Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey [138]
Bao plunged into the river without hesitation, wading armpit-deep into the water and shouting encouragement to the swimmers. How he kept his footing in the current, I couldn’t imagine. All I knew was that it terrified me.
“Your husband is a madman,” Balthasar muttered before going after him, picking his way with obvious difficulty.
Together, they managed to help the exhausted swimmers to shore, and I do not think those men would have made it to safety without them.
“Who’s left out there?” Balthasar gasped.
The L’Agnacite Jean Grenville coughed and retched and spat out river water. “De Montague’s on the rock,” he said hoarsely. “Didn’t see what happened to Longchamps.”
One by one, the remaining canoes reached the shore. The downpour continued unabated. In the middle of the rising river, Mathieu de Montague wrapped his arms around a boulder that would soon be wholly submerged.
“Can we reach him on foot?” Bao asked Jean Grenville.
He shook his head. “Too deep.”
Balthasar pushed the sodden hair from his eyes. “Can he swim? If he can’t, in another ten minutes, he’ll be swept away.”
Jean gave a weary nod. “A little, I think. Just not well.”
“We’ll get as close as we can,” Bao said decisively. “Link arms, make a chain. It’s our only chance.”
I watched with my heart in my throat as ten of our strongest men put Bao’s plan into action, clasping each other’s wrists and plunging into the raging water in a long chain, a bit downriver of where Mathieu clung to his increasingly tenuous perch, straining to keep his head above water.
Our redoubtable Jaguar Knight Temilotzin anchored the chain, his feet planted firmly on the shore.
Of course, Bao led it.
Once again, he waded up to his armpits in the fierce current. Balthasar maintained a hard grip on Bao’s left wrist, his other hand clasped around Brice de Bretel’s wrist. Bao reached out his right hand in Mathieu de Montague’s direction.
Between the hissing rain and the torrent of the river, I couldn’t hear what Bao shouted to the lad, but Mathieu shook his head in terrified refusal. The rain fell harder and the river rose further.
Bao shouted at him again.
Whatever he’d shouted, it didn’t matter. A fresh surge of water dislodged Mathieu from his rock. Paddling dog-wise, his neck craned at an awkward angle, he made his way toward Bao’s extended right hand.
Ah, gods!
It was close, so close. Peering through the rain, I saw Mathieu sputter and put out his hand with only a few feet between them. Bao lunged for him and came up short, his empty fingers grasping at air. The entire chain of men lurched forward, staggering in the current, every last one of them in danger of losing their footing and being swept away.
On the shore, Temilotzin grunted and heaved backward, stabilizing the chain.
Bao made one last desperate lunge in vain, his effort curtailed by Balthasar Shahrizai’s death-grip on his wrist.
In the space of a single heartbeat, the moment passed and the opportunity vanished. The ferocious current carried Mathieu de Montague downriver past Bao’s reach, his open mouth gaping in dismay.
The river swallowed him, and he was gone.
Depressed and defeated, our men retreated, helping one another straggle ashore, dropping with exhaustion once they reached it.
The green walls of the jungle rose around us in mockery.
And the rain kept falling.
FORTY-NINE
It rained for three days.
Our campsite was a sodden, miserable place plagued by guilt. For a surety, there was plenty of it to go around. We had lost two men in the accident—Mathieu de Montague, whose fate everyone had seen, and a fellow named Uriel Longchamps, who had sunk and vanished without a trace after the canoe had overturned. Although we’d searched along the bank of the river until nightfall, there was no sign of either of them.
“It is my fault,” Eyahue said in a morose tone. “I knew the river was too high. I should have called for a landing sooner.”
Bao studied his hands. “I was so close! I should have had him.”
“Mathieu