Sunspot. James Axler
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men can see that, too,” Krysty said. “They’re going to come at a dead gallop.”
“We’re in a flood plain here,” Mildred reminded everyone. “We need to find ourselves some higher ground.”
As Ryan and J.B. scrambled from the bluff, Jak waved the others after him and headed down-channel.
Bezoar was the only one who didn’t move to follow. The old swineherd sat slumped on the rock, his bad leg sticking out straight, his face still beet-red. Young Crad turned back to help him get to his feet.
“It’s no use, boy,” Bezoar said, impatiently waving him off. “This old gimp can’t run anymore. You go on without me, boy. Save yourself.”
Young Crad wouldn’t hear of it. “I go, you go,” he said. He bent and picked up his comrade, piggyback. Then, as if the added burden was nothing, he broke into a trot, chasing after Jak.
“That one’s something special,” Mildred commented as she, too, started to jog.
“Short on words and brains mebbe, but long on heart,” Krysty said.
“Droolie sure can run,” J.B. admitted.
“Better catch them,” Ryan said, again bringing up the rear.
As the companions tightened ranks, winding past a maze of dry channel braids, the raindrops got bigger and closer together. The wind whipped the branches of the scrub brush and sent chest-high tumbleweeds bounding and rolling down the riverbed past them. No matter how hard the rain came down, Ryan knew they couldn’t stop to wait out the storm, even if the trail they left behind was obscured. The only thing that was going to save them from the pursuit was distance. Only if the dogs and horses couldn’t recover the lost trail were they home free.
In a couple of minutes Ryan’s clothes were completely soaked through. Falling raindrops hit the earth with such force that they jumped two feet in the air. Daylight began to fade. He looked over his shoulder, squinting into the wind and the looming darkness. In a strobe flash of lightning he saw the approaching squall line, like a vast waterfall stretching across the plain from edge to edge. Amid the wind’s howl and the thunder’s boom, he could hear dogs baying, not far behind.
As the storm closed on them, it rained even harder. So hard it came down in rattling roar. So hard that it hurt as it hammered upon unprotected heads and shoulders. So hard it was difficult to breathe with all the water vapor in the air. The parched desert earth couldn’t soak it up. The ground turned to cooked oatmeal underfoot, boot prints filled with water as fast as they were made. A section of saturated bluff to their right collapsed, sliding partway across the channel. Ryan veered and jumped the barrier, splashing down knee-deep in a muddy, coffee-and-cream-colored pool. The runoff was funneling from high ground to low. Ahead, shallow stream channels filled and overflowed, coalescing into broad stretches of shin-high rapids.
The muffled baying grew suddenly louder. When Ryan looked back again, through the shifting downpour, he saw the dogs—drop-jawed, with lolling tongues, legs driving, splashing through the stream. Behind the hellhounds, torrents of water sheeted over the backs of charging horses and riders.
“Up!” he bellowed at Jak through a cupped hand.
The albino was already doing just that. Because the crumbling bank on the right would never have held the companions’ weight, he led them in the opposite direction, to the crest of a teardrop-shaped, scrub-covered island, high ground where they could make a stand.
As Ryan high-stepped through the boot-sucking muck of the island’s beach, he heard a growing rumble like an earthquake and half turned. Surging up behind the dogs and horses was a foaming wall of milky-brown water ten feet high.
“Hang on to something!” Krysty cried out to him.
As Ryan grabbed hold of the branches of a low bush, the flash flood slammed into the mounted pursuit. The force of the wave and its load of debris bowled over the horses and riders. It swept away the dogs in an instant. For a split second Ryan glimpsed the head of a horse as it bobbed up, rushing past, its eyes wild with fear, then it disappeared under the churning surface.
The one-eyed man used the scrub limbs to pull himself to higher ground where his companions stood braced, their legs sinking deep into the soggy soil, their miserable, streaming faces lit by lightning. Ryan jammed his boots against the roots of the brush to help hold his position.
“What happened to the pursuit?” Krysty asked.
“Long gone,” Ryan told her.
“The water level is still rising,” Doc said. “It appears we’ve departed the frying pan only to land squarely in the fire.”
There was no doubt about that. Their little mound of safety was growing smaller and smaller by the minute; the river flowed around their knees. Ryan could feel the ground eroding from underfoot.
“What are we going to do?” Mildred said.
Krysty looked across the mocha-colored river. “Too strong a current to swim through,” she said. “We’d never make it to the bank.”
“Only thing we can do is wait it out,” Ryan said. “Hang on and hope we don’t get washed loose before the river starts to fall.”
After a while the torrential rain stopped, but the river continued to come up; soon it even submerged most of the brush on the island’s crest. Clustered together, the companions grasped the ends of the branches, half swimming at times, their legs dangling back in the flow.
It was looking worse and worse.
When Jak shouted a warning, Ryan looked up to see a row of weak yellow lights bobbing toward them along the bank.
“Surrender or be swept away!” someone shouted over the roar of the torrent.
There was little question who had come to their rescue.
And under the circumstances, the companions couldn’t reach for or raise their weapons.
“We could let the current take us downstream,” Krysty said. “Mebbe get past them.”
“The odds of running those rapids and surviving to tell the tale are slim at best, my dear,” Doc said.
“Too many downed trees in the flow,” Ryan said. “We’d get snagged and never come up.”
“Drowning doesn’t suit me,” J.B. said.
“J.B., you’re half drowned already,” Mildred said.
“That’s how I know.”
“We can die now, without firing a shot,” Ryan said, “or we can try to live long enough to fight at a time and place of our choosing.”
“Proposed in that way, it is an easy decision to make,” Doc said. “There is only one acceptable course of action.”
Ryan looked from face to face. “Are we all agreed, then? Is anyone opposed?”
But for the sounds of the river, there was silence.
“We give up!” Ryan bellowed, though this genuine surrender stuck mightily in his craw.
“We’ll throw you a rope,” someone shouted back. “Make it fast at your end.”
J.B. managed to trap and tie off the line, lashing it around the submerged trunk of a stunted but sturdily rooted tree. One by one the companions used the rope to pull themselves, hand over hand, through the chest-high current to the light of the lanterns.
Ryan was the last to ford the swollen river. As he climbed out of the water, a horseman approached. Black-gloved hands held the reins of the towering chestnut stallion. The rider was dressed in a gleaming black rain cape. Covering the lower half of his face, nose to chin, cheek to cheek, was a matching leather mask. An oval of metal mesh in front of his mouth allowed him to speak unmuffled. There were angry boils and sores on his high, pale forehead. The eyes above the mask were black