‘Who would you prefer to save?’ the Mongol rasped as they jumped down onto the ice.
‘Keogh,’ he answered at once, ‘if it’s possible. He’ll know more about the British organisation than Shukshin. And he has this talent of his – whatever it is.’
Even as he spoke those words a fantastic idea had come to Dragosani, one he had never even considered before. If he could ‘learn’ necromancy from an undead
Thing and with it steal the thoughts and secrets of the dead, mightn’t he also steal their talents? At the Chateau Bronnitsy the agents were all allies, working on the same side, towards the same end. But here in England the ESPers were enemies! Why not steal Keogh’s as yet unknown talent itself – and use it to his own ends?
From the hole in the river where cakes of ice churned in dark, frenzied water, a great grunting and gasping sounded as Batu and Dragosani drew closer; but as they more cautiously approached the rim itself all sounds ceased and they were greeted only by the gurgle and slap of water moving under and against ice. For a moment a clutching hand shot dripping into view and clawed at the rim, but before they could make a move to grab it the hand was gone, sucked under.
‘This way!’ Dragosani gasped. ‘Follow the course of the river.’
‘You think there’s a chance?’ Batu obviously thought not.
‘A very slim one,’ said Dragosani.
They ran on the ice as best they could under a cold and silent moon.
Beneath the ice, tumbled and turned by the current, Harry Keogh somehow got his jacket off and let it go. Under his shirt he wore a rubber wet-suit vest, but still the cold was terrific. It must surely finish Shukshin, who was completely unprotected.
Harry started to swim, kept his head turned sideways with his face against the ice, actually found places where cold air was trapped in shallow pockets. He swam towards his mother, following her stream of troubled thoughts just as he had followed them unerringly two hours ago
with his eyes closed. Except then there had been plenty of air to breathe and he had been warm.
Panic gripped him momentarily but he put it out of mind. His Ma was over there – that way! He began to swim more strongly – and something grasped at his feet, his legs. Something fastened its grasp on him and clung to his trousers. Shukshin! The river was bobbing them along in tandem, like matches down a drain, gluing them together through sheer gravitational attraction.
Harry swam more desperately yet, with his arms, with one leg. He swam as never before, his lungs bursting, his heart a great gong clanging away in his chest. And Shukshin clawing his way up his body, his hands like the pincers of some great crab, snatching at Harry as if to pull him to pieces.
This was it; he could swim no more; the water was the black blood of some giant alien into whose veins Harry had been injected, where Shukshin was an alien antibody bent on his destruction.
‘Ma! Ma! Help me!’ Harry cried out with his mind as at last he was forced to draw breath, but drew only icy water which gushed into his straining jaws and nostrils.
‘Harry!’ she answered at once, loudly, close at hand, her own voice frantic in his head. ‘Harry, you’re here!’
He kicked backwards, lashed out with both feet at Shukshin, and thrust upward with his back and head, crashing himself against the ice cover – which immediately, mercifully, shattered into thin shards as his head and shoulders emerged into air!
And suddenly the water was still and his feet touched a muddy bottom five feet down, and even before his eyes had focused and his battered senses stopped spinning, Harry knew he had made it. Now he summoned his last reserves, threw out his hands and grasped at tough roots where they projected from the overhanging bank. And slowly he began to draw himself up and out.
Beside him the water swirled and gurgled as from some hidden commotion. Harry half-turned and terror drew his lips back from his teeth – as Shukshin’s mad face came surging up alongside him, choking and gagging! The madman saw him, spewed water and a babbling scream of rage into his face, clutched at his throat with hands like steel grapples.