Free Angus Wells - The Kingdoms 03 by The Way Beneath (v1.1) Page A

night for all of Drisse’s
rivermen, but he was most confident of his own catch, for he was certain he had
picked the best spot—and laid his claim before the rest—to enmesh the heart of
the shoal.
                 Now
he could rest for a while, letting the net fill before he sculled the Verrana round to meet the Volalle and the hard labor of hauling in
began. Tomorrow, he thought, after the catch was gutted, he would divide it and take the larger boat over to the Keshi bank, where the
horsemen would pay handsomely for such a delicacy. The prospect pleased him and
he thought that with the proceeds he would buy his wife the cabinet she admired
in Lari Suttoth’s workshop. He stretched, flexing
muscles only a little wearied by the long row out, and looked up at the moon.
Soon; soon they would come to him: it was merely a question of waiting
patiently for the Idre to yield up her bounty.
                 He
reached between his outspread legs with one eye still on the bobbing corks of
the net and found the waterproof sack that lay there, deftly working the cord
loose from the neck and bringing out a slab of pale goat’s milk cheese. The big
knife he wore sliced a chunk from the slab with the skill of habit, his hand
lifting it to his mouth without his eyes moving from the net, and he began to
chew, savoring the pungent taste. He cut a second slice and sheathed the knife,
replacing the cheese and tugging the drawstrings of the sack tight. He
swallowed and drank a mouthful of the thick, dark ale his village brewed, then began to chew on the second morsel of cheese.
                 Then,
abruptly, he choked it down, leaning forward with his eyes fixed disbelievingly
on the corks. They no longer bobbed on the gentle wash of die Idre, but
stretched in a taut line, shaping a vee that pointed, not north as it should
when the pocheta struck, but south. He cursed softly, thinking that some
drifting piece of debris had snagged his net, though he could see nothing that
suggested flotsam, and moved amidships to set a hand on the master line. His
curse became a grunt of surprise as he felt the line vibrate beneath his
fingers, then a cry of amazement as the corks disappeared beneath the surface
and the line coiled beneath the thwart ran out with a speed that no shoal of
pocheta could produce. Nor any fish he knew of was his final thought before the
cable snapped tight against its fastening and he felt the Verrana tilt under the pressure, the planks beneath his feet no
longer secure footing, but a dangerously angled platform.
                 Water
splashed inboard and Derwen Pars shouted as he felt his craft spilled from
under him, the Idre enfolding him in a cold, wet embrace. For an instant panic
gripped him and he sucked water into his lungs, icy
needles probing his throat and nasal passages as he fought for breath. Then
instinct overcame the panic and he was striking for the surface, head plunging
into moonlit air, his eyes blinking clear in time to see the Volalle spun about and turtled just as
his father’s boat had gone down so long ago. Save now there was no floodtide to
explain the capsizement. With the time-stretched clarity that danger brings he
saw Gille Oman and Festyn Lewal leap from the turning boat into the river and heard
through their frightened shouting the twanging snap of the net cable, like some
gigantic harp string breaking.
                 And
then raw terror gripped him, freezing him so that his legs ceased their
paddling and he was suddenly sunk, the shock of
submergement reactivating his body and bringing him back to the surface in time
for his eyes to confirm what had so terrified him.
                 A
great dark hulk rose from the water, blacker than the night, a neck thick as a
flit man’s waist supporting a triangular head on which eyes glowed with an
awful fire above a mouth that was all serrated, angular teeth, surrounded by
wavering tendrils that