Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [130]
“You sure about those fellows, Dag?” Remo called up from the water, once they’d all clambered down and were ready to push off.
“Yep. Just over half a mile that way.” He pointed.
Barr’s head turned. “Oh, yeah, I’ve got ’em now! Follow me, Remo! It’ll be just like old times.” His boat shot away as his paddle dipped and surged.
Remo snorted, but trailed dutifully. Whit’s voice drifted back through the fog: “Beats shifting sheep, anyhow…”
“Sheep?” said Berry.
Dag shook his head.
Long minutes slid past as the Fetch slipped downstream. Floating with the current, the banks obscured, it felt as if they’d stopped altogether in a quiet, fog-walled harbor. Running full-tilt into a snag or a big rock at five miles an hour and opening the Fetch’s seams would cure that illusion right quick, Dag thought; he kept all his senses alert.
“Them Lakewalker boys’ll be able to find their way back to us, won’t they?” said Berry uneasily.
“That’s why we put one in each boat,” Dag assured her. “They’ve made it to the island; ah, good for the narrow boat! Barr can get it right in between the trees.”
“Just so’s he don’t catch it sidewise to the current and lean too far over. He could fill it in an eyeblink that way.”
“These Pearl Riffle patrollers are up to the river’s tricks, I expect,” said Dag. “Handier than I would be. And those narrow boats are made to float even full of water. Air boxes in the prow and stern, tarred up and sealed.”
“So that’s how they do that! I always wondered.” She added after a moment, “We thought it was magic.”
Fawn took Hod and Hawthorn below to help assemble a warming welcome for the expected influx of unhappy boatmen—or boatless men. It was nearly an hour before the narrow boat appeared out of the fog astern. Two cold, wet strangers crouched in a miserable huddle in the center, clutching the thwarts nervously, but a third sat up in the bow, helping Barr paddle. Bo and Hod gave them hands to climb stiffly out—one nearly dumped the boat over in his clumsiness, but Barr kept it upright.
“Whee-oh!” said the paddling man, straightening up and pulling off a shapeless felt hat much the worse for wear. He was a lean, strappy fellow, unshaven and shoeless; his feet were scratched and his toes purple with the cold. “We sure are glad to see you folks. We hit the top of that there island broadside in the dark last night, and it just sucked our boats down under that big towhead like the river was swallowing ’em!”
Bo leaned over the steering oar and nodded sagely. “Yep. It would.” Fawn, hovering in the rear hatch, looked on wide-eyed.
They had barely hoisted the narrow boat back aboard when the skiff, too, emerged from the mist, Remo and Whit rowing strongly. The skiff rode low in the water with the weight of the four rescued men. One was not only shoeless but shirtless, the skin of his shoulders and torso scraped bloody, some hanging in ugly strips. He handed up an ash boar spear, of all the things to have hung on to in the wreck. He groaned as he was hauled and pushed up by his anxious companions, but when he found his battered feet and gingerly straightened, clinging to the upright spear, he gazed around with a lively smile. Unbent, he proved a tallish man by farmer measures, with black hair straggling down his neck, and bright, brown eyes.
“This here’s our boat boss, Captain Ford Chicory,” the paddling man explained.
“I’m Boss Berry, and this is my boat, the Fetch,” said Berry, raking an escaped hank of hair out of her eyes. “You’re right welcome aboard.”
The skinned flattie blinked at her in frank appreciation. “Well, ma’am, you folks sure fetched us out of a heap o’ trouble! We called all night from those trees as the water was gettin’ higher, till we got so hoarse we couldn’t yell no more, but you’re the first as heard us.”
“Thank the Lakewalker, here,” said Berry, nodding to Dag. “He’s the one that spotted you. We’d have passed you right by in this soup.”
“Yeah, and if we had heard you, we’d likely’ve thought you was ghosts crying to lure us to our doom in the fog,” Hawthorn