Paul Thompson - Alliances

But she was gone. Alhana waded into the river, keeping to the path marked between the poles. When she reached the rear of the cart, she eased herself around it. The three Qualinesti were clinging to the trace poles, their frightened gazes scanning the river.

“Lady, take care! There’s an undertow!” cried one elf.

Here the surface of the river was free of lily pads and slow moving, but a swift current tugged at her legs, trying to pull her off balance. For the river crossing, she had donned Qualinesti-style leggings and she blessed the freedom of movement they allowed even as she shucked off her thigh-length tunic. Tossing it onto the cart, she shivered violently as the air hit her sodden underclothes.

The three Qualinesti urged her not to leave the anchor of the cart. “Obey Lady Kerianseray and Lord Samar,” she said and dove into the black water.

The current was much stronger than she had realized. It pulled the scarf from her hair and rolled her lengthwise, adding to the tremendous disorientation of swimming in the dark. She kicked hard. When her head broke the surface, she gulped a lungful of air. The cart was twenty yards upstream and receding fast. She could no longer touch bottom.

Turning to look downstream, she noticed a boulder in midstream. She dove again and moments later emerged near the rock. Clinging to its smooth side was Porthios.

The surface current here was much stronger, but a few rapid strokes brought Alhana to him.

“You always were a strong swimmer,” he stuttered, teeth chattering like dice rattling in a cup.

“Where’s Robethan?” she asked. He regarded her blankly. “One of the Qualinesti on the cart. He went in after you.”

“I’ve seen no one.” He had trouble getting the words out, so violently was he shaking.

“You’re chilled to the core. If you don’t get out of the water, you’ll die.”

She moved around him, putting her back to the current and letting it press her even closer to him. When he objected to being touched, she told him bluntly to be quiet. He needed the warmth.

They heard voices on shore, and Alhana called out. Porthios put his face to the boulder. His shivering had eased, but the extra warmth was not worth the terrible shame that welled in his heart. That Alhana should be risking death for him, that she should be touching, even through layers of soaked cloth, the awful horror that was his body. His neck bowed further, as though he could shut out the humiliation. Then Alhana began to speak.

It was a ridiculous place to pour out her feelings, Alhana knew. They were up to their necks in a swift and icy river, and she was staring at the back of his masked head, but she didn’t know whether either of them would survive to see dry land again, and she could not die without telling him what was in her heart. So she did.

She talked of their son, of the pain and loss she had endured. She described her life after learning of Porthios’s presumed death, how she had never given up the search, although she had begun to think all she would ever find were his remains.

“I prayed you would be alive,” she said, “so I could find you and tell you all these things. So I could tell you, just one last time, that I love you, husband.”

He said nothing. Alhana thought he was fading, but she felt no fear. The cold wasn’t so bad; she wasn’t even shivering anymore. In fact, the motion of the river against her body was pleasant, soothing. With a little sigh, she laid her head against his shoulder and allowed herself to relax.

Porthios jerked suddenly. One emaciated arm reached up the smooth stone. Fingers stretched. There seemed to be no handholds, yet somehow he found one. He willed his frozen legs to move and managed to wedge his toes in a cleft below the surface. Slowly, he hauled himself out of the water.

The current shoved Alhana against the boulder, shaking her out of her lethargy. She tried to emulate his actions, but could find no grip at all on the slippery boulder. He extended a hand to her. With amazing strength, Porthios drew his wife up from the stream.

“How did you do that?” she gasped.

Rather than move away, Porthios embraced her, and not only to help ease her shivering. “I will not die by water. Fire claimed me, and in fire I shall perish one day.”

She pushed sodden hair from her eyes and muttered, “No. You’re just too stubborn to die.”

Voices shouted from shore. Despite Porthios’s strictures against showing a light to their enemies, torches blazed on the riverbank. Porthios and Alhana called until their rescuers located them.

The elves formed a living chain from shore to boulder. Samar, at the boulder end, held out his arms to Alhana while the elf behind him gripped his belt to anchor him. Alhana took his hand and offered her own to Porthios. The chain retracted toward shore until all were at last back on dry land. Chathendor had blankets and wine waiting.

Porthios accepted the first but shunned the second. His first words on touching land again were, “I said no one was to light a fire until we’re out of Nalis Aren.”

“I ordered it,” said Kerian, emerging from the shadows with Hytanthas at her back. “If you don’t like it, you can go back in the river.”

“You’ll give us away to our enemies, or worse.”

“I’ve seen worse tonight.”

She told Porthios and all within earshot of the encounter with the undead elves, painting a graphic picture of the terrible price exacted on Grayden’s army.

“Gods’ mercy,” Chathendor breathed. “That’s not a fate I would have wished on anyone.”

Porthios would have argued further, but Kerian interrupted him. Fists on hips, she snapped, “Do the names Querinal, Robethan, Sanal, and Torith mean anything to you?” He shook his head. “They’re the elves who accompanied you into the river with the cart. They’re gone, all of them.”

One by one the four had left the cart, trying to save Porthios, Alhana, and each other. None had survived the fierce undertow.

Alhana pulled at Kerian’s arm, asking her to come away. Kerian didn’t budge. “A leader who does not value his followers’ lives is no fit leader,” she said severely. “He’s a gamester, moving people around like tokens on a game board!”

Samar finally succeeded where Alhana could not. After Porthios’s failure to cross the river, Samar had sent scouts up and down the river, looking for a likely ford. He interrupted the argument to report their findings. Two miles south was a natural bridge, bedrock thrust up into the stream bed. The downstream side was graced by a sixteen-foot waterfall, but the upstream side was passable, the water no more than a foot deep.

Relieved on many counts, Alhana ordered that they would leave at once for the natural bridge. Porthios did not contradict her.

Weary beyond measure, the caravan turned south to follow the river. Alhana and Chathendor led. Samar and the mounted guards fanned out along the shore, while those guards without mounts marched in slow step behind. Next were the Bianost elves, still drawing their carts and wagons by hand. Wounded elves and those too weak to keep up were draped atop the precious hoard of weapons.

Last to leave were Kerian and Hytanthas. The Lioness was staring out at the black water, so calm on the surface, so deadly just beneath. Querinal, Robethan, Sanal, and Torith—she repeated the names to herself like a prayer. Four of the many who would not live to see the end of the journey. If indeed any of them would.

The last of the creaking carts disappeared around a bend, and Hytanthas suggested they move along.

“It never changes,” she said.

Hytanthas didn’t ask what she meant. He understood perfectly.

The demarcation between the area influenced by Nalis Aren and the land beyond had not seemed so obvious on the way in. The oppressive atmosphere had come up on the elves gradually. On the way out, the shift was abundantly clear. The predominant color of the landscape quickly changed from black to green, and the exhausted elves began to walk faster. Those on foot dropped weapons and walking sticks, packs and bindles, pushed past the guards on horseback, and broke into a run. The elves drawing carts and wagons let go the traces and joined the celebration.