Vampire in the Banyan Tree

Hart and Aleron Make for the River

Suddenly there was a clatter on the rough boards of the room and Hart jerked his head towards the sound. Nothing. The sound came again, and this time he saw it, a rock skittered across the floor from the glassless window. 'Hart!' came a hoarse whisper from outside.

Hart looked across to his companion, she stared back then gave a tiny shrug, dunno.

He pulled himself out of the suction of the water and stepped onto the wet floor, advancing cautiously to the window. Below, almost lost in the gloom save for a rim of light from some unseen doorway, was Aleron, staring up, in the process of weighting another cobble to throw.

         'Are you crazy?' It was a rhetorical question. Having not been able to figure that out after seventeen years, he wasn't going to get an answer now.

         'We're going!' insisted the pale face below, 'Now!'

         'Where?'

         'Minnow Fett.'

         'Now?'

         'Put some clothes on.'

         'No!' hissed Hart, why am I whispering?, 'It's the middle of the damn night!'

         'Get down here. Don't be seen.'

         'You'll have to climb down the ivy,' called the girl, 'you can't get out by the big hall without someone noticing you.' She had removed herself from the tub and was wrapping a drying cloth about her body.

         'I'm not- we're not going anywhere,' replied Hart. A third stone struck the window edge and clattered in to the room.

         'That nearly fucking hit me!'

         'Shhh!' replied Aleron, from the darkness.

         'He's the prince,' whispered the girl.

         'He's something,' muttered Hart, but hesitated. Maybe there was some emergency. There better be. He began drying himself. 'Get my- oh.' She had his boots. He leant against the wall and yanked them up while she held his belt.

She pulled her wet cloth from around her shoulders, folded and wrapped it twice around her waist and leaned out over the sill. 'A minute, your highness!' she lilted to the darkness below. Hart couldn't think of any reason she needed to do that topless. 'I'll go around to the south door and open the gate for you,' she said, to Hart. He strapped on his belt, stepped up on the sill, turned and squatted down, lowering one boot to kick into the ivy thicket for a purchase. Finding one, he secured a good grip with his left hand and began to lower himself. He found the grips solid. Funny how you did everything better when you were drunk.


As his head descend toward the sill, the girl leaned out and kissed him. 'I'm Iolene,' she said. He gave her a sour look, then his face was full of the resinous green smell of ivy. His fingers began to feel the strain of the narrow grip, since he couldn't trust too much weight on the footholds.Light was leaking from the window above, but he couldn't lift his head clear to see it. He was more than thirty feet above the ground, in darkness. It occurred to him that it was a good thing that he was drunk, or this could be dangerous. He descended past the second story, the tower was windowless for the last stretch. The ivy, growing nearer to its source, became sturdier and of thicker bracket. Not far now.

         'You can drop from there,' came Aleron's voice. Hart ignored it. Aleron's idea of a distance you could drop from was anybody's guess. He could be twelve feet up, for all he knew. 'You should have rolled', Aleron would say, as Hart lay on the ground nursing a sprained ankle and a chipped tooth. However, a few seconds later, his boot did indeed touch ground.

Now he could see, a little. There was a doorway half open on the far side of the courtyard from which light came. He could hear the sound of singing. It lead, with a few intermediaries and curvatures, to the main hall, where Aleron's father's men were still successfully charting a course between alcohol-induced cheer and alcohol-induced stupor. 'Here,' said Aleron, and shoved something in his arms, a thick shag jacket that felt like bear fur. He didn't own one. Was it Gronfoeut's? It smelt like an uncleaned dog kennel, which seemed to support the theory.

         'Come on,' whispered his companion, 'we can get around the side and climb the wall. Can't get to the horses.'

Hart heard the clink of metal and saw Aleron had a pack and a lantern. 'She said she'd open the side gate for us,' he said.

         'Even better - wait, you don't think she's going to tell on us?'

         'I-'

         'Never mind. Let's go.' Aleron took off towards the open door and Hart reluctantly followed, wondering what was going on.

They entered and resealed the door. They turned right down a side passage, moving towards the rear of the building, with which Hart was unfamiliar. They entered a corridor wide enough to be a hallway, but so stacked at one side with old furniture in sheets they were forced to push past single file. At the end was an arched doorway, its keystone carved in the shape of a deer's head and Aleron paused, holding up a hand. They peered around the lintel. Kitchens were beyond, dim and empty. The big cooking tables were cleared for the night, the detritus of domestic enterprise stowed away. A fire, gone mostly to coals, glowed under a bulbous, black-bottomed, stock. It was the common custom of large households, in these parts, to always keep one simmering. The singing of the unseen rowdies had dimmed to rumour. On the warmed stones before the hearth lay an old, grey-muzzled bitch. She raised her head and thumped her tail, but didn't rise.

         'Good girl,' said Aleron, making it sound like a threat. He entered cautiously. Other voices could now be heard from a wide side corridor or chamber, of women talking softly and the clink of indeterminate utensils. On the other side could be seen the back door. Strangely, it seemed unbarred and unlocked.

They crept softly across the heavy tiles to the back door, and it was the work of a few moments to lift the latch and open it, bracing it against the wind. They chocked the frame to prevent it banging and slipped into the darkness of the side. The lane was created by a brush fence, that secured the inn's vegetable garden against deer and wild pig, and the outer wall. The night air was restless, but the speckling rain had stopped. The willows would cover any noise their feet might make now. They went down to the gate and heard a soft call from the other side. Iolene was there, with a ring of keys. As they approached there was a sudden cavernous growl and Hart jerked back, nearly tripping. She was restraining a massive dog by the collar, black as Satan, that they hadn't spotted in the darkness. The meagre light gleamed on its teeth. It was a Mulound, a powerful breed popular in the Swampland for their ferocity and deep-bred protective instincts. In the north they were often fitted with an iron cuirass on their chests, like a little breastplate, called a petyle, to turn boar tusks. This one had merely a heavy collar which Iolene yanked by means of remonstration. 'Shh!' she hissed and smacked the animal's broad skull. It sounded like she'd slapped a stone.

Iolene manipulated the keys in her free hand. The metal clicked, the gate swung open and they slipped through, giving the dog as wide a berth as possible. 'Well done,' whispered Aleron,' where is the road from here?'

         'Straight ahead is the main gate,' she replied, 'you'll have to climb that one since I don't have a key, but it's easy. I had to get Sohbuk or he would have taken you for robbers.' The big hound glowered at them, but did not try her grip. 'Don't tell anyone I took the keys.'

         'You have the gratitude of your prince,' whispered Aleron, proving there was no circumstance in which he couldn't spare a few seconds to take himself seriously.

         'And what other than that?' she asked.

         'Uh-'

         'Your uncle got all our money,' interjected Hart.

         'I mean, do I get a kiss?'

         'Oh! Yes.' Hart leaned forward and kissed her and, as he did, the dog surged at him with a ferocious bark. He jerked back, with a vision of jaws crunching closed on his kneecap.

         'Sohbuk!' yelled Iolene.

         'Shh!' hissed the other two.

         'I meant from his highness,' said Iolene.

         'Um-' said Aleron, looking warily at the dog. But, before he could prevaricate, Iolene braced one foot against the hound to secure him, grasped Aleron by the back of his head and kissed him a little more deeply than he was entirely prepared for. Sohbuk huffed and growled but she had him well planted.

Eventually Aleron felt it necessary to disengage.

         'Well,' he said recovering his breath, 'you're welcome.'

         'Now go!' she whispered, holding back the restless dog, which was tensing to leap again in case the wrong-smell one tried another face-sucking attack on the mistress.

They went up the path, hearing the gate close behind them. The house was a great, dark presence, detailed here and there by slivers of warm light from shuttered windows. Sparks could be seen flickering into the wind from the chimney that drew from the main hall's fireplace, but its substance was invisible. From these meagre beams, the gate could be discerned by the faintest gleam returning from its metal. They reached it and began to climb.

         'Did she give you the tongue?' asked Hart.

         'Yes,' replied Aleron, as he swung a leg over the spikes at the top. He sounded annoyed.

Their boots came down on gravel. The willows hissed. It seemed, for a moment, that they could see some detail of the sky flying above, giving Hart hope that the plelegiddon might break without rain. There was a diffused effulgence though the trees, the flickering glow of the great torch Boll had set on the dike road. By it, the sign embossed on the lintel could be read. The Laughers, Public House, gates closed after midnight, ring for attendance. Mstr. Boll Gort proprietor. A heavy iron bell hung above the plaque, its hammer swaying.

A short crunch up the path and they had emerged onto the road and the illumination of the torch. This was set up to mark the turn-off to Boll's establishment, and could be seen for twenty miles up and down the dike. It was set in an ornate iron post, like a street lamp, and fueled by an oil reservoir that was good for a week or two. With its wrought metal frames in the form of leaves and branches, it was rather hansom. 'No moon,' said Hart. No light. Nothing off the fens, nothing to mark their track. It wasn't cold but the wind was up. It was a wild night. Don't rain, you bastard, he thought, to the invisible sky. Hart's head was clearing. Although he was still pleasantly fortified by drink, he knew it wouldn't last. Still, he couldn't help feel a surge of adventurous pleasure in standing, secret and unknown, on the edge of the great, wide world.

Aleron was squatting on the ground, trimming his pack. 'We can see enough by the ruts,' he said, by which he meant the gleam off the standing water, in the grooves made by wagon traffic, 'until we round the copse. Then we can light the bullseye.'

         'What are we doing?'

         'I told you. Going to Minnow Fett.'

         'In the middle of the fucking night? Why not go with the others tomorrow? We don't have horses, we can't ford the river. It'd be crazy to do it in the dark anyway.'

         'I'm not going with those shit-eating traitors. When I'm king I'll have them hung.'

         'What?' said Hart, bewildered by the inexplicable tone of rage in Aleron's voice.

         'I don't want to explain. I would trust you if you asked me to do something and I told you it was important.'

         'No you wouldn't.'

         'Absolutely would. You know me.'

         'Yes, that's my point.'

Aleron finished securing his gear and stood abruptly up. His face had the fierce set Hart knew only too well. 'Stay here, then' he snapped. He jerked the pack, secured his sword, then turned and marched off down the road. Hart sighed, knowing that any further attempts at rationality would only be seen as disloyalty. He shrugged the heavy shag jacket up and started after his friend.

It was dark, but the Boll's torch lit the road for a long way, and it was easy enough to stay on the straight, bordered as it was, on either side by steep embankment fallaways. Aleron was right, there was enough water in ruts to provide a faint glimmer, and, by turning, they could orientate by the bright point in the dark landscape. Within an hour, however, the long, shallow curve of the dike brought them around the copse of ash and they passed into real darkness.

         'Wait', whispered Aleron, and he lit the lamp, trimming the hood to emit the barest ray.

         'I suppose you know we're going in the opposite direction to the river,' said Hart.

         'We're not going to the river. That road loops all the way around Dogwater and the Spinneys. We're going to go over the flats. There's a causeway the locals use.'

         'In the dark?'

         'There are marking lamps. All you have to do is go one to the next and you can't wander into the quicks.'

         'Wait a minute, there are quicks? How do you know that?'

         'I just do. It's half the distance, if that, but you can't take a wagon over it, so most people go by the ford. We'll be in Minnow Fett before dawn breaks, while those idiots are still looking for us on the road. Assuming they even sober up enough to realise we're gone.' He said this last with a deal of vindictive satisfaction and, again, Hart wondered what was up. The 'idiots' referred to were his own father's men, after all.

         'What happened back there?'

         'Nothing. Come on.'

They set off again. If Aleron was right, it was, indeed, a prodigious shortcut but that's what this country was like. The straight course in even the summer marshlands, generally sunk you up to your neck in bog. Travel was a series of negotiations. Hart cursed silently, it occurred to him that they had passed through the kitchens as they made their exit. If he'd known what they were doing, if Aleron had bothered to explain, it wouldn't have been difficult to liberate some bread or meat.

         'Did you bring water at least?' he asked.

         'What do you mean 'at least''?

         'Because I know you didn't bring any food.'

Aleron gave him a dirty look over his shoulder, and Hart knew he'd guessed right. 'I have a canteen.'

         'Well give me that.'

         'No. It must be conserved for eventualities.'

Hart sighed loudly, but his companion ignored it. No bandits out, at least, he thought, on the sensible assumption that no travelers would be either. Now Aleron was shining the narrow beam to the left of the road, as if looking for something. By what light survived beyond the road, they could make out the swaying ghosts of bull rushes. Hart knew the land to the north of the dike was open, mostly marshy but dry enough this time of year to pick through if you knew it. They didn't, of course. To the south was farmland, the country having been mostly reclaimed since the troubles, but the area they were trudging through would be a lake a month from now, thick with migratory birds.

There were a great many little gods and old powers that rejoiced in the rain, and a number of ancient festivals turning on the seasons that gave the Swamplanders entirely too much excuse for pagan relapse. The priests did what they could to stamp their imprimatur on the modern era, but the old ways didn't go easy.

Occasionally way stones, white-washed on their roadward side, could be seen. These were a common method of marking side paths, since so many of the ways in the region's were little more than hunter's tracks that changed with the flood. Aleron seemed to be marking them and, after a half hour walking, he turned from the rutted top of the dike and descended the shallow embankment on the north, into the skulks. There was a couple of planks laid here across a soggy patch, and beyond, a narrow path trodden down through the reeds receded into darkness. Apparently the road to hell wasn't paved at all.

Hart didn't like the look of it, but kept quiet as they tromped across the boards. Immediately, the tall growth closed in on them. Forced into single file, Aleron's shape became a silhouette against slightly lighter darkness, the delicate details of the vegetation flickering into the lantern's faint beam as they pressed past, leavened here and there by a fluttering night insect. Hart's light-starved eyes began to read little motes and flickers of weird phosphorescence about the margins of his vision, which he soon realized were fireflies, weak, on the bare point of visibility, in the fading months of summer.

Passing side-paths, Aleron slowed and hesitated, wearing on Hart's temper. It seemed increasingly apparent to him that his companion didn't know where they was going. However, he knew that challenging Aleron on it would simply make him more determined to press ahead and prove himself right, and anyway, it was weak to complain. At least there was no sound of thunder yet. The alcohol's false brio was almost gone. His mouth was dry and he was increasingly worried about the direction they were headed. A night bird screeched from the darkness and he started nervously, there was a rattle of ptarmigan wings and a splash. There was standing water out there to their right somewhere - that wasn't good - and frog song was on the wind. He wondered if they were still going north. The path was not straight and there was no way to orientate themselves in the dark. He felt the beginnings of a headache and a strong desire to sit down and rest, although there was no shelter nor likely spot to do so. Occasionally wet mud and bog squelched underfoot, it was hard to tell if the land was drying or declining into wetter terrain, but they were forced to jump several puddles and skirt springs. Hart wondered if they'd even be able to correctly identify the path from its offshoots if they headed back and he wished he'd marked them.

What had precipitated this rash course of action on Aleron's part? Judging by his angry outburst earlier, It had to be something to do with Jaice. For the last three days, the relationship with their bodyguard had been deteriorating, as Aleron's desire to be respected and prickliness about his status clashed with Jaice's equal determination to corral them to the planned route.

Hart's mind wandered back over the previous days. Leaving Mithtoad and the cutting, they had made a semicircle eastward, through wilder country, where the long fields began to run up against the hedgerows that shielded the cultivation from boar and wild deer, moated by drainage ditches that flowed with smooth, dark water, overshadowed with leaning bluebell and willow. The plan was to travel cross-country, hunting as they went, to the manor of Master Mote Bonle, a relative of Aleron's father's old retainer, Fox-Eye Varm, where they would spend the night.

For reasons of security, none of their destinations were announced, even to their recipients. Jaice didn't want the prince's destinations known, in country he considered more than suitable for ambushes and populated by people he considered more than capable of carrying them out. Fox-Eye wasn't a complete idiot, however. Knowing his cousin wouldn't appreciate a surprise like this, a boy from the cotter's yard had been sent galloping ahead to warm him, but his attempt to inform the household had been taken as some form of unconvincing practical joke, and had only earned him a beating, as an incentive to develop greater verisimilitude in his lying. So when they clattered into the courtyard, in the evening of the nineteenth, with torches burning and dogs barking like a cacophony, they burst as unexpectedly upon Mote Bonle's household and his horrified wife as the Blurtachian Horde.

They'd shot nothing but were in good spirits anyway, with every hand at harvest, there was no one to serve as beaters and the season was wrong for bigger game. The heat was holding, and the day was still glowing in the earth as the night came in, breathless and wanting rain. Their arrival, however unexpected to their hosts, had not gone unnoticed by the district. This was mostly due to Fox-Eye's youthful emissary, who, aggrieved at his treatment, had gone to a local public house and loudly complained, to anyone who'd listen, that the princes was a'coming and nothing would be ready, because nobody would listen to him and also that when Master Bonle found out certain people would get their heads chopped off and it would serve them right.

The windows and doors of Bonle's house were thrown open, as locals, high and low, streamed in, drawn by the sudden social gravity exerted in royalty's presence. Growing rapidly out of the control of the Master's panicked wife, the party developed a life of its own, as the manor glowed like a burning citadel, torchlight leaping from every door and window.

Hart's impressions soon bled together, faces gleamed with sweat, thick-armed labourers toasting 'is 'ighness from the lawn, someone slurringly telling him that it all put him in mind of the old days (without further elaboration), of drinking and eating pheasant the farmhands had shot out of the rows the day before. People sang and bruised each other's shoulders in greeting, making alcohol-enthused plans to go hunting the next day that would curdle in grey-morning headaches. Someone tumbled down the wide stairs, to general laughter, out in the great hall, something expensive-sounding crashed to the floor. From the windows, he saw figures hauling each other out into the darkened hedges and fields. Everyone's fucking, he thought, weirdly, seeming to feel the sexual energy flying up from the country like sparks from a bonfire. 'Don't worry, darling boy' laughed one of Mote's relatives, a tremendous woman in a pleated dress that made her look like an upholsterer's clearance sale, 'you'll find them in the pews tomorrow.' It had occurred to Hart that they'd been drinking, pretty much constantly now, for three days. On the tail of that revelation, it occurred to him that he hadn't seen Aleron lift a cup at all. Was that even possible? Aleron didn't drink heavily in any case, and less when he was ill at ease. Hart was the opposite.

Aleron had been increasingly restlessness to get out of settled country. He chafed at the shallow arch of their circuit, wanting to strike deeper. Now, as the morning after the party dawned and Mote laboured, under his crushing hangover, to assemble enough of his family and followers to see the princes off in appropriate style, Aleron suddenly announced a change in plan. He wanted to hunt along the river, camping instead of lodging, and get to Minnow Fett by the morning of the seventeenth instead of the afternoon of the sixteenth, still in time for the wedding. To get to the river, they would have to cross the Seven Gods Dike, and enter the fens country, the fiefdoms of the Wettling's, the king's northern kinsmen and allies. That, more than anywhere, was where Aleron wanted to go, to stand on the edge of his father's country, in silence, beyond the hot faces, the cheers and the crowds, the grasping hands of well-wishers. He decided to cancel plans to travel the shorter southern road to Redriver and the wedding and strike out further north, taking the long road around in grand procession, as his father had done in the old days, coming to Minnow Fett by fanfare to the north, like a grand monarch of the old country.

However, the idea did not sit well with their escort, which had been resisting the northern lean to their passage anyway, and now became adamant. Past the dikes the going got harder. The overgrowth hemmed in the roads, making them ideal for bandits, or else they degenerated into half-bog that tired the horses and threatened a broken leg in every hollow. And there were reasons, other than the practical, for the captain to resist. Jaice had a southerner's antipathy for the land over the river that was almost superstitious. They would be camping in the open, he pointed out, and what if the weather broke and the water came up and they became stranded?

Exhausting his powers of persuasion (something that never took long), Aleron resorted to simply ordering Jaice to do what he was told. However, the captain hadn't been selected as their nursemaid because he was easily pushed around by the overbearing spawn of the aristocracy. He soon made it clear that he could make things difficult, while keeping short of outright mutiny. Men sent to retrieve horses didn't return, and the man sent to find him didn't either, until half the morning had worn away, and then two saddles had been lost and one sent to repair. The soldiers loitered, and fumbled about their instructions without giving any overt sign of insolence that Aleron could call them on.

When they finally did get underway, Jaice went slow, insisting on constantly riding ahead and scouting the road for 'miscreant elements' while he forced his charges to wait. At one point he spotted a dog he thought looked rabid and they had to halt again while his men chivvied it off with stones.

Aleron became increasingly frustrated by this obstruction, but was unsure how to combat it, a boy asserting authority over men that they knew, ultimately, he couldn't enforce. One, especially, began to work on their nerves, the large, swart-eyed retainer nicknamed Bourogg, who Hart had never seen before but who seemed to have some sort of unspoken status. He received each of Aleron's increasingly testy demands with smirking pretend-obsequience, from which the others began to take license. After a weary day of this tug-of-war, Aleron conceded to a compromise itinerary. With the last of the harvest coming in and the weather about to break, they'd turn east and make a straight run along the crowded road to Gallows Fett. Then hook down and around to the south, along the Seven Gods to Minnow Fett, skipping Boll Gort's public house, in which they'd originally planned to lodge, as the king often had in the old days of his grand touring, before trying the ford, then crossing the river two days before the wedding.

Aleron, however, had made the concession without humour, and retaliation was not long in coming. In an act of mean-spirited genius, he hailed a wagon train, rolling towards Gallows, and commissioned them to take them and their small entourage of locals, overnight, to the settlement. As an excuse for this, he pointed to the loss of time occasioned by recent delays (the unfortunate circumstances of which he magnanimously declined to blame on any one individual), necessitated an overnight journey. Any objections of the overawed wagoners were overruled by the gold Aleron grandly dumped into their hands, probably representing a month's wages for each of them, and half the coin he and Hart had been foolishly supplied with by the exchequer.

Obstruction was now impossible. Jaice and his men had no choice but to follow the wagons throughout the night, cursing the rutted tracks, walking their tired horses, knowing there would be no rest in the day to follow. Once they were under way, Aleron lost his customary moodiness and became the life of the party. One of their companions had a guitar and a good voice, and regaled the group with many popular local songs, Aleron, uncharacteristically, leading a chorus or two himself, to make sure that that their sullen escort could hear it. It had seemed, to Hart, not the best idea to deliberately exhaust and alienate men tasked with protecting their lives, but he knew it would be pointless to bring it up. They drank, ate and took their ease, until they were rocked to sleep on the high hay of the swaying wagons.

But they'd run into the end of the harvest at Gallows, and the town was bursting. Despite pushing along the Seven Gods, they'd lost too much time, and, when the darkening road caught them, still miles from the ford, they'd turned back towards the beacon, deciding to spend the night at the king's old watering hole after all, rather than chance the ford in the darkness.

Hart and Aleron pressed on. The ground began to unexpectedly dry and rise. The path became clearer, the reeds gave way to boughs of spinney thicket and bramble, and twigs and leaf-litter snapped under their boots instead of mud-squelch. This was encouraging. They saw way stones again, irregular and infrequent, but indicating that somebody thought enough of this track to mark it. Aleron seemed to gain confidence and Hart felt some of his foreboding ease.

Aleron spoke, for the first time since they had left the road. 'Alright,' he said, 'be on the lookout for the lights.'

         'Huh?'

         'I told you, the quicksand crossing is marked by way torches at night. You go one to the next and you cannot wander off the path. We should be able to see them before we- shit!' he pulled up so abruptly that his companion bumped into him, painfully jamming his nose. For a moment, Hart saw little lights again, and not fireflies. Cursing under his breath, he pushed around to see what had brought their progress up short.

The path had ended. At their feet was quiet, quick-moving water. Glitters and swirls on its inky surface extended, to some extent, into the darkness, but the farther side could not be seen. They could hear the sound of current and the gurgles and clucks of water in conversation with itself.

         'This is the river!' said Hart, rubbing his nose.

         'It can't be. We turned north off the dike.'

         'How do you know where we turned, in the darkness?'

         'We turned north. It's a canal or a tributary or something.'

         'Fine. It's a tributary. It's across our path and it's not supposed to be. So we went the wrong way.'

         'Fifth track after the spinney, I counted.'

         'You could have missed fifty tracks in the darkness! You can barely see a thing with that damn lantern, as close as you've got it trimmed. Who do you think is after us?'

         'Keep you voice down!'

         'Why? And why are we sneaking about?'

         'That's-'

         'I'm at least going to see how wide this thing is. Gimme the lantern.'

         'No!'

         'Aleron-'

Hart grabbed the lantern ring, Aleron immediately seized it with both hands and hauled back.

         'You're going to drop it!'

         'You are!'

They tussled dangerously on the edge of the dark water, Aleron grunted as he was swung hard onto a tree bough, Hart's boot skidded on the wet bank and went into the water up to his shin.

         'Stopstopstop!' yelled Aleron and they halted, breathing heavily, both gripping the ring. Hart could feel cold water filling his boot, which did nothing for his temper.

         'All right,' said his companion, with the exaggerated reasonableness of one placating a hysteric, 'you can have the lantern if you calm down-'

         'I am calm!'

         '-Because, if you drop it, or break it, we are in trouble. Agreed?'

Hart glared, and Aleron seemed to take it for agreement.

         'All.. right, ' he said, 'Now, I'm going to let go. One, two-' Suddenly he kicked Hart hard in the leg, simultaneously giving the ring a vicious twist and breaking the other's grip.

         'Ha!' yelled Aleron in triumph, leaping backward and immediately tripping over a tree root. He tumbled helplessly into the water, with a yell and a splash, and they were plunged into utter darkness.

Hart had seconds to act while he was still orientated, in moments Aleron would be swept past him an unknown distance, and he was weighted by the backpack. Hart threw off the coat and jumped into the stream where he though Aleron must be, hoping his feet would hit the bottom. They didn't and he went deep, having to stroke powerfully to regain the surface again. Immediately he became aware of a deadly suction. His clothes, boots, the heavy sword at his belt, all were trying to drag his head underwater. It was not like swimming naked across the fens in the summer. The water wasn't deadly cold, but it was cold, and could be full of any number of hazards, weeds, logs or thickets of sunken tree branches. As for his boots, when he kicked down, the soles gave him almost no push, when he raised his legs again, the tops caught the water and nearly yanked him under.

         'Aleron!'

         'Don't panic!' yelled Aleron and Hart thought that was pretty rich. He was close, though. Hart struck out and his reaching arm found Aleron, struggling against the current and his own encumbrances. 'Take off- take off the back pack!' gasped Hart, nearly inhaling water.

         'No, we need it!'

He began to feel a deadly weight. He could almost hear old Clubfoot's voice, focus on the problem. This is real. This is happening to you. There's nobody to help. Get on top of this. This is how people drown. He reached down and drew his short infantryman's blade from its thigh sheath. He kicked to give himself a momentary boost from the water and shoved the sword along the back of Aleron's shoulders, inside the two loops of the backpack. He heard Aleron splutter, half-choking, and thought he must have cut him shallowly, even trying to keep the weapon flat to his body. The he jerked the razor-sharp edge upward and sliced off the backpack straps. The weight fell away and Aleron managed to exhale enough water to shout in protest.

         'Idiot!'

He felt Aleron wrench his wet jacket from his grip and seem to twist away, wait a minute, is he diving for the backpack? an instant later, Aleron's boot struck him in the stomach as he kicked downward. Hart fell backward and went under, his water-heavy clothing hauled him into the swirling undercurrent and for a horrifying moment he lost track of up or down in the darkness, unable to even see the bubbles trailing from his mouth to guess which way to kick for the surface. With the air half forced out of him and no way to get another breath, he felt the icy clutch of pure panic. He forced it out of his mind. Think. The sword! Its weight pointed down. He felt its heft, orientated himself and kicked up, stroking desperately with his free arm. He wasn't deep, his head broke clear and he sucked air.

         'Aleron!' he yelled as loud as he could. No answer but the wind and rushing water. A tree branch raked his face with its fingers, he sputtered and coughed. The water current caught the flat of the blade, he felt the handle twist out of his grasp and he lost it. Fuck it. The damn thing was trying to drown him anyway.

         'Aleron!' No answer. He got a sudden, vivid precognition of himself shivering under a tree until dawn, then picking his way downstream to discover under which log or willow root the current had tucked his friend's corpse. Try explaining that to the capitol. He might as well turn north and keep going. Then he heard a splash and a gasp.

         'Here!' came a voice, Hart struggled towards it.

         'Keep shouting!'

         'Here!' Closer now. He heard the noise of Aleron's body in the water and his hands grabbed wet fabric.

         'Which way is the bank?' panted Aleron.

         'I don't- argh!' Tree branches, a thousand jabbing, scratching fingers, struck them both in the face, a timely reminder that they were in no genteel swimming pool but a swift-moving channel choked with fallen trees and detritus. The current dived around the obstruction, dragging at their feet, Hart flailed out wildly, one hand gripping Aleron's jacket the other seizing a branch. He felt himself take up the water resistance, not only for himself but for his companion. The rough greenwood shredded through his grip, ripping his palm. He clenched it harder, desperate not to come off its end and continue their uncontrolled downstream course. Suddenly he could feel the water's force. The current threw a bow wave up the side of his face that nearly choked him, and he couldn't shift his head enough to get entirely clear. How fast have we been moving? And how far had they gone, even in this short time? He felt the strain in his shoulder and along his arm, the desperate pressure of his clenched grip, no more than a few inches from the end of the slippery branch. 'Grap-!' he gasped, 'grap the-', but Aleron was already on it. Hart felt the branch sway as the weight of a second person came on, and he felt the pressure relieve. He let go of the jacket and got both hands on a better purchase, lifting his head clear of the water.

Reaching into the limbs for a thicker stem meant you got a face full of twiglets. Holding further out, it became too difficult to grip and there was a chance the thinner branches would break of in your hands. Nevertheless, it became easier as they got about the obstruction and out of the main current. What they had grabbed hold of was almost certainly a fallen tree, its dead canopy dense enough to block some of the channel's force.

         'I'm touching bottom!' yelled Aleron.

         'Thank you, ye blessed gods of wood and air.'

         'Some.. monotheist you are,' panted the other.

Hart felt Aleron grab the cloth of his own jacket and was pulled around the last of the branches. He felt his boot reach solidity. Slipping and scrambling through mud, they escaped the water and hauled up, exhausted, onto higher ground. They were soaked, shivering and gasping for breath but, as they lay in blessed stillness, they felt the deadly lethargy ease from their limbs. Hart could feel foliage tickling his face, the lank grass of a channel bank probably. It was pitch black. They had no idea where they were.

         'Should have..' panted Aleron, 'kept... the backpack.'

Hart was too tired to argue. He felt around. Mud, tree roots and reeds, pretty much what you'd expect. 'Got to.. find some shelter,' he replied.

         'Had.. a tent.. in the backpack,' replied his companion and Hart suppressed an impulse to kick him, since he knew that Aleron probably didn't but there was no way Hart could prove that now. Once they were clear of this bank they would be in the wind again, soaked to the bone and freezing. He was already missing the shag coat, although he knew it would have drowned him. Wait, what side of the canal had they even come out on? Could they crawl back up and find it? No, they must have crossed, or else the current would have been pulling them right, not left, in respect to the shore, and he knew one thing- neither of them were returning to the water in darkness.

         'W-we better stay here,' he said, his teeth already chattering, 'c-can't get back into the wind.'

         'I can feel roots, replied Aleron, 'I-if we move along we can probably get to an overhang and get some shelter, or a hollow l-log or some-something.' He sounded like he was beginning to shiver too.

They groped along the bank, occasionally cursing as their feet slipped in the mud and they slid almost back into the water. All they could sense by touch were the unruly thickets of an untended canal embankment. They pulled their sleeves up over their hands to protect them from nettles and blackberry thorns but were unable to much protect their faces. Although the wind wasn't catching them fully, enough of it swept down the water to make them shiver uncontrollably, and they soon gave up trying to talk though their chattering teeth and concentrated on trapping what warmth they could to their bodies. Finally they found enough of an overhang in the bank, a shallow cave under tree roots dug out by flood water, to gain some meager shelter, and packed into it as tightly as they could. Aleron scythed a few armfuls of rushes, since he still had his sword, and they bundled them into a crude windbreak and settled to wait out the long hours until dawn.