Torrent(39)

“That’s fair,” I said.
As Simon dug into his pack again, Temi pointed at my bullwhip and said, “Can’t we use that like a rope? It might be long enough to lower someone down.”
“And risk having it drop into the water and float away? I took a special class so I could make it myself. It’s priceless.”
“Note, she’s perfectly willing to let me drop in the water and float away,” Simon said.
“Well, I didn’t make you by hand in a special class.”
Simon pulled out his trusty roll of duct tape. “Rope alternative, coming up.”
In an impressively short time, he’d braided strips of tape into a twenty-foot length and had fashioned the equivalent of a rappelling seat for himself. He found a sturdy stump to tie the end around, then handed the loose coils to us. He stuck the flashlight into his belt and crouched beside the hole, placing his hands on either side.
“Lower me down, ladies.”
Temi and I gripped the “rope,” and I took a wide-legged stance, ready to lean back to help with the weight while she found a bolder to brace herself against. Sometime I’d have to ask her if she wore a knee brace, which would account for the limp, or if she favored the leg because it hurt to put weight on. It’d be a drag either way.
“Ready when you are,” I told Simon.
He lowered himself, using his legs to slow his descent. At first, there was no pull on the rope, but his head dropped below the hole, and he must have run out of rock to brace himself against, for we soon had his full body weight.
“Should we start lowering you?” I asked, not sure if he’d hear me in my normal tone of voice, but not willing to shout in case the riders lurked nearby. Temi’s observation that this might be a trap hadn’t left my mind.
A couple of quick tugs came in response.
“Guess that’s a yes,” I said.
We let our rope slide a foot, then a foot more. When we didn’t receive any more feedback, we kept going. I wished I’d taken a closer look inside so I’d have an idea as to the depth, but it couldn’t be more than ten feet to the water. All right, maybe fifteen, I decided as more and more rope played through our hands.
Something jerked at the end of the line, and my gut lurched.
“Simon?” I asked, forcing my voice to stay low, though I wanted to shout.
Words floated up. I couldn’t decipher anything except a few curses followed by, “Cold!”
“He must have let himself drop into the river,” I said, not certain Temi had heard. She was farther away from the hole than I was.
“There’s probably not a bank or anything to stand on,” she said.
A couple more tugs came, and I let out a little more line, but it grew slack. He must be standing on the bottom. I knelt beside the edge of the hole. I couldn’t see Simon but a flashlight beam was waving back and forth down there.
“Anything promising?” I asked.
Simon stepped—no, waded—into view beneath the hole. Water lapped about his waist. “As far as I can tell, there are no tarantulas.”
So that was what all the flashlight waving had been about.
“That’s the most promising feature?” I asked.
“Actually, no. I can see... I don’t know. It might just be some natural caves, but I bet you’ll be interested.”
“Interested enough to warrant standing in freezing cold water?”
“I think so. There’s enough headroom for walking.”
I leaned back, facing Temi. I considered how fragile our duct tape rope was—it would be easy for someone to come along and cut it. I wasn’t sure about climbing back out again without it either. If Simon jumped, he might be able to reach the bottom of the hole, but those smooth stone walls didn’t offer any handholds.
“You want me to stay up here?” Temi asked.
“Would you? I’ll leave my bow in case... in case.”
“Because the handful of times I shot one as a kid will serve me so well if a monster blazes out of the trees,” she said dryly.
“You can use the staff as a club if you have to.” At her skeptical expression, I added, “You can serve a tennis ball at a hundred miles an hour, right? You ought to be able to crack a monster on the head hard enough for it to see stars.”
“A hundred and thirty-two,” she said.
“What?”
“My fastest serve. It was a record, actually.”
“There you go. Add some adrenaline to that, and you should be quite lethal with a club.”
Temi eyed the bow, perhaps trying to decide if it had as many nice merits as a club, at least insofar as blunt instruments went. “I’d rather have a fire extinguisher.”
“We’ll add that to our arsenal in the future. Given the suspicious smells that come out of Zelda’s air conditioning vents, the ability to put out fires might come in handy one day.”