Then, all at once, the deck jerked under Sara’s feet as the whole boat suddenly shuddered, slewing, as if the center mast were a pivot.

“They’ve hooked the rudder!” someone cried.

Sara looked over the stern and saw a massive metal barb speared through the great hinged paddle the helmsman used to steer the ship. The rudder could not be pulled aboard or chopped loose without crippling the Hauph-woa, leaving it adrift and helpless.

Prity bared her teeth and screamed. Though shivering •with fear, the little ape started climbing over the rail, till Sara stopped her with a firm hand.

“It’s my job,” she said tersely, and without pause shrugged out of her tunic and kilt. A sailor handed her a hatchet with a strap-thong through the haft.

Don’t everybody speak up all at once to argue me out of doing this, she thought sardonically, knowing no one would.

Some things were simply obvious.

The hatchet hung over one shoulder. It wasn’t comforting to feel its metal coolness stroke her left breast as she climbed, even though the cutting edge still bore a leather cover.

Clothes would have been an impediment. Sara needed her toes, especially, to seek footholds on the Hauph-woa’s stern. The clinker construction style left overlaps in the boards that helped a bit. Still, she could not prevent shivering, half from the morning chill and partly from stark terror. Sweaty palms made it doubly hard, even though her mouth felt dry as urrish breath.

I haven’t done any climbing in years!

To nonhumans, this must look like another day’s work for a tree-hugging Earthling. Kind of like expecting every urs to be a courier runner, or all traekis to make a good martini. In fact, Jop was the logical one for this task, but the captain didn’t trust the man, with good reason.

The crew shouted tense encouragement as she clambered down the stern, holding the rudder with one arm. Meanwhile, derisive scorn came from the coracles and those ashore. Great. More attention than I ever had in my life, and I’m stark naked at the time.

The mule-cable groaned with tension as villagers strained on pulleys to haul Hauph-woa toward the beach, where several gray qheuens gathered, holding torches that loomed so frighteningly close that Sara imagined she could hear the flames. At last, she reached a place where she could plant her feet and hands- bracing her legs in a way that forever surrendered all illusions of personal modesty. She had to tear the leather cover off the ax with her teeth and got a bitter electrical taste from the reddish metal. It made her shudder-then tense up as she almost lost her grip. The boat’s churning wake looked oily and bitter cold.

Jeers swelled as she hacked at the rudder blade, sending chips flying, trying to cut a crescent around the embedded hook. She soon finished gouging away above the grapple and was starting on the tougher part below, when something smacked the back of her left hand, sending waves of pain throbbing up her arm. She saw blood ooze around a wooden sliver, protruding near the wrist.

A slingshot pellet lay buried halfway in the plank nearby.

Another glanced off the rudder, ricocheting from the boat’s stern, then skipping across the water.

Someone was shooting at her!

Why you jeekee, slucking, devoluted…

Sara found an unknown aptitude for cursing, as she went through a wide vocabulary of oaths from five different languages, hacking away with the hatchet more vehemently than ever. A steady drumbeat of pebbles now clattered against the hull, but she ignored them in a blur of heat and fury.

“Otszharsiya, perkiye! Syookai dreesoona!”

She ran out of obscenities in Rossic and was starting to plumb urrish GalTwo when the plank abruptly let out a loud crack!. The attached cable moaned, yanking hard at the grappling hook—

—and the tortured wood gave way.

The hook snatched the ax out of her hand as it tore free, glittering in the sunlight. Thrown off balance, Sara struggled to hold on, though her hands were slippery from sweat and blood. With a gasp she felt her grip fail and she dropped, sucking in deeply, but the Roney slammed her like an icy hammer, driving air from her startled lungs.

Sara floundered, battling first to reach the surface, then to tread water and sputter a few deep breaths, and finally to keep from getting tangled in all the ropes that lay strewn across the water. A shiny hook passed a frightening hand’s width from her face. Moments later, she had to dive down to avoid a snarl of cords that might have trapped her.

The boat’s turbulent wake added to her troubles, as the Hauph-woa took advantage of its chance to flee.

Her chest ached by the time she hit surface again-to come face-to-face with a lanky young man, leaning on the rim of a coracle, clutching a slingshot in one hand. Surprise rocked him back when their eyes met. Then his gaze dropped to notice her bareness.

He blushed. Hurriedly, the young man put aside his weapon and started shrugging out of his jacket. To give to her, no doubt.

“Thanks …” Sara gasped. “But I gotta … go now.”

Her last glimpse of the young villager, as she swam away, showed a crestfallen look of disappointment. It’s too soon yet for him to be a hardened pirate, Sara thought. This new, hard world hasn’t yet rubbed away the last traces of gallantry.

But give it time.

Now she had the river’s current behind her as she swam, and soon Sara glimpsed the Hauph-woa downstream. The crew had the boat turned and were stroking to stay in place, now that they had reached a safe distance from Bing Village. Still, it was a hard pull to reach the hull at last and start up the rope ladder. She only made it halfway before her muscles started to cramp, and the helpful sailors had to haul it in the rest of the way by hand.

I’ve got to get stronger, if I’m going to make a habit of having adventures, she thought as someone wrapped a blanket around her.

Yet, Sara felt strangely fine while Pzora tended her wound and the cook made her some of his special tea. Sara’s hand ached, and her body throbbed, yet she felt also something akin to a glow.

I made decisions, and they were right ones. A year ago, it seemed every choice I made was wrong. Now, maybe things have changed.

Clutching her blanket, Sara watched as the Hauph-woa labored back upstream along the west bank, to a point where they could take aboard the stranded caravan, ferrying the urs and their beasts far enough to have no worries about local fanatics. The calm teamwork of passengers and crew was such an encouraging sight, it boosted her morale about “big” issues, almost as much as the brief fight had lifted something else inside her.

My faith in my own self, she thought. I didn’t think I was up to any of this. But maybe Father’s right, after all.

I stayed in that damn treehouse long enough.