Travers’ two remaining goons eased around the corner of the sentry tower. They didn’t seem to notice Archie and Houndstooth as they splashed in the water, arguing over who would be first up the ladder and into the ranger’s tower, to safety. One of them managed to dunk the other, and clambered over him toward the ladder. The man in the water reached up an arm to grab his colleague’s leg.
With a jerk and a splash, the man disappeared under the water. He came back up again, sputtering. Then he was airborne, flipped by the nose of the first adult feral to reach the Gate.
Archie and Houndstooth watched as the man flailed between the feral’s jaws. The man screamed in ear-splitting agony as his blood ran down the hippo’s jowls and into the water. His colleague scrambled up the ladder to safety, not looking back even as the screams died with a wet crunch.
“Archie,” Houndstooth said, his voice thick. “I think this might be it.”
“You may be right, ’oundstooth,” Archie replied grimly. “But I am determined to live. And determination is everything, is it not?”
She swung her meteor hammer in a wide circle over her head and watched the water as the ferals surged toward them, borne on the swell of the current. The heavy metal head whipped through the air as it gained speed.
At first, the ferals didn’t notice Houndstooth and Archie. They were smacking into each other, into the Sturgess Queen. They bellowed and bit as the water shoved them into each other. One of the bulls let out a roar that rattled Houndstooth’s very bones.
The first feral to notice them was a small female with a long crack running through one of her fangs. She whipped toward them, fury in her wild eyes, and charged.
Rosa fled left, carrying Archie out of the path of danger and far from Houndstooth—but Ruby did not follow. She let out a roar that put the raging feral bulls to shame. She turned her wide mouth toward the attacker and opened it, ready to fight. Her golden tusks glinted in the sun. Houndstooth unsheathed his knives, bracing his knees in the saddle, and bared his teeth, echoing Ruby’s stance.
Water fanned in front of the feral as she bore down on Ruby and Houndstooth, her own jaw yawning wide—but then a brown blur slammed into her from one side, knocking her into the water. Betsy—sweet, small, battle-scarred Betsy—bowled the feral over, sinking her fangs into its flank before it had a chance to recover from the impact.
“Betsy!” Houndstooth cried as the little brown hippo disappeared into the roil of ferals. He looked around for Archie, but she, too, seemed to have vanished in the fray. A grey-backed hippo brushed up against Ruby, and Houndstooth jumped, prepared to fight—but it was Abigail, cowardly Abigail, Hero’s Abigail, trying desperately to hide between Ruby and the tower.
A roar drew Houndstooth’s attention back to the roiling mass of ferals, who were savagely fighting each other as the water buffeted them into the Gate. Houndstooth’s safe shelter against the tower was keeping him and Ruby out of the worst of the current—but it was too much to hope that they would completely escape notice, and Abigail’s flight had drawn the attention of a huge, one-eyed bull.
It was that bull whose roar had shaken Houndstooth’s bones—a roar that was directed at cowering Abigail. The bull began to move toward them, parting a path through the seething mass of grey that was the feral melee. Houndstooth went cold with fear. The bull was easily half again as large as Ruby. His massive head swung to and fro as he snapped at other, smaller ferals. He was coming for them, and they wouldn’t stand a chance.
Houndstooth tried to steer Ruby out of the way—tried to maneuver her out of the path of certain death—but she wouldn’t budge. Houndstooth cast his gaze frantically around for Archie, but he couldn’t see her, and there was no time because the bull was free of the tangle of ferals and he was charging at Ruby with all the fury of a freight train.
Ruby did not bellow at the bull. She stared at him dead on, and Houndstooth could have sworn he felt her tremble. Time seemed to Houndstooth to have slowed to a crawl. He patted Ruby’s flank with an unsteady hand. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, trying to accept that there was no way out of the path of the bull—but he realized that closing his eyes did not make it easier to face his death. He would never see Hero again, and he couldn’t swallow that with his eyes closed.
His eyes flew open just in time for him to see Rosa. She galloped around from the other side of the ranger’s tower, water shearing before her, a white blur with Archie standing atop her back. Archie yelled, a thundering cry that made even the feral bull hesitate for a moment in his charge. Archie, magnificent Archie—she swung her meteor hammer hard and released it, and it flew true and straight, and it hit the bull hard between the eyes with a crack like lightning. Blood stained the water. The bull stood in the water and swayed like a drunk, his eyes still locked on Ruby. He made a single, unsteady movement forward. Houndstooth threw a knife and it sunk deep into the hippo’s remaining eye—a surreal echo of Adelia’s strike back at the islet where Neville had died.
The beast fell.
Archie crowed as Rosa crowded beside Abigail and Ruby. “That makes ten times I ’ave saved your life, ’oundstooth! No more of this nine-and-a-half nonsense, eh?”
“Where’s Betsy?” Houndstooth asked her. Archie pointed to a small brown smudge on the other side of the water—Betsy had gotten herself out of the fray. Houndstooth blew an exasperated sigh. The hippo would have to be retrieved. As he watched, the smudge made its way onto the bank across the water from the sentry tower.
“Archie,” he said slowly, “I think she’s got the right idea. Getting onto land.”
As he spoke, a small bull with gleaming tusks just a few meters in front of them tore into its neighbor, then cast its head around, hungry for a fight.
“You are both right,” Archie replied. “We ’ave to get to ’igh land.”
The bull seemed to hear her voice. With incredible speed, it detached itself from the frenzy of fighting, roaring hippos and turned on them. Houndstooth felt at his pocket—the only knife he had left was his ivory-handled switchblade. Archie’s hammer hung at her waist, useless in the melee. They looked to each other, exhausted, out of options—but then, in a final, miraculous rescue, four bobbing shapes slapped into the furious little bull and toppled it.
The buoys.
Archie and Houndstooth stared at the buoys as they bobbed by, knocking the feral bull under the water each time he attempted to surface. Archie turned to Houndstooth.
“I thought they all blew? I thought . . . I thought Travers moved all of them to the dam?”