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Ayashe ignored the pain in her naked feet as she dashed down the rocky slope. Behind her she could hear the yelping of the dogs as they followed her scent. She had formulated a desperate plan only after trying everything else she could think of to escape her pursuers. Her nude body was badly scratched from pushing her way through thick stands of brush and climbing trees, and her feet bruised from scrambling across rocks. During the chase she had backtracked, waded through water, splashed across swamps, and even attempted to move from tree to tree before giving that up as an exhausting waste of time. Some of her tricks had worked for awhile, but nothing she had done had completely shaken Moeller and his dogs. Now she was down to her last throw of the dice.
Before her lay the beach and her last chance of
escape. She only hoped that she
had the strength and endurance to pull it
off. The plan had come to her
even before Moeller had given the signal for her to
run. But she realized that it
wouldn’t work even as the thought crossed her
mind. From the vantage point
of the area outside the castle she could see that the tide was
out. In order for her plan to
work it had to be coming in, so she had used all of the skills she had learned
as the daughter of a
hunter and trapper in
It must have worked. She was still free; just barely. The dogs were probably less than five minutes behind her, but the beach was just ahead and if she could keep ahead of her pursuers for another ten minutes she might yet escape.
The salt water stung as she splashed into the incoming tide, but the sand beneath her feet was a welcome relief from the rocky ground of the upland. She ran parallel to the beach heading in the direction of the harbour, hoping that she had enough time and that the beach ran far enough so that she would leave no trail.
Although tired, she kept up the pace, glad that the rigorous training Larra forced on all of her companions had given her endurance far beyond the ordinary. Ayashe’s wilderness upbringing had given her confidence in her fitness, but Larra had shown her what true fitness was. She had trained hard to meet Larra’s levels of expectations and her hard work now paid off as she continued to splash down the beach.
The beach narrowed and then disappeared into a rocky
headland. Here the waves smashed
across the rocks, making the footing treacherous, but the water was only
about two feet deep and she forced herself through it until she reached the
edge. She
hesitated. She could swim, but
had never attempted the distance she was about to try, and she had already
been running from Moeller for several
hours. Down the beach she heard
the bark of a dog. Taking a deep
breath she plunged into the water.
It was not as warm as she would have liked, but she had swum in colder
waters in her forest home. The
problem was the distance. From
where she went in to the wharf by the castle it was about a mile, but she
would be swimming with the tide. If
she took it easy and didn’t get too cold she had a
chance.
She used as little energy as possible, using the breast stroke to
begin and then shifting into a side
stroke. Gradually she moved toward
the wharf, the incoming tide pushing her generally in the right
direction. With her head barely
out of the water she hoped that no one on shore would see
her.
She was almost to the wharf when she heard the thrum of a large
motor. Turning in the water she
looked toward the sound and saw a ship heading into the
harbour. She could not be sure
but she guessed it was the ship that had brought her to the
island. Cursing her luck she
changed her stroke. The ship
would almost certainly attract men to the wharf, making discovery
inevitable.
She was only about a hundred strokes from the wharf now, but already
she could see men moving on top of it.
But she had no choice but to keep
going. She did not have the strength
to swim back across the bay. Her
only chance was to make it into the shelter of the wharf before she was
spotted.
She struck out overarm, pulling herself through the water and kicking
hard in a last desperate effort to make it to
safety. She was almost there
when a shout went up, but it was too late to turn
back. Fifteen more strokes pulled
her level with the wharf pilings.
Cold and exhausted, she clung
to one of the pilings while the sound of boots thundered
overhead.
The shouts were all in German, but Ayashe had no doubt they were
all directed at her. Letting
go of the piling, she swam farther under the wharf looking for a place where
she might be able to climb out of the
water. Here and there heavy
cross-bracings offered a refuge and reaching one she tried to pull herself
onto the slippery wood. Her first
attempt failed, but then a large wave lifted her and she was able to get
hold. Gasping with relief and
shaking from exposure she pulled herself onto the heavy
beam.
It was only a temporary refuge.
Already the sea was lapping against it and in a few more minutes it
would be underwater, but she was too exhausted to go anywhere
else. Even as she hung on, however,
it occurred to her that eventually the incoming tide might raise the sea
level until she was caught between the water and the deck of the wharf above
her. As fortune had it, however,
she did not have that long to wait.
Even as she clung to the beam in quiet desperation she saw a narrow
shape moving toward her and realized that the Germans on the wharf had loosed
a boat toward her.
There was nowhere to go.
All she could do was watch as the boat drew closer and try to think
of a way out of the dilemma.
No idea came. The boat
moved stopped just feet away and the German in charge ordered her into the
boat. Too late to escape, Ayashe
tried a desperate gamble. Releasing
her hold she dropped into the water and swam toward the boat, intending to
swim beneath it.
She was almost at the end of her strength, but the thought of surrender
never occurred to her. She would
chance drowning rather than being taken prisoner again.
Unfortunately the Germans had other
ideas. Something painful tore
into her right thigh as she ducked beneath the
boat. Had she not been underwater
she would have screamed in agony, but whatever had her drew her steadily
toward the surface.
She was pulled halfway out of the
water. As her head broke the
surface she screamed as her leg was torn by whatever gripped
it. It was terribly painful,
and it took her a second to realize what had
happened. Then she saw that one
of the boatmen was holding a long pole.
He pulled on it and an excruciating pain ran through her
leg. She was dragged to the boat
and one of the crewmen grabbed her hair, pulling her partly out of the
water. Other hands caught hold
of her arms and she was dragged into the
boat. It was then that she saw
that the crewman holding the pole had hooked her leg on the end of a gaff,
sinking the hook a good two inches into her
thigh. He wrenched it loose,
releasing a spurt of blood.
One of the men yelled something in German and another took a length
of rope binding it above the wound and slowing the flow of
blood. Taking the oars the others
quickly rowed the boat from under the wharf and tied it up at the bottom
of a set of wooden stairs. Then
Ayashe was lifted from the boat and carried to the top of the
wharf.
More orders were shouted
and other men came running, one of them carrying what looked like a first
aid kit. By this time Ayashe
was shaking from the cold and the shock of her
wound. It didn’t help that
she was nude and surrounded by men who made no secret of what they wanted
to do to her. Even though she
could hardly understand a word they spoke, their body language and the looks
they cast her way were more than enough to intimidate
her.
From somewhere someone fetched a blanket and tucked it around her
shivering body. It was an act
of mercy she would not have expected from her brutal captors, but she reminded
herself that they didn’t want her dead; they were saving her for
Moeller.
It occurred to her that the Nazi chief would not be
happy. Once again he had failed
to bring in his prey. She cursed
her luck. If it had not been
for the untimely arrival of the freighter she might have
escaped.
The man with the first aid kit pulled the blanket aside so that he
could look at the wound in her thigh.
She stared straight ahead trying to ignore the fact that it also exposed
her loins. She winced as the
medic first cleaned her wound and then without applying any type of painkiller
or anesthetic, began to stitch it closed.
The sound of the ship was closer now; a steady thrumming that got
louder and louder the closer the ship got to the
wharf. A shout from one of the
men indicated that something was not
right. Ayashe looked up and the
ship filled her vision. She suddenly
realized that it was much closer than it should have been and then there
was an enormous crash as the ship hit the wharf.
Ayashe tried to jump up, but her injured leg buckled beneath
her. The deck of the wharf heaved
beneath her feet, wood splintering, and huge timbers thrusting up like chunks
of ice in the spring melt. Beneath
her the deck opened up and she was falling in a shower of broken beams toward
the dark water below.
She hit in a shower of wood.
Above her head more timbers crashed down toward her and she let herself
sink, guessing that the heavy wooden beams would not sink as far as she
did. Even so, something hit her
shoulder so hard that her left arm went numb, and she was barely able to
fight her way back to the surface.
The shock of the water was much more severe this time and the pain
of her injured thigh was agonizing.
She could barely swim and was forced to grab hold of a shattered beam
to keep afloat, but she could tell from the way her exhausted body reacted
that she could not hold out for long.
The cold water was now sapping her strength much faster than before
and she knew in a very short time exhaustion would overtake
her. Somehow in spite of her
injuries she had to fight her way clear of the wreckage of the wharf and
make her way to shore.
But it was no easy task to push through the floating debris using
only one arm and one leg, especially with the rising tide shoving her against
the heavy broken timbers. She
floundered forward, kicking with her one good leg and holding on to the chunk
of broken wharf with her functioning arm.
Pushed by the waves and buffeted by the debris she felt herself losing
the fight. Her strength was almost
finished. A chunk of wood slammed
into the back of her head, and her senses
dimmed. Swirled about by the
tide her grip slipped and she sank beneath the waves.
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