, that he looked much the same. But Gerard’s chest still moved up and down, slowly, as he breathed, and his color was not all that much paler than usual. So nobody was dead.
Yet.
With that thought, Newt’s gaze was drawn across the narrow channel of water—it had seemed so much wider when he was swimming it—to the cliffs they had just fallen from.
Sir Caedor was barely visible, dwarfed by the monster that reared four or five times his height over him. But the sunlight glinted on his blade as it swung and made contact. The serpent-monster swiped at him in return, but its paddle-legs were less useful on land than they might have been in the water, and the sword had clearly made it wary.
Perhaps once the knight was able to take down the beast, they could regroup and find a way to set out for Morgain’s island. For the first time since their departure from Camelot, Newt started to feel some real optimism. Caedor might not be able to defeat that beast, but he should be able to use his much smaller size to elude it—the thing was ungainly, like the oliphants Newt had heard of.
Sir Caedor really could prevail. Newt might not like the man personally, but Arthur’s knowledge had flowed into him enough. He was able to have trust, at least while they weren’t actively arguing with each other.
“Urrrgggle.”
Newt looked down to see Gerard stirring slightly, flinching as his hand came up to touch his forehead where the bruising was the worst. “Welcome back to the Land of the Not-Dead,” he said, then turned back to watch the battle on the cliff. “Careful, careful…”
“We fell.”
“You were pushed, I was pulled,” Newt corrected.
“I’m going to kill him,” Gerard said with feeling, discovering that his sword had come out of its scabbard when they fell. It was now lost somewhere in the waves.
“You may not get the chance,” Newt said, standing abruptly as the tenor of the fight changed, visible even at this distance. The sea-beast swooped and swerved, trying to drive Sir Caedor over the cliff and into the waters