In the Heart of Darkness(78)

He heard a sudden, distant explosion. Then another.



Another. Another.



Now, a veritable barrage was rumbling across the river. The sound of the explosions had an odd, muffled quality.



Cautiously, he turned his head, raised it a bit. He could now see the nature of the activity on the shore behind him. The Malwa were casting grenades into the river. He watched several plumes of water spout from the surface.



Those grenades, he thought, could be dangerous to him.



A thought from Aide surfaced. The facets had restored their identity.



Depth-charges. Very dangerous. Water transmits concussion much better than air.



He caught a quick, gruesome image of his own body, ruptured, bleeding from a thousand internal wounds.



He shook the image off. First things first. For his immediate needs, the thunderous sound of the grenade blasts was a blessing. He jerked the knife out of the hull—paused a split-second, timing the galley's passage—and drove it upward again. The knife sank solidly into the thick plank. It—and he—were securely anchored.



That powerful knife-thrust, striking the wood, had been far from silent. But the noise was completely drowned under the cacophony of the grenade blasts—the more so since many of those blasts, now, were nearby. The Malwa soldiers on the galleys racing across the river were tossing their own grenades.



It was an absurd exercise, thought Belisarius. He did not know much about the effects of underwater explosions. But, no matter how effective concussion was in water, he did not believe the Malwa had more than a small portion of the grenades necessary to saturate the entire, vast sweep of the Jamuna.



The real problem, he knew, would come later. He could not stay hidden beneath the galley for long. At daybreak, he was sure to be spotted. And he needed to make his escape onto shore long before daybreak, anyway. He would need the hours of darkness to make his way safely out of the city.



The fact that the Malwa grenades were no immediate danger to him, therefore, brought little consolation. If they maintained that barrage, he would be in danger the moment he left the galley and began swimming toward the far shore. Unless the galley actually docked at one of the wharves—which he doubted; none of the galleys on the opposite side were doing so—he would have to swim at least thirty yards to shore. The Malwa would be scanning the shore, by then. And, even if they did not spot him, they could kill him with one of the random grenades they were casting about.



He looked up at the sky. The cloud cover was advancing rapidly. He prayed for a downpour.



The galley continued its powerful sweeping progress across the Jamuna. It had reached the middle of the river.



Belisarius prayed for a downpour.



The galley began angling upstream, west by northwest. Now, it was a hundred yards from shore, and more than two hundred yards west of Great Lady Holi's barge on the opposite bank.



Belisarius prayed for a downpour.



Once the galley was fifty yards from the north bank, the officer in command shouted new orders. The galley began to travel almost parallel to the shore, heading west. The officer brought the galley within thirty yards of the shore, but no closer.



Soon, they were three hundred yards upstream from Great Lady Holi's barge. Four hundred yards.



But the galley never came closer to shore. Thirty yards.



Belisarius cursed under his breath. He would have to make the swim. Right under the eyes of watchful soldiers, with grenades in hand.



He glanced up, one last time. The cloud cover was almost complete. Again, he prayed for a downpour.



His prayers were answered.



Not by rain, but by fire. A great, blooming, volcanic eruption shattered the sky to the southeast. The thunderclap from that eruption swept over the Jamuna, drowning the grenade blasts like raindrops under a tidal wave.



For a moment, all was still. Then, from the same area to the southeast, the first immense blast gave way to a barrage. One blast after another after another. None of them had the same intensity as the first, but, in their rolling fury, they were even more frightening. Now, too, rockets began hissing their way into the sky, at every angle and trajectory—as if they were completely unaimed. Simply firing in whatever direction they had been tumbled, by a giant's hand.



The officer in command of the galley began shouting new orders. The galley backed oars, turning away from the north bank. Turning back to the southeast, back to the wharf where Great Lady Holi's barge was rocking in the shockwave of the blasts.



Belisarius could not make out the officer's exact words—his voice, like all other sounds, was buried beneath the continuing thunder of the distant explosions. But he knew what had happened. The Malwa search of the north bank had been half-hearted to begin with. And now, with further—dramatic!—evidence that the nefarious foreign general had made his escape to the south, it was being abandoned completely.