The Named: The Complete Series

Chapter Ten

Ratha tried to bury the feelings that Thakur had raised by indulging in something she had wanted to do ever since the section of wall had fallen into the river and transformed itself into a raft. The following day she turned over the seamare-watching duties to other herders and went off by herself with Ratharee on her shoulder.

Again she gathered sticks, bark, and brush. The task was easier this time, for she didn’t need to use thorn-wood. Ratharee was eager to show her skills once again, and soon the two were well launched on their project.

At the end of the day, Ratha hid her materials and the beginnings of her raft and returned to her clan-leader duties. But things seemed well enough settled that she could afford some time to herself, and she took advantage of the lull.

The following afternoon, Ratha crouched with her head bent over Ratharee’s back as the treeling wove the sticks and brush together with twisted bark cord. The raft was half-finished when she caught the scent of seamare mixed with that of the clan’s herding teacher.

She stood up as Thakur came forward with Aree on his back. Half-embarrassed, half-proud, she showed him what she and Ratharee had made. She couldn’t help a backward flick of her ears and hoped he wasn’t going to question her again about her lost cubs.

He said nothing about them. Instead, he circled the half-built raft, eying it judiciously.

“You might try adding some bundles of dry reeds near the water,” he suggested, and offered to go collect them. Ratha, suspecting that the offer was an apology of sorts for upsetting her, readily agreed, and after that the two spent all the time they could spare at the task. Sometimes, Ratha noticed, Thakur didn’t come, or he would arrive late from an unexpected direction, reeking of seamare. Not wanting to ask or answer any questions, she made him work downwind of her until finally the raft was finished.

Triumphantly she dragged it from the construction site to the brackish estuary. With Thakur and the treelings helping, she got the raft floating. As he steadied it, with Aree riding nervously on his shoulder just above the waterline, Ratha and her treeling clambered aboard.

The craft floated, but it rocked alarmingly, and she found herself shifting her feet continually to keep from tipping. When Thakur released the raft, it did tip, spilling both her and Ratharee off into the shallow water.

“It’s too narrow,” she said mournfully, after enduring an excited scolding from Ratharee. She licked herself and the treeling, trying to press the water from both soggy coats.

Widening the raft and giving it more support in the form of bundled-reed outriggers helped solve the tipping problem, but Ratha soon found there was something else she had overlooked: She had no way to control the thing, to make it go where she wanted.

After riding weak but malicious currents to disaster several times in a row, she hauled her drenched self and her recalcitrant boat ashore and glared at it. Ratharee, who had abandoned her for Thakur in the interests of staying dry, made an insincere attempt to comfort her and backed away from the water streaming from her coat.

Irritably, she shook herself, growling that she should have known better than to waste effort on such a useless thing.

“It isn’t that useless,” Thakur observed. “It does keep you out of the water when you walk on it.” He added that if she tethered her raft to shore at both ends in a narrow part of the river, the Named wouldn’t have to wade or swim to get across.

That idea mollified Ratha somewhat. Instead of wrathfully shredding her treacherous construction, she followed Thakur’s advice, tethering her raft among the reeds at a narrow spot, where it served as a floating footbridge.

Having satisfied her urge for raft building, Ratha devoted her attention once more to things that had begun to worry her. One of these was the Firekeeper leader.

Ratha thought at first that Fessran was keeping away from her and Thakur because of the seamare smell they wore. Fessran balked at taking on the same scent. She pointed out that her work ruined her odor enough with the harsh stink of ash. And, as Firekeeper, she didn’t have much to do with seamares once the herders had settled into their duties.

Ratha accepted that. Those of the Named who had adopted the practice of disguising their scents had done so willingly. They saw the advantage when Thakur showed that it made the wave-wallowers less restive. But she didn’t want to force anyone into it; scents were strongly personal issues among the Named, and some had more sensitive noses than others.

So Fessran remained free of the seamare stink and avoided those who had it. But Ratha noticed that she seemed to sit at a greater distance from her than from Thakur. And that whenever Ratha approached, she would stop grooming her belly and immediately switch to washing her face.

Ratha knew that not all of the Firekeeper’s coolness to her was due to her smell. The forced abandonment of the Un-Named litterling still rankled; there was resentment in Fessran’s eyes, even though the Firekeeper had said she didn’t care.

It was late in the summer and a hot day, even on the sea coast. The herdbeasts sought shade in the forest, and the seamares wallowed in the shallows enclosed by part of their corral. With heat making the animals lazy, the herders too could relax. Ratha decided to take a break from overseeing the seamare herders and went to drink from the pool beneath the spring.

Coolness from the spring seemed to blow away the heavy, hot air surrounding her as she came down the deeply shaded path. Spray-moistened moss cushioned her feet when she crouched to drink. She lapped her fill, then laid first one side of her face, then the other, in the pool, letting the chill seep through her fur. As she dangled a forepaw in the water, she glanced up to the rock ledges above, wondering which one would be best for a nap.

One ledge was already taken. Sandy fur showed against blue-tinted stone. Fessran was there, relaxing and starting to groom herself. One rear leg stuck stiffly over her head as she began licking the creamy fur on her belly.

The soft chuckle of the stream had covered Ratha’s footsteps, and the wind blew her scent away. Fessran didn’t know she was here. The idea of spying on the Firekeeper made Ratha uncomfortable, and she was about to announce herself when something disquieting about Fessran’s grooming caught her attention.

Slowly she backed under a hanging bunch of ferns, shielding herself from Fessran’s view. Absently she licked the back of her own forepaw and began to scrub her cheek, wondering what it was about Fessran’s grooming that disturbed her. And then, aware of the motion of her own forepaw over her face, she froze, knowing she had found her answer.

When Ratha groomed, she always started by scrubbing her cheek with the side of her forepaw. So did the others of the Named. Only if a Named female was pregnant or nursing did she break the inborn pattern and start by grooming her stomach. Ratha peeked out from beneath the ferns. Fessran wasn’t carrying cubs. She hadn’t come into heat this year. But she could be nursing.

A Named female could give milk without birthing a litter. If a female took in a motherless orphan, the cub’s suckling could make her produce milk in a matter of days—even sooner if she badly wanted to feed the litterling. And Fessran had wanted to.

Ratha watched Fessran lick and nibble, taking great care over her belly. She felt a slow anger start to burn away the refreshing coolness from the pool. Yes, Fessran must be nursing. She had kept the cub, despite the orders to Khushi that the litterling be returned. Ratha crouched beneath the ferns, feeling hot-and-cold surges of anger and betrayal. What a fool she had been!

Her first mistake had been letting Fessran go with Khushi. She imagined how the Firekeeper must have persuaded the young herder not to obey the clan leader’s orders and instead to turn the cub over to her. And then the two had stayed away to make it look as though they had made the journey. It must have been then that Fessran found she could suckle the orphan.

Ratha ground her back teeth. She could see them now in her imagination, Fessran lying in the shade, nursing the Un-Named cub. Such a sweet maternal scene it must have been! And Khushi, sitting by, looking torn and bewildered because he had not wanted to disobey Ratha’s orders.

But well-chosen words from his mother about the value of a cub’s life and the sorry blindness of a clan leader might well have swayed him. Fessran, she remembered, was very good at choosing words.

So they had kept the Un-Named orphan, the two conspirators, and even brought him along when the herds moved from the old clan territory to the coast. No wonder Fessran had been so itchy to return from the first expedition.

And I saw all of that, but I chose to look the other way. Now they’re shoving my nose in it.

She repressed an urge to bound up from ledge to ledge until she reached the one where Fessran sat. That would do no good and might lead to embarrassment or worse, should her sense of balance be overwhelmed by her sense of outrage. Instead she came out from beneath the ferns and called Fessran down. After a few grumbles, the Firekeeper came.

Ratha sat, looking at the ripples that spread from the cascading of the falls into the pool. Fessran sat down a short distance away from her. Deliberately, Ratha said nothing until the Firekeeper started to fidget.

“Am I keeping you from your grooming?” Ratha asked. “Please continue. I’m just nursing my thoughts.”

With a sidelong look at her, Fessran wet a paw and slowly started massaging her cheek.

“Shouldn’t you start with the fur on your belly?” Ratha made her tone more pointed.

“Ratha, what are you talking about? If you have something to tell me, just say it and quit chasing your tail.” Fessran’s own tail switched irritably.

Ratha got up and paced toward her, keeping her eyes fixed on Fessran’s. “You know what I’m talking about: keeping your teats clean to nurse a cub. That Un-Named litterling I made Khushi return never was taken back to the place he was found, was he?” She felt the hackles on her neck rising. “You may be keeping your teats clean, Firekeeper, but the rest of you stinks, and the smell is worse than the seamare dung on me.”

Fessran’s face grew tight as her ears flattened. “All right. Yes, I kept Mishanti.”

“Mishanti? By the Red Tongue’s ashes, you’ve already given him a name?”

“Yes, because he deserves one. You are wrong about him, Ratha. As soon as Khushi stopped for a rest, I looked at that cub, and I knew that if we took him out and abandoned him, I would hate myself for the rest of my life. It would be like killing one of my own litter.”

Ratha closed her eyes. “We’ve trodden this path already, Fessran. You know where it leads. I thought when you turned from me to support Shongshar and his fire-dance, it was something that would happen only once. Now you have disobeyed me again, tricked me, lied to me. ”

Fessran swallowed and her laid-back ears began to droop, but the determined glitter stayed in her eyes. “The part of you I disobeyed and tricked and lied to,” she said slowly, “is not the part of Ratha that I know. The part I know would not have me kill or abandon this cub out of a fear of what he might become.”

Ratha gritted her teeth. “You forget too easily. Shongshar... ”

“Stop holding Shongshar over my head,” Fessran hissed. “This isn’t the same at all. A cub’s life is what I seek, not power over the Named.”

“What is the same is a headstrong Firekeeper who does what her belly tells her without regard for what anyone thinks, even me.”

This stung. Ratha could see Fessran flinch. “You don’t think I didn’t worry about your feelings? I’ll tell you, I spent a lot of time thinking.”

“With that misbegotten Un-Named suckling curled up next to you, kneading your belly,” Ratha sneered.

Fessran’s voice and eyes went cold, stabbing Ratha deeper than she expected. “You are wrong about Mishanti, clan leader. You don’t know how wrong.”

Ratha turned away from her, began to pace the banks of the pool. She stopped to look at herself, saw the bared teeth, the angry eyes that did not look quite like hers. Was Fessran right? What part of her was saying these ugly things? And was there something blinding her to what Fessran saw?

She made an angry turn, tore up moss with her claws as she pivoted. When she came back to Fessran, she had trodden down her doubts and felt as cold and determined as the Firekeeper looked.

“Fessran, I won’t exile you from the clan, as I have the right to. I need you too badly. I also know that you don’t have the skills to survive outside.”

At this, Fessran bridled, but Ratha could see she knew the truth of those words. Fessran had managed her own stays away from the clan only by depending on the hunting and fishing skills of others.

“I will, however, break you down in rank to the lowest wood-stacker and give you a few good swipes into the bargain if you don’t get rid of that cub. And if I come and find him in your den, I’m taking him. Is that clear?”

Fessran’s sides heaved. She looked at the ground. “It is, clan leader. And I am very sorry for you.”

“If you’re sorry for me, don’t hurt me any more. Do what I told you to in the first place.” Ratha turned and left, without waiting to see what Fessran’s reaction would be.

Thakur watched Newt’s foreleg sweep back and forth beneath the water of the lagoon. She could move it fast enough now to make a little wave curl over her paw.

“Stronger?” Newt asked.

“Much stronger,” Thakur answered. “Good. You’ve been working.”

“Swim. Out there.” Newt jerked her muzzle toward the ocean. “Helps.”

“Now let’s try stretching again,” Thakur said, wading out of the pool toward a heavy driftwood log. “See if you can keep your claws fastened in the wood and then pull so your muscles stretch.” He watched as Newt emerged, still limping, but no longer holding her foreleg against her chest. Now her foot brushed the ground, and Thakur hoped she might soon be able to put some weight on it.

She did the exercise as he directed, getting a clawhold in the gray driftwood and pulling back with all her weight to limber and stretch the contracted muscles. He saw Newt grimace as she pulled hard, straightening her leg.

“Hurts,” she said between grunts of effort. “But good for leg.”

Then Thakur saw her abruptly freeze, her claws still embedded in the log, her stare fixed at a point beyond. Even as his gaze followed, his nose caught the smoke-tinged scent of the Firekeeper leader. Beside him, he felt Newt tense, jerk her claws from the driftwood, and start to growl.

Fessran sat in a hollow between two dunes, cocking her head to one side. “Phew, herding teacher,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I had to force myself to follow your trail. You don’t have to roll in seamare dung now that we’ve got the creatures penned.” She got to her feet, her eyes roving over Newt. “And who is that? She stinks as much as you do.”

Thakur didn’t know whether Newt understood Fessran or not, but he heard her growl deepen. “No,” he said sharply, pushing Newt back with his shoulder.

“So I’m not the only one who has dealings with the Un-Named.” Fessran grinned. “What does our clan leader have to say about this?”

“If Ratha has anything to say about it, you can be sure she will,” he said irritably.

Fessran fixed her gaze on Newt, who bristled. “When did she turn up?”

“She’s the one who gave me the idea about herding seamares.” Thakur turned to Newt. “Put your fur down,” he told her. “That is Fessran. She’s often rude, but she won’t harm you.” He halted. Newt’s eyes had gone glassy and started to swirl.

“The smell,” he heard her hiss. “In her coat. The Dreambiter’s smell.”

Before Thakur could stop Newt, she was over the log in a bound and charging at Fessran. The puzzled stare on the Firekeeper’s face turned to an angry snarl. Thakur sprinted after Newt, trying to launch himself between the two, but he wasn’t fast enough. Newt and Fessran met in an angry flurry, then broke apart. Newt suddenly withdrew, muttering to herself. Fessran stood, her head lowered, her nape erect, ready to fight off another attack, but Newt had gone into a strange trance in which she circled aimlessly for several minutes, looking confused, then toppled over onto her side.

“What, by the Red Tongue’s ashes, is the matter with her?” Fessran demanded.

Thakur lost his temper. “What is the matter with you, Firekeeper? I told the others I didn’t want to be disturbed, but you obviously didn’t listen.”

“I’m sorry, Thakur,” Fessran said contritely. She flattened her fur, came a few steps closer. “Is she all right?”

“Her name is Newt, and she’s not going to die, if that’s what you mean. But she’s not all right. She gets these fits. Her foreleg is injured, and I was trying to help her when you stuck your whiskers in.”

“What was she saying about my smell?”

“I don’t know. I think your scent had something to do with the fit. Maybe you’d better back off.” Thakur nosed the fallen Newt, who had started to twitch and stir. Fessran retreated downwind as Newt slowly rolled onto her front and shakily got up. “Just because I don’t cover myself with duck-footed dappleback dung . . .” Thakur heard the Firekeeper mutter. Newt shook her head in confusion then peered at Fessran. For an instant, he thought she was going to attack again. Then she took a breath and spoke.

“You,” she said hoarsely to Fessran. “You carry smell. You not biting one, but you carry smell.”

“What’s she yowling about?” Fessran asked.

“I don’t know. Fess, just go away, please.”

Newt startled him with a roar. “No! Stay. Tell about smell.” She turned almost desperately to Thakur, stumbling badly on her words. “The one who bites. In my head. Smell is real. Newt didn’t make up.” She lunged away from Thakur, facing Fessran. Then she seemed to catch sight of the scars on Fessran’s leg and chest. She looked up, searching Fessran’s eyes.

“Not only smell, but scars,” she breathed. “Like me.”

Caught in the intensity of Newt’s gaze, Fessran twitched back her ears and narrowed her eyes.

“You know Dreambiter,” Newt insisted stubbornly, unwilling to release Fessran from her stare.

“I have many scents on me, from all those in the clan,” Fessran answered cautiously. “Who do you mean by Dreambiter?”

“She comes. From behind, in darkness. I hear her feet, then she leaps on me and wounds me with teeth. I remember taste of milk, sound of purring, but then came pain and this.” Newt thrust her lame forepaw at Fessran.

Thakur tried again to ease himself into the conversation, but the two were intent upon each other and took no notice of him.

“Newt, who was your mother?” Fessran asked.

She got only a blank stare.

“Mother. You know, the one who birthed you, gave you milk.”

“The Dreambiter gave me milk.” Newt’s voice was flat. “I don’t know mother. Does mother bite?”

“A little nip once in a while, if cubs are being rowdy. But mostly she feeds them, keeps them warm, gives them nuzzles and licks. I’ve had young ones myself, so I know.” Fessran gave her a quizzical look.

Thakur saw that Newt was retreating into her memories, muttering to herself. He saw the link she was forging between Fessran’s description of a mother and the Dreambiter image that plagued and terrified her.

“The one who bit me is the one you call mother, and she is in your clan.” Newt’s ears flattened slightly, and her pupils widened with fear then narrowed with rage. Thakur felt a stab of alarm.

“Who in the clan could... ” Fessran broke off. Thakur saw her mouth a name to herself and felt it tremble on his own tongue: Ratha.

“Enough, Fessran,” he said sharply, wishing he’d stepped in before things got this far. Newt was starting to shiver and growl.

The Firekeeper bristled. “Why shouldn’t I tell her the truth? If this cub is from the loins of our clan leader, then Ratha has no right to judge others.”

“I don’t think it will help us or her to dig up old and rotted dung,” Thakur snapped. “Firekeeper, if you are going to cause trouble, do it somewhere else.”

Fessran left, her tail low and switching. Thakur didn’t like the way Newt’s gaze followed her.

Newt extended her patrol range and hobbled along her new trails with raised nape and bristling tail. Now that she had gone beyond her own beach, she caught the scents of the intruders in the wind and found a trace of the Dreambiter’s among them. It made her shudder—and fight off rising panic that threatened to tip her over into an attack of her strange illness.

The gentle one who called himself Thakur had not come since that meeting with the other female, the one who carried the scent of the Dreambiter. After that encounter, he refused to answer Newt’s questions and at last had turned away, saying he should no longer visit her.

She found herself missing Thakur with a keenness that added to her misery. Why had he come if he meant only to go away again? Why had he tempted her to speak if there was no one to hear her and answer?

She thought of becoming silent once again, but she found that she couldn’t. It seemed as if the words were jammed up behind her tongue, pushing to get out, yet she didn’t know how to say them. Something had changed in her. He had done it.

Her rage made her reckless, and she followed the scents of the Named until she found herself crouched in the lee side of a dune, looking down at a strange sight.

She had come to another river resembling the one that formed her lagoon. This stream meandered its way across sand flats that lay at the base of a sandstone cliff. At one point the cliff was gouged inward, forming a pocket, and there, on the narrow mud-beach beneath the cliff, Newt saw a cluster of seamares.

She stifled her impulse to go and herd them back to the rookery, for the Named invaders on both sides of the river guarded the captives. From this distance, she couldn’t tell if any of the sentries was the Dreambiter.

When she crept closer for a better view, she saw something going on that she didn’t understand. The intruders were doing something she had never seen any animal do: carrying long sticks in their jaws and poking them upright into the mud on the seamares’ beach.

A line of poles already extended down the beach into the water, and as she watched, two of the Named waded out with saplings from which the branches had been stripped and shoved them into the sandy bottom, continuing the line of upright sticks in the river itself.

As the pole-setters worked, forcing the sticks into place with their jaws, another group followed them. This bunch carried odd little animals on their backs. Newt remembered the creature Thakur always carried with him. The ringed tails, strange paws, and sharp little muzzles were the same.

She watched as the intruders brought shorter sticks in their jaws and held them crossways against the uprights. The other animals reared up and did something with their paws and long pieces of vine that then held the crossmembers in place. When they finished each section, Newt saw what they had built. It was like a tree, but not a tree, or like a bush that had been wrenched and bent to serve some unknown purpose. Bewildered and frightened, she crept away.

The next day found her back behind the dunes, spying on the strangers. She could see that the mysterious thing had grown, now extending from the mud-beach to midriver, then bending at an angle to follow the current flow downstream.

She still didn’t know what it was, but as the strangers and their small helpers continued to put poles in place and lash them together, she gained a dim sense of what this thing might be. Then, when the builders brought tangles of thornbrush and added those to the construction (not without grimaces of pain and yowls when tender noses got pricked), she began to understand. She watched a seamare lumber up to the construction, hoping the creature might butt it down. Instead the animal nosed it, then bellowed as the thorns stung its muzzle. It retreated, beaten and bewildered, and made no other attempt to escape.

Now Newt understood. This thing was a barrier, an obstruction, like a wall of rock or tangled, thorny growth. It shocked and dismayed her that anyone would make something like this. She growled deep in her throat as she watched the barrier grow, encircling the apprehensive seamares.

She thought of Thakur and her promise that she would come to him instead of launching an attack on the Named. But the thought of Thakur only made her angrier. He was one of those invading strangers who had captured the seamares; he would do nothing to help.

She was weary from all the thinking she had done. As the afternoon shadows lengthened, she tried and failed to come up with a way to free the seamares. At last she sank into the wordless, dull anger of defeat.

The barrier was nearly completed. The seamares huddled in the center, bewildered and miserable. From her vantage point, Newt could see that the barrier enclosed most of the mud-beach and ran out into the river, giving the creatures only limited room to swim. She remembered swimming with Splayfoot and seeing the seamare fly through the twilight under the ocean. These strangers had no understanding of the seamares, and they didn’t care. She sniffed the scents coming to her on the wind. There was already the taint of sickness in the odors of the trapped creatures.

Shifting restlessly, she raked the dune. Sand ground under her claws. And then she watched again, this time fixing her gaze on the intruders themselves as they worked to set the last stakes in place before bundling them with thorns. She saw how the cats struggled, often getting splinters in their jaws and blunting their fangs while bringing heavy sticks to midriver and setting them in place. Sometimes they set a pole wrong, or a surge of current from the stream pushed the stake over.

Often she saw two or three of the strangers, coats muddy and soggy, hanging on to a pole with their claws and trying to sink the end deep into the mud bottom by their combined weight. Half the time the stake sagged when they released it, then came loose and was carried downstream. Growling with frustration, the workers retrieved it and fought to anchor it in place again.

It was not a task for which they were well suited, and that became more obvious the longer Newt watched them work. Yet, although she disliked what they were doing, she could not help seeing how hard they tried. It reminded her of her own struggles, and she saw a tiny bit of herself in the strangers. She could also see that, despite the difficulty, they were succeeding.

She stayed until evening, hoping to creep closer by dark. When she approached the seamares’ pen, she found that the night she hoped would shield her had been pushed back. On the banks of the river were strange bright spots she had never seen before. They flickered and danced, like reflections of the sun on the surface of her lagoon, and they cast a fierce light. Newt’s nape prickled in terror. Were the invaders so powerful that they could capture pieces of the sun and hold them, as they did the seamares?

Though she trembled and wished she could retreat to the beach, with its soft darkness and swish of waves, she forced herself on. When she drew closer, the bright points took on form. To her they were a nest of yellow and orange snakes writhing together toward the night sky, hissing and snapping their jaws as if the stars were prey.

Beside the fires, outlined by the fierce light, she saw the forms of sentinels. In their eyes, even at a distance, the orange light shone in glints of amber and green.

The smell was harsh and choking, as irritating to her nose as the light was to her night-widened eyes. She shuddered. Here was a foe she could not face down, for the fear it struck in her lay too deep. She took flight back into the darkness and crouched on cold sand, watching and hating those glowing, writhing nests of snakes.

The acrid smell of smoke could not drown out the scents of the seamares behind the barrier. They still reached her and somehow reproached her for turning back. She kneaded the sand fiercely with her claws, drawn on by the seamare odor and pushed back by the ashes and smoke. At last she crept forward again. The snake-nests lay on both banks of the river, but there were no dismaying lights in the river itself. It lay open to her, a dark, safe path.

Wet sand felt clammy against her pads as she limped across the flats toward the river. She waded into the shallows, the night-chilled water seeping through the fur of her legs, her belly, and her flanks. Feeling ahead with her good forepaw, she sought the bottom drop-off that would show her the channel. The only way to conceal her approach was to swim underwater in the deepest part of the river.

After poking her nose up to take a breath, Newt slipped beneath the surface and down into the main channel. Here it was deep and wide enough for her to swim. The incoming tide overcame the downstream current, helping her to glide upriver, near the channel bottom. And the strange lights unexpectedly aided her by casting a glow into the murky gloom, so she could see her way ahead.

Each time she surfaced to breathe, she made herself inhale slowly and quietly rather than gulping air. The sentries stood with their faces turned outward, away from her. No one had seen or smelled... yet.

Gradually she worked her way upriver toward the mud-beach where the seamare pen had been built. Lifting her dripping head, she stared at the barrier of poles and thorns that now rose out of the water only a few tail lengths away. Those who had made it had unwittingly aided her by extending it into midriver, where the water was deep enough to conceal her.

She floated at an angle, with only her nose above the ripples, gathering breath and strength. Then she dived and shot toward the barrier, her good foreleg stretched out with claws extended. She hit the barrier hard underwater , ignoring the thorns that sank into her paw. Pulling thorn-tangles aside, she ripped away lashed crosspieces, using her jaws to aid her good foreleg.

Sounds from the beach made her halt her destructive flurry and duck back into the depths of the channel. She hid there until her lungs were nearly bursting, expecting to hear angry roars and the noise of running feet, but nothing happened. Perhaps the noise she had made sounded loud only to her. Gasping, she surfaced, approached the barrier, and saw a horselike head rise from the water on the other side. Another followed, blowing quietly. The seamares knew what she was doing.

Feeling a sudden surge of triumph, she attacked the thorns and stakes again. One pole tipped sideways under her weight. She wrenched the lashings off another and pulled prickly branches aside, even though they stung her mouth and scraped her teeth.

She worked until she had cleared a narrow opening, then fought to widen it. Abruptly she heard a grunt and was nearly ploughed underwater when a heavy body rammed itself through the break. Another followed, and then another, as the seamares poured through. They churned the water into froth, bumped and banged her, but in her delight at having freed them, she didn’t care.

Abruptly, yowls and sounds of galloping feet began from the shore. Newt saw sentinels running along the bank, some bearing branches with the writhing snakes of light curling about their ends. Fear quickly chilled her triumph. She sought the channel depths once more, stroking and kicking hard to keep up with the escaping seamares, whose wake helped to carry her along.

It seemed to take the Named intruders a long time to realize that the attack had come from the water. They were still dashing up and down the riverbanks by the time Newt and the seamares passed the last of their beacons and had swum far enough downstream so that night could shield their escape.

Gradually the noise and confusion died into the distance, as Newt and the seamares made their way back down the loops and meanders of the river toward the sea. The honks and grunts of her big companions blended into the wash of surf in a boisterous song of freedom.

The escapees hauled themselves out onto the night-silvered gravel of the beach, with Newt doing a three-limbed frolic around them. And when they reached the jetty and were gathered once more into the herd, Newt gamboled off to her sleeping place, wet and weary but happy.