Now he began frantically kicking and pounding at the sides of the box; he had no idea which was the top, and all he could think of was drowning, trapped in this thing, as icy water soaked him, and his kicks and flailing blows splashed water about wildly.
But then he felt the box settle, only half full of water.
His relief was short-lived, however. A moment later, he felt it shift with the pressure of the water rushing around it, and he knew in a moment it could be swept into deeper water, where he would almost certainly drown. But with that brief respite of relief, he knew he had to concentrate his efforts on the one place where he could get the most impact from his blows.
Not the sides of the box, but the foot.
He wriggled until he got his arms stretched up and braced against the head of the box, and began to kick downward with all his strength.
After his legs started to hurt, fear gave him new strength. And as the box shifted in the current again, he finally felt the wood give.
More hysterical blows later, as the box shifted into slightly deeper water, and he was having trouble keeping his head above it, he felt the bottom pop out. He eeled out faster than he would have believed, somehow having the presence of mind to bring his blanket with him, and not a moment too soon. As he scrambled for the bank, he could see clearly in the nearly continuous flashes of lightning, the box ripped away from the rocks it had landed among and spun away into the darkness. He clutched the corner of the blanket between his teeth and scrabbled desperately with hands and feet through water that pulled at him, until he finally managed to fling himself onto the bank, panting and half-dead.
All he wanted to do was lie there and not move. But he knew he didn’t dare. First, the water was rising; he could feel it climbing higher on his legs. Second, he thought he could hear shouting somewhere above. And third, he knew that if he did remain lying there, the wet and the cold would get him, and he would very probably die of the cold if the water didn’t carry him off first. Somehow he managed to get to his feet, wrap the blanket around himself, and stagger off along the shore of the raging stream.
He had no real idea of what direction to go in. He had no idea where in Karse he was. He didn’t know where the wagon was, either, except that he was pretty sure he was still on the same side of the water as it was. All he could do was try to put as much distance between himself and his captors as he could.
So he went upstream, away from where the box was spinning away on the current, because with luck, they would go in the opposite direction, assuming he was being carried away by the water.
He staggered on long past the point of exhaustion, long past the time when his limbs burned with fatigue and his mind blurred. There was only the fight to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep that wool blanket clutched around himself. The only light he had to see by was the lightning, which showed no sign of abating.
So as long as there was light to see by, he forced himself to move on, stumbling over fallen branches and rocks, finally grasping at tree trunks to help move himself along. His lungs burned, his sides ached, his legs and feet were a torment. The rain pounded his hair flat, and only the fact that the blanket was wool was keeping him from freezing to death. And even so, it was so heavy with the added weight of the water that it was a terrible temptation to let it fall off his shoulders and leave it behind.
Finally, just when he thought he was going to just drop down where he stood—and in fact, was swaying with fatigue—a bolt of lightning revealed the entire face of the hill above him. And he thought he saw—
Another bolt flashed across the sky as he peered at the spot.
It looked like a sort of cave, under the roots of an enormous tree.
It was the best he was going to get at this point.
He staggered up the slope, groping toward the promise of shelter. When he finally reached it and clawed his way in through dangling roots and vines, he found a musty-smelling—but dry—den, full of blown-in leaves. There was also a sort of animal smell, but it was old, and at this point he would have happily shared the space with whatever creature had made it home. Or snakes. Or mice or bugs or any other thing. He didn’t so much crawl in as fall in, wind himself tightly in his precious blanket, and plummet into the first undrugged sleep he’d had since the ordeal started.
* * *
His belly woke him, growling like an unsated animal.
He was sorry he was awake, once he opened his eyes and moved a little. Every muscle in his entire body was whimpering in protest when he moved the least little bit. His stomach felt as if it was gnawing on his backbone. It growled even as he thought that.
Shut up, stomach.
The first thing he wanted to do was to try and reach Dallen, but the moment he woke, he knew from the feeling in his head that his Mindspeech was still gone.
And he couldn’t help it. Despair hit him like a rock, a despair so black and deep that it took him over like that storm. He cried, then. Cried until his nose was clogged, his eyes were sore, and his voice had turned into a hoarse croak. Was Dallen even alive? Dallen would have come rushing to his rescue the moment things fell apart, and these bastards had to know about Companions by now, what they were, how important they were. How a Companion would go through fire and hell itself to get to his Chosen. So had they waited? Had they stayed just long enough to ambush and murder?
Gods, I swear by my life, if you let that happen, I will track you all down to your lofty homes and kill you.
His thought actually wasn’t that coherent. It was more like a simple wail of anguish and the vague threat of mayhem in the heavens if Dallen was gone.
That started the sobs all over again, until he was so exhausted by grief that all he could do was lie there and watch the sun move on the other side of the roots and vines. He wished in that moment that he had the strength to crawl to the water he could hear rushing by out there, fling himself in, and drown.
It was his own exhaustion that saved him, but it was the stubborn will to live that had kept him going in the mine that dragged him out of his grief. A stubborn will to live that presented him with logic instead of emotion.
They can’t have killed him. He wouldn’t have come alone.
And he knew at once that was true. Of course he wouldn’t have. He was Dallen. Dallen, who had as much experience with these bastards as Mags did and knew to expect the unexpected from them. Dallen would never have just rushed after Mags, not without help.
If it was the hit on the head that took your Mindspeech, he might have “lost” you right away anyway.
That was possibly true . . . he still wasn’t entirely certain how his bond with Dallen worked . . . but it did stand to reason that if he couldn’t sense Dallen, then Dallen couldn’t sense him, either.
You don’t know that your Mindspeech is gone forever until you see a Mindhealer.
That was true, too.
And it was all enough to get him to crawl, aching and weary, to the vines, part them a little, and look cautiously out.
Cautiously, because it occurred to him that it would be just his luck to find himself staring at the backs—or worse, the faces—of his kidnappers.
But there was nothing to be seen out there but the dangerously high waters of that stream—not so much a stream as a small river, raging at both banks and full of big branches and debris—the steeply sloping bank covered in vines, and the nearly identical bank on the other side.
He crawled carefully out into the sunlight. At least the rain had done him one favor. He wasn’t filthy and stinking anymore. In fact, he and the blanket were remarkably clean. He pulled the still-damp blanket out after him, spread it out in the sunlight, and considered his options.
There was one thing he remembered about Karse. It was south of Valdemar. So if he went north, it stood to reason t
hat eventually he’d get across the Border. He wished he had some idea of how long his captors had held him, but by the look of things around him, it was really autumn now. He had been correct, although some trees were still green, many had begun to turn, so there had already been one good frost. That was both good and bad. Good, because as he remembered from his scrounging when he was a mine-slavey, next to all the young plants of spring, fall was the time of the most abundant wild food. He probably should avoid berries unless he actually recognized them, but there would be nuts and seeds, for sure. But fall was bad, because winter was coming, and the only thing he had between himself and winter’s cold was a single blanket.
I did all right with as much in the mine, he reminded himself. As long as I find myself shelter every night, I’ll do all right.
He was woefully lacking in everything else, though. Short of navigating by the sun, he had no idea how to keep himself going in the right direction. He hadn’t yet taken any of the wilderness survival classes at the Collegium, nor the classes in how to find directions, nor the ones where you memorized detailed maps. He didn’t have a knife, a bow, or any other sort of weapon.
Well, time to fix that.
All his crying had at least done one thing; his stomach was so upset now he wasn’t the least bit hungry. Thirsty, though . . .
He made his way with some difficulty down to the river, clambered over the rocks, and scooped up handfuls of the icy water, splashing some over his sore eyes after he’d drunk. He looked with longing at the flashing silver forms farther away. He had more chance of flying home than he did of catching those fish. Even if he’d had fishing line and a hook, he didn’t know how to fish.
But he filled his pocket with river pebbles that were as close to round as he could get, and then experimentally pulled up some of the smaller tendrils of vine. After he stripped the leaves away, he found to his relief that the stems shredded into tough, flexible threads. He could work with this.
A candlemark or so later, his skills at weaving horsehair had yielded him a sling, a stick with a formidable, triangle-shaped rock bound into the fork at one end, and a few armlengths of cord. He used part of the cord to bind his blanket around his body and then formed a kind of sling out of it at the back by knotting opposite corners over his chest. Now his hands were free, he had a way to carry things, and he had two weapons, both of which he knew how to use, and use well.
Fortunately, the stream was coming from the direction he wanted to be going—north. He tried not to think too hard about what he would have to do if he was forced to leave his source of water.
Deal with that when it happened.
As he walked, he turned over rocks ahead of him. Almost at once he was rewarded with a redbug, a little crustacean that had pinchers on the front and a most delicious tail. Those had been great prizes back at the mine, and he refused to think about how good it would taste tossed in a fire for a moment. He didn’t have a fire, and he’d eaten them raw before. He pounced, and a moment later he was sucking out the meat and the guts, then cracking the claws between his teeth to get the little meat that was in them as well.
He had to stop at noon, afraid he would lose his bearings with the sun overhead, but by then he had caught and eaten a half dozen more redbugs and a handful of cress. His stomach was less than pleased with this meager fare, but he’d lived on less at the mine, and he kept telling himself as much. He was on sharp lookout for cattails. If he could find cattails, he could sleep with a full stomach.
While he waited for the sun to move on, he scanned the bank above him, looking for anything that looked like one of the nut-bearing trees he was familiar with—or, indeed, anything else that might be of use.
Then, while he was at it, he looked for the signs of humans.
Not that he was going to approach any Karsites—but if he got a chance, he’d steal from them.
In order, what he needed as much as food were something to use for a knife, something to carry water, and a way to make and carry fire. He could do without fire for a while; there were a lot of things he could and would eat raw, and the blanket and a little shelter would keep him warm at night for now. He could do without carrying water as long as he didn’t stray from the river.
But he was already feeling the lack of a knife. He knew in theory he could make a knife by fracturing a flint rock—but what did flint look like? He had no idea.
While he waited, he caught and ate a few more redbugs. Each one helped ease the hunger pains in his stomach. And he made some more cord from the ubiquitous vines. He tried tasting the leaves to see if they were edible, but, sadly, they were too bitter to choke down.
He resolved to stop as soon as he saw any place that would serve as shelter for the night. It would be much better to stop early and have shelter; he could use the extra time to hunt for more food. At least when it came to food, he was not as completely in the dark as someone who had grown up in a city would be.
But right now, he would cheerfully have murdered someone for a knife, a fire-starter, a little iron pot, and a waterskin.
As he worked his way along the riverside, he took anything he saw that looked potentially useful. A few more stones for his sling. Some clamshells, and he wished that he knew how to find live clams. He hesitated over the skeletal remains of a very large fish and finally took some of the rib bones. About midafternoon, he spotted another cave, a real one this time, and that decided him. It was time to stop and make camp.
It wasn’t so much a cave as a washed out area beneath a rock overhang—not sheltered enough for an animal to make a den, but the fact that the dirt in the back was dry proved it would keep off another storm. He left everything he had gathered in the cave and went down to the river to forage for food in good earnest.
The redbugs were thick here. He actually managed to eat enough to fill his stomach. There was still plenty of light, so he marked the overhang with his blanket spread out and went up the slope, checking back to make sure he could see it as he went.
And just as he was about to turn back, his diligence was rewarded with a hickory tree.
It was the squirrels that told him it was there; they had been busily foraging among the leaves for the nuts, and chattered at him angrily for disturbing them. He went to his hands and knees as soon as he realized what he had found, and by the time he was weary, the front of his shirt bulged with his bounty.
Careful not to lose a single one, he made his way back down to his shelter, cached the nuts, and gathered more of the vines. This time he knotted the strands into a very fine-meshed net bag to hold the nuts; by the time it was finished, it was almost dark. He went down to the river for a final drink, then came back, secured all of his treasures behind him, wrapped up in his blanket, and lay down as far in the rear of the shelter as he could get.
It was a good thing he took that precaution too.
Some time during the night, another storm rolled in. This one wasn’t as intense or nearly as long as the first, but it did have a great deal of lightning, and it woke him up out of a sound sleep.
It was just as cold as the other storm, too. He wondered, as he watched the river rage below him, if this sort of weather was normal for autumn here. Dallen would have known, probably. The mere thought made him ache for the sound of Dallen’s Mindvoice in the back of his head.
But the place he was in now looked as if it had been washed out. That argued for the river coming all the way up here at least now and again. So these sorts of storms probably were the norm.
On the other hand, the hillsides hadn’t been scoured bare, so floods probably weren’t usual . He did resolve to keep an eye on the water level from now on, however, because a storm he wouldn’t even see a hint of upstream could send a torrent racing toward him.
Finally, exhaustion and a full stomach sent him back into sleep again, despite the lightning
and thunder.
* * *
By the third day, and a happy accident, he realized he had his knife. In reaching back into the blanket-pouch for cattail root, he cut himself on one of the clamshells. He had cursed at first, then, suddenly realizing what had happened, he had actually laughed aloud. He made a point of collecting every shell big enough to be useful after that, especially the broken ones. With a knife, he could cut strips from his shirt hem to use to make a better pocket for his sling. With a knife, he could peel the cattail roots and not have to chew the root, bark and all, and spit out what he couldn’t eat. With a knife, he could sharpen sticks to a good point for crude spears.
He was very, very glad he had those crude spears when he heard voices on the afternoon of the fourth day.
They were speaking Karsite, and they were coming from somewhere above him.
He had already found his shelter for the night; or, rather, he had dug it for himself. He had found an enormous, downed tree, and he had patiently enlarged a hollow under it and lined it with dead leaves. He had just finished peeling his dinner of cattail roots and was about to go down to the water to see if he could augment them with redbugs, when he heard the voices.
“Make camp here,” ordered one. “You and you, go down to the river and bring up enough water to hold us through the night. You and you, dig the latrine pit. I don’t want anyone out of camp after dark. Nobody goes outside the perimeter.”
Quickly, he gathered everything up and tucked himself back in under the log, pulling the weeds up and toward him to conceal the opening. Just in time, too. Shortly, a couple of men in identical brown tunics came blundering down the hill, hung all over with what looked like waterskins, like pods hanging off a tree. He peered longingly at them. Oh, what he would have given for a chance to snatch one!
No such luck. It was broad daylight, and there were two of them. Even if he’d had the skills of a thief in a tale, that would have been suicidal.
They filled their skins in the river, complaining about the cold and wet, and lumbered back up the slope, grumbling loudly the entire time about how heavy the water weighed. Evidently their captain heard them. “Quit your bellyaching and move, or I’ll make you march with them all day tomorrow!”
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