“Which way from here?” the vessel of the Goddess croaked, finding his voice with difficulty.
* * *
Marco fought down dizziness as he grayed-out a little; heard the battered, burnt-faced stranger ask: “Which way from here?”
“We’ve got to get him out of here—back to Venice, back where it’s warm and they can look after him,” Benito replied, hesitantly. “There’s probably people out looking for him by now—and he ain’t in any shape to stay out here, anyway.”
Marco gave in to the inevitable, too sick and dizzy and in too much pain to argue. “The path’s—through those two hummocks,” he said, nodding his head in the right direction and setting off a skull-filling ache by doing so. The three of them stumbled off down the rim-path, making slow work of it—especially since they had to stop twice to let him throw up what little there was in his stomach. He concentrated on getting one foot set in front of the other. That was just about all he was up to at this point; that, and keeping from passing out altogether.
He was still survival-oriented enough to be aware that now that they were in the clear, they were attracting the attention of the marsh dwellers with boats—some of whom were more dangerous than the Squalos. He tried to warn the other two, but his tongue seemed to have swollen up and it was hard to talk.
But the walls of the Arsenal were in sight now, crumbling and water-logged brick-and-wood, looming up over their heads. Things began to whirl. . . . He couldn’t possibly see the Piazza San Marco from here, but he would swear he saw the pillar and the lion . . . and the open book. He struggled to read the words. . . .
“Don’t fall over yet, Marco!” Benito’s voice. Pleading. “Don’t die on me, brother!”
By an effort of will, the whirling world steadied briefly.
There was a shout from behind; just as a small boat came around the Castello point. An errant beam of sunlight glinted off blond hair in the bow, and there was another, darker figure waving at them frantically from the stern.
And there was ominous splashing growing nearer behind them.
The stranger on Marco’s left suddenly dropped his arm, and Marco and Benito staggered as Marco overbalanced.
Then things got very blurred and very confusing.
The stranger bellowed behind them, and there was the sound of blows, and cries of anger and pain; Benito began hauling him along as fast as they could stumble through the weeds and muck. Then he was in waist-deep water, with the sides of a gondola under his hands, and he was simultaneously scrambling and being pulled aboard. That was . . . Maria Garavelli cursing under her breath beside his head.
And then a gun went off practically in his ear.
He tumbled onto the bottom slats and lay there, frozen, and wet, and hurting; shivering so hard he could hardly think, with shouting going on over his head, and another shot.
Then they were under a winged leonine shadow as consciousness slipped away.
* * *
When he came to again, it was to the sight of Maria standing on the stern, moving the gondola with steady easy strokes. Benito wrapped a blanket around him and helped him to sit up. It was a good thing Benito was supporting him; he was shivering so hard now that he couldn’t sit on his own.
“He all right?”
There was worry in Maria’s voice; that surprised him.
“He need help? Lord—he’s bleeding, ain’t he! Caesare—”
Aldanto was down on the slats beside him, without Marco seeing how he had got there. He shut his eyes as much to hide his shame as to fight the waves of dizziness. Amazingly gentle hands probed his hurts.
“Cut along the ribs—looks worse than it is. But this crack on the skull—”
Marco swayed and nearly lost his grip on consciousness and his stomach, when those hands touched the place where the boathook pole had broken over his head. The pain was incredible; it was followed by a combined wave of nausea and disorientation. The hands steadied him, then tilted his chin up.