Read Online A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter by Ron Miller - Free Book Online Page A

couldn’t steer it with paddles for nothing; it would only spin in circles. But if I just let ‘er alone, the current took me right across the river, right to Catstongue. Anything drifting in the river ends up in a big eddy there. If we just let ourselves go, we’ll be all right.”
    “I can’t believe this is your big plan,” Bronwyn answers testily, forgetting that it seemed fine to her only a few hours earlier. “And I wish you’d sit still!” At that moment, a large steam-pilot passes them in the channel, its paddles thrashing the water like a vast eggbeater. The little boat spins in the wake as though it were caught in a whirlpool. Bronwyn grips the sides until her fingers ache, and she squeezes her eyes shut, flinching at every splash of icy water that hit her. The shell is sucked into the middle of the river. The moving lights of ships are all around them, ghostly hulks, hissing steam or creaking with cables; their engines and chains clanking. Voices come over the water from all directions. Bronwyn feels like a rabbit in a herd of cattle.
    “I don’t remember it being this busy,” apologizes Thud.
    “You are just a dumb kid thirty years ago, that’s why.”
    “Yeah, I guess so.”
    “I don’t know why we couldn’t at least have taken some oars, just in case.”
    “I guess we could’ve.”
    “Why aren’t we moving anymore?”
    The city, to their left as they faced downstream, should have been moving to the left as the current carried them. Nor was it actually motionless, as Bronwyn had thought at first; it was moving in the wrong direction.
    “The river’s going backwards !” Thud whispers in surprise.
    “That’s impossible,” hisses the princess.
    “Well, look, then,” answers Thud, and when she looks, sure enough, they are unquestionably moving upstream.
    This isn’t possible! The river comes from the mountains, it is headed to the sea; how can it be going the wrong way? The answer comes to her immediately, and she feels as stupid as she ever cared to, which generally is not at all, : the tide ! Blavek is at the fall line of the river, at the northernmost limit of the tidewater country. The city is virtually at sea level and when the tide came up the estuary, it backed up the water of the river as far as Blavek.
    Damn! How could she have known? She is no sailor. She desperately wants to blame Thud, it has to be someone’s fault, so why not his? This was entirely his idea, after all; the man is clearly feeble-minded; why had she ever gone along with him? It is utterly stupid on the face of it. Now look at what is happening: she is drifting directly toward Palace Island. Merciful Musrum, it is the very place from which she has been trying to escape! For all she knew, Payne and Ferenc are in one of the towers, gloating as they watch her inexorably drift toward them. She is certain they would be vastly amused, damn them.
    Soon enough, the vertical stone embankment of Palace Island looms above them. It is a peculiar sensation, looking at a place as though it was a prison that for eighteen years had been a home, more or less. She can see the towers and turrets of the palace proper and the blocks of government buildings that surround it. They glow like hot bricks in the light of the boulevard’s gas lamps. She can see figures moving regularly along the parapet’s edge, not fifty feet over their heads: Guards on patrol. The little boat rounds the northeast corner of the island. Ahead of them yawns four vast, black mouths, the openings to the tunnels that allow the Slideen to pass beneath the causeway. Above the tunnel mouths are the bright lights lining the roadway, and the dimmer, golden lights in the windows of the official mansions, offices and palaces built over the river. She can see the busy shadows of people and vehicles. When will someone finally see
    them and raise the alarm? She feel as obvious as a clown in church. They are now in a narrow channel, only a hundred yards wide; the