“Wait for it . . .”
A thrashing of whitewater as something big broached and snapped for the dangling lantern of a boat, something with a long head full of white teeth. Yells drifted over the water, and he could see a man poised with a harpoon, backlit against the oil lamp. He struck, and a monstrous three-lobed tail came up out of the water. Other boats were closing in, to help with the first catch and wait for the others that would be drawn by the commotion and the blood in the waters.
“Now! Stroke, stroke!”
The Land gunboat was out further in the Gut, hooting its steam whistle and scanning with the searchlight . . . but it was guarding against attempts to get away, not looking for boats making for the ex-Imperial shore. John kept his right hand on the whaleboat’s tiller, flicking an occasional glance down at the compass in his left. That was mostly for show; Center kept a ghostly vector arrow floating before his gaze.
there are now echoes from cliffs of the configuration indicated, the machine said. distance one thousand meters and closing.
Thump. John’s head whipped around. That was the gunboat’s cannon . . . ah. “Just a big ‘un,” he whispered to the crew.
You got an occasional one of those, even in the shallow waters of the Gut. Nothing like the monsters that made sailing the outer seas hazardous, but too much for a harpooner to handle. There had been very little life on land when humans arrived on Visager, but the oceans more than made up for it. The Chosen officer on the gunboat probably thought of it as sport, something to break the dull routine of night escort work. And very good cover for John.
“We’ll be coming up on the cliffs soon,” he said quietly. “Half-stroke . . . half-stroke . . .”
The oars shortened their pace, scarcely dipping into the water. He could hear the slow boom of surf now, thudding and hissing on rock. John held up his signal lantern and carefully pressed the shutter: two long, two short, one long.
A flicker answered him, two shorts, repeated—all that they dared use, with the light pointing out to the Gut.
“Yarely now,” the lead Marine in the head of the boat said. There was a quiet plop as he swung the lead. “By the mark, six. Six. Five. Six. Four. Four.”
Rock loomed up on either hand, just visible as the waves broke and snake-hissed over it. A river broke the cliff near here, cutting a pathway that men or goats could use.
“By the mark, seven. Ten. No bottom at ten.”
The pitching of the boat changed, calmer as they moved into the sheltered waters. John felt sweat matting his hair under the black knit stocking cap. The guerillas would be waiting; the guerillas, or a Fourth Bureau reaction squad.
“Rest oars,” he said.
The poles came in, noiseless. The boat coasted, slowing . . . and the keel crunched on shingle. Four men leapt overboard into thigh-deep water, fanning out with their weapons ready. The rest followed them a second later, putting their shoulders to the whaleboat’s sides and running it forward. John drew the revolver from his shoulder rig and ran forward to leap off the bow.
there, Center said, reading input from his ears too faint for his conscious mind to follow.
He walked forward, sliding his feet to avoid tripping on the uneven surface. A match glowed, cupped in a hand, just long enough for him to recognize the face. Arturo Bianci, the cotadini he’d shipped the arms to, back when the war began. Two years looked to have aged the man ten, which wasn’t all that surprising.
A hand gripped his. “No lights,” John warned.
Bianci made a sound that was half chuckle. “We have learned, signore. Those of us who live, have learned much.”
They had; there were ropes strung from sticks to guide up the steep rocky path. Guerillas joined the Marines in unloading the crates and lashing them to their shoulders with rope slings. John swung crates down from the boat, pleased with the silence and speed . . . and waiting for the moment when lights would spear down from the clifftop and voices sound in Landisch. At last the boat rode high and empty, rocking against the shingle.