The Anubis Gates

I guess you can’t relax yet, Doyle told himself wearily as he slid under the surface again and obediently let half the air in his lungs bubble out through his nose, so that he sank easily through the cold black water; then he halted his descent with a scissors-kick when it occurred to him that there wasn’t going to be a pool floor to kick upward from. What if I’ve sunk so deep, he thought, that I can’t thrash my way back to the surface before my lungs mutiny and suck in river water? He instantly began clawing and kicking his way up, and he felt a rope loop brush the back of his hand a moment before he burst out into the air.

There was a wild chittering nearby, like a cageful of excited birds, and Jacky, leaning out over the side, was bundling up the wet weight of a fishing net, in among the tangles of which a few little lights still burned. “Get in,” Jacky snapped. “Clamber over the side up front, I’ll balance you from the back. Stay away from that net—those little bastards carry knives. And hurry.”

Doyle took a moment to look upstream—he could see Romany’s boat perhaps fifty yards off, the synchronized knocking of the oars very loud now—and then he heaved himself up and rolled into the canoe. Jacky was crouched in the rear, rigidly holding the oar straight down into the water.

As soon as the canoe had stopped wobbling, Doyle panted, “Step on the gas.”

Jacky began plying the oar desperately. Having come to a full stop and taken on more weight, though, the canoe was reluctant to move.

“I’ve got one more pistol,” called Doctor Romany. “Drop the oar and I won’t fire it.”

“Wouldn’t dare,” gasped Jacky, her arms quivering as she dragged the oar through the motionless water. “Wants you… alive.”

“Not anymore,” said Doyle, sitting up carefully. “A minute ago they were all shooting at me.”

“Thought you… were someone else.”

The canoe was moving now, but slowly. Doyle could distinguish three heads in silhouette in the boat bearing down on them. “Is there a spare oar?” he asked desperately.

“Ever paddled… canoe?”

“No.”

“Shut up then.”

Doyle noticed a long tear in Jacky’s trousers on the outside of the left thigh, exposing a long, rough cut. He opened his mouth to ask about it, then noticed a round hole punched in the fabric of the canoe, toward the stern. “Good God, Jacky, you’ve been shot!”

“I know.” Even by the dim light of the rising crescent moon Jacky’s face was visibly dark with effort and glistening with sweat, but the canoe was now matching the speed of Doctor Romany’s boat. For a minute or two both craft maintained their interval as they knifed and lumbered through the water, and the oarlocks clacked in the same rhythm as Jacky’s desperate panting; then the canoe put on a little more speed and began to leave the clumsier boat behind.

Blackfriars Bridge was looming close in front of them, and when it was clear that they would lose the pursuing boat Jacky sat back and stared ahead at the great stone arches they were being relentlessly propelled toward. “North middle arch,” she gasped, and stabbed the oar into the water on the starboard side. The rocketing canoe heeled over and began cutting a wide arc to starboard across the face of the river.

When they were nearly in line with the arch she’d indicated, and so close that Doyle could see the explosive splashing where the river pounded against the stone pilings, she whipped the oar out of the water and plunged it in on the other side; the craft straightened out, and there was an instant of blackness and roaring water and the awareness of hard stone rushing past on all sides—and a fast rise and drop that almost landed Doyle in the water again—and then they were out on the broad river, on the east side of the bridge now, and Jacky was slouched back, eyes shut and hands hanging limp over the sides, devoting her energy to getting her breath back as the canoe gradually lost speed.

Doyle looked back, and realized that Doctor Romany would not have been able to duplicate the sharp turn to the wider middle arch, and would not dare try shooting the bridge through the narrow arch that lay ahead of him. If he wanted to continue the pursuit he’d have to heel around to a halt and then row to the one the canoe had darted through. “You lost ‘em, Jacky,” he said wonderingly. “By God, you left ‘em behind.”

“Grew up… on a river,” Jacky panted after a while. “Handy… with boats.” After a few more moments of panting, and pushing back sweat-damp hair, Jacky went on, “I thought the Spoonsize Boys were a myth.”

Doyle knew that Jacky must be referring to the little eggshell mariners. “You’ve heard of them?”