Chapter 16: The Shot

The shot cracked off the funnel and rolled out over the water.

Tobias spun half around and sat down hard on the wet deck.

For a second nobody moved.

Then red came through his fingers where he clamped them over his upper arm, and the whole deck screamed.

"Tobias!"

Veda hit the planks on her hands and knees.

The stitches in her thigh tore, and she did not feel it.

She crawled to him, and he looked up at her with a startled face.

"It's only my arm," he said. "It went through. I think it went through."

She pulled his hand away.

The bullet had cut a groove along the outside of the muscle and opened it to the bone.

It was a lot of blood and not much else.

She knew that.

She had dressed a hundred wounds like it in the other life, with a steady hand.

Her hands were not steady now.

The axe lay beside him, where he had dropped it.

She looked at it.

The panic in her chest burned out, leaving only a cold, steady calm.

She picked it up.

She stood on the leg that would not hold her, and it held.

"Veda," Lois said. "Veda, no."

Damon was backing along the rail with the gun up, and for the first time since she had known him he looked afraid.

"Stay back," he said. "I'll shoot you."

"Shoot."

She walked toward him.

She did not limp.

The crowd opened around her, and no one said a word.

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