Darkwell - Douglas Niles [97]
"Pawldo!" cried the bard as the halfling was torn from his seat. She dared not release the tiller to reach for him, and in the next instant, the boat lurched again and the halfling flew over the side.
Tristan whirled in his seat, reaching out his hand toward Pawldo, receiving only a faceful of chill water for his effort. The halfling bobbed under the water as the current swept him away from the boat.
Canthus sprang over the side of the boat in a single leap, splashing into the foaming rapids near the spot where Pawldo had disappeared. In another second, the moorhound vanished under the water.
Canthus popped to the surface some distance away, and Tristan saw his teeth firmly clamped around the halfling's shirt. "Come on, boy!" he whispered, willing the dog back to the boat.
Robyn leaned over the side next to him, and Tristan seized her around the waist to prevent her from being swept overboard. She extended her staff, and he saw Pawldo, his arms thrashing, grab desperately for it. For a split second, the dog and the halfling disappeared again, but then Pawldo surfaced with the tip of Robyn's staff in his hands.
"Pull!" she cried, leaning back into the boat. Tristan heaved as well, ignoring the sickening rocking of the craft and the icy spray that continued to fly into his eyes. Robyn, still clutching her staff, fell on top of him.
They scrambled back to the gunwale to see Pawldo hanging on to the hull like a drowned rat. Canthus bobbed in the water behind him, frantically trying to swim in the torrent. Tristan reached down and grabbed the halfling by the arms, quickly pulling him back into the perilous safety of the boat.
Immediately he leaned back toward the water, grasping for the fur of his dog. Canthus yelped once – a gasping, choking sound – and tried desperately to swim toward his hands, but just as he got close, an eddy of violent water swirled him away, and the moorhound disappeared below the surface.
"No! By the goddess, no!" The king leaned far out of the boat, aware of Robyn's hands now grasping him by the legs. He flailed at the water and would have hurled himself in but for her firm grip. "Canthus!" His voice was a wail, but the dog did not reappear.
Then another jarring crunch shook the boat as it twisted in the grip of the raging current. For a moment, the vessel hung between two giant boulders, and Tristan got a brief impression of the gorge walls towering overhead, appearing to lean in on them. The boat suddenly broke free, riding again with the current, but now water swirled about their ankles, pouring in through another gash in the hull.
"Shallows! We'll have to find a bank and land her, or we'll be torn to pieces!" The bard shouted over the thunder of the rapids, twisting the tiller in her hands. But no flat shoreline presented itself. If anything, the walls were steeper and higher here than at any point along the journey, and they continued racing downstream.
Tristan saw more and more rocks sticking their craggy heads above the surface of the water, and once again he felt the awful scraping of granite against wood. How much more punishment could the little boat take before it came apart?
The king looked anxiously across the whitecaps of the river, desperately seeking any sign of Canthus, but the dog had never surfaced again after their last glimpse of him. Still, Tristan could not bring himself to believe that the great hound was dead. Not Canthus, too! he thought. There is too much death, too much killing! We must stop it!
A savage swirl in the current suddenly twisted the boat around, and for a hair-raising second, they rode sideways, beam to the current. In that instant, they smashed into a huge rock jutting out of the middle of the stream, and the little vessel came to pieces around them.
Tristan flew from his seat in