The Valley Of Horses

6

Jondalar rubbed the stubble on his chin and reached for his pack that was propped against a stunted pine. He withdrew a small packet of soft leather, untied the cords and opened the folds, and carefully examined a thin flint blade. It had a slight curvature along its length – all blades cleaved from flint were bowed a little, it was a characteristic of the stone – but the edge was even and sharp. The blade was one of several especially fine tools he had put aside.

A sudden wind rattled the dry limbs of the lichen-scabbed old pine. The gust whipped the tent flap open, billowed through, straining the guy lines and tugging at the stakes, and slapped it shut again. Jondalar looked at the blade, then shook his head and wrapped it up again.

"Time to let the beard grow?" Thonolan said.

Jondalar hadn't noticed his brother's approach. "One thing about a beard," he said. "In summer it may be a bother. Itches when you sweat – more comfortable to shave it off. But it sure helps keep your face warm in winter, and winter is coming."

Thonolan blew on his hands, rubbing them, then squatted down by the small fire in front of the tent and held them over the flames. "I miss the color," he said.

"The color?"

"Red. There's no red. A bush here and there, but everything else just turned yellow and then brown. Grass, leaves." He nodded in the general direction of the open grassland behind him, then looked toward Jondalar standing near the tree. "Even the pines look drab. There's ice on puddles and the edges of streams already, and I'm still waiting for fall."

"Don't wait too long," Jondalar said, moving over and hunkering down in front of the fire opposite his brother. "I saw a rhino earlier this morning. Going north."

"I thought it smelled like snow."

"Won't be much yet, not if rhinos and mammoths axe still around. They like it cold, but they don't like much snow. They always seem to know when a big storm is coming and head back toward the glacier in a hurry. People say, 'Never go forth when mammoths go north.' It's true for rhinos, too, but this one wasn't hurrying."

"I've seen whole hunting parties turn back without throwing a single spear, just because the woollies were moving north. I wonder how much it snows around here?"

"The summer was dry. If the winter is too, mammoths and rhinos may stay all season. But we're farther south now, and that usually means more snow. If there are people in those mountains to the east, they should know. Maybe we should have stayed with the people who rafted us across the river. We need a place to stay for the winter, and soon."

"I wouldn't mind a nice friendly cave full of beautiful women right now," Thonolan said with a grin.

"I'd settle for a nice friendly Cave."

"Big Brother, you wouldn't want to spend a winter without women any more than I would."

The bigger man smiled. "Well, the winter would be a lot colder without a woman, beautiful or not."

Thonolan looked at his brother speculatively. "I've often wondered about that," be said.

"What?"

"Sometimes there's a real beauty with half the men trying for her, but she looks only at you. I know you aren't stupid; you know it – yet you pass her by and go pick out some little mouse sitting in a corner. Why?"

"I don't know. Sometimes the 'mouse' just thinks she's not beautiful, because she has a mole on her cheek or thinks her nose is too long. When you talk to her, there's often more to her than the one everybody is after. Sometimes women who aren't perfect are more interesting; they've done more, or learned something."

"Maybe you're right. Some of those shy ones blossom out, after you've paid attention to them."

Jondalar shrugged and stood up. "We're not going to find women, or a Cave, this way. Let's break camp."

"Right!" Thonolan said eagerly, then turned his back to the fire – and froze! "Jondalar!" he gasped, then strained to sound casual. "Don't do anything to attract his attention, but if you look over the tent, you'll see your friend from this morning, or one just like him."

Jondalar peered over the top of the tent. Just on the other side, swaying from side to side as he shifted his massive tonnage from one foot to the other, was a huge, double-horned, woolly rhinoceros. With his head turned to the side, he was eying Thonolan. He was nearly blind directly ahead; his small eyes were set far back and his vision was poor to begin with. Acute hearing and a sharp sense of smell more than made up for his eyesight.

He was obviously a creature of the cold. He had two coats, a soft undercoat of thick downy fur and a shaggy outer one of reddish brown hair, and beneath his tough hide was a three-inch layer of fat. He carried his head low, downward from his shoulders, and his long front horn sloped forward at an angle that barely cleared the ground as he swayed. He used it for sweeping snow away from pastorage – if it wasn't too deep. And his short thick legs were easily mired in deep snow. He visited the grasslands of the south only briefly – to graze on their richer harvest and store additional fat – in late fall and early winter after it became cold enough for him, but before the heavy snows. He could not stand heat, with his heavy coats, any more than he could survive in deep snow. His home was the bitter-cold, crackling dry tundra and steppes near the glacier.

The long, tapering, anterior horn could be put to a far more dangerous use than sweeping snow, however, and there was nothing between the rhino and Thonolan but a short distance.

"Don't move!" Jondalar hissed. He ducked down behind the tent and reached for his pack with the spears.

"Those light spears won't do much good," Thonolan said, though his back was toward him. The comment stayed Jondalar's hand for a moment; he wondered how Thonolan knew. "You'd have to hit him in a vulnerable place like an eye, and that's too small a target. You need a heavy lance for rhino," Thonolan continued, and his brother realized he was guessing.

"Don't talk so much, you'll draw his attention," Jondalar cautioned. "I may not have a lance, but you don't have a weapon at all. I'm going around the back of the tent and try for him."

"Wait, Jondalar! Don't! You'll just make him angry with that spear; you won't even hurt him. Remember when we were boys, how we used to bait rhinos? Someone would run, get the rhino chasing him, then dodge away while someone else got his attention. Keep him running until he was too tired to move. You get ready to draw his attention – I'm going to run and try to make him charge."

"No! Thonolan," Jondalar yelled, but it was too late. Thonolan was sprinting.

It was always impossible to outguess the unpredictable beast. Rather than charging after the man, the rhino made a rush for the tent billowing in the wind. He rammed it, gouged a hole in it, snapped thongs and got snared in them. When be disentangled himself, he decided he didn't like the men or their camp and left, trotting off harmlessly. Thonolan, glancing over his shoulder; noticed the rhino was gone and came loping back.

"That was stupid!" Jondalar yelled, slamming his spear into the ground with a force that broke the wooden shaft just below the bone point. "Were you trying to get yourself killed? Great Doni, Thonolan! Two people can't bait a rhino. You have to surround him. What if he had gone after you? What in Great Mother's underworld am I supposed to do if you get hurt?"

Surprise, then anger flashed across Thonolan's face. Then he broke into a grin. "You were really worried about me! Yell all you want, you can't bluff me. Maybe I shouldn't have tried it, but I wasn't going to let you make some stupid move, like going for a rhino with such a light spear. What in Great Mother's underworld am I supposed to do if you get hurt?" His smile grew, and his eyes lit up with the delight of a small boy who had succeeded in pulling off a trick. "Besides, he didn't come after me."

Jondalar looked blank in the face of his brother's grin. His outburst had been more relief than anger, but it took him a while to grasp that Thonolan was safe.

"You were lucky. I guess we both were," he said, expelling a long breath. "But we'd better make a couple of lances, even if we just sharpen points for now."

"I haven't seen any yew, but we can watch for ash or alder on the way," Thonolan remarked as he began to take down the tent. "They should work."

"Anything will work, even willow. We should make them before we go."

"Jondalar, let's get away from this place. We need to reach those mountains, don't we?"

"I don't like traveling without lances, not with rhinos around."

"We can stop early. We need to fix the tent anyway. If we go, we can look for some good wood, find a better place to camp. That rhino might come back."

"And he might follow us, too." Thonolan was always eager to start in the morning, and restless about delays, Jondalar knew. "Maybe we should try to reach those mountains. All right, Thonolan, but we stop early, right?"

"Right, Big Brother."

The two brothers strode along the edge of the river at a steady, ground-covering pace, long since adjusted to each other's step and comfortable with each other's silences. They had grown closer, talked out each other's heart and mind, tested each other's strengths and weaknesses. Each assumed certain tasks by habit, and each depended on the other when danger threatened. They were young and strong and healthy, and unselfconsciously confident that they could face whatever lay ahead.

They were so attuned to their environment that perception was on a subliminal level. Any disturbance that posed a threat would have found them instantly on guard. But they were only vaguely aware of the warmth of the distant sun, challenged by the cold wind soughing through leafless limbs; black-bottomed clouds embracing the white-walled breastworks of the mountains before them; and the deep, swift river.

The mountain ranges of the massive continent shaped the course of the Great Mother River. She rose out of the highland north of one glacier-covered range and flowed east. Beyond the first chain of mountains was a level plain – in an earlier age the basin of an inland sea – and, farther east, a second range curved around in a great arc. Where the eastern-most alpine foreland of the first range met the flysch foothills at the northwestern end of the second, the river broke through a rocky barrier and turned abruptly south.

After dropping down karst highlands, she meandered across grassy steppes, winding into oxbows, breaking into separate channels and rejoining again as she wove her way south. The sluggish, braided river, flowing through flat land, gave the illusion of changelessness. It was only an illusion. By the time the Great Mother River reached the uplands at the southern end of the plain that swung her east again and gathered her channels together, she had received into herself the waters of the northern and eastern face of the first, massive, ice-mantled range.

The great swollen Mother swept out a depression as she curled east in a broad curve toward the southern end of the second chain of peaks. The two men had been following her left bank, crossing the occasional channels and streams still rushing to meet her as they came to them. Across the river to the south the land rose in steep craggy leaps; on their side rolling hills climbed more gradually from the river's edge.

"I don't think we'll find the end of Donau before winter,"

Jondalar remarked. "I'm beginning to wonder if there is one."

"There's an end, and I think we'll find it soon. Look how big she is." Thonolan waved an expansive arm toward the right "Who would have thought she'd get that big? We have to be near the end."

"But we haven't reached the Sister yet, at least I don't think we have. Tamen said she is as big as the Mother."

"That must be one of those stories that get bigger with the telling. You don't really believe there's another river like that flowing south along this plain?"

"Well, Tamen didn't say he'd seen it himself, but he was right about the Mother turning east again, and about the people who took us across her main channel. He could be right about the Sister. I wish we'd known the language of that Cave with the rafts; they might have known about a tributary to the Mother as big as she is."

"You know how easy it is to exaggerate great wonders that are far away. I think Tamen's 'Sister' is just another channel of the Mother, farther east."

"I hope you're right, Little Brother. Because if there is a Sister, we're going to have to cross it before we reach those mountains. And I don't know where else we're likely to find a place to stay for the winter."

"I'll believe it when I see it."

A movement, apparently at odds with the natural way of things, which brought it to the level of consciousness, caught Jondalar's attention. By the sound, he identified the black cloud in the distance, moving with no regard for the prevailing wind, and he stopped to watch as the V-formation of honking geese approached. They swooped lower as a single entity, darkening the sky with their numbers, then broke up into individuals as they neared the ground with lowered feet and flapping wings, braking to a rest. The river swerved around the steep rise ahead.

"Big Brother," Thonolan said, grinning with excitement, "those geese wouldn't have set down if there wasn't a marsh up ahead. Maybe it's a lake or a sea, and I'll wager the Mother empties into it. I think we've reached the end of the river!"

"If we climb that hill, we should get a better view." Jondalar's tone was carefully neutral, but Thonolan had the impression his brother didn't quite believe him.

They climbed quickly, breathing hard when they reached the top, then caught their breath in amazement. They were high enough to see for a considerable distance. Beyond the turn the Mother widened, and her waters became choppy, and, as she approached a vast expanse of water, she rolled and spumed. The larger body of water was cloudy with mud churned up from the bottom, and filled with debris. Broken limbs, dead animals, whole trees bobbed and spun around, caught by conflicting currents.

They had not reached the end of the Mother. They had met the Sister.

High in the mountains in front of them, the Sister had begun as rivulets and streams. The streams became rivers that raced down rapids, spilled over cataracts, and coursed straight down the western face of the second great mountain range. With no lakes or reservoirs to check the flow, the tumultuous waters gained force and momentum until they gathered together on the plain. The only check to the turbulent Sister was the glutted Mother herself.

The tributary, nearly equal in size, surged into the mother stream, fighting the controlling influence of swift current. She backed up and surged again, throwing a tantrum of crosscurrents and undertows; temporary maelstroms that sucked floating debris in a perilous spin to the bottom and spewed it up a moment later downstream. The engorged confluence expanded into a hazardous lake too large to see across.

Fall flooding had peaked and a marshland of mud sprawled over the banks where the waters had recently receded, leaving a morass of devastation: upturned trees with roots reaching for the sky, waterlogged trunks and broken branches; carcasses and dying fish stranded in drying puddles. Water birds were feasting on the easy pickings; the near shore was alive with them. Nearby, a hyena was making short work of a stag, undisturbed by the flapping wings of black storks.

"Great Mother!" Thonolan breathed.

"It must be the Sister." Jondalar was too awed to ask his brother if he believed now.

"How are we going to get across?"

"I don't know. We'll have to go back upstream."

"How far? She's as big as the Mother."

Jondalar could only shake his head. His forehead knotted with concern. "We should have taken Tamen's advice. It could snow any day; we don't have time to backtrack very far. I don't want to be caught in the open when a big storm blows."

A sudden gust of wind caught Thonolan's hood and whisked it back, baring his head. He pulled it on again, closer to his face, and shivered. For the first time since they had set out, he had serious doubts about surviving the long winter ahead. "What do we do now, Jondalar?"

"We find a place to make camp." The taller brother scanned the area from their vantage point "Over there, just upstream, near that high bank with a stand of alder. There's a creek that joins the Sister – the water should be good."

"If we tie both backframes to one log, and attach a rope to both our waists, we could swim across and not get separated."

"I know you are hardy, Little Brother, but that's foolhardy. I'm not sure I could swim across, much less pulling a log with everything we have. That river is cold. Only the current keeps it from freezing – there was ice at the edge this morning. And what if we get tangled up in the branches of some tree? We'd get swept downstream, and maybe pulled under."

"Remember that Cave that lives close to the Great Water? They dig out the centers of big trees and use them to cross rivers. Maybe we could…"

"Find me a tree around here big enough," Jondalar said, flinging his arm at the grassy prairie, with only a few thin or stunted trees.

"Well… someone told me about another Cave that makes shells out of birchbark… but that seems so flimsy."

"I've seen them, but I don't know how they're made, or what kind of glue they use so they won't leak. And the birch trees in their region grow bigger than any I've seen around here."

Thonolan glanced around, trying to think of some other idea that his brother couldn't put down with his implacable logic. He noticed the stand of straight tall alders on the high knoll just to the south, and grinned. "How about a raft? All we'd have to do is tie a bunch of logs together, and there are more than enough alders on that bill."

"And one long enough, and strong enough to make a pole to reach the bottom of the river to guide it? Rafts are hard to control even on small shallow rivers."

Thonolan's confident grin crumpled, and Jondalar had to suppress a smile. Thonolan never could hide his feelings; Jondalar doubted that he ever tried. But it was his impetuous, candid nature that made him so likable.

"That's really not such a bad idea, though," Jondalar amended, noting the return of Thonolan's smile, "once we get upstream far enough so there's no danger of getting swept into that rough water. And find a place where the river widens and gets shallower, and not so fast, and where there are trees. I hope the weather holds."

Thonolan was as serious as his brother by the time the weather was mentioned. "Let's get moving then. The tent is fixed."

"I'm going to look over those alders first. We still need a couple of sturdy spears. We should have made them last night."

"Are you still worried about that rhino? He's well behind us now. We need to get started so we can find a place to cross."

"I'm going to cut a shaft, at least."

"You might as well cut one for me then. I'll start packing."

Jondalar picked up his axe and examined the edge, then nodded to himself and started up the hill toward the alder grove. He looked over the trees carefully and selected a tall straight sapling. He had chopped it down, stripped the branches, and was looking for one for Thonolan when he heard a commotion. There was snuffling, grunting. He heard his brother shout, and then a sound more terrifying than anything he had ever heard: a scream of pain in his brother's voice. The silence as his scream was cut short was even worse.

"Thonolan! Thonolan!"

Jondalar raced back down the bill, still clutching the alder shaft and clutched by cold fear. His heart pounded in his ears when he saw a huge woolly rhinoceros, as tall at the shoulders as he, pushing the limp form of a man along the ground. The animal didn't seem to know what to do with his victim now that he was down. From the depths of his fear and anger, Jondalar didn't think, he reacted.

Swinging the alder staff like a club, the older brother rushed the beast, careless of his own safety. One hard blow landed on the rhino's snout, just below the large curving horn, and then another. The rhino backed off, undecided in the face of a berserk man charging him and causing him pain. Jondalar prepared to swing again, pulled back the long shaft – but the animal turned. The powerful whack on his rump didn't hurt much, but it urged him on, with the tall man chasing after him.

When a swing of the alder shaft whistled through the air as the animal raced ahead, Jondalar stopped and watched the rhino go, catching his breath. Then he dropped the shaft and ran back to Thonolan. His brother was lying face down where the rhino had left him.

"Thonolan? Thonolan!" Jondalar rolled him over. There was a rip in Thonolan's leather trousers near the groin, and a bloodstain growing larger.

"Thonolan! Oh, Doni!" He put his ear to his brother's chest, listening for a heartbeat, and was afraid he only imagined hearing it until he saw him breathing.

"Oh, Doni, he's alive! But what am I going to do?" With a grunt of effort, Jondalar picked up the unconscious man and stood for a moment, cradling him in his arms.

"Doni, O Great Earth Mother! Don't take him yet. Let him live, O please…" His voice cracked and a huge sob welled up in his breast. "Mother… please… let him live…"

Jondalar bowed his head, sobbed into his brother's limp shoulder a moment, then carried him back to the tent. He laid him down gently on his sleeping roll, and, with his bone-handled knife, cut away the clothing. The only obvious wound was a raw, jagged rip of skin and muscle at the top of his left leg, but his chest was an angry red, the left side swelling and discoloring. A close examination by touch convinced Jondalar that several ribs were broken; probably there were internal injuries.

Blood was pumping out of the gash in Thonolan's leg, collecting on the sleeping roll. Jondalar rummaged through his pack, trying to find something to sop it up with. He grabbed his sleeveless summer tunic, wadded it up, and tried to wipe up the blood on the fur, but only succeeded in smearing it around. Then he laid the soft leather on the wound.

"Doni, Doni! I don't know what to do. I'm not a zelandoni." Jondalar sat back on his heels, pulled his hand through his hair, and left bloodstains on his face. "Willowbark! I'd better make willowbark tea."

He went out to heat some water. He didn't have to be a zelandoni to know about the painkilling properties of willowbark; everyone made willowbark if they had a headache, or some other minor pain. He didn't know if it was used for serious wounds, but he didn't know what else to do. He paced nervously around the fire, looking inside the tent with each circuit, waiting for the cold water to boil. He piled more wood on the fire and singed an edge of the wooden frame that supported the cooking hide full of water.

Why is it taking so long! Wait, I don't have the willowbark. I'd better get it before the water boils. He put his head inside the tent and stared at his brother for a long moment, then ran to the edge of the river. After peeling bark from a bare-leafed tree whose long thin branches trailed the water, he raced back.

He looked first to see if Thonolan had roused, and saw that his summer tunic was soaked with blood. Then he noticed the overfull cooking skin boiling over and putting out the fire. He didn't know what to do first – tend to the tea, or to his brother – and he looked back and forth from the fire to the tent to the fire. Finally he grabbed a drinking cup and scooped out some water, scalding his hand, then dropped the willowbark in the hide pot. He put a few more sticks on the fire, hoping they would catch. He searched through Thonolan's backframe, dumped it out in frustration, and picked up his brother's summer tunic to replace his bloody one.

As he started into the tent, Thonolan moaned. It was the first sound he had heard from his brother. He scrambled out to scoop up a bowl of the tea, noticed there was hardly any liquid left, and wondered if it was too strong. He ducked back into the tent with a cup of the hot liquid, looked frantically for a place to set it, and saw that more was soaked with blood than his summer tunic. It was pooling under Thonolan, discoloring the sleeping roll.

He's losing too much blood! O Mother! He needs a zelandoni. What am I going to do? He was becoming more agitated and fearful for his brother. He felt so helpless. I need to go for help. Where? Where can I find a zelandoni? I can't even get across the Sister, and I can't leave him. Some wolf or hyena will smell the blood and come after him.

Great Mother! Look at all the blood on that tunic! Some animal will smell it. Jondalar snatched the blood-soaked shirt and threw it out of the tent. No, that's not any better! He dove out of the tent, picked it up again, and looked wildly for some place to put it, away from the camp, away from his brother.

He was in shock, overcome with grief, and, in the depths of his heart, he knew there was no hope. His brother needed help that he could not give, and he could not go for help. Even if he knew where to go, he couldn't leave. It was senseless to think any bloody tunic would draw carnivorous animals any more than Thonolan himself would, with his open wound. But he didn't want to face the truth in his heart. He turned away from sense and gave in to panic.

He spied the stand of alder and, in an irrational moment, raced up the hill and stuffed the leather shirt high up in a crook of one of the trees. Then he ran back. He went into the tent and stared at Thonolan, as if by sheer effort of will he could make his brother sound and whole again, and smiling.

Almost as though Thonolan sensed the plea, he moaned, tossed his head, and opened his eyes. Jondalar kneeled closer and saw pain in his eyes, in spite of a weak smile.

"You were right, Big Brother. You usually are. We didn't leave that rhino behind."

"I don't want to be right, Thonolan. How do you feel?"

"Do you want an honest answer? I hurt. How bad is it?" he asked, trying to sit up. The halfhearted grin turned to a grimace of pain.

"Don't try to move. Here, I made some willowbark." Jondalar supported his brother's head and held the cup to his lips. Thonolan took a few sips, then lay back down with relief. A look of fear joined the pain in his eyes.

"Tell me straight, Jondalar. How bad is it?"

The tall man closed his eyes and drew a breath. "It's not good."

"I didn't think so, but how bad?" Thonolan's eyes fell on his brother's hands and opened wider with alarm. "There's blood all over your hands! Is it mine? I think you'd better tell me."

"I don't really know. You're gored in the groin, and you've lost a lot of blood. The rhino must have tossed you, too, or trampled you. I think you have a couple of broken ribs. I don't know what else. I'm not a zelandoni…

"But I need one, and the only chance of finding help is across that river we can't cross."

"That's about it.

"Help me up, Jondalar. I want to see how bad it is."

Jondalar started to object, then reluctantly gave in and was immediately sorry. The moment Thonolan tried to sit, he cried out in pain and lost consciousness again.

"Thonolan!" Jondalar cried. The bleeding had slowed, but his effort caused it to flow again. Jondalar folded his brother's summer tunic and put it over the wound, then left the tent. The fire was nearly out. Jondalar added fuel more carefully and built it up again, set more water to heat, and cut more wood.

He went back to check on his brother again. Thonolan's tunic was soaked with blood. He moved it aside to look at the wound, and he grimaced remembering how he had run up the hill to get rid of the other tunic. His initial panic was gone, and it seemed so foolish. The bleeding had stopped. He found another piece of clothing, a cold-weather undergarment, laid it over the wound, and covered Thonolan, then picked up the second bloody tunic and walked to the river. He threw it in, then bent to wash the blood off his hands, still feeling ridiculous over his panic.

He didn't know that panic was a survival trait, in extreme circumstances. When all else fails, and all rational means of finding a solution have been exhausted, panic takes over.

And sometimes an irrational act becomes a solution the rational mind would never have thought of.

He walked back, put a few more sticks of wood on the fire, then went to look for the alder staff, though it seemed pointless to be making a spear now. He just felt so useless, he needed to do something. He found it, then sat outside the tent, and with vicious strokes, began to shave one end.

The next day was a nightmare for Jondalar. The left side of Thonolan's body was tender to the lightest touch and deeply bruised. Jondalar had slept little. It had been a difficult night for Thonolan and every time he moaned, Jondalar got up. But all he could offer was willowbark tea, and that didn't help much. In the morning, he cooked some food and made broth, but neither man ate much. By evening, the wound was hot, and Thonolan was feverish.

Thonolan woke from a restless sleep to his brother's troubled blue eyes. The sun had just dipped below the rim of the earth, and though it was still light outside, in the tent it was harder to see. The dimness didn't keep Jondalar from noticing how glazed Thonolan's eyes were, and he had been moaning and mumbling in his sleep.

Jondalar tried to smile encouragingly. "How are you feeling?"

Thonolan hurt too much to smile, and Jondalar's worried look was not reassuring. "I don't feel much like hunting rhinos," he replied.

They were silent for a while, neither knowing what to say. Thonolan closed his eyes and sighed deeply. He was tired of fighting the pain. His chest hurt with every breath, and the deep ache in his left groin seemed to have spread to his whole body. If he had thought there was any hope, he would have endured it, but the longer they stayed, the less chance Jondalar would have of crossing the river before a storm. Just because he was going to die was no reason his brother had to die, too. He opened his eyes again.

"Jondalar, we both know without help there's no hope for me, but there's no reason you…"

"What do you mean, no hope? You're young, you're strong. You'll be all right."

"There's not enough time. We don't have a chance out here in the open. Jondalar, keep moving, find a place to stay, you…"

"You're delirious!"

"No, I…"

"You wouldn't be talking like that if you weren't. You worry about gaining your strength – let me worry about taking care of us. We're both going to make it. I've got a plan."

"What plan?"

"I'll tell you about it when I get all the details worked out. Do you want something to eat? You haven't eaten much."

Thonolan knew his brother wouldn't leave while he was alive. He was tired; he wanted to give up, let it end, and give Jondalar a chance. "I'm not hungry," he said, then saw the hurt in his brother's eyes. "I could use a drink of water, though."

Jondalar poured out the last of the water and held Thonolan's head while he drank. He shook the bag. "This is empty. I'll get some more."

He wanted an excuse to get out of the tent. Thonolan was giving up. Jondalar had been bluffing when he said he had a plan. He had given up hope – no wonder his brother thought it was hopeless. I have to find some way to get across that river and find help.

He walked up a slight rise that gave him a view upriver, over the trees, and stood watching a broken branch snagged by a jutting rock. He felt as trapped and helpless as that bare limb and, on impulse, walked to the water's edge and freed it from the restraining stone. He watched the current carry it downstream, wondering how far it would go before it was snared by something else. He noticed another willow, and he peeled more inner bark with his knife. Thonolan might have a bad night again, not that the tea did much good.

Finally he turned away from the Sister and went back to the small creek that added its tiny fraction to the rampaging river. He filled the waterbag and started back. He wasn't sure what made him look upstream – he couldn't have heard anything above the sound of the rushing torrent – but when he did, he stared in open-mouthed disbelief.

Something was approaching from upriver, heading straight for the bank where he stood. A monstrous water bird, with a long curved neck supporting a fierce crested head and large unblinking eyes, was coming toward him. He saw movement on the creature's back as it drew near, heads of other creatures. One of the smaller creatures waved.

"Ho-la!" a voice called out. Jondalar had never heard a more welcome sound.