Blood River Down

by Lionel Fenn

  This, he thought as he fumbled for the bat, is where I make up for all the failures I've been.

  He fell asleep.

  Several hours later he awoke when something soft brushed against his cheek, causing him to flail about with the bat and smash the log to pieces. And when he realized where he was, and when he felt a leaf clinging gently to his cheek, he slumped forward and rested his forehead on the grass, laughing weakly, sobbing his relief, not noticing the darkness until he tried to stand and tripped over his own feet.

  He sat, pulled his knees to his chest, and looked up.

  Though the foliage was high and thick, he could still catch a glimpse of the night sky, the moon, and a handful of stars. As his eyes adjusted to the dim silver light, he saw the trunks and branches oddly flattened, the leaves without edges, his own hands unable to cast a shadow on the ground. Above, he could hear rustling in the canopy, and out there in the dark night-things moved about. But there was no sense of danger, no feeling of being watched. The sea-beast had evidently given up and gone home, and nothing else here was hungry enough to attack him.

  Directly ahead, something growled.

  "Go away," Gideon told it angrily. "Gimme a break, do you mind?"

  It growled again, and the dark was punctured by two pinpoints of green.

  Using the bat as a brace, he pushed himself to his feet, looked around, and saw that the tree he had been sitting against had a bole that spiraled around itself and was thick enough that if he had to, he could climb by running around in circles.

  The growling deepened, and the green eyes advanced.

  Gideon held the bat to his chest, trying to decide if he should stand and fight or try for the tree. His hand stroked the wood absently. Fighting in the near dark was not exactly ideal; on the other hand—of which there seemed to be an awful lot lately—it was entirely possible that whatever the creature was out there, it could climb as well. It might even be some sort of large cat, in which case he'd have just as much chance on the ground as above it.

  He frowned; it was growing warm.

  Running, of course, was out of the question. Two steps, and he'd break his leg; of that he was sure.

  "Damn!" he said then, and snatched his hand away from the bat, looked at it, and grinned. There was a deep blue glow inside the grain, and he quickly brought it to the surface, cupped it, blew on it, and sent the bluelight gratefully ahead.

  The green-eyed creature was caught unawares. It looked up at the globe and snarled at it, swiped a paw at it, and whirled when it glided over its head and stopped.

  Gideon laughed.

  The animal was less than shin high, half that long, and covered with long black fur that dragged on the ground. It was tailless, fat, and though its round head looked to be larger than it should be for the animal's size, there was nothing menacing about it except for its growl.

  "Thank you," Gideon said, not to the globe, but to the animal, for being one of the few creatures on this world that didn't seem bent on shortening his life. He was so relieved that he climbed the tree anyway, heading for a flat-topped branch some ten feet above the ground. The lightlamp rose accordingly and enabled him to see that if he braced his back against the trunk and stretched his legs along the branch, only a strong wind or a nightmare's tossing would take him to the ground before he was ready.

  It was a chance, but his body needed the rest, and he hoped his reflexes would serve as his alarm.

  It sounded convincing, and once he'd clapped the light off, it even felt convincing as he rocked back and forth, flung his arms out, his legs, testing for the limits of balance before the drop.

  But it was still a long hour before his nerves relaxed and he permitted the night sounds to lull him to sleep... and heard a distant whistling that had him instantly awake and the bat in his hand.

  It was daylight, the sun high and bright enough to show him his perch, the forest around him, and the sea-beast looking at him from the base of the tree.

  —|—

  He had no idea how it had followed him so far from the ocean, but it was down there now, snapping those teeth at him as its ears lay back alongside its canine-dolphin head.

  Slowly, his hand raised his weapon, his gaze on the sea-beast while it thumped its tail on the forest floor and shifted agitatedly from one clawed foot to the other. Spittle slipped out of its mouth, nictitating membranes winked over its bulging eyes, and finally it lunged forward, butting the trunk and nearly spilling him from his branch.

  Instantly, he was on his feet, not bothering to wonder for more than a brief moment why, with its height, it hadn't just reached up and gulped him down. With the bat waving bravely in front of him, he edged out along the branch; the sea-beast followed, a soft mocking whistle slipping between its teeth. It eyed him as if measuring distance, the top of its head level with the branch's underside but too far away for Gideon to swing at without putting himself within range of its mouth.

  Sideways it moved, its tail still thumping, the ground still shaking.

  Sideways Gideon moved, until he felt the branch beginning to sag and saw culinary excitement begin to shine in the creature's eyes. Puzzled, he stopped. The beast stopped. He looked down the creature's length and lifted an eyebrow. How, he wondered, could such an ugly thing be so damned stupid? The legs, he saw then, were so rigid they were trembling, the claws dug deep into the earth, and its neck was virtually nothing more than a thick stump.

  "You poor sap," he said. "You can't jump, can you?"

  The beast whistled, a bit louder, and he felt the branch quaver, felt the wood beginning to split.

  Gideon cocked his head and took a long stride back toward it, saw the jaws open and shut in frustration and anticipation, saw a tidal flow of muscles ripple from the back of its skull down its spine to the tail. He was right. It could not leap because its legs were too busy trying to hold up its out-of-water weight, nor could it raise its jaws any higher because it didn't have the means to.

  Gideon smiled.

  The sea-beast whistled again, and the branch sagged even more.

  Gideon raised the bat over his head just as the beast saw the move and started to back away. Before he could bring the weapon down on the skull, however, the branch split with an agonizing scream and he was propelled into the air, twisting as he sought to avoid the snapping jaws, landing with a grunt square on the thing's back. It spun around immediately, trying to dislodge him; he clamped his thighs against its short fur, trying not to be dislodged. It whistled and dropped a tree; he hissed when the tree almost brained him. It began to run, and Gideon began to panic, realizing that once it was back in its element he would have no more chance of survival than one of those giant crabs.

  It whistled, and trees parted in its path like the volley of cannons that had wiped out the Light Brigade.

  Gideon no longer attempted to dodge the lower branches but rather tightened his legs even more and lifted himself up, took the bat and closed his eyes, swung it, and heard it crunch against the beast's neck.

  The beast whistled and stumbled.

  He swung again, one eye open now to see the fur part, the flesh part, and the dark red of its viscous blood splatter into the air. With a moue of distaste he struck again, aiming for the head and falling just short, feeling himself slip backward, where the tail was trying to arch overhead and swat him to the ground.

  The bat whistled through the air; the beast whistled toward the beach; the trees snapped, crackled, popped out of their way, until Gideon gathered himself and lunged forward, the bat finally coming down in the middle of the beast's skull.

  It stopped dead.

  Gideon kept moving, sliding up the back, the neck, the skull, and into the air to the ground. He twisted around and leapt to his feet, the bat at the ready, his breath coming in short gasps.

  The beast eyed him mournfully.

  Gideon shrugged and stepped to one side to leave it plenty of room to fall.

  It seemed to appreciate the gesture because i
t whistled once again, this time soft and low, and dropped. It wasn't elegant, but it served the purpose, and Gideon hopped out of the tail's way when it made one last move to smash him into a tree.

  Shaking his head at that deception in death, Gideon stepped around the body and headed back into the trees. He wasn't about to walk the shoreline when there might be others waiting, and if he were lucky, he wouldn't get too lost before he died of old age. Besides, he wanted time to think, and he quickly placed the bat in its holster so he wouldn't have to feel its power and be reminded of what it had done, and what it could have done had he been in a more tenable position.

  The idea frightened him, and he moved deeper into the trees, until the sun was directly overhead and he had reached the stream he had vaulted the day before. There he dropped to his knees and splashed water onto his face, his head, washed his hands, and drank from his palms. It was no substitute for solid food, but he'd not seen any of the red berries or anything else he felt tempted to eat, and he needed something in his stomach to stop it from complaining.

  An hour later, when his legs stopped aching and his arms had lost their cramps, he moved on, aware after only a few paces that he was listening to a faint, steady roaring in the distance. Not an animal, but one much like what he'd heard as he'd floated down the Rushes.

  Without running he quickened his step, ignoring animal noises seeming to keep pace with him in the branches, ignoring his legs telling him they were tired of all this nonsense and wanted a vacation, with or without pay they didn't give a damn, and ignored the fact that he had once again taken up the bat. Just in case there were surprises.

  Then the trees ended, and a river began.

  And there, on the opposite bank, was Ivy Pholler.

  "Hey!" he called, waving his free hand.

  Ivy turned, and he gaped, abruptly realizing she was standing in the shallows, perfectly naked.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  "Where the hell have you been?" she called, hands hard on her hips.

  Gideon could only stare dumbly as his right hand gestured vaguely behind him, thinking that perhaps one of his better hallucinations had come cruelly back to haunt him. When she saw the stunned expression on his face and looked down at herself, however, she scowled a clear message and he sighed—she was real, and there she was, scrambling up the bank to yank on her clothes and ruin his fantasies. A resigned lift of his shoulders, and he watched as she returned fully clothed to direct him upriver, where he saw a bridge spanning the deep water. A log bridge. The narrow trunk of a single storm-felled tree that barely made it to the other side.

  "Are you kidding?" he said, nudging the trunk with his foot and watching it wobble. "I'll fall in."

  "No, you won't," she assured him. "I didn't."

  He closed one eye. "Which side did you land on?"

  "What a stupid question."

  With a glance back to be sure there was no miracle in the offing, no chance that this place would somehow give him a temporary pair of wings, he took out the bat, held it out in both hands for a balance pole, and stepped timidly onto the log. It rocked ominously, and he jumped back with flailing arms, did a deep-knee bend, and stretched his arms over his head. Then he leaned down and plucked some purple moss off the log where his first step out would be.

  "Are you finished?" Ivy called.

  "I just want to be sure."

  She shook her head in disgust and sat down to wait.

  A woman doesn't understand these things, he thought as he kicked at the fallen tree again; there's a certain aura a man has to sustain if he wants to keep his self-respect.

  "For god's sake, Sunday!"

  On the other hand, some women understand men all too well.

  With the bat once more in position, he gauged the distance to be traveled and stepped firmly up onto the log. It trembled. He held his breath. It steadied. Ivy hoped he would cross before the seasons changed. Ignoring the jibe, he took a sliding pace forward and set his hips square with the opposite bank. When he didn't fall on the third step, he allowed himself to breathe and to keep moving. The tree took his weight without too much sagging in the center, but he refused to look up, staring unwinking at the slippery bark, one foot carefully sliding in front of the other, swaying every few steps and closing his eyes until the log steadied. Left foot, right foot, until a hand closed around the bat and yanked him to shore.

  "I—"

  Ivy told him to shut up and embraced him without warning, snuggling her cheek against his chest and squeezing. "I thought you were dead," she whispered. "I really thought I was never going to see you again."

  "Nope."

  "I thought..." She lifted her gaze to his and shook her head. "I was going to have to do this on my own. I couldn't find Tag or Whale, and who the hell knows where that damned lorra is. God, you can't know the feelings I had. You just can't know, Gideon."

  "I suppose not."

  She frowned and leaned away from him without releasing her embrace. "You're certainly talkative, aren't you? Aren't you glad to see me, or is that just the bat in your hand?"

  He backed away quickly, nearly fell into the river, and sat hard on the bank instead, on a flat-topped rock. Ivy clucked and dropped beside him, and together they watched the river sweep past, glass smooth and silent until it reached submerged boulders under the bridge, then turning into white water all the way to the next bend.

  "Rough time, huh?" she asked.

  He nodded. It occurred to him that she, too, had probably been through the wringer, but right now he was only concerned with his own self-pity.

  "Want to tell me about it?"

  "Not really."

  "It would help, you know. You shouldn't keep things like that to yourself."

  "It's unpleasant."

  "Life, too, is unpleasant if you can't see the sun."

  He stared at her incredulously, and she giggled.

  "Stupid, right?" she said.

  "Profoundly so."

  "So tell me, and don't leave out the gore."

  He did, beginning with the terror and fascination of his fall and ending with his near fatal confrontation with the two-legged dolphin that looked like a German shepherd. When he was finished she was gaping at him, admiration in her green eyes and a rapid pulsing at the hollow of her throat.

  "Incredible!"

  "It couldn't jump."

  "No kidding."

  "I'm still alive, aren't I?"

  "Well, it just goes to show you, doesn't it?" she said, and scrambled to her feet.

  "Now what?"

  "Well, we can't stay here, right? We have to move on."

  "Where?"

  She pointed upriver.

  "What's up there?"

  "Good lord, didn't Glorian tell you that, either?"

  Glorian, it seemed, had a remarkable gap in her already questionable memory when it came to the finer details, and he complained bitterly about it for the next hour as they worked their way along the bank.

  "And you still haven't told me where we're going."

  "Rayn," she said, swiping at a dull scarlet vine that was curling toward her neck.

  He looked quickly up at the sky slowly turning dark, saw no shadows, and wondered if her prediction was part of some sort of weather folklore. Ivy, when she saw him, groaned.

  "No, not rain. Rayn!"

  "Spell it."

  She did.

  "What is it?"

  "A place."

  He gathered that no one in this world had ever heard of the spontaneous narrative.

  "A city," she elaborated when he prodded her with a harsh word and the bat. "If Glorian's anywhere, she's probably there."

  "Why there?"

  "The duck, remember?"

  "Ah. The duck's in Rayn."

  "I doubt it. But that's where we can find out where it's been taken."

  "Ah."

  "Unless they kill us first, of course. It's a possibility you have to consider on something like this."

  "Ivy, t
ake me home."

  She sympathized with a smile, patting his arm in condolence while she casually sliced away branches in their path with the edge of her dagger. Raw cries from deep in the forest made him wary about their digressions when boulders or trees blocked their way, but she assured him they weren't facing anything dangerous. At most they might come across a wandering footh, a tiny cat-like creature with black fur and green eyes.

  "Oh. I saw one of them," he said, ducking under a branch that aimed for his nose.

  "You did?"

  "Sure. Just before I fell asleep."

  "And you lived?"

  Amazing, he thought, how these people expected him to die at any moment and at the same time expected him to rescue their duck.

  "Yes," he said when she expressed her amazement again. "And now you'll tell me why I shouldn't have."

  "It has a bite."

  "I might have lost a finger, not much more than that."

  "You would have lost a lot more, Gideon. The poison in its fangs can kill an army."

  He stopped.

  She looked over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

  "What's it called again?" he asked.

  "Footh."

  "Stupid name."

  "If it bites you, what do you care?"

  A potent if somewhat after-the-fact argument, and another reason to keep an eye on the shadows, on the trees, on the branches overhead, on the leaves that seemed to quiver though he could feel no wind, on the deadfalls in the river, on the path behind him, on the sky in case it had wings, on Ivy's back in case he got lost.

  To her unusually restrained and therefore all the more maddening amusement, he kept his weapon constantly to hand from that moment on, testing it once in a while on an unsuspecting bush or a falling leaf determined to do his skull damage, until finally, when he could barely distinguish his shadow from the ground, she brought them back to the river, to a wide shelf of dark rock six feet above the water.