The Fabulous Riverboat by Phillip Jose Farmer

“They’re all gone!” Joe said. “Jethuth! Vhat a thight! There ain’t nothing left, Tham!” The plain was buried under a whirl and toss of waters, but in fifteen minutes the waters had drained off. The River had resumed its normal appearance along the shores of Parolando, though it must have been swollen downstream.

The great buildings and the boat in its scaffoldings were gone. The cyclopean walls on the sides, a mile apart, were gone. There were little lakes here and there where the mines and the basements of the factories had been. The vast weight of water had gouged out part of the plain where it had been dug up. But the roots of the grasses were so deep, so tough, and so thickly intertwined that even the scrape of hundreds of thousands of tons of water had not ripped the earth out. The stone and earth walls along the banks had been swept away as if they were sand.

The skies paled, and the starlit darkness became gray. The great fleet of the invaders was gone, somewhere far down The River, or under it, broken, smashed, fragments floating or half hulls upside down. The two armies on the plain and the sailors were all dead, crushed by the weight of the water, drowned, rubbed into nothing or squeezed out like toothpaste.

But Parolando extended for ten miles along The River, and the lake had, after all, only raged across a two-milebroad area. Its main damage had been in the middle of Parolando, where it had carried everything out that stood within a half-mile-wide area. Those on the edges had been drowned and the buildings smashed or only submerged briefly.

Dawn brought with it a thousand men in boats or over the walls of Chernsky’s Land from the north.

At their head was King John.

Sam drew up his men in battle formation with Joe Miller in the center, but King John limped forward, his hand held out in sign of peace. Sam went forward to talk to him. Even after John had explained what he had done, Sam expected to be killed. But later he realized that John needed him and Firebrass and others if he was going to get the boat rebuilt. Also, he would be taking a perverted pleasure in keeping Sam alive while Sam wondered when the dagger in the night would come.

As it turned out, not everything had to be started from scratch again. The boat, almost entirely undamaged, was found beached on a hill across The River a mile down. It had been deposited as gently as a cat’s footstep by the withdrawing waters. The work of getting the great hull back was not easy; but it took much less time than making another one.

John explained more than once to Sam what he had done, but the deviousnesses and the two times two double crosses were so complicated that Sam could never see the picture as a whole. John had made a deal to betray Sam, knowing full well that Hacking would betray him also. John would have been disappointed if Hacking had not tried to stab him in the back. He would have lost all his faith in human nature.

John had made a deal with Iyeyasu to help him invade after Hacking’s invasion. Iyeyasu liked the idea that Hackrag would weaken his forces while taking Parolando. At the last moment, John had made a deal with Publius Crassus, Tai Fung and Chernsky that they would help him mop up on Iyeyasu’s forces, which would be shattered by the waters released by the blown-up dam.

John had sent the three men to set off the explosives in the dam when the greatest number of invaders and defenders would be concentrated between the tunneling secondary-defense walls. Beofre that happened, John had fled in his boat, hidden by the fog.

“Then you weren’t in your palace when the cannons opened up on it?” Sam said.

“No,” John replied, smiling his cat’s smile. “I was miles to the north, traveling to meet Iyeyasu. You have never thought much of me, Samuel, but you should get down on your knees now and kiss my hand in gratitude. Without me, you would have lost all.”