The Anubis Gates

After he got his initial panic under control he discovered that it wasn’t too difficult to float along feet foremost and jackknife up every half minute or so to take a breath. This stream probably shallows out sometime before it reaches the Thames, he thought, and when it does I’ll somehow flop my way to shore. His heel caught against something, swinging him around to thump his shoulder against a rock, and he yelped in pain. The next rock caught him across the middle, and he forced his tortured stomach muscles to keep him curled around it while he got his breath back. The flowing water at his back was helping him stay on the rock, but he could feel himself slipping off—the nails of one hand scrabbled ineffectually against the wet stone—and all at once he had lost confidence in his ability to get to shore unaided. “He-e-elp!” he yelled, and the effort of yelling both loosened his grip on the rock and brought back the other time that night that he’d shouted the same thing. Duvel save us, rya, it’s prastamengros! he thought as he bobbed away downstream again, nearly all of his strength gone. He shouted for help twice more as he was carried along, spinning helplessly now, his head to the front as often as his feet, and when he’d despairingly realized that he could manage only one more yell, and porpoised himself well out of the water, lungs filled to make it a good loud one, something cold and sharp nipped through his coat and yanked him back against the current.

He expelled the breath in a wild ululating scream of surprise.

“Good Lord, man,” exclaimed a startled voice from nearby. “give o’er, you’re being rescued!”

“I think you broke his spine. Dad,” said a girl’s voice eagerly.

“Sit down, Sheila, I’ve done nothing of the sort. Over on the far side, there, we don’t want the boat to capsize when I drag this wretch aboard.”

Doyle was being pulled jerkily backward through the water, and looking over his shoulder he saw several people in a rowboat with bulging sides; an older man was drawing in the long, hooked pole that he’d snagged him with. Doyle gave his weight to the hook and let himself relax totally, leaning his head back in the water and staring at the moon while he gasped great, unhindered lungfuls of the cool night air.

“My God, Meg, will you look at this,” said the man’s voice as the pole clattered on the gunwales and two hands gripped Doyle’s shoulders, “your man’s tied up like a bloody top before the string’s yanked.” A woman muttered something Doyle didn’t hear. “Well,” the man went on, “we can’t just let him drift past with a wave and a nod, now, can we? Besides, I’m sure he appreciates the fact that we’re poor hard-working merchants, and even a Good Samaritan delay like this is costing us money. Stands to reason.” There was a locking click and then a knife blade was sawing and snapping through the ropes with businesslike ease. “That’s it, feet up now, may as well get them all. Good, that’s got it. Now—damn it, Sheila, didn’t I tell you to sit over there?”

“I wanted to see if he’d been tortured,” said the girl.

“Torture enough, I’d call it, to be bound hand and foot and pitched into the Chelsea Creek and then be fished out only to have to listen to an idiot girl. Sit down.”

The man lifted Doyle up by the collar, then reached out over his shoulder and, flipping the sopping coattails aside and grabbing the waistband of his pants, hauled him over the gunwale and onto the forward thwart. Doyle tried to cooperate, but was too weak to do more than brace his hands against the gunwale as it went by under him. He lay motionless on the thwart, still absorbed with the pleasures of relaxing and breathing.

“Thank you,” he managed to gasp. “I couldn’t have… kept afloat… sixty more seconds.”

“My husband saved your life,” said a potato-faced old woman sternly, leaning into his field of vision.

“Now, Meg, he’s as aware of that as you are, and I’m certain his gratitude will be handsomely expressed. Now let me get us moving again, we’re drifting in toward the bank,” He sat down on the center thwart and Doyle heard the oarlocks rattle as he took up the oars. “I’ll have to set to rowing with a passion to make up for the time we’ve lost, Meg,” he said, more loudly than necessary. “And we’ll still probably be too late to get our usual spot at Billingsgate.” He paused a moment, and then the boat shuddered, and surged forward, as he leaned into the work.

The girl Sheila leaned curiously over Doyle. “Gentlemanly nice, those clothes was, before they got spoiled,” she remarked.

Doyle nodded. “Put ‘em on for the first time tonight,” he said hoarsely.

“Who was it tied you up and threw you in the creek?”

Having regained his breath and some of his strength, Doyle sat up dizzily. “Gypsies,” he answered. “They, uh, robbed me, too. Didn’t leave me a cent—I mean a sixpence.”

“Oh God, Chris,” the old woman interrupted, “he says he hasn’t got any money. And he sounds like some kind of foreigner.”