Trek to Kraggen-Cor (23 page)

Later that night a drained Cotton wearily leaned his head against a pine tree trunk as he sat on a carpet of fallen needles and stared through the low, sheltering boughs at the fluttering fire under the nearby lean-to. The wind moaned aloft, and the snow thickly eddied and swirled down. Tired though he was, anxiety gnawed at Cotton's vitals, for all he could think of was, What if we're trapped here? What if we don't get to Dusk-Door on time? The twenty-fifth will come and go, and Mister Perry and the others will be trapped down in the Ruck pits.

Overhead, Waroo, the White Bear, raged and groaned and moaned and growled, and stalked about and clawed at the mountains and doubled his fury again.

CHAPTER 16 RIVER RIDE

Perry walked back into the campsite where the other members of the Squad were gathered. "Well, they've gone," he announced. "I stood and watched and could see them for three hours before the last waggon passed beyond my view on the flat prairie. Oh—I shall miss Cotton dearly, but we will meet again at the far door."

"Three hours?" questioned young Tobin Forgefire. "You watched them go away for all that time? Hmph! That was a long goodbye. In the caverns of Mineholt North—or in any Chakka cavern for that matter—goodbyes can last but a moment, for that is all it takes before the one who is leaving turns a corner or passes through a door and is lost to sight. On the other hand, hellos can last a goodly while, since those who are meeting can stand together and talk for as long as they wish. Hah! That is the way it should be: short goodbyes and long hellos."

Lord Kian looked up from the smooth bare ground in front of him. "Dwarves have the right idea when it comes to partings and meetings," he agreed. "You and I, Perry, can learn much from these Folk." Then Kian began scratching marks in the smooth earth with a short stick.

Perry watched for a while, puzzled, but just as he started to ask about it, Lord Kian called the Squad together. "When I was a lad in Dael," he began, smoothing over the loam, "often Rand and I would construct a raft out of tall, straight trees and float down the River Iron water to the Inner Sea and visit the city of Rhondor." A faraway look came into Kian's eyes. "There we would sell the raft for a silver penny or two, for Rhondor is a city of fire-clay tile built on the coastal plain along the shores of the great bay, and wood is always in short supply and welcomed by the townspeople. And Rand and I would take our coins and tour that city of merchants, where the market-stalls had items of wonder from Pellar and Hum and even faraway Hyree. Ah, but it was glorious, running from place to place, agonizing over what things of marvel to buy: pastries and strange fruit, trinkets and bangles and turtle-shell combs for Mother; curved knives and exotically feathered falcon hoods for Father; horns made of seashells; mysterious boxes—it was a place of endless fascination. After spending our money on the singled-out items, winnowed from the bedazzle, we would trek home to bestow the largess upon Mother and Father, and to think upon another raft."

Kian smiled in fond remembrance, but then sobered and drew with his stick in the smoothed earth. "This is the way of their construction," he said, and began outlining the procedure for building a raft, indicating that they would use white oak from the thick stand below the ford, where the trees grew tall and straight and had no limbs for more than half their length. The Dwarves listened intently, for though they were crafters all, they never before had constructed a raft.

The next morning, just after breakfast, using woodcutters' axes they had taken from one of the black waggons, Anval and Borin began felling the trees marked by Kian the day previous. The rest of the Squad trimmed and topped the fallen trees, then dragged the logs to a work site at the edge of the river. It took a full day of hard labor by each of the Seven to accomplish the task, and as dusk approached, Lord Kian called a halt to the work.

Wearily they returned to camp and ate a supper meal, then all bedded down except the guard. When Perry's turn at watch came, he made slow rounds and wondered if Cotton, too, was standing ward.

The following dawn, Perry groaned awake with sore arms, neck, back, and legs; hewing and hauling is hard labor, and once again the Warrow had called into play little-used muscles. The others smiled sympathetically at him and

shook their heads in commiseration as he groaningly stumped toward the fire. Aching, he hunkered down next to the warmth and moved as little as possible to avoid additional twinges while he took his breakfast.

Over the course of the day, however, Perry worked out the soreness as under Kian's directions the Seven toiled to construct the bed of the raft from the felled trees: Perry was sent to fetch rope while the other six comrades hoisted up the long straight timbers and laid them side by side upon two, shorter, crossways logs. And as the wee buccan struggled to drag each of the large coils of thick line to the work site, Anval and Borin notched the logs so that a long, sturdy, young tree—trimmed of branches and cut to length by the other three—could be laid completely across the raft in a groove that went from log to log; three times they did this: at each end of the raft and across the center. At each end, Barak and Delk bound the logs to one another with the heavy rope; and as the two went they lashed each of the three cross-members to each long raft log in turn. In the meantime, Kian, Anval, and Borin used augers to drill holes through the cross-members and through the raft logs below, while Perry helped fashion wooden pegs that he and Tobin then drove with mallets into the auger-holes to pin the structure together. This work took all of the second day to complete, and again the Squad wearily retired to the campsite.

The next morning dawned dull and overcast, and there was a chill wind blowing from the mountains. A rain of leaves whirled down, covering the woodland floor with a brown, crackling carpet. Glumly the Seven huddled around the campfire and breakfasted, each keeping an eye to the bleak sky for sign of cold rain.

That day began with the Squad constructing a platform in the center of the raft as a place to stow the supplies away from the water plashing upward, and they fashioned a simple lean-to as part of the platform in case of rain. To pole the raft, they cut and trimmed long saplings. Then they made two sculling sweeps, and crafted oarlocks, placing them at each end of the raft, fore and aft; the sweeps would be used to position the craft in the river current. Kian took time to instruct the others in the plying of these oars, as well as the poles.

Lord Kian and Perry went searching for boughs for the roof of the lean-to. Spying the color of evergreen through partially barren branches of the fall woodland, they climbed up a slope and emerged at last from the shelter of the trees to find themselves upon a clear knoll near a small stand of red pine. On the exposed hillock the chill wind from the mountains blew stronger, cutting sharply through their clothes. Lord Kian drew his cloak closely around himself and stared long over the forest and beyond the open grassland at the faraway peaks, the crests of which were shrouded by roiling white

clouds under the higher overcast. 'The White Bear stalks the mountains," he observed.

"Bear?" asked Perry, who had been half listening. "Did you just say something about a bear?"

"It is just an old tale told to children in Riamon," answered Kian, "about a white bear that brings cold wind and snow to the mountains."

"We have a legend like that in the Bosky," responded Perry, "except it isn't a bear, but a great white Wolf instead. The Wolf only comes with dire storms though, for that is the only time you can hear him howling outside the homes. The story may have come from the time of the Winter War, two hundred thirty-odd years ago—though as for me, I believe the tale is older than that. During the War, however, white Wolves came down from the north and pushed through the Spindlethorn Barrier and into the Boskydells. It was touch and go for many families, but the Gammer and others organized Wolf patrols—they went with bows and arrows and hunted the creatures, and finally the Wolves came to fear the sight of Warrows.

"But what about the bear? Does he, too, signal fierce weather? In the mountains? Oh, I hope the Army is down out of the high country." And thereafter Perry took to glancing often toward the mountains far to the west; he looked in that direction even after he and Kian returned to the raft site and the forest trees blocked the view.

The Squad laid log rollers down the bank from the raft to the river to launch the float, and they tied ropes to the craft to pull it over the rollers. By the time they had completed this work, night was drawing upon the land, but at last the raft was finished. "Tomorrow will be soon enough to load the supplies and launch our 'ship,' " announced Kian. "We've done enough for today. Let's bed down." And so the Seven returned to camp.

That evening there began a cold, thin drizzle, and though they stayed under the campsite lean-tos, the night became miserable for the comrades, and they got little rest.

The icy rain continued, and the next morning, as the Seven huddled under the shelters, Kian surveyed the group: "How many here can swim? None? None other than myself?"

"That should not surprise you, Prince Kian," grunted Barak, "for though there is water aplenty under the Mountains—pools and streams, and even lakes and rivers—we Chakka have no desire to plunge into the black depths merely for pleasure. Swimming is a sport of clear water and warm sunshine and open air, or it is a necessity for those who ply boats, but it is not an activity of stone delvers."

Borin nodded in agreement with Barak's words, then added, "Among the Chakka in this company, I deem that only Anval and I have ever spent much time on water, using the skills you taught us, Prince Kian. as you well know.

to ply a boat on our journey to Pellar and back. Even so, we did not learn to swim."

Tobin lifted an eyebrow at Perry, and the Buccan responded: "As to War-rows, of the four strains, only the fen-dwelling Othen know much of boating and swimming—although some of the Siven strain, notably those living in Eastpoint, occasionally take up the sport. I was not one who did—as Lord Kian already knows."

"So be it," said the Man. "I was going to instruct you to leave off your mail, not only to take away its tiring burden, but also so that it would not weigh you down in the event you fall in. I think now not only will we forgo our armor, but also we will attach a safety line between each of us and the raft to haul us back aboard if we fall off.

"And now, since you have not ridden a raft before, remember, it is best if we do not all crowd together at times on one side or the other of the float, for it will tip; and although rafts seldom overturn—and do not sink as sometimes boats with heavy ballast or cargoes do—still it will be better if we keep the craft floating on the level." Kian stood. "Are there any questions?" he asked. "Then let us stow the cargo and armor and launch our raft, and be on our way."

They made several trips from the campsite to the float, loading their supplies and packs and armor onto the platform in the center of the craft, covering it all around with a waterproof canvas and lashing it in place. Finally, all was ready for the launching. Anval and Borin knocked the wedges from beneath the logs the raft was resting on, and with the other five pulling on the launching ropes, the massive craft slowly began rolling onto and over the hewed trunks laid down the bank; and the raft ponderously trundled down with gathering speed to enter the river with a great splash. It floated out, but was snubbed short by a mooring line cinched to a tree, and cum-brously it swung in the current back to the shore.

Lord Kian and Anval carried the two sweeps to the craft and set them in the oarlocks while the others took the raft poles aboard. Soon the Dwarves and Warrow had secured safety lines around their waists and were pronounced ready. With a last look around, Lord Kian untied the mooring line from the tree and ran down the bank and jumped aboard. Borin and Tobin and Delk poled away from shore, then Kian and Anval used the sweeps to pull the float into the swift current in midriver. Perry watched the shore slide by and knew that they were on their way at last.

The icy rain continued, and the raft riders sat on the supply tarpaulin, huddling under the on-board shelter, as the craft floated through the drizzle. Occasionally, two would use the sweeps to correct the raft's position in the current, but for the most part the oars were shipped aboard out of the water. The Squad travelled thusly all day, with little change except occasionally one or another would stand and stretch his legs.

The river continued to flow between bordering woods. In places, the trees were thickset but slender; at other places, old huge trees, set far apart, marched away to either side for as far as the eye could see; still elsewhere, the margins seemed to be nothing but dense thicketry. Most of the foliage had turned brown, and at times sudden gusts of wind caused the forest to shower down swirling, wet leaves; here and there all that was left behind were stark, barren branches clawing up toward the leaden skies. The Squad saw little animal life on the land, and only a few birds, mostly Ravens.

That first day, the Seven floated for just over eight hours and covered nearly fifty miles, coming south from the ford to a point five miles above Great Isle. There they used the sweeps and poles to land on the west bank, where they tied up for the night.

Early the next day. ere dawn, the drizzle stopped and the wind died, and by midmorning the overcast was riven by great swaths of blue sky slashing overhead, and later on there were towering white clouds aloft, serenely moving to the east.

That day the raft drifted past Great Isle with its steep rocky banks and large gnarled trees of ancient age. The island was nearly twelve miles long, and it took two hours for the craft to float its length. At its northern end in, ancient days there had been a fortress where guardians of the river dwelled. But they had been corrupted by the Evil One, and had begun marauding and harassing river trade, plundering merchants and pirating cargoes. Finally, the woodsmen of the Argon vales banded together to destroy the looters and lay the fortress to such great waste that nothing remains of it to this day—not even its name is remembered. Past this island the float drifted down the western side to come at last to the southern end, where the cloven river came together again.