Worlds of Honor

hadn't wound that net around his face and looped it over that branch, he would have drowned long before regaining consciousness. His throat ran dry at the realization that this tiny animal had deliberately and quite cleverly saved his life. The treecat huddled down, crooning softly, and touched its face to Scott's, rubbing soft fur against his cheek in a gesture clearly meant to comfort and reassure. Wonder seeped through the fear and pain holding him prisoner. It gradually occurred to him that he needed to start thinking about a way to survive this predicament. And to do that, he had to get out of this icy water.

Scott inched his way awkwardly higher onto the boulder, trying to drag more of himself out of the river's freezing clutches, then clamped shut his jaws and explored his injuries more thoroughly, finding blood-soaked bandages of some kind which the treecat had clearly tied in place around the gashes in his head. When he probed the back of his skull, Scott groaned. But when he touched his brow, a bomb detonated behind his eyelids and icy panic came up with the vomit as he spewed helplessly into the river, fighting a pain in his head that he knew would kill him very soon if he didn't get help and get it fast.

Even if his skull wasn't broken, which it might be, with hairline fractures, the concussion alone was bad enough that he might not even be able to stand up, much less hike down the river to the distant bend where he'd parked his air car. He tried keying in the code for the Twin Forks emergency operations center on his wrist com, but nothing happened. The com unit was damaged, its circuitry broken from the fall against the boulders. He had a backup com unit in his backpack, but that was several meters away, across a rushing stretch of boulder-strewn river and up a sloping riverbank and back under the nearest spreading picket wood tree. Unless he could get his injured self out of this river and all the way up to that pack, he couldn't even call for help.

Black terror lapped at his awareness, rising out of a bottomless chasm in a flood far colder than the river he lay sprawled in. And straight through that terror, a sudden, unexpected warmth enfolded Scott, nudged him back from the edge of that terrifying black pit, drew him up out of panic and back to an awareness of the sunlit river and the touch of tiny, alien hands on his cheeks. He caught raggedly at the air and managed to open his eyelids into the harsh glare of sunlight. The treecat huddled down in front of him, crooning in distress. A moment later, it nestled right against him, pressing its warm body as close to his heart as it could hold itself. Three pairs of hands and feet gripped his shirt firmly, as if saying, I'm not going to let you go. The warmth and love rolling through him drew a broken sound from Scott. His panic and fear ebbed away with the wetness spilling down his face.

With a concussion and shock and blood loss to overcome and a broad stretch of treacherous ground to cover before he could even reach his communications gear, the odds against his survival had gone up immeasurably . . . but he wasn't quite alone.

Swift Striker huddled as close to his two-leg as he could press himself and sank deeper into the healing trance. The two-leg's mind glow was similar enough to that of the People that he could, after a fashion, establish a bond, even though the two-leg clearly couldn't complete it. But he was able to drain away the ragged, cutting terror that rolled out of the two-leg's mind, aware of a not-quite-rightness that differed from the taste of his two-leg's mind-glow just before the disastrous fall against the rocks. Swift Striker had seen a youngling suffer damage to his head, once, when the youngling had mistimed a jump between branches. The disastrous fall hadn't been fatal, but the smashing blow of the youngling's head against the ground where he'd landed had left the youngling's mind glow crippled forever afterward. He'd been completely unable to form clear thoughts after that terrible fall. Less than half a season later, the youngling had quietly suicided.

The two-leg's terror and the broken taste of its mind glow reminded Swift Striker fearfully of that tragedy. He poured love and reassurance through the bond, determined to protect this wonderful, bright-haired creature, to get it safely back to its own kind. And he would stay with the two-leg, croon to it . . . to him, he realized, sinking deeper into the trance . . . would keep him from the despair the mind-blind youngling had felt, if it were in Swift Striker's power to do so. The two-legs were used to being mind- blind, after all; perhaps Swift Striker's constant reassurances would help enough, whatever was actually wrong inside his head?

Determined to succeed, Swift Striker steadied the frantic chaos in his two-leg's mind glow, eased his fright, soothed and crooned and drew away the physical hurting and the sharp emotional pain, as best he could. The two- leg's pounding heartbeat gradually relaxed into a less frantic, only slightly irregular knocking and his breathing steadied down and his muscles turned from stone back to pliant flesh again. His two-leg was still afraid, but the blinding, jagged terror had gone.

Swift Striker rubbed his head against the two-leg's wet cheek and burbled softly, then pulled his head back and touched the two-leg's face with one true-hand. <You must get out of this cold water,> he thought firmly.

It was no use, of course. The two-leg was mind-blind and couldn't understand. But when Swift Striker pointed urgently toward the shore, his two-leg made some of the strange mouth noises that comprised two-leg language and stirred a little. The two-leg's emotional aura tasted now of faint, renewed hope and determination to try. A youngling of the People, so injured, would never have been able to accomplish what his two-leg must if he were to survive. Swift Striker scented the wind and listened hard for any hint of danger on the shore, then bleeked encouragement. Not even if Swift Striker summoned the entire Laughing River Clan, could he hope to carry his new friend to safety. His two-leg must save himself—with whatever feeble help Swift Striker could lend.

He feared it would not be enough.

The treecat blinked solemnly into Scott's eyes, still pointing toward shore, then made a soft sound. 'Bleek?'

Scott reached up, hand wet and shaking and smeared red. He hesitated, then dunked his fingers into the freezing water to rinse off the blood. The treecat sat very still, permitting the touch of Scott's dripping hand and unsteady fingers. Soft as dandelion down . . . The treecat closed grass-green eyes as Scott stroked damp fur, then arched its long back and made a sound very like a buzzing purr. Through the blinding pain, the fear, and the freezing ache of numbing water where it rushed across his lower legs, dangling down from the boulder, Scott MacDallan smiled, enchanted.

The treecat sat up, peering into his eyes, then tilted its head and raised one arm, unmistakably pointing toward the bank once again. Yeah, good idea, Scott agreed muzzily. Gotta get out of this freezing water. Standing up was out of the question, however. Scott hunched himself into a semi-foetal position on his side, then eased his way gingerly over toward hands and knees. His head mushroomed and he gagged; but he made it onto knees and palms without vomiting. Scott knelt on the boulder, knees and feet in the rushing water, head low, trembling, and willed the nausea back. Water splashed up across his bare arm and he realized dimly that the strips of cloth around his head had been torn from his sleeve—or, rather, cut from it, given the sharp, straight lines and clean edges of those cuts. Clever treecat, marv'lous treecat . . . 

He started to crawl toward the distant bank.

The slender, six-limbed creature hopped from boulder to boulder, dancing just ahead of him as he crawled. It bleeked in steady encouragement as Scott dragged himself from one rock to another, sometimes collapsing against sun-warmed stone to pant and rest. Whenever Scott paused, pulling himself half out of the water just long enough to catch his breath and gulp back the murderous nausea in his throat, occasionally immersed up to his armpits and thighs in rushing, cold water, he would look up to find the treecat just in front of him, sitting on the next boulder, waiting with an air of anxious worry.

If he stopped too long, the treecat bleeked urgently, a low, distressed sound, then hopped back to the boulder Scott clung to and touched one tiny hand to his face, urging him to motion again. When, some unknown stretch of time later, he collapsed across a rough-edged boulder, aware that he couldn't possibly go on, the treecat grew frantic.

'Bleek! Bleek-bleek-bleek!'

How many times that sound repeated he wasn't sure, but the sharp cry finally penetrated the icy fog in his brain. Scott looked up slowly, shaking and cold with more than the freezing river swirling around him, and blinked up into uncanny, summer-grass eyes. The treecat's gaze bored into his own, visibly willing him to rouse himself from fatal stupor. The treecat grasped his face in both hands, the tiny fingers warm and supple, claws sheathed. The curiously firm gesture had the effect of a rousing slap. Scott felt some of the rising