Rain Wilds Chronicles (83 page)

As he joined his crew on the deck, he felt their sympathy for him. Swarge, Bellin, Hennesey, and hulking Eider were silent and looked aside from him, as if ashamed they could not give him what he wanted. Skelly came to his side and took his hand. He glanced down at her, seeing his niece for a moment instead of his deckhand when she met his gaze. She gave his rough hand a small squeeze; her pinched mouth and a quick nod of her head let him know that she shared his concern. With no more than that, she left him and went back to her watching post.
They are a good crew,
he thought with a tight throat. Without a quibble, they had followed him on this jaunt up the river into unknown territory. Part of it was because that was the type of river folk they were: curious, adventurous, and confident of their skills. But a good part of it was that they would go where he and Tarman went. He commanded their lives. Sometimes that knowledge humbled him.

He wondered why he had bothered being evasive with Carson. The man was no fool. The crew's charade would not have
fooled him for long. He knew the boat was sentient, and if he'd had any doubts, Tarman's rescue of Leftrin last night would have dispersed them. When he'd shouted, the barge had come straight to him, and despite the current, had held himself steady in the river until his captain was safe aboard him again.

Wrapped in a blanket but still dripping, shivering, he'd gone into the galley. “Is Alise all right?” he'd demanded, and the faces of his crew had told him all.

He hadn't slept since then. And he wouldn't sleep until he found her.

 

T
HE TANGLE OF
floating debris was both too thick and not solid enough.

Relpda had carried Sedric to it. Once she had got close to it, she had pushed her way into it like a spoon pushing through thick soup. Driftwood and matted brambles, leafy branches and long, dead logs, freshly torn trees and wads of grasses had given way to her shoving and then closed up behind her. Chesting against the mess, she had either judged it solid or close enough, for she had dropped him. He'd fallen from her jaws athwart a couple of floating logs and started to slip between them. His stiff limbs had screamed as he frantically moved them, thrashing and crawling until he was on the larger and thicker of the logs. There he had clung, and he felt how it bobbed in the current. Worse, he felt how it shifted and threatened to break away from the tangled mess along the shoreline as the frantic dragon pawed and bumped at it as she attempted to clamber on top of it.

“It won't hold you, Relpda. Stop. Stop tearing it apart. You can't get on top of this; it's just floating bits of wood and reeds.” He moved away from her to a part of the raft that her struggles were not affecting so violently. He could feel her rising panic coupled with her weariness and despair. She was tired, and he knew guiltily that if she had abandoned him, her reserves of strength would have been much greater. He wondered again why she had saved him at obvious cost to herself.

Then he wondered why he was doing nothing to save her.

There was a quick and guilty answer to that. Once she had drowned, she'd be out of his head forever. He'd know his thoughts were completely his own again. When he went back to Bingtown, he could live just as he always had and—

He thrust his selfishness aside. He was never going back to Bingtown. He was on a raft of debris over an acidic river. He inspected his stinging arms; the exposed skin looked like cured meat. No telling what the rest of him looked like and he was too cowardly to look. A shudder of chill ran over him. He hugged himself and tried to consider the incomprehensible situation he found himself in. Everything he had depended on in this savage place was gone. No ship, no crewmen, no hunters. No supplies of any kind. Alise was probably already dead, her body floating in the river somewhere. Sorrow smote him; he tried to push it aside. He had to clear his mind, or he'd join her.

What was he going to do? He had no tools, no fire, no shelter, no food, and no knowledge of how to get any of that for himself. He looked at the copper. He'd told her the truth. He had no idea of how he could save her. If the dragon died, the river would wash her away, and then he would die, too. Probably slowly. And alone. With no way to move up or down the river.

Right now, the dragon represented his only chance at getting out of here. She was his only ally. She'd risked her life for him. And asked so little of him in return.

Relpda gave a short trumpet, and he looked back at her. She'd pushed her way deeper into the floating wreckage. She'd hooked one of her forelegs over the end of a substantial log and was struggling to lift her other front leg over, but she was at the narrow end of the long, dead tree. As she put her weight on it, the log bobbed under. The log was threatening to slip out from under her and shoot up into the air. And the danger was great that she would sink beneath the floating debris.

“Relpda, wait. You need to center yourself on the log. Wait. I'm coming.” He stared at her situation, trying to think how to remedy it. Sinking dragon, floating wood. He wondered if his weight on the high end of the log would be enough to hold it down while she put the other leg over.

She didn't listen to him, of course. She kept giving small hoots of effort while trying to hook her other front leg over the log. Her struggles were tearing at the matted debris. Pieces of it were breaking free from the outer edge and whirling back out into the river's current.

He tried again, focused himself at her. “Beauteous one, you must allow me to help you. Be still for a moment. Be still. Let me weight the log down for you. I'm coming now, lovely creature, queen of queens. I am here to serve you. You must not tear the packed wood apart. It might carry you away from me, down the river. Be as still as you can while I think of what to do.”

He felt a touch of warmth and then a tiny message.
Serve me?
He felt her relaxing her struggles. It was pitiful, how quickly she put her belief in him. His wet clothes clung and chafed his red skin as he awkwardly moved from log to wedged driftwood to log. None of it was stable, and often he had but a moment to find his next step as his perch sank under him. But he reached the tangled roots of her log and seized hold of them. The log was long enough and he was far enough away from her that he thought his small weight might lever her greater one. He started to climb up on the root mass, to see if her end would rise. Then he realized his error. He needed to lower her end of the log to get it under her, not raise it. He suddenly wished he had more experience with this sort of thing. He'd never been a man who worked with his hands and back, and he'd taken pride in that. His mind and his manners had earned him his keep. But if he didn't learn, right now, how to help, then his dragon was going to die.

“Relpda, my glorious copper queen. Be very still. I am going to try to lift my end and shove the log under your chest. When it comes up, it may lift you a bit.”

His scheme worked poorly. Whenever he tried to lift the floating end of the log, whatever he was standing on sank. Once he nearly lost his balance and fell under the floating tangle. He succeeded in moving the log slightly more under her chest, but when he gave up the task, her position was only marginally better than it had been. When she stopped kicking, she sank, but her back and head remained above the water. She fixed her eyes
on him. He looked into them. Spinning pools, dark blue against copper. The colors in them were liquid. It reminded him of the shifting colors of her blood in the glass vial. Guilt stabbed him. How had he ever done such a monstrous thing?

Tired,
she mooed at him. The sound beat against his ears, and the sensation of her exhaustion flooded his mind, weakening his knees. He braced himself against it, and he tried to send warmth and encouragement back to her.

“I know, my queen, my lovely one. But you must not give up. I'm doing my best, and I will help you.” His weary mind weighed and discarded options. Push smaller pieces of wood under her. No. They'd simply dislodge. Or he'd fall in.

She shifted her front feet, seeking a better purchase. The end of the log lifted, splashed down again, and she nearly lost it. More debris broke from the edge of the mat and floated away in the river's hungry current. “Don't struggle, lovely one. The log you are on might break free of the others. Stay as still as you can while I think.”

The wave of warmth that flowed through him stilled his worrying. For a moment, he was flushed with pleasure, and he felt a stirring of emotion, like infatuation. As quickly as it had come, it faded. He clenched his hands. What had Alise called it? The dragon glamour. It felt good. Intoxicating and alive. Nearly, he reached after it and willed himself into it. Then she thrashed again, and once more he nearly fell into the water. No. He had to keep his distance and his own mind if he was to help her. A darker reason to stay separate came to him. If he let her join her thoughts too deeply with his thoughts and then she drowned—He shuddered to think of sharing that experience.

He looked at the dragon, at the sky to estimate his time, and around at the trees. The trees, he decided, would represent their best chance. It would be hard work, but if he could rearrange the debris so that the current braced the heavier logs tight to the trees, and then get her to move herself there, she might find a sturdier position. He looked at her, waited until she was looking at him, and then tried to push his mental image into her mind. “Lovely queen, I will move wood and make a safer place for
you. Until I am finished, do not struggle. Hang there and trust me. Can you do that?”

Slipping.

“I'll hurry. Don't give up.”

“I'll be damned,” someone exclaimed in amused astonishment.

Sedric spun, his heart leaping with joy at the sound of a human voice. He slipped, caught his balance, and then squinted into the dimness under the trees.

“Up here.” The man's voice was a hoarse croak.

He moved his eyes up and saw a man clambering down a tree trunk. His hands gripped the ridges of bark, and he stuck the toes of his boots in the cracks as he came quickly down. It wasn't until he turned to face him that Sedric recognized him. It was the hunter, the older one. Jess. That was his name. They'd never spoken much. Jess plainly had no use for him, and he'd never explained his one visit to Sedric's chamber. The man looked terrible, bruised and battered in the face, but he was alive and human and company.

And, Sedric quickly realized, he was someone who knew how to get food and water, someone who could help him survive. Sa had answered his prayers after all.

“How did you get here?” he greeted him. “I thought I was the only one left alive.” He began immediately to make his way toward the man.

“By water,” Jess said and laughed sourly. His voice was harsh and raspy. “And I shared your cheery thought about survival. Looks like that little quake we had a few days ago saved a second surprise for us.”

“Does something like this happen often?” Sedric asked, already feeling his anger rise that no one had warned him.

Slipping
. Distress was plain in the dragon's rumbled call and in the thought she pushed at him.

“A change in the water, yes. A flood like this, no. This is a new one for me, but not entirely ill fortune for either of us.”

“What do you mean?”

Jess grinned. “Just that fate seems to have not only saved us,
but thrown us together with everything we need for a most profitable partnership. For one thing, when I finally kicked my way to the surface, I found a boat caught in the same current that I was. Not my boat, unfortunately, but one that belonged to someone sensible enough to stow his gear tightly.” He coughed harshly and then tried to clear his throat. It didn't help his rough voice. “It has a couple of blankets, some fishing gear, even a fire-making kit and a pot. Greft's, probably, but I'll wager that he'll never have need of it again. That wave hit so hard and so suddenly that it's hard to believe any of us survived. It almost makes me believe in fate. Maybe the gods threw us together to see how smart we were. Because if you're a clever fellow, we have everything we need for a very comfortable new life.”

As Jess had croaked out his words, he'd dismounted from the tree's trunk and stepped onto a log. It bobbed beneath him as it took his weight. For a large man, he was graceful enough as he trod swiftly along its length. In the crook of one arm, he carried several round red fruit. Sedric wasn't familiar with what they were, but at the sight of them, both his hunger and thirst roared.

“Do you have water?” he asked the man, advancing cautiously across the packed debris toward him. Jess ignored him. It looked as if he reached the end of the large log and then clambered down into the water. Then Sedric realized that the boat was moored out of sight behind the big driftwood snag. Jess disappeared for a moment and when he stood up, he no longer held the fruit. Obviously he had stowed it in the boat he was standing in. A curl of uneasiness moved in Sedric's belly. The situation seemed plain to him. The hunter had climbed the tree, eaten fruit, and what he had brought down was his surplus that he intended to save. For himself. He must see how serious Sedric's situation was. Yet he stood there, in his boat, in his dried clothes, with his food, and made no offer of aid to him.

Jess leaned his elbows on the log that floated between him and Sedric and looked over at him. Sedric halted where he was, trying to make sense of the situation. When Sedric just
returned his gaze, Jess cocked his head and wheezed, “I notice you aren't saying what you'll bring to our new partnership.”

Sedric goggled at him. They were alone on a raft of ever-shifting flotsam in the middle of the forest, weeks from anywhere, and the man was trying to wring money out of him? It made no sense. Behind him, he heard the dragon thrash, felt a wave of anxiety from her, and then felt her calm as she realized the log was still partially under her.
Hungry.
His own thoughts about food had stimulated hers. Or perhaps it was her hunger he was feeling. He didn't know. He couldn't completely sort himself out from her anymore.
Afraid.
The thought came to him without a sound from her.
Careful.
Did she sense something he didn't?