“I don’t know.” His uncle grimaced. Glancing at him, Dani saw trails of blood winding through the foam that churned around his submerged chest.

“You’re injured!”

“A scratch.” Thulu pointed with his chin toward a bend in the river. “Here he comes. Kick with your legs, Dani! I don’t think he can swim. If we can swing wide left, maybe the current will carry us past him.”

There where the bend created a shallow apron of shoreline and the current slowed a fraction, the Fjel was fording the river, wading with dogged persistence to intercept their course. Water parted to surge around the mighty thews of its thighs, around its waist. The force of it would have swept anything else off its feet.

Not the Fjel.

Step by step, it continued its steady advance.

Dani kicked frantically, felt the float’s course shift. His uncle grunted, beating at the river with one arm. The trails of red in the foam surrounding him spread and widened. Almost …

Neck-deep in the river, the Fjel raised one dripping arm and reached out with a taloned hand to catch a branch of their float, halting its progress. It had to tilt its chin to keep its mouth clear of the river’s surface. It was close enough that Dani was staring into its slitted yellow eyes, mere inches away.

It said something in the Fjel tongue.

“Go away!” Dani kicked at it.

The Fjel grinned and said something else, reaching with its other hand for the clay flask that hung about his neck. Water surged all around them on every side. Its taloned hand closed around the flask …

… and dropped, sinking below the surface of the river as though it held a boulder in its grasp. The Fjel sank, its head vanishing beneath the river. Its grip was torn loose from the float, and the current restaked its claim. Dani choked, feeling the thong tighten around his neck and burn his skin; then that, too, eased as the Fjel let go.

The float rotated lazily as it cleared the bend, its passengers clinging for dear life. Behind them, a column of bubbles broke the surface. The big Fjel rose, dripping and staring after them.

Too late.

They had rounded the bend.

Struggling to stay afloat, Dani watched it until it was out of sight and wondered what the Fjel had said. And then the river’s course took a steep drop and it turned once more to a white-water torrent, and he obeyed his uncle’s desperate, shouted orders and clung to the float and thought of water and how to stay alive in it and nothing else, until the raging current flung them hard against a boulder.