Dragon and Herdsman

"That won't help Taneem," Jack snarled back. The Kapstan was a hundred feet up now and still rising. "Think, blast it. There must be something we can do."

"How about a net?" Alison suggested from Draycos's other side. "Cut one of these vine meshes and use it to catch her."

"No time," Jack said. "Besides, as long as he stays over the river there's no place for us to anchor it."

"Probably why he's still there," Alison growled. "Any chance she'll know how to hit the water safely?"

"At the height they are at there is no safe way," Draycos said grimly. "As Jack said, it will be like striking concrete."

"Yes," Jack said slowly as an idea suddenly came to him. "If she hits the water."

Alison frowned at him. "What—?"

"Rope," he snapped, shoving her halfway around and grabbing at her pack. Getting it open, he scooped out her coil of rope. "Come on, Draycos."

Jack sprinted upstream, his feet making huge splashes at the edge of the water as he ran. "What are you going to do?" Draycos demanded from behind him.

"You'll see," Jack said, dropping his own pack off his shoulders as he ran, craning his neck to look up. Frost was still over the same spot, and still rising. They had to be getting close to two hundred feet by now. Jack looked down at the water, trying to estimate the current—

"Here," he decided, splashing to a sudden halt and flicking his wrist to send the rope uncoiling into the trees. "Grab the other end and hold on," he told Draycos as he tied the other end around his waist. Taking a deep breath, wondering if this was as insane as it seemed, he threw himself into the river.

The water was icy cold, but he hardly noticed. Kicking out, he sliced his arms hard into the surface, swimming for all he was worth.

"There!" he heard Draycos shout from behind him.

He paused and looked up. The K'da was right: Jack was now directly beneath the Kapstan. He turned around, treading water, putting his back to the low waves threatening to splash into his face.

And then, abruptly, the transport did a sudden midair roll around its long axis, dropping its portside wing to vertical. For a few seconds Taneem's claws held her to the wing. Then her grip gave way, and she tumbled off and dropped toward the water.

Jack swore under his breath, splashing himself into final position as he watched her fall. She had flattened out, he saw, turning her belly downward and stretching her legs out sideways in an instinctive skydiver's minimum-speed posture.

But it wouldn't slow her enough. Not from a fall of that distance. If this didn't work, she would be dead.

In fact, there was a fair chance she and Jack would both be dead.

But there was no time to think about that now. Pumping his legs to hold himself steady, Jack grabbed his left sleeve with his right hand and yanked it all the way back to his shoulder, leaving the arm bare. The more skin surface she had to aim for, the better. Lowering his right arm back into the water, paddling hard, he raised himself as far up as he could and stuck his left arm straight up. "Taneem!" he shouted. "Taneem!" She was dropping toward him like an avenging angel—

And then, suddenly, she shifted out of her flat posture, turning her body head downward. Her forelegs stretched out, pointing straight for Jack's face. The paws slammed into his arm like a falling boulder—

And as he was shoved violently down into the water, he felt her slide around his arm and down onto his back, the momentum of her fall driving him straight toward the bottom of the river.

For a long, terrifying minute he plummeted downward, the churning water battering against his face and body, his lungs fighting to keep in what air he had, the sudden increase in pressure stabbing pain into his ears. Something slammed up hard against his feet, knocking them out from under him and sending his back and head to hit only slightly less hard against sticky muck. His impact sent a surge of mud swirling around him, cutting off the faint light of the surface as the blow to his head sent stars flashing across his vision and scrambled his sense of direction.

But even as he fought against a rising surge of confusion and panic, the rope tightened around his waist, and he felt himself being pulled up and sideways against the current. The swirling mud was left behind; the glow from above returned and grew stronger—

And suddenly his head broke through the surface of the water.

"Jack!" Alison shouted.

Gasping in a lungful of air, Jack shook the water from his eyes. Alison was knee-deep in the river, she and Draycos together hauling him in by his rope. "Are you all right?" she called.

"Yeah," he managed, a fresh burst of adrenaline surging through him as he looked up. With all of them now out in the open like sitting ducks, all Frost had to do was drop back down to treetop height and open fire.

But the transport wasn't moving in for the kill. In fact, as Jack's eyes darted around the sky, he couldn't find either it or the floater anywhere.