Arrow's Rest by Joel Scott (best books to read all time .TXT) 📗

to keep her stern true to the seas, and the paddler thought a mortal broach was only minutes away. He’d known there was risk in heading this far out into the Strait, but time was short, and they couldn’t afford to jink their way along the coast skirting the headlands and navigating through the clusters of islands. While they offered shelter, it would have taken twice as long. He didn’t second-guess his decision, he was a fatalist, and if the spirits meant for them to survive, then they would. He knew that most people drowned within a stone’s throw of land.

He heard a big one hissing as it curled up and broke behind him and he braced his knees against the gunwales and took a firmer grip on the paddle. The canoe rode it for the first seconds and then the bow dug in and slewed and he heaved on the paddle with all his strength and it flexed in his grasp like a living thing and he thought it would break under the stress but the hand-carved spruce held and he managed to fight the stern back before the wind. He didn’t know how many more times he could do it. His shoulders ached from the strain and it was just a question of what gave out first: him or the paddle.

He heard another one coming, louder than any of its predecessors, and he took a deep breath and buried the paddle and twisted it and fought to keep the canoe from slewing and as they slanted up on the wave he glimpsed through the spindrift and rain the lethal dark shapes spread out low in the water dead ahead, a half dozen half seen, and he knew it was the end and his strength deserted him and he bowed his head and accepted his fate. As the wave crested and carried the canoe forward and drove it down, there was a sudden scattering, an upwelling waterspout, and then the rank, oily scent of fish carried on warm vaporous breath.

The paddler bowed his head in greeting.

“Hello, my brothers and sisters,” Joseph said. “I am glad to see you.”

The pod ranged alongside, a scarred old female in the lead, all of their heads turned towards him and those wise and animate eyes settled upon him and he felt their strength flowing into him like an electric current and he sat up straight and struck his paddle into the roiled waters with renewed energy.

The orcas stayed with him for an hour, never further than fifty feet distant and sometimes so close alongside Joseph could reach out and touch them with his hand. Once they moved in line off the bow, leading the dugout canoe through an enmeshed patch of drifting kelp and logs before resuming their formation around him; rising and falling with the waves in synchronicity; of the sea rather than in it. They left him when the wind began to slacken, peeling off in a line northwards in the direction of the Robson Bight, their ancient rubbing grounds.

When he lost them to sight, Joseph turned and glanced over his shoulder between the surges and saw the sky brightening behind him and sensed a break between fronts was coming. He locked the steering paddle under his arm and picked up the bailer and renewed his efforts. As the water inside lowered, the canoe became more responsive and easier to steer. The wind dropped and the waves flattened out into the previous long billowing swells and they once again hurried north.

The sun suddenly broke out from the clouds, and Joseph stretched and smiled as the warmth and light flooded over him and his old flannel jacket began to steam. He leaned forward and dug his paddle into the water and raised his head and began to chant. The sodden dog stretched out along the bottom of the dugout canoe pricked its ears, sat up, raised its head, and howled in accompaniment.

Chapter 47

A light came on in the darkened storage room, dazzling Jared with its brightness. He blinked as his eyes adjusted, and saw the two men from the dinghy. Clint and Travis, as he now knew them to be. The brothers.

“We going to have a problem?” the squinty-eyed one with the bandage wrapped around his head inquired. He carried a large wrench in his hand and sounded hopeful. His brother stood by the door, his hand resting on the butt of the gun tucked in his belt.

“No.”

“Sorry to hear you’re showing some sense. This way.” They ushered him out through the door. As they turned into the narrow passageway, Jared glanced back at Sullivan who hadn’t stirred.

“Don’t worry about him, he’s not going anywhere. He’s done. Finished. Kaput. You give him some pills?”

Jared didn’t reply. The man shrugged. “Makes no matter. They’ll be gone soon enough. He won’t last long after that — he’ll be begging for an end to it. You’ll see.”

“You talk too much, Travis,” his brother snapped.

Travis rolled his eyes at Jared and grinned, exposing tobacco-stained teeth. “Just sayin’,” he said with a shrug.

A flight of steep steel stairs with a handrail led upwards at the end of the passageway. It might have offered an opportunity, but the brothers were taking no chances. They stood well off to the side and motioned Jared up ahead of them. He went through the door at the top and came out into a corridor that led past a compact galley outfitted in gleaming stainless with a man working at a chopping block who glanced up without expression as the procession passed by. Twenty feet further on, the corridor opened out into a large saloon. A bar was located at one end with a mirror and railed shelves holding glassware displayed behind a long slab of granite. A man in a dinner jacket and slacks was seated on one of the raised-back bar stools with a bottle and three glasses set out before him. As the door closed behind Jared