Read Soul Seekers for Free Online Page A

had caught his attention and as he listened so he heard it again, the faint whisper of running water. Cas quickened his stride until he felt the ground start to slope away from him. He slowed and looked down.
    In the darkness he could just make out the surface of a lake stretching away to either side of him and a narrow strip of road crossing the lake. The road was little more than an earthen mound, with wooden posts stuck at intervals on either side into the mud and planks of timber lashed together to create a crude road on which horses, carriages and men could cross without getting stuck in the mud.
    ‘Must be the Charles River,’ Siren said, ‘just outside of Boston.’
    Cas couldn’t see the horse riders on the pikeway but he could see the occasional flicker of a lantern through distant trees. The horses were crossing the reservoir on the turnpike, looking to cut them off somewhere ahead on the road to Boston.
    ‘We can’t get ahead of them,’ Siren said.
    Cas turned and looked back through the forest to where the lanterns of the pursuing soldiers were closing in on them, shouts echoing through the night.
    ‘We’re not going to,’ he said finally. ‘Siren, help me with this.’
    Cas ran onto the bridge and selected the first of the road timbers. He yanked the ropes securing it free and heaved it up off the earth and began dragging it to the edge of the water.
    ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Jude uttered. ‘We haven’t got time to build a canoe!’
    ‘It’s not a canoe,’ Cas replied. ‘They’ll float.’
    ‘Shut up and help,’ Siren growled as she shoved Jude by the collar toward Cas.
    Cas grabbed another three of the timbers and with Emily, Jude and Siren dragged them to the edge of the water and set them down. Cas then grabbed the ropes that had lashed the planks into place and tossed them to Siren.
    ‘Now what?’ Emily asked. ‘I hope you don’t expect us to get into the water, it’s freezing!’
    ‘We’ll need the ropes,’ Cas said, ‘or we won’t make it.’
    From behind them a chorus of shouts erupted and was followed by the sound of running boots crashing through the woods as the soldiers charged toward the reservoir.
    Cas turned to them.
    ‘Into the water, as fast as you can!’
    *
    The sound of four splashes echoed through the woods and the sergeant leading the troops shouted out as he raised his lantern high above his head.
    ‘There they are lads!’ he bellowed. ‘On me!’
    The troops followed their sergeant and stumbled out of the forest onto the pikeway just as a dozen horses galloped onto the wooden beams and thundered toward them. Many of the soldiers carried their long, heavy muskets, while others held flickering lanterns that lit the rippling surface of the lake in a soft glow.
    ‘There they are, in the water!’
    Lieutenant Silas Du Pont, standing in his saddle, pointed out over the lake at the shape of four swimmers in the water drifting away from them. The armed soldiers raised their muskets and a ripple of flashes briefly lit the pikeway as they fired unison, the gunshots crashing out deafeningly into the night.
    Tiny splashes hit the water around the four swimmers, spouts of white foam churning the surface as round after round smacked into the water around them.
    ‘They’re almost out of range!’ shouted a sergeant.
    Lieutenant Du Pont gestured wildly at his troops.
    ‘Get down the bank alongside them! They’ll have to come ashore before they freeze!’
    The soldiers whirled and dashed away, running down the banks of the reservoir as the horses galloped back toward the turnpike and turned east, following their comrade’s progress from the opposite bank. The sound of their hooves faded away until all that could be seen was the twinkling of their lanterns through the distant trees.
    ‘That was too close.’
    Cas looked down from the tree branch on which he lay, some ten feet above the pikeway on the edge of the treeline. Siren lay flat on the thick limb just