"Cover me!" Thomas yelled.
He came down from the wheelhouse pirate style, just jumping down, all graceful and stylish despite the roll of the ship, despite the ice and the cold. Murphy, her feet planted, secured to the railing, shifted her grip and produced the little assault weapon she'd had on a strap around her back-the P-90 Kincaid had given her as a gift. She raised it to her shoulder, sighted through the scope at one of the oncoming rafts, and started calmly squeezing out rounds, one and two at a time. Fam. Famfam. Fam. Famfam. Fam. Fam.
One of the rafts foundered. Maybe she'd struck whoever was steering it and caused him to misguide it. Maybe the lake had simply swamped it. I don't know. But a second raft immediately turned to start picking up men who had spilled into the water from the first. Murphy turned her gun onto the remaining raft.
Thomas started hauling me out of the water by the line around my arm, just pulling me up arm over arm as if I'd been a child and not an adult a hundred pounds heavier than he was. He doesn't even work out.
I was tired enough that I just let him do it. As a result I had enough spare attention to notice when my feet cleared the water, and Deirdre surged out of the blackness and seized my ankles.
"Kill you!" she snarled. "Kill you for what you did to him!"
"Holy crap!" Thomas yelled.
"Ack!" I agreed.
Most of those deadly strands of her hair were thrust into the stone reef below, holding her down, but a few that were free whipped wildly at Thomas. He ducked aside with a yell, barely managing to hold on to the line.
It felt like she was going to pull my legs off at the ankles. I screamed and kicked at her as best I could, but my legs were so numb that I could barely move them, much less shake her off. Thomas had all that he could do to simply hold on to the line and prevent those bladed strands from severing it.
"Karrin!" he screamed.
Murphy swung her legs up over the railing of the ship, still attached to it by the line fastened to her harness. Then she swung herself out into empty air above the water until she hung alongside me.
Then she aimed the P-90 down at Deirdre and flicked the selector to full automatic.
But before she could pull the trigger, Deirdre hissed, and a flickering blade swept up and struck Murphy across the face. She screamed and recoiled as the blade continued, an S-shaped cut that missed Murphy's throat by a finger's breadth and sliced through the strap that held the P-90 on her body. The weapon tumbled into the water.
"Bitch!" Murphy snarled, one side of her face a sheet of blood. She tried to reach for her pistol-in its shoulder holster, beneath her harness, beneath her coat. It might as well have been on the surface of the moon.
"Murph!" I said. I twisted my shoulders and thrust the end of Fidelacchius to within reach of her hand.
Murphy's fingers closed on the hilt of the holy blade.
She drew it maybe an inch from the scabbard.
White light blinded me. Blinded Deirdre. Blinded Murphy. Blinded Thomas. Blinded everyone.
"No!" Deirdre screamed, utter despair and terror in her voice. "No, no, no!"
The pressure on my ankles vanished, and I heard the Denarian splash into the water.
Murphy released the hilt of the sword. The light died. It took maybe half a minute before I could see anything else. Thomas recovered faster, of course, and by that time he had us both back onto the deck of the Water Beetle. There was no evidence of Deirdre anywhere, and the two boatloads of soldier boys were hightailing it away as fast as they could go.
Murphy, bleeding from a cut running parallel to her right eyebrow all the way into her hairline, was staring in shock at me and at the sword. "What the fuck was that?"
I slipped the sword off my shoulder. I felt really tired. I hurt everywhere. "Offhand," I mumbled, "I'd say it was a job offer."
"We've got to move before we get carried onto the reef," Thomas muttered. He hurried off, pirate style. He looked good doing it. Of course. He doesn't even moisturize.
Murphy stared at the sword for a second more. Then she looked at me, and her bloody face went tight with concern. "Jesus, Harry." She moved to the side of my wounded leg and helped support my weight as I hobbled into the ship's cabin. "Come on. Let's get you warmed up."
"Well?" I asked her as she helped me. "How 'bout it? I got this sword that needs somebody to use it."
She sat me down on one of the bench seats in the ship's cabin. She looked at the sword for a moment, seriously. Then she shook her head and said quietly, "I've got a job."
I smiled faintly and closed my eyes. "I thought you'd say that."
"Shut up, Harry."
"Okay," I said.
And I did. For hours. It was glorious.
Chapter Forty-six
I woke up covered in a couple of heavy down comforters and innumerable blankets, and it was morning. The bench seat on the Water Beetle had been folded out into a reasonably comfortable cot. A kerosene heater was burning on the other side of the cabin. It wasn't exactly toasty, but it made the cabin warm enough to steam up the windows.
I came to slowly, aching in every joint, muscle and limb. The after-action hangover was every bit as bad as I had anticipated. I tried to remind myself that this was a deliriously joyous problem to deal with, all things considered. I wasn't being a very good sport about it, though. I growled and complained bitterly, and eventually worked up enough nerve to sit up and get out from under the covers. I went to the tiny bathroom-though on a boat, I guess it's called a "head" for some stupid reason-and by the time I zombie-shuffled out, Thomas had come down from the deck and slipped inside. He was putting a cell phone back into his jacket pocket, and his expression was serious.
"Harry," he said. "How you doing?"
I suggested what he could do with his reproductive organs.
He arched an eyebrow at me. "Better than I'd expected."
I grunted. Then I added, "Thank you."
He snorted. That was all. "Come on. I've got coffee for you in the car."
"I'm leaving everything to you in my will," I said.
"Cool. Next time I'll leave you in the water."
I pulled my coat on with a groan. "Almost wish you had. Coin? Sword?"
"Safe, stowed below. You want them?"
I shook my head. "Keep them here for now."
I followed him out to the truck, gimping on my bad knee. I noted that someone had, at some point in the evening, cleaned me up a bit and put new bandages on my leg, and on a number of scrapes and contusions I didn't even remember getting. I was wearing fresh clothing, too. Thomas. He didn't say anything about it, and neither did I. It's a brother thing.