No getting to his feet. No looking either way. Only his left hand slid left… his right hand slid to follow it. Cold hands that grew colder as he moved along so slowly, fast water hammering his face and beating his breath away.
After a while that seemed a long while, Baj was no longer certain he could feel his hands. Thrashed and spun this way and that in the rapids, afraid his numb grip might loosen and let him go – he slowly drew himself up against the current, the most difficult thing… most difficult thing. Felt the wet line against his face for a moment, Felt it snap against his face again, opened his mouth to pouring water and braided leather, and bit down hard.
So by hands and teeth he held on. And was able to slowly work one hand's fingers at a time – or thought he worked them – clenching, unclenching in a dream of noise and cold and motion.
Then he opened his mouth to let the line snap free, but still gripped it in his hands – better hands, now – and began again that slow sliding to the left. One hand, then another… Began that, and dreamed he would do it to the other bank, and grow warmer all the time, though the river furled and unfurled him like a banner.
He woke to a shout like a big dog's bark, turned his buffeted head to the left, and saw, amid fountaining sheets becoming rainbows, Richard's soaked heavy-browed face, the thick shoulders awash.
Then, it was the simplest of things. Hook a right elbow over the whipping line… let go with the left hand… and give the hand into Richard's almost-paw like a gift, so the Person – with that slight additional purchase – made one great heaving motion, caught a rock's definite edge, and hauled himself up to the rawhide to grip it and begin to crawl to the left again, forging a way to the riverside, Baj laboring behind him.
… When they stood, sodden and exhausted, on the north bank of New River – Errol already gone to sleep in thick grass beside them – Nancy, on the south bank, a loop of the braided leather knotted around her waist, was busy gathering the three packs and their weapons – the sheathed blades, Richard's ax, and Baj's bow and quiver – into a single very large and ungainly bundle, and lashing it four-square with doubled knots at the rope's end.
"Mistake. The current," Baj said, and cupped his hands to shout. "… It's too big! Tie the packs… tie those separately along the line!" A call quite useless against the river's noise.
"Too fucking big!" Baj and Richard scrambled down the bank to take hold of the rope to haul her across.
Nancy, prepared, seemed to still hesitate.
"Afraid of noisy water," Richard said.
"She went through the waterfall."
"Not the dangerous same."
The girl stood on the opposite bank, the awkward bundle – big as she was – lying at the line's end a few feet behind her.
"It's going to – that load's going to swing downstream as she comes over!"
"Yes, it is." Richard wrapped both hands around the line. Baj stood a little behind him.
Across the river, Nancy appeared to make up her mind… stepped carefully down the bank as if the river might rise up to seize her… then in a rush ran into the current.
She struck the water, went under, turned and seemed to tug at the tied bundle, so it came heavily toppling down after her and into the river.
Then the girl was swimming, and Baj saw she swam as a frightened puppy might, straining, her head up, paddling in roiling crashing waters.
"Now…!" Richard heaved back on the line, Baj with him, and the braided leather rose whipping out of the rapids, dipped under again… then up, dripping, water squeezed spraying out of it along its length.
Baj saw Nancy's white face amid white water – saw the heavy bundle behind her bob free of some obstruction and begin to drift faster and faster downstream.
Nancy was drawn under.
"No good," Baj said. "No good."
"Pull…"
"No good!"
Halfway across, Nancy seemed to come no closer… then began to drift a little downstream with the rapids, downstream after the tumbling bundle at the line's end. Her hands splashed in that desperate paddle.
"The rope's tied off! It'll hold!" Richard heaved on the line, grunting with effort.
"Hold to pull her in drowned!" The river noise seemed louder. "The packs…" Baj let go of the rope and ran back up the bank. Errol, awake, was sitting cross-legged, watching Nancy in the river.
"Knife!" Baj reached down and drew a blade from Errol's belt, then turned and ran down and into the river, reaching up left-handed to hold the line.
The current – snaking around and past him with such pouring weighty strength and bitter cold – now seemed familiar, a dangerous discomfort, but not dreadful.
He couldn't see Nancy through battering spray and foam, and trusted to the slender slippery line – stretching under strain, and sooner or later bound to snag on sharp rock and part – trusted that to bring him to her. He dragged himself along, half swimming, half kicking over rounded rock and scattering pebbles in the flow, and shouted to her – but couldn't hear himself.
Water smashed into his left ear as if a man had struck him with a fist of ice. The pain lanced through, and Baj ducked his head away as the line yanked at him… yanked again, streaming away with the river's flow.
Then Baj went faster, skidded down along the line, glimpsed trees – on which bank he didn't know – and struck large stones with elbows and knees. The river tried to turn him, roll him over and away and off the braided leather. His left hand was burning where he gripped it – burning with the only heat there was in a world of cold.
He heaved up, gasping for a breath in sheets of spray – slid down the line with the river, and struck a softer thing than stone.
A narrow hand… wiry arms came round to grapple, and Baj felt the girl's lean smallness buckle to him – saw as they both rose riding a spume of water, her face contorted with terror, and called "I have you, sweetheart…" By which he meant nothing personal.
They spun and rode together, and Baj kicked to try to turn them so she struck no rocks. He saw a flashing in the surf, and was surprised to see the knife still in his right hand. It reminded him what it was for, and as they whirled along, Baj steadied with that motion, didn't fight against it – and in the spinning through foam and noise, reached quite easily behind the girl, found the whip end of the line tugging… tugging them along, and sliced the bundle free.
… Then, much easier, the taut leather stretching from distant Richard by a distant tree, they slowly struggled swinging nearer and nearer to that bank, until Baj got to his feet – bare feet with no feeling – stood battered by crashing water… and step by step, the girl clinging, aiding, marched through shallower clear streaming water to pebbles and the sand.
… They found the pack-bundle by nearly night, stranded on a stony bar two miles downstream, only a fairly dangerous swim from the north bank. Errol went and roped it for hauling over.
All was there, Nancy'd knotted it together so tight and well. All there – though soaked as the arrows' fletching – and needing a drying fire, the steel blades wiped and tallowed.
That night, aching and bruised in exhausted sleep, Baj dreamed not of water, but of his First-mother, though he'd never known her, though she'd been murdered when he was a baby – murdered as it was now intended for other mothers to be murdered. The details, in his dream, were vaporous as smoke, but the sorrow hard as iron.
The Lady Ladu… He'd seen no portrait of her, had – as he grew – met no older Kipchak merchant or mercenary officer who'd been so privileged at Caravanserai as to have met the wife of the Khan Toghrul. Only the old librarian, Lord Peter, had been able to describe her to him, and that when he was already a young man… So, for all his childhood in the court of the Achieving King, Baj had imagined his First-mother as lithe and beautiful, a black-haired slant-eyed queen, ferocious… but tender toward him, and loving.