The Rosetta Codex Read Free

and awkwardly shifting direction, pushing the oars instead of pulling, struggling against the resistance met by the flat stern. Go, the boy thought at them. Go!
    The people in the first boats scrambled for weapons, for clubs and blades, long staffs and bolas, stumbling into each other, unbalanced, panicked and confused. Leaping and howling, Petros and the other men rushed through the gaps between the fires and attacked with spears and knives and cudgels. Blades bit deep into flesh; knotted wood cut the air and crushed bones. The beach became an inferno of smoke and screams and flames and blood, the bitter stench of burning flesh, and cries of victory; rising above it, strings of burning embers climbed toward the sky like the dying swarms of lantern bugs in the late summer nights. Sickened, the boy turned away.
    But he watched the one boat that might still escape.A small fire burned in it, but was quickly extinguished. When they were several boat lengths away from the beach, the oarsmen, now composed and synchronized, dug in on one side, turning the boat around, then began pulling desperately with the oars. Several more flaming arrows launched toward them, but only one made contact, and it bounced harmlessly off the side of the boat and into the water.
    The boy’s decision was almost unconscious. As the boat neared the spit of land, he stood upright, shrugged off the blanket, clambered onto the rock, and dove into the lake. The cold stunned him for a moment, and he slid through the water like a slowly sinking statue. He opened his eyes, but was as good as blind. For several long moments he did nothing, nearly accepting the bottom of the lake as his final destination. He had no will, no desire, no sense of loss. Then some spark of life returned and he recovered; he pulled with his arms and kicked with his legs, and swam awkwardly for the surface.
    His boots filled with water. One at a time he kicked them from his feet. Finally he began to rise through the cold and dark. A driving ache in his chest, strange inner glistenings of silver in his vision. His arms and legs felt dead and useless, but he managed movement, upward progress until at last he broke the surface.
    Water came with his first breath, choking him. For a moment he couldn’t see the boat, and he was afraid it had already passed him by. Then he heard a splash, turned his head, and saw it no more than fifteen feet away; but it was moving quickly now. He swam toward a point ahead of it, and in ten strokes he was within reach.
    The boy kicked hard, rising slightly out of the water, andgrabbed the side of the boat with one hand. The boat’s momentum continued, dragging him through the water, straining his arm and shoulder. He pulled himself up enough to get a grip with the other hand and cried out. “Help me!”
    The help he received was an oar cracked across his hands, then again across his skull. He fought the instinct to let go, his vision shifting slightly.
    â€œHelp me!” he cried again.
    The oar came down hard on his left hand and he released its grip, but held on with his right. His face smashed against the wet dark wood, the fingers of his left hand scrabbled for purchase somewhere, anywhere.
    â€œWait!” a voice whispered forcefully from inside the boat. “He’s just a boy!”
    The boy couldn’t see anything but darkness; he craned his head around, tried to look above him, saw something like moving shadows.
    â€œI don’t care what he is.” A deep, scared voice of a man. “He’s one of them and they’re slaughtering us back there.”
    You would have slaughtered them first if you’d had the chance, the boy thought. “No,” he choked out, “I’m not one of them.”
    The boat had slowed, and now there was almost no forward movement; it rocked slightly with the shifting of people and water.
    â€œPull him in or bash his skull,” a third voice said. “I don’t