Free Tales of Noreela 04: The Island by Tim Lebbon Page A

he’d have battered them aside with the punt, leaving them to the mercy of the terrible currents.
    “By all the Black!” he shouted, venting his rage where the river could carry it to the sea. He looked in that direction, and from that level he saw the masts just above the broken bridge, coming closer and closer with every beat he stood hesitating.
    Kel pushed off, angling upriver as he shoved the small boat across the mud levels. It was hard work, his muscles immediately began to ache, and with every shove he felt Namior calling him back. He wished he’d tried harder to persuade her… but she was stronger than he’d ever given her credit for. Perhaps he could have knocked her out and carried her. But there was her family. Save her, let them die, and he would gain nothing.
    And is this all gain?
he thought, those familiar suspicions and fears of his own motives crashing in once more. He cursed again, swore that it was not. He loved Namior, and that was the reason he so wanted her to come with him. It was about her, not him.
    “I’ll go back for her,” he said. But speaking those words aloud made it no more likely. He’d made his choice. The Core training had seen to that. Noreela came first, and five years after running from that ethos, casting it aside and trying to purge it from his mind and soul, he realized that he had never really changed.
    The small boat slipped from the mud into the fast-flowing river fifty steps above the rope, and Kel hurriedly strapped the punt to its side and took up the oar. He knelt on the downstream side and started paddling, turning the nose of the boat upstream in an effort to lessen the drag. But already he was being swept quickly down toward the broken bridge. The flow was much faster than he’d anticipated, slapping the boat and splashing heavily inside, soaking him in an instant with thick, stinking water. Something struck the hull and drifted by, and Kel stared down into the smashed face of someone he might have known.
    He paddled harder, gritting his teeth as he searched for strength that wasn’t there. The night and the waves had leeched it away. The boat spun beneath him, going sideways onto the water and starting to rock as the waves struck it. He paddled on, trying not to think about what would happen if the boat capsized.
    “Fucking idiot!” someone shouted, and Kel grinned, because for a beat he thought O’Peeria was berating him from memory once more. But then he looked downstream and saw the boat he was heading toward, and the man and woman standing there holding the rope.
    Kel plunged the oar into the water, trying to swing his boat around and avoid a collision, but the water was its own master that day. The oar either struck something just below the surface,or a current gave it a tug; Kel’s shoulder wrenched and he lost his grip, watching the oar swept away beneath the rope line.
    He sat down and held on.
    The boats struck, timber cracking and splitting, and Kel was thrown to his right. His own craft was turning, its bow buried in the static boat, stern being swung around by the fast-flowing water, and it would be only beats before it was plucked free and swept down toward the ruined bridge.
    Closer to those masts, that island.
    “Come on!” the woman said. She was reaching for him, leaning across where the boats had crunched together, while the man held on grimly to the rope line. Kel knew them by sight, but not their names. The woman ran a stall on the harbor selling fresh catches, and the man was a fisherman. “Come
on!”
she shouted. “Unless you want to be there when
they
arrive.” She looked past him toward the sea, and Kel was glad to see her fear. If there was fear, there would be caution as well.
    Be afraid, Namior
, he thought. And as he reached across and grabbed the woman’s hand, hauling himself into their boat as his own tore free and was carried downriver, he remembered how fear on its own really held no power at all.
    THEY EXIST IN the