This time he could see them, their scaled bodies, their long, grasping hands, clawed feet, and tails. The woods seemed infested with them, all following the river's edge, their dreadful eyes focused on the three reed boats as they rushed to keep up with the increasingly swift river.
“I don't think that shore's any friendlier,” Jugar offered.
“Stay down low in the boat,” Ethis said emphatically. “Lash yourself to it if you can.”
“Tie myself down to this bundle of sticks?” Jugar said with indignation. “Are you mad?”
Motion to his right caught Jugar's eye. Urulani was rushing from the back of her boat toward the prow, her hand clutching her dagger. She grabbed hold of the upturned bow with her left arm, slashing desperately at the line connecting the boats.
The boat rocked suddenly from side to side.
Ethis was cutting their rope to Drakis' boat. It split apart with a distinct twanging sound as the rope, relieved of its tension sprang away and fell into the river.
Jugar gaped. “Has everyone gone mad?”
Ethis stepped quickly back down the boat. His eyes searched about for a moment before settling on something. He reached down, pulling out the dwarf's war ax. Before Jugar could protest, Ethis thrust the handle into the dwarf's hands.
“Use the blade in the river,” the chimerian ordered. “It will help steer the boat.”
“Put my nice steel blade in
water
!” Jugar yelped. “I've spent my life trying to keep this blade
out
of water!”
Ethis was not listening. He picked up a river pole similar to Ishander's from its stowage place in the bottom of the boat. “We're about to go into battle, dwarf. Think of the river as your enemy.”
The bow of the boat pitched up just as Ethis got to the stern. It rushed over the billowing swell, dropping down the other side in a sudden plunge that stole Jugar's breath from him. The world had, indeed, gone mad as the river before the boat suddenly looked like an angry wall of chaotic white reaching up to engulf the boat and the dwarf with it.
Jugar turned his ax over and, gripping it upside down, drove it into the whitewater over the side of the boat. The river tore at his grip, determined to wrench the ax out of the dwarf's hands but his grip was strong.
The bow plunged into the water on the other side of the swell, rolling over both Jugar and Ethis in a wave of blinding white before the reed boat shot through the other side. Jugar shook his head violently, clearing his vision in time to see a huge finger of rock jutting up from the riverbed. Water swept around either side.
“Right!” shouted Ethis. “Steer us right!”
Jugar grimaced as he turned the ax in his hand, then shouted victoriously as the bow of their boat swung to the right, shifting them into a chute that drove them with breathtaking speed into a spinning eddy drifting toward the top of a series of waterfalls.
Tree trunks and branches from either side of the narrow channel stuck out over the river, casting their shade over the sudden calm.
The dwarf laughed out loud. “Now THAT was a fine thing, Ethis! I might even get to like that!”
Ethis crouched at the end of the boat, gazing up into the trees.
“There's Drakis ahead of us,” Jugar nodded. “I don't see Urulani or the Lyric. You don't suppose they somehow got ahead of us, too, do you?”
Ethis leaned forward, speaking quietly.
“Paddle, Jugar.”
“What?”
“Paddle,” the chimerian repeated with sudden urgency. “Paddle NOW!”
Jugar pulled his ax, swinging it sideways, and, with both hands, stabbed its head into the water next to the boat and pulled. Ethis set the pole and pushed with all four hands, scuttling the boat suddenly forward.
A screeching cry filled the air above them.
The trees were swarming with drakoneti.
Jugar drew his ax from the water, swinging it forward and plunging the blade into the river again. The boat was moving faster now, rushing headlong toward a cascade of falls whose roar was growing by the moment.
The drakoneti, seeing their prey escaping, leaped from their perches. Several of them splashed into the water around their boat, thrashing and screaming.
“We've got to get to the cascade!” Ethis shouted. “Keep paddling!”
“I AM paddling!” Jugar shouted back, his teeth set. “You're the one with four arms! I'd think paddling would be a better place for you than for . . .”
The boat suddenly shook with a thudding sound.
Jugar looked up.
A drakonet rose up, gaining its footing on the cross planks between the dwarf and Ethis at the back of the boat. It smelled terrible to the dwarf, its scales flashing in the dappled sunlight through the overhanging trees. Its barbed tail flashed over the dwarf where he sat ducking down to avoid its sting.
Two more drakoneti missed the center of the boat but managed to grip the sides. One was struggling in the current beneath the boat but the other was pulling itself up over the side.
Jugar yelled, drawing his ax from the water and turning it in his hands. He swung first on the drakonet that had nearly pulled itself over the side. The pain shooting up through his leg was blinding, but his aim was true; the blade swept through the creature's joint cleanly severing the forearm. The drakonet howled and slid back down the side of the boat before sinking under its keel.
The second creature was clawing frantically at the reeds, but the dwarf would not allow it to get purchase. He twisted the blade again, slamming the flat of it repeatedly against the long, bony fingers of the dragon-man.
The monstrous face opened its wide mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth, howling in hatred and indignation, but as it shifted its fingers, the dwarf's tactic proved effective. The drakonet lost its grip, sinking quickly into the dark waters.
“That's two for me, chimerian,” Jugar crowed though sweat was breaking out on his brow. The color had left his face and he was having troubling seeing. The pain in his leg was overwhelming. He could see Ethis at the back of the boat, fending off the drakonet who was shifting quickly from side to side, looking for any opening to attack.
“You'll be three,” Jugar said raising his ax.
His footing dropped out from under him.
The reed boat rushed over the edge of the first cascade, plummeting down and crashing into the water below. Jugar fell backward, his head and shoulders wedging in the bow of the boat. His ax lay under him, pinned by his own body.
The drakonet lay on top of him, its face pressed close to the dwarf's own. Its eyes suddenly focused, its maw flashing open to engulf Jugar's face.
Suddenly the face jerked backward. The boat rocked precariously as Ethis wrestled with the drakonet, but the creature was too strong even for the chimerian. It shifted in Ethis' grip, its claws slashing at the air.
Jugar struggled up from the bottom of the boat, dragging his ax up with him. He could barely see and seemed to be having trouble catching his breath.
He pulled back the ax and swung with all the strength he had left.
Jugar felt the satisfaction of the blade lodging in his enemy.
Then the boat rolled at the crest of another cascade.
The dwarf knew that he had to get his ax back.
So he held on, dragged over the edge with his vanquished enemy, tumbling through the white, roaring air and crashing into the swirling waters of the river.
He wondered for a moment if dwarves could float . . .
There was the rush of waters.
The last thing he remembered were strong hands . . . and four arms . . . wrapping themselves around him.
CHAPTER 28
Shadows and Scales
E
THIS DRAGGED THE DWARF up onto the wide sandbar just far enough to get Jugar's face out of the water before collapsing onto the sand himself. He lay there, drawing air into his lungs in deep gulps, coughing and sputtering for a time and contemplating the billowing clouds that drifted across the sun above him.
He turned his head. The dwarf was breathing, but barely. His normally ruddy skin color was returning, however, and this reassured the chimerian. Reluctantly, he rolled over on his side and pushed himself up to kneel on the shore and look around.
The bar stood at the fork in the river framed on all sides by steep cliffs. Across from the sandbar was the ravine cut by the river where he could see and still hear the cascades that had brought them here. The raging water tumbled down its course over a number of falls until it crashed into the whirling eddies of the basin, its anger spent by the time it lapped up against the wide sands. One fork of the river then continued through a cut to the north while the other wound eastward through a second, twisting canyon. The thick jungle crowded the crest of the cliffs overhead.
Ethis tensed, his eyes searching the tree line.
Nothing moved.
The chimerian's eyes narrowed in suspicion. Only minutes before, the jungle had been teeming with drakoneti. They were swarming through the dense foliage like a plague of locusts. He fully expected to see them spilling over the edge of the cliffs like a kickedopen nest of spiders, yet now they had seemingly vanished back into the jungle from which they had appeared.
He shivered, his elastic skin rippling in the motion.
Something was terribly wrong.
“Ethis!”
The chimerian turned toward the sound, which had been nearly muted by the roar of the cascades through the canyons. He staggered to his feet and waved his uppermost arms over his head in acknowledgment. “Drakis! We are here.”
The human looked nearly drowned, his dark hair lying flat against his head and his tunic sagging from the weight of being permeated with the river. Drakis had a firm grip on the rope slung over his shoulder ; the same rope Ethis had severed at the top of the cascades. It was still tied to the back of his reed boat, which listed slightly to one side in the gentler waters at the edge of the sandbar. Ishander and Mala stood in the shallow waters next to the boat, keeping it from grounding on the shore as Drakis pulled it up the beach toward where Ethis stood.
“Where's Urulani?” Ethis called.
“I don't know,” Drakis replied. “I was hoping she and the Lyric were with you.”
“We were separated up in the cascades,” Ethis said. “We went one way around a rock and they went another and that's the last I saw of . . . wait! There they are!”
The reed boat was shooting down the cascades at a tremendous rate. Urulani could clearly be seen sitting with her back pressed against the back of the craft, her dark skin glistening in the bright sun as she gripped one of the cross planks cut from its place and now in service as an oar. The Lyric was there, too, her wispy, white hair now plastered against her narrow head as she knelt in the bow of the boat, her arms wrapped around the prow, her wide-eyed, hysterical laughter cutting over the roaring sound of the rapids. The craft plunged down the cascade, vanishing in an explosion of water, only to shoot up out of the water at the crest of the next falls and bounding again toward its edge. Urulani leaned hard on the board, shifting the boat sideways as it slid over the edge, dropping flat into the white water below it. The boat disappeared behind a rock outcropping for a moment before reappearing, its bow now aligned with the current as it shot down a chute and across a whirlpool before gliding out across the pooling waters at the base of the cascade.
Urulani hunched over where she sat.
The Lyric stood and began jumping up and down in the front of the boat, clapping her hands together in delight. “That was wonderful! Can we do it again?”
The look on Urulani's face suggested otherwise.
As Urulani guided her boat to the sandbar, Ishander nodded his head with approval. “You run the river well for a woman!”
“And it is amazing to me that you have lived this long,” Urulani said tiredly in return as her boat whispered up onto the shore. She dropped the soaked plank, resting her elbows on her knees. “I count two boats. Where's the third?”
“Lost, I think,” Ethis offered. “Jugar went over the side and I went with him. I'm not all that certain as to how we got here and I've seen no sign of our boat since partway down the cascade. Drakis, I think you were the first ones here, did you . . . Drakis?”
Drakis' eyes were unfocused. He was blinking as though trying hard to concentrate on something that he could not quite see or hear.
“Drakis?”
Mala rushed toward the chimerian, splashing up out of the water in her haste. “Ethis . . . everyone . . . we've got to hide!”
“Hide?” Ethis asked. “Where? There's nothing but this sandbar and the bare cliff face behind us.”
“They're coming!” Mala said urgently. “We've got to leave! We've got to . . .”
A shadow fell over them.
Ethis looked up.
The enormous rust-colored dragon soared up over the tree line above the cascades, its leathery wings shivering as they pressed against the air, slowing the monster down precipitously. The dragon's neck craned forward, drawing the body and the wings down into a dive that skimmed just a breath away from the cliff face. It flew over the cascades and the large pool at the river's fork, the tips of its wings brushing the surface as it hurtled directly toward Ethis and his companions huddled on the shoreline.
Ethis reached for his sword instinctively . . . and found his scabbard empty. He bent down, grasping the dwarf by his collar with one hand and his belt with two others, trying to drag him toward Urulani's boat.
Urulani leaped up, drawing her own sword. Ishander crouched behind the boat, his back pressed against the craft's side. Mala rushed to stand behind Drakis, who held his hand up, palm open toward the dragon.