Way of the Wolf (18 page)

At the last moment he dropped the steering pole and shrugged his own rucksack on over his shoulders. And then they were under the branches.

Tikaani leaped for the nearest one and the whole tree seemed to sag under his weight. He shouted in alarm and his feet dragged against the deck of the raft. Beck scrambled forward and seized his friend’s thighs, propelling him up. Damp leaves scraped against his face, as if the tree was trying to push him back into the river. Tikaani grabbed for a higher branch and pulled. Beck managed to push one of Tikaani’s knees over the branch so that he was lying flat on it, out of the raft.

But the
Ptarmigan
had already passed under the tree. Now Beck had to clamber back to the rear of the raft to get a branch for himself. He could see just the one he wanted, a branch next to Tikaani’s that looked strong enough to take his weight. He leaped for it—

And pain jabbed into his shoulder. A smaller branch that he hadn’t seen through the leaves had pushed into him, holding him back. He fell back onto the raft, which wallowed beneath him.

‘Beck!’ Tikaani shouted.

Beck scrambled to his feet, waving his arms for balance. But, sickeningly, he knew that the branch was now just out of reach. He couldn’t even jump for it.

He dropped to his knees again to balance the raft. His eyes met Tikaani’s and saw only despair. Then the raft was swept down the river, Beck still on board, Tikaani safe and helpless on his branch. Beck turned away from his friend to face the edge of the falls.

All the previous options ran through Beck’s mind again, but he knew there was only one real choice. The absolute priority was to
not
go over the falls. And there was no way he could stop the
Ptarmigan
doing exactly that. His chances were better
off
the raft than on.

And so he ditched the rucksack – it would only hold him back – and dived into the river. Hands above his head, feet together, he entered the water as cleanly as an Olympic swimmer. He was swimming for his life before he even broke the surface again.

Back at school Beck had always been good at the crawl. But he had never before needed to win a race quite so badly. His body fell straight into a rhythm. You breathed in every time your left arm came up out of the water. By the time it had hit the water again you had buried your face beneath the surface, streamlining your whole body like the bow of a submarine while you breathed out again and the water flowed over you. You stroked with your right arm, up and down, and then the left arm was coming up again and the cycle repeated itself.
Stroke-stroke-breathe-stroke-stroke-breathe
. . .

But Beck had felt the river pulling at him the moment he entered the water. It seemed that every cell of his body wanted to head down towards the falls. He knew he was making more progress in that direction than he was towards the bank. He was blinded by the water flowing over his face but he could make out that much. He was kicking with his feet but his heavy boots hampered him. All he had to propel him was the strength of his arms.

And then a wave washed over him; he was completely submerged, and this time there was no coming up. A new current seized hold of him. It had been lurking beneath the surface, ready for him, and it was twice as strong as the current above. He felt it whisk him away while his body twisted and turned, trying to head back to the air again.

Water roared in his ears and he had no idea which way was up or down. In theory, he knew, the thing to do was blow out some bubbles. Air always knew which was up and the bubbles would rise. But that depended on you being able to
see
the bubbles. All Beck could see was confused shades of light and dark, and he really didn’t want to waste any of the precious air in his lungs.

Something slammed into him and he cried out in pain. His shout gurgled in his ears. That was half his air gone anyway. But Beck knew it could only be a rock, and rocks were stable. They didn’t get swept away by the current. He tried hard to cling onto it, but already the water was pulling him away. He felt himself scrape along more rocks and then suddenly he was out in the air again, coughing and spluttering.

Beck spat the water out of his mouth and breathed in so deeply that the air whistled. The water pitched and heaved around him but there was a rock right by him and he could cling onto it. Gradually he took in his surroundings.

The current was just as strong. It still dragged at him. Even hanging onto the rock, he was making a bow wave. The roar of the falls was deafening – they were just a couple of metres away. So why wasn’t he being swept over? Because, he realized, a semicircle of boulders stuck out from the side of the river, right on the edge of the falls. Water swirled into a little whirlpool there, and he had been swept in with it.

And if he wasn’t very careful, he would be swept out again too. He tried to adjust his grip on the slippery rock and almost lost it altogether.
Oops!
Beck realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere as long as he stayed in the water. All he could hope to do was climb out.

He glanced up as he clung on. The banks were a couple of metres high. Well, he could climb that high if he could get to them.

He gripped the rock and heaved with his arms, while his feet scrabbled against the side. But his boots could find no grip and he fell painfully against the sharp edges. He tried again, and again the current almost swept him away.

Beck lay against the side of the rock and made himself breathe calmly. He could do this. Before the cold of the river gave him hypothermia, before his strength gave out and he was swept away and dashed to pieces at the bottom of the falls, he could do this . . . if he could just work out how . . .

‘Hey! Beck!’ a familiar voice called. At the same time something hard hit him on the head. ‘Whoa! Sorry . . .’

Beck looked round and almost had his eye poked out. The tip of a branch was waving right in front of his face. He looked towards the far end of the branch.

Tikaani was lying on his front, on the river bank, reaching out as far as he could safely go. And he was holding the branch out to Beck.

‘You’d better take it,’ Tikaani called, his voice rising with buried panic, ‘’cos I don’t know how long I can hold on here . . .’

Beck didn’t hesitate and grabbed the branch for all he was worth.

The Kynak river didn’t give up without a fight. The moment Beck let go of the rocks, it seemed to double its pull on him, determined to get him away from the safety of the little pool and out over the falls. But Beck wrapped his arms and legs round the branch while Tikaani dragged him across the pool to the bank. Finally Beck could climb out of the water under his own steam. Feeling the river’s clutch slip away down his body – chest, waist, knees, then finally letting him go – was one of the best feelings that he had ever known.

Beck clambered up the bank on his hands and knees, and collapsed on his front next to Tikaani.

‘Thanks,’ he gasped, and closed his eyes while he waited for his strength to return. If he hadn’t been drenched in freezing water, he would have been pleasantly warm. The ground was dry, the sun was shining, and Tikaani was a natural wind break. But Beck shivered.

‘Sorry.’ He sat up abruptly. ‘I’m going to have to strip off and get dry.’

‘Hey, fair enough,’ said Tikaani with a shrug, and a grin that was only slightly malicious. Maybe he was remembering being pushed over in the snow. ‘I’ll see if there’s anything dry.’

And so, while Beck ran on the spot and did push-ups and star jumps, Tikaani rummaged through his rucksack. Almost everything in it was damp, but not as soaked as Beck. It had never gone fully underwater. Neither had Tikaani. His hair and trousers were dripping wet but he had been wearing a waterproof coat as they went down the rapids. His torso was mostly dry, and warm.

Tikaani changed his trousers and socks and chose the least damp clothes he could find for Beck. He wrung out the wet clothes as best he could and went to stand on the edge of the falls while Beck got dressed again. Beck could feel a healthy warm glow inside him now. It didn’t matter if the clothes were a little damp. The wind wasn’t strong enough to chill them. If they could just get walking again, then their own bodies would generate enough warmth to dry the clothes properly.

And that, Beck thought sourly, was about the only good news he could think of. He had almost got them killed. They had lost the tarpaulin with the raft. They had lost his rucksack, which contained the map and his water bottle and half their clothes—

‘Hey, Beck!’ Tikaani was walking towards him and pointing back at the falls with his thumb. ‘Pujortok!’

‘If that’s an Anak word meaning “Life almost ended here”,’ Beck muttered, ‘you’ve got that right . . .’

‘No.’ Tikaani seemed strangely cheerful. ‘It’s an Anak word meaning “It smokes”, and it’s what we call this waterfall. I’ve been here before.’

Beck blinked. ‘You have?’

‘We only got as far as the bottom, so I didn’t recognize it for a moment from up here. My dad took me hiking . . .’

It was like Tikaani was suddenly talking an alien language. Beck understood the words but his brain just couldn’t process them to make sense. ‘
You
have been
hiking
?’

‘Well, yeah.’ Tikaani shrugged. ‘I mean, we stayed in a tent and we ate food out of cans and we had sleeping bags and we didn’t feel cold or hungry once . . . And did I mention we drove out here in a truck? But technically, I’ve been hiking. And I’m pretty sure we can be in Anakat by sunset!’

The waterfall poured down a twenty-metre cliff. They had to go some distance away from the river for the sharp drop to even out enough for them to climb down. Seeing them from the side, Beck could understand how the falls got their name. The glittering spray of falling water billowed and swelled in the breeze like wood smoke before drifting off over the top of the fir trees. A rainbow arced through the spray from the top to the bottom, its curve pointing the way they had to go.

By the time they reached the foot of the cliff, Beck’s mood was much better than it had been at the top. His good humour was fully restored when they found, clinging to the slope at the bottom of the falls, a bush with the largest collection of lingonberries they had ever seen. They set off along the lower reaches of the Kynak with full stomachs, warm bodies and light hearts.

Tikaani was in a talkative mood and Beck was happy to let him chat. He felt just as optimistic as his friend but his immersion in the river had taken more out of him than he had realized. He shot a sideways look at the Kynak beside them, now so calm and peaceful as Pujortok receded behind them. He wasn’t going to trust that river again in a hurry.

And meanwhile he let Tikaani talk.

‘My granddad says it was a great moment in a boy’s life, the first time he went out on a hunt. The boys from the village would be taken out here for a few days . . .’

All Tikaani’s buried Anak memories seemed to be floating to the surface, jogged loose by their experiences of the last couple of days. Most of them were handed-down memories from his grandfather.

‘Some soldiers came up here for a training course. Granddad set some snares overnight and in the morning they’d caught a couple of hares. So they skinned them and cooked them and tried to give them to the soldiers, but they wouldn’t touch them because Granddad had handled the meat with his bare hands . . . Hey!’ Tikaani paused and looked around. He glanced back at the mountains and took in their surroundings: the river, a bit of high ground to one side. He seemed to be taking mental bearings.

‘We’re almost at the clearing where we camped,’ he said happily. ‘We could rest there.’

Beck nodded wearily. Rest would be good. Just a quick one, before the final push on to Anakat.

The clearing wasn’t far. It was fifty metres across with a soft floor of pine needles that made Beck want to throw himself down and sleep. The sun was high enough to shine down into it and the fir trees all around kept out the wind. It was perfect in every way.

Row-rrr-or!