Trapped

"Almost to the beach."

"And from there to the shooter?"

"Twenty meters."

Twenty meters: two or three seconds of sprinting, even for someone as fast as Impervia. And running on sand would slow her down. The shooter would have plenty of time to aim and fire. Even if we all charged en masse, he'd get at least two of us before we crossed the gap.

"Any cover we can use?" I asked Annah.

"No. The people of Crystal Bay obviously like an unobstructed view of their shrines when they're out on the lake."

"Damn."

I tried to picture how far twenty meters really was. A reasonable stone's throw, but too far to hurl a knife with any accuracy. An easy shot for an arrow, but none of us had a bow. Besides, if we could draw a bead on the gunman, he could draw a bead on us. For the past ten seconds, he hadn't fired a single round. Probably reloading… or at least conserving ammunition. It would be nice to think he'd used all his bullets, but I didn't believe we were that lucky.

Sand crunched beneath the jolly-boat's keel. We were still in the water, but we'd bottomed out in the shallows. "Ten meters from here to the beach," Annah said. Impervia and Pelinor dug their oars into the sand, trying to pole us forward like punters… but the only result was a harsh rasping sound as the keel buried itself deeper. We'd run aground and pushing would only make it worse.

Myoko took a shuddering breath. The Caryatid squeezed her: "Hang on, hang on…" If Myoko dropped us now, our prow would fall forward, leaving us exposed to gunfire at close range. We'd have to flatten ourselves on the bottom of the boat; the hull would protect us, but we'd be pinned down for as long as the shooter wanted to toy with us.

Suddenly, the boat soared upward: hurtling out of the water as if propelled from a catapult, flying in an arc that ended with a brutal collision as the boat snapped up to the vertical and slammed its flat stern onto solid land. We almost tipped over, our balance precarious-the boat was now completely upright, nose pointing to the sky. If we hadn't been holding tight already, we would have spilled into the line of fire. Pelinor and Impervia jammed their oars out into the sand on either side, making diagonal struts to keep us from wobbling left or right… but it was Myoko who saved us, giving the boat one last shove downward, driving the stern a full hand's breadth into the sand. Planted deep and solid. Then Myoko went limp, blood gushing from her nose and mouth.

The shooter blasted another bullet into the jolly-boat's hull. It didn't go through-we were still safe. If "safe" is a valid word when you're stuck on an open beach, and your only protection is an upright rowboat. It was as if we'd taken cover in a tiny privy-shack while a murderer waited outside.

"Phil," Impervia whispered, "how much money are you carrying? Enough to buy our way out of here?"

"Yes and no," I told her. "I have enough cash to pay a healthy bribe… but if we tell the shooter that, he'll just have more incentive to kill us. Once we're dead, he can get rich looting our bodies."

"Let's skip the bribery," Pelinor said. "We'll try Plan B. We do have a Plan B, don't we?"

Impervia scowled. "Bribery was Plan B. Plan A was having Myoko jam the rifle down the shooter's throat."

We all looked at Myoko where she lay ashen and unconscious in the Caryatid's arms. The bleeding from her mouth and nose had slowed to a seeping ooze; I hoped that was a good sign.

A moment's silence; then Impervia said, "Flames," in a cold hard voice. "Caryatid, can you set fire to this man who wants to kill us?"

"I don't know." The Caryatid continued to gaze down at Myoko: rocking the limp body, the way one might rock a sleeping child.

"Can you do it?" Impervia said more sharply. "There's no way to help Myoko right now; first we have to deal with the gunman. If you aren't up to the job, just say so and we'll try something else."

The Caryatid forced herself to look up from Myoko and meet Impervia's gaze. "I don't have much range on making flames obey me. And I can't control them at all if they're out of sight."

Without a word, Annah handed her the mirror.

"All right," the Caryatid said. "I'll try."

The Caryatid's ready supply of matches had got soaked when Oberon did his belly-flop. She had to find more matches in her pack, then search for a dry place to strike a light, but at last she had a single flame balanced on her fingertip.

(All this while, the shooter stayed silent. Everything was still-the town, the docks, the fishing boats. Oberon had to be somewhere, but I couldn't see him. I assumed he was lurking in the water, just deep enough to stay hidden: snout breaking the surface now and then to breathe, biding his time for a chance to rush the shore.)