Then the two-leg fell heavily, the leg which was still planted in the swirling water twisting out from under it with a sharp shock of pain through the ankle. It smashed down heavily, striking half-submerged boulders with its back and shoulders and head. Pain smashed across Swift Striker, left him momentarily blind with agony. The huge, armored fish, still lunging and fighting, crashed down across the two-leg's head and shoulders, crushing the two-leg's skull against unyielding rock. White-hot, blinding pain caught Swift Striker so hard he cried out with a sharp bleek of distress. Then darkness smashed down, erasing all but a thready trickle of that bright, powerful mind glow.

Swift Striker huddled frozen in place, deeply shocked. The great fish flopped away, lying trapped in the swirling water downstream. For just an instant longer, Swift Striker clung motionless to his branch, while the two-leg sprawled insanely across the boulders, half buried in the raging water. A dark stain leaked from its head, smearing the white water an ugly shade of red.

Then Swift Striker was moving, racing along the branches, flowing out above the angry river along the rough-barked wood that crossed like a bridge toward the distant island. The heavy fish strapped to his back hindered him. He tore impatiently at the knots of his carry net and freed it, dropping the fish with a negligent splash into the water, then swarmed down trailing branches that came within a few hand-spans of the two-leg's still form. A chill passed down Swift Striker's spine when he realized the two-leg had fallen with its face partially in the water, its nose and mouth lying just under the foaming surface. Another few moments of immersion and it would drown!

He used tail and true-feet to cling upside down from a branch just above the two-leg's head and tugged at its brightly curled head fur, lifting with all his strength. He managed to pull the furless face clear of the water and heard the shallow, ragged breaths it drew, but he couldn't possibly hold the two-leg's head like this for more than a few moments. Already the muscles along his arms and legs and back burned with the strain of holding up the heavy head. The carry net, still looped around his middle, flopped down his belly, hanging limp. The idea that flashed into his mind had him wrenching at the remaining knots with his hand-feet, freeing the net completely. He looped the net downward, snagging the two-leg's face in it, then strained and pulled and struggled to drag the carry loops up over the snagging branch from which he dangled.

The ropes slid over a sturdy fork in the rough-barked branch and held fast. The two-leg's face hung in the net, just clear of the water rushing past its oddly shaped nose, but it could breathe now, safe as Swift Striker could make it until it woke again. The pain in the two-leg's mind throbbed even with that mind lost in unconsciousness. Swift Striker whimpered softly, unable to erase that pain and needing to do just that, more than he could recall ever having needed to do anything in his life. Moving gingerly, still clinging upside down from the branch, Swift Striker parted the silky, flame-colored head fur to peer critically at a gash along the back which still bled. Angry swelling already spread outward and the flesh was hotter there than elsewhere. Another gash crossed the upper portion of the two-leg's face above its eyes, where the huge fish had crashed down against its head. The bruising here was even worse and the bones felt wrong, as though the blow from the enormous, armor-scaled fish had broken them. The blood leaking slowly down the boulder from the great cuts alarmed Swift Striker.

He narrowed his eyes, recalling the memory song his clan's memory singers had sung, of the two-leg youngling which had halted Climbs Quickly's terrible bleeding where the death fang's claws had torn the scout so cruelly. She had wrapped a cord around the injury and tightened it down. But Swift Striker's two-leg had not suffered injuries on a forelimb, which could be tied off with cord, they bled from his head. Still, if he tied something down tightly across the gashes, the bleeding might stop. The two-leg's body coverings certainly provided sufficient materials for such a wrapping.

Swift Striker shifted along the branch with his true-feet and altered position cautiously, fumbling for his flint knife, then tugged at a section of the covering over the two-leg's motionless arm. Sawing carefully, Swift Striker separated long strips from the body covering, then moved gingerly, having to work through the carry net he'd looped around the two-leg's face. It was awkward work, but after a brief struggle, Swift Striker succeeded in tying the strips down over both gashes. Blood, dark red and terrifying, soaked into them, but the flow slowed and gradually stopped. The two-leg remained unconscious, but it was still alive.

Swift Striker stroked the smooth skin of the two-leg's cheek, crooning anxiously. Touching the two-leg like this sent shocks of strange pleasure through Swift Striker. Its head fur was longer, silkier than his own, yet the face, so smooth and soft, was not entirely hairless, he now realized. Tufts of fur grew above its closed eyes, in an arching curve, and its jaw and cheeks bore a fuzzy shadow of hair, as though the two-leg had scraped its face against something so abrasive it had rubbed all the hair off right down to the skin. The prickle of remaining stubble was rough-smooth under his hands through the webbing of his carry net, the golden-mottled skin icy pale.

Swift Striker scented the wind, but could catch no trace of any danger, certainly not the stink of a death fang or the musky odor of a snow hunter. Death fangs, while not overly bright, knew better than to come this deep under the trees of a clan's home range, and snow hunters tended to keep to the high slopes and craggy peaks of the mountains. It ought to be safe enough to risk. Swift Striker let go with his tail and true-feet and landed softly on the boulder next to his stricken two-leg. He chittered softly in anxiety, able to do nothing else to help. Far too large and heavy to drag clear of the icy water, the two-leg would have to remain where it was until it regained consciousness.

Crooning anxiously, Swift Striker stroked the two-leg's bright, wet hair and waited.

Consciousness returned reluctantly, in patchy bits and pieces of confusion. Blinding pain through Scott's head dominated awareness for an uncertain stretch of time. Eventually other stimuli made themselves felt. Cold water rushed across portions of him, leaving him numb in several places and shivering all over. Deep-lying aches the length of his back told of injuries to muscle and soft tissue. His ankle throbbed inside his high-topped wading boot. Unyielding rock dug into his shoulder and ribs and thigh. An unfamiliar roaring in his ears gradually settled into the recognizable sound of rushing water. Memory, splintered and broken, stirred. He had been wading through a rocky stream, had lost his footing. He must be lying in the water, then, with rocks under him.

That made sense.

But something lay across his face, cutting into the skin like a web of ropes, and that didn't make sense. He stirred sluggishly, then bit back sour bile and a need to groan. For long moments, the only roaring he could hear was the pounding of blood in his ears as his whole head threatened to detach itself from his shoulders and go spinning away on the current like a child's balsa-wood raft. By the time his head had decided it would remain attached, after all, Scott knew he was in serious trouble. He was a medical doctor, after all, knew the signs and symptoms of shock and concussion as well as any other medical professional on Sphinx.

The fact that he lay sprawled in an icy mountain river, unable to move, while sporting all the classic textbook symptoms of head injury and physical shock, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest hospital and several dozen meters from the shelter of his air car, left Scott MacDallan cold with a fear such as he had never known in his life. An aching, burning crick in his neck prompted him to try, gingerly, to ease his head into a slightly different position. He bit his lips and moved his head fractionally, swallowing back a cry of pain, and realized the sensation of webbing across his face was not an illusion.