Free The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) by William Dietrich Page A

horseman, and fired. He jerked and pitched backward, his horse sprawling hard. Other animals swerved and tumbled, skidding across the ice. Germans cursed and howled. Now the empty gun was an anchor, but I
had
gained a few seconds.
    Of dread.
    If the river ice had refrozen too firmly where I’d sawn before joining Gregor and the coffin, I’d either be sabered or spend my last days in the fortress prison. But if it was still sufficiently fragile …
    The remaining cavalry circled, the animals kicking up a surf of snow. Saber blades made a whooshing sound as excited Prussians and Russians slashed back and forth in the air, treating the chase like sport.
    A hobbling run. Just yards away.
    “Lance him!” A spear point came down and leveled.
    “No, I’ll finish him.” It was Von Bonin’s voice and I glanced back to see the Prussian taking aim with the appendage on the stump of his arm. His sleeve was up, exposing the flint mechanism, and the muzzle hole was aimed square at my back.
    I grimaced, leaped headfirst for the spot I’d prepared with my rifle as spear, and took a huge breath.
    The arm’s gun went off.
    As I crashed through the ice, a bullet seared my scalp.
    The cold water was a shock. First the pain of falling through brittle blocks, and then the bite of the bitter Neva. The river jolted like electricity. I plummeted, the swords on my back another anchor, and for a moment I feared they’d carry me straight to the bottom.
    But my clothes had trapped some air, neutralizing my descent. The devil’s luck, again. I let go of my pretty rifle, steadied, kicked, and looked up. I could just make out faint cracks of light against the morning sky where I’d sawn to weaken the ice. There was a longer line I’d cut to point out my necessary direction. Swim that way! Doing so in winter clothing with two old swords was as ridiculous as dancing in a grain sack, but terror works miracles. I stroked for my life.
    The river’s current sucked at me, and I had to take care it didn’t pull me too far downstream.
    I’d already imagined the scene above. A pathetic fugitive, about to be spitted or sliced, has an even more ignominious end when he falls through a weak spot in the frozen river. Horses skid to a halt, their riders fearful of plunging themselves. The posse gingerly dismounts and surrounds the icy hole, waiting on the unlikely chance that their quarry might resurface through broken floes. And when ten minutes pass with no sign, the obvious is concluded. Ethan Gage’s thievery carried him straight to the Neva mud, and he will not surface until the spring thaw, if then. Salvage sailors might eventually drag in hopes of snagging the old swords, but would eventually conclude I’d been washed out to the Baltic, the military relics washed with me.
    I would sink out of history and pursuit. Or so was my plan.
    It was a lung-busting thirty yards to my goal. The cold clamped like a vise and burned like fire.
    The already dim water darkened even further as I passed under the hull of my target ship. I kicked upward, feeling its slippery keel. There was a curve as it arched to the bow, meaning the current had carried me several yards downstream of where I’d aimed. I desperately breasted back toward the stern, just moments from drowning. My lungs clenched in protest. My vision narrowed. The chill was rusting my muscles.
    But there, at last, was the black opening in the bottom of the hull.
    The ship we’d chosen was a harbor maintenance vessel fitted with what sailors call a moon pool, a wooden well in its hold from which underwater obstacles could be winched, anchored, or driven, out of reach of bad weather and loose ice. The sides of the box were higher than the waterline, and a hatch kept the sloshing waves out when the ship was underway. Being beneath the main deck, the moon pool was shielded from view above.
    I burst the thin ice of the river surface inside the dark lidded enclosure, almost shrieking from pain and cold. I