The Black Prism
Page 19

His eyes clamped shut as he felt the claws scramble onto his neck, and then over his head. In holding on to the screen, his body had become a bridge—the only way out of the water—and the rats swarmed him.
In moments, it wasn’t half a dozen rats. It was hundreds.
Kip’s muscles locked. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. He didn’t dare even open his eyes. Rats were in his hair. A rat had fallen down the front of his shirt and was clawing his chest. Rats were running up his arms.
“Move, Kip! Move or die!” Sanson shouted.
Suddenly, Kip felt detached from his own body. He was nearly drowning, the town was on fire, almost everyone he knew was dead, two drafters were trying to kill him, and he was worried about rats. Even as he clung here, the drafters were preparing the death blow, and he was too frightened to move. Ridiculous. Pathetic.
He felt a hand grab him, and his eyes snapped open. It was Sanson. Sanson had climbed back up the grate and was braving the rats to try to help Kip over. Kip shook like a dog, dislodging perhaps a dozen rats, but leaving many more. Still terrified, he began climbing up the grate.
He threw one leg up onto the top of the grate, but he couldn’t pull himself up. He was too heavy. A rat fell into his gaping pant leg and began scurrying up against his bare skin.
Sanson grabbed Kip’s clothes with both hands and yelled with the effort. Kip pulled one last time, and felt his body rising, rising—and finally rolling over the top of the grate. He crashed into the water on the other side.
The current pulled at him immediately. When he surfaced, Sanson was yelling something, but Kip couldn’t even make out the words. He reached down into his pants and grabbed the struggling rat and threw it away.
Then he was at the waterfall. There were ledges running perpendicular to the falls, and the town daredevils would sprint along those and leap over the falls. It was too late for Kip to try that. There were sections where the water was shallower than others. Kip turned desperately and his feet caught an underwater rock. The force of the current pushed him forward, and he squatted on the rock, gathering his feet underneath him, flailing his hands to right himself. The pool at the base of the falls was plenty deep, but if he didn’t jump far enough, he’d hit rocks on his way down.
He jumped as hard as he could. To his surprise, he actually went the direction he was trying. For a moment, there was perfect freedom. Peace. The roar of the water drowned out all other sound, all other thought. It was beautiful. Somehow, he and Sanson had been floating in the river all night, and now the sun was just peeking above the horizon, beating back the midnight black of one horizon to deep blue, to icy blue, to pinks and oranges that lit clouds like halos.
Then Kip realized how fast he was falling. His body was at an angle to the fast-approaching water below. From watching the bolder youths, he knew he had to hit feet first or headfirst with arms extended or he would be hurt badly.
There was no way he was going headfirst, so he arched his back and wheeled his arms.
Whatever he’d done, it seemed to be the exact wrong thing, or maybe he’d already been twisting forward, because he found himself parallel to the water. He was going to land the most colossal bellyflop ever seen. From this height, it might well kill him.
Not only that, but he realized that he was falling with the water—all the divers he’d ever seen had jumped out beyond it. The water always glanced off one rock on the way down.
He didn’t even have time to think a curse before a rock smacked his foot, hard. He threw his arms out—
—as he crashed into the water headfirst, feeling like someone had just hit him over the top of the head with a board. His arms felt like they’d been torn off. And he’d forgotten to take a breath before he hit. Kip opened his eyes underwater in time to see something big streak down into the water beside him in a gush of bubbles. Sanson!
Sanson had hit feet first, but had been spun when he hit the water so he was upside down. He seemed stunned for a moment, unmoving, then his eyes opened, but he was looking away from Kip. Obviously disoriented from the fall, Sanson began swimming—down. Kip grabbed his foot to get his attention.
But Sanson panicked. He thrashed and kicked Kip square in the nose. Kip yelled—and watched the last of his air go rushing toward the surface.
Sanson turned, saw Kip, saw the direction the bubbles were going, and then saw the blood blossoming in the dark water. He grabbed Kip, and together the boys swam for the surface.
Kip barely made it. He gasped, inhaling water and blood, and then coughed it out. He coughed again, then retched. Sanson tugged on his arm. “Kip, help me! We’ve got to get to shore before we get to the rapids.”
That woke Kip up. Within fifty paces of the deep, still area where the waterfall landed, there was another set of rapids so steep they were almost a series of waterfalls themselves. And already the current was getting swifter. Foot aching, head splitting, nose streaming blood, he swam with Sanson.
They made it to shore with ten paces to spare. The boys hauled themselves onto a grassy bank and inspected the damage, exhausted. Sanson was uninjured, and he looked sheepish. “Sorry, Kip. I mean, about your nose and all. I never liked swimming. Always thought there were things in the deep that’d grab me.”
Pinching his bleeding nose, Kip looked at his friend. “Oo sabed my life ub dere,” he said. “Oo din’t eben break ma nose.” Kip was more concerned about the foot he’d struck on his way down. He unlaced his shoe with one hand and tugged the shoe and stocking off. His foot was sore, and there were some nice scrapes along the top, but when he rubbed it he didn’t think any bones were broken. He began tugging his wet stocking back on, which was hard to do while still pinching his nose with one hand.
“I can’t believe we got—” Sanson started.
“Away?” Kip asked. He had abandoned trying to tie his shoe with one hand and was sniffing hard, trying to keep blood from dripping all over him. Even as he finished the knot, though, he knew why Sanson had stopped speaking. They were bathed in a harsh red glare.
Looking up, Kip saw a red flare hanging in the sky above them, marking their location for the rest of the king’s army—who had to be nearby. The flare’s smoke trail led back to the top of the falls, where the two drafters stood, looking at them.
Kip and Sanson had escaped two drafters. Now they had to escape the rest of the army.
Kip hopped to his feet, sniffing hard. He thought he was going to hyperventilate. Then he saw a horseman on the ridge that wound from above the waterfall down to the Sendinas’ farm. He abruptly forgot about his bleeding nose. The horseman would have to go farther to go around, but he had a horse. Kip and Sanson had to make it down the trail along the rapids and get to the farm before the horseman did.
Then Kip saw three other horsemen join the first. And then another, and another.
He and Sanson started running.
The waterfall kicked up huge clouds of mist, day and night, and the valley stayed dark for hours longer than the surrounding country. When the flare winked out, Kip lost sight of both the horsemen and the trail.
He stopped, terrified. Broad-leafed plants, slick with the mist, obscured both sides of the tiny trail. One foot set on those, and he would plunge down the rocky incline to the river. In the rapids, he’d be battered to death.