Septimus Heap, Book Six_ Darke - Angie Sage [116]
Shortly after midnight, on the other side of the Big Red Door, a Thing arrived. It regarded the door with interest. It placed its ragged hands on the shiny red wood and winced as they touched the Camouflaged Magyk that covered the surface. Unnoticed by Marcellus—who was meant to be keeping watch but had actually dozed off—the door shuddered slightly and tightened its hinges.
The Thing sloped off down the corridor, muttering Darkely to itself.
Chapter 38
The Pig Tub
Nicko had set off to rescue Jenna and her companions from the Ramblings as soon as Stanley had left. He had not wanted to take the Port barge but he’d been outnumbered—even Jannit had agreed with Rupert and Maggie. She had told him that the Heaps were not the only ones to need rescuing; there would be others, surely, and they must take the biggest boat they could. Besides, what else did they have that was suitable? It was the depths of winter. Most of their boats were out of the water and sitting on props in the boatyard. Nicko had agreed reluctantly but before long he was regretting his decision. The Port barge—or the Pig Tub, as he soon began to refer to it—was nothing but trouble.
Right from the beginning progress had not been easy. They had to go the long way around because, for the Port barge, the Moat was not navigable past the boatyard. Added to that, the wind was against them and the long, unwieldy boat, which could not easily sail in the narrow confines of the Moat, needed to be poled along by Rupert and Nicko. This involved them standing on either side of the barge, pushing long barge-poles through the water. Progress was made a little easier by the falling tide, which was flowing their way, but it was still painfully slow and gave them plenty of time to stare at the Darkened Castle.
“It’s like everyone has . . . gone,” Maggie whispered to Rupert, not liking to say “died,” which was what she meant. She didn’t see how anyone trapped in the Castle could survive and thought that the sooner she and Rupert got away to the Port, the better.
Nicko had pushed the oar through the water with all his might, propelling the barge inch by frustrating inch toward Raven’s Rock, longing for the moment when they were out in the wide river with the wind in their sails. And then, just before the Moat joined the river, they ran aground on the Mump—the notorious mudbank at the entrance to the Moat. Nicko couldn’t believe it.
Despite desperate efforts with the grounding poles, made specially to push a barge off a mudbank, nothing they could do would shift the “stupid Pig Tub idiot boat,” as Nicko put it. She was stuck fast.
Maggie was horribly embarrassed. A skipper going aground was hard to live down. At least she did not have a boat full of passengers and livestock with whom she would be marooned for six interminable hours, enduring their complaints, moans, barks and brays with no means of escape. With any luck, no one would get to hear of this. And Port barges were made to sit on mud, so there was no harm done.
But for Nicko and Rupert, there was harm done. They stared disconsolately over the side at the thick, muddy water, knowing that every minute marooned on the mudbank meant another minute of danger for Jenna, Sarah, Septimus and Lucy (they had forgotten about Marcellus, and neither of them cared if Simon was in danger). Although neither said it, Nicko and Rupert had no idea if they were even still alive. All they had was hope, which faded as the tide fell.
And then they had nothing to do but sit and stare at the Castle—and try not to think about what creature could be making the spine-chilling roar that echoed across the Walls every now and then and made the hairs on the backs of their necks stand on end. The only consolation was that, from where they were stranded, they could now see the indigo and purple glow of what Nicko told Rupert must be the Wizard Tower SafeShield.
At midnight, down in the Port, the tide turned. Salt water began to creep into the empty gullies in the sand and it began to rise once more in the