Silhouette in Scarlet - Elizabeth Peters [78]
Leif went under. The boat dipped; water began trickling in over the gunwales. Not much water – he didn’t want us to sink, not before we had plenty of time to think about what was going to happen to us.
John brought the bailing can down on the whitened fingers that curled over the side. They disappeared, and the boat lifted sluggishly. We turned in a slow, reluctant circle as I freed my oar. It was the only thing I could think of to do; but I was well aware it was a futile gesture. The oar was too unwieldy to use as a club, especially since my quarry would probably not be considerate enough to stay in one spot so I could brain him. The gun was no use, it was in my purse, which was six inches under water, in the bottom of the boat.
John kept spinning around on his backside. If he got up, the ineffectual patch would give away altogether and we would sink like a stone. I figured we were going to sink anyway. It wouldn’t have been a disaster if Leif had not been lying in wait like the Loch Ness monster. He was unencumbered by bulky clothing – that sleek, shining torso, limned by pale fire, was a sight I would never forget. John was hurt and Gus was crippled, and with his handy knife Leif could pick us off one by one before we reached shore.
The sky lightened rapidly. I saw the hand the next time it appeared, and since it was – of course – on my side, I bent over and bit it. The boat was rocking, water was coming in from every possible direction, and Gus was flailing around with his oar. If Leif didn’t sink us, he would. Under the sound of water and Gus’s infuriated bellows I heard a confused roaring noise, which I took to be the pounding of my overstrained heart.
Leif came up again, treading water. He slashed at my hand and slipped sideways as Gus struck at him with the oar. Another blurring crimson line crossed the first on the back of my hand. X marks the spot? Half of a double-cross? The specific reference was obscure, but the general meaning was clear. I was now number one on Leif’s hate list, and he wanted me to know it. A slash here and a slash there, weakening, demoralizing – once in the water, I’d be easy prey for a murderous merman.
John rose to his knees. Somehow during the chaos he had managed to strip off shoes and sweater. One vigorous yank pulled most of the buttons off his shirt, and he shrugged out of it as I made an ineffective attempt to grab him. I think he said something, but I’m not sure. He slid over the side, leaving his pants floating on the surface until the water soaked them and they sank, with gruesome slowness.
There was no sound except that distant roaring. The water poured in. Gus was pulling at me, trying to get between me and the sleek fishlike shape that kept leaping and slashing, leaping and slashing. I couldn’t move. Blood poured down my arm and hand, but it wasn’t physical weakness that held me paralyzed, it was superstitious terror. Leif’s monstrous form seemed more, or less, than human, a water demon, an aquatic Bane.
He came up again, right beside me. His face was only inches from mine. His lips were drawn back in a fixed grin and his eyes were flat as brown glass. A ray of feeble sunlight glinted off the knife blade.
The valiant, abused craft finally gave way. But just before the icy water took me, I saw Leif’s grin vanish and a look of mingled fury and disbelief transform his face as he was pulled down into the steel-grey depths.
I swallowed a couple of pints of water before I managed to fight my way back to the surface. Somehow I was not at all surprised to find myself in the solicitous grasp of a total stranger whose face was blackened like Al Jolson’s.
So, after all, I danced the maypole dance with the people of Karlsholm on Midsummer Day.
I wore a dress that had belonged to Gus’s wife, brilliant with embroidery and laced with silver chains. Fortunately for me, she had been a stout, healthy woman, but we had to add a ruffle on the skirt. That was no problem for the housewives of Karlsholm. They’d have