A burly man paddled a small hide covered boat down a river. The sky was gray with clouds, the broad, muddy stream a deeper, darker slate gray, and the snow blanketed woods drifted silently by, black and white. Though he traveled with the current, the man paddled at a frantic rate, and in spite of the crisp, cold air, he was sweating. Behind him in the boat lay a canvas rucksack tightly packed with gear. Beside his knee on the hull lay a long sword in a brown leather sheath, wrapped in wool.

The man panted with exertion as he looked tensely back over his shoulder, his gray eyes large and dark. He blew out a cloud of breath like a breaching whale and continued to dip his oar with a desperately grim regularity. His ragged jacket of furs was steaming from evaporating sweat, his once short black hair was tangled and unkempt, his face, recently clean--shaven, now supported a solid growth of beard. He had frost in his eyebrows and eyelashes.

As the day progressed, he paddled for hours in nervous silence, skillfully steering past floating logs, avoiding obstacles large and small with a kind of smooth grace bordering on precognition. He did not slacken his pace. His breathing grew more even and steady, though he winced in pain from time to time. Occasionally he stopped rowing for a few seconds to catch his breath, and listen, very carefully, allowing the boat to drift in the current. He often scanned the riverbank, and always kept himself well in the center of the stream, never straying close to either side of the river.

The woods passing by along the sides the river were quiet and seemed almost devoid of life. Twice he passed solitary crows, perched silently high in the snow blanketed boughs of a tall fir tree. Coming around one bend he startled a little family of mule deer, which were drinking water under the forlorn, bony tendrils of an ancient willow. When they saw his boat they leapt up from the bank and galloped off into the woods. The boatman seemed more startled than the deer and jumped with alarm at their movement, nearly dropping his paddle. Apparently shaken, he let the boat drift for a while and held his hand to his forehead, peering wearily into the woodline, and back upriver behind him.

As the sky finally began to darken he steered toward a high gravel bar near the right hand side of the river, and leaping ashore lightly for a man with such a big frame, pulled his small boat up out of the water, and onto the rocks. A light snow began falling.

The man walked around the small sandbar for a bit, stretching his legs. He urinated, creating a small cloud of steam. He jumped up and down, clapping his cramped hands together, rubbing his thighs and calves, and looked apprehensively at the forest, especially upriver, which he seemed to check every few minutes.

The gravel bar rose a few feet above the water level, and was situated so that it allowed a view of a good portion of the river upstream, nearly half a mile to the next bend. In this stretch of the river the normally heavy forest growth was very thinned out, perhaps by a recent wildfire.

The man stared up river for a long moment, then set to untying and opening his rucksack. He unrolled a heavy wool blanket onto the ground, and sat on it, digging out more gear from his pack. For a moment he looked wistfully at a steel and flint firebox, but returned it to the pack. He then produced a large wineskin and took a long draught of bitter, watered wine, and unwrapped a piece of bacon from a cloth. He chewed a small piece of fatty, salted meat, grimacing in distaste.

After a few minutes, he returned the wineskin and bacon to the rucksack, which he propped up behind himself, to rest his head on. He arranged his clothing to close all gaps, from his cured sealskin boots, to his buckskin trousers and the checkered black and green wool tunic he wore under his greatcoat. He placed his sword by his side, lay down upon the blanket, pulling it over his shoulder, and finally pulled the small hide covered boat over himself and his pack as a shelter against the snow, keeping a gap open for a good view up river. For a moment he grasped the simple silver chain hung around his neck as if in prayer or contemplation. Seconds later he was asleep.

The man slept fitfully, starting, and often waking. Many times as the night progressed, he woke suddenly to small forest noises, an owl hooting, fish jumping in the river, logs jostling in the current. When startled in this way he looked carefully up river, then in all directions for a while, tense, holding his breath, before being satisfied enough to relax again and drift back to sleep. The snow continued to fall, growing heavier, and the air grew colder and colder. Around midnight a nearly full moon struggled to emerge from behind a scudding soup of fast moving clouds. The man continued to sleep fitfully, waking every so often.

Later in the night the snow stopped, and a near total silence descended on the area, save for the steady rushing and burbling of the river. The change seemed to make the man uneasy, and once again he awakened. He looked around, and stared upriver for several minutes. Seeing nothing, he began to lay his head back down on his pack. But suddenly he froze in position. In the eerie stillness of the night he heard the very distant but distinct crack of a branch snapping. For a moment there was a tense silence, but then followed the faint rustling of underbrush, and the hint of galloping padded footsteps. The man started, causing the boat to shake; he seemed to notice this and cringed, as if afraid to reveal himself.

Now completely awake, he peered for several long moments upriver. Suddenly in a beam of moonlight on the left bank near the bend far upstream, he saw a tiny black shape darting from one group of trees to another. Uttering a faint involuntary moan, the man instantly sat up, knocking the boat over to the side and disturbing a small avalanche of snow, which had built up on it. For a frantic moment he was tangled in his warm blanket. He kicked it away, flinching and shivering as fingers of the freezing air penetrated his garments like ice water. He leapt up, turned his boat upright, and in one smooth motion slid it down the gravel bank and into the water.

He threw his rucksack into the boat, grabbed the paddle and his sword, and leapt in gently, pushing away from the bank with his paddle, all the while looking over his shoulder upriver. He saw the shape again, running on all fours right along the left bank, only a couple hundred yards away now, and he dug his shoulder into heavy, skillful paddle strokes, guiding his boat swiftly into the current. Only then did he realize he had left his blanket on the bar. He hesitated for a half a moment, shuddering in the icy wind, then resumed frantic, steady paddling as he heard a heavy splash not far at all behind him.

The river had risen nearly a foot since nightfall, and the current was swifter yet. The small, light boat quickly sped away. For a long moment he did not look back, concentrating on controlling his breathing and paddling as hard and efficiently as possible. As he reached a turn, he heard a feral animal noise. At last he looked behind him, to see the distant silhouette of a black beast now several hundred yards back, on the gravel bar, rending and biting and tearing away at his blanket. It stopped, sensing his stare, and suddenly looked back at him, great yellow eyes reflecting the moonlight, meeting his own squinting gaze, then it was out of sight behind the foliage of the riverbank.

The man paddled hard until dawn, then as the current picked up considerably, rested for an hour or so, merely guiding his boat as it darted through the increasingly swift flow. Though the sun was out, a cold, cold wind blew. It tormented him but he was thankful, for he knew the beast would not be able to take advantage of the speed of the flowing water to pursue him. The water and the air were too cold for anything but a creature of the arctic to endure for long. His pursuer would certainly be forced to run along the banks, coping with the underbrush and other obstacles. Or so he hoped.

Thinking this comforting thought, the man relaxed. He was deathly tired, exhausted beyond reason. His arms ached, his legs were cramped, his back burned with pain. The wind had picked up and was blowing through the skeletal branches and twigs in the trees with a steady rhythm, each gust chilling him to the bone, yet, oddly, irrationally, relaxing him. The water chuckled and giggled to it's own private joke. The boat drifted.

He awoke in utter confusion. He felt a delicate, teasing touch on his face and shoulders, he heard something like a hissing sound rushing louder all around him. He jumped up in a total panic, certain that a beast was caressing him with claws, gloating, while hissing in malicious gluttony. The boat slipped and he nearly fell out, a gout of freezing water splashed into his lap and past his numb hands, down his sleeves. The boat made a dunking sound in the water as it nearly capsized, which he heard strangely echoed far over his left shoulder, as if something had been catapulted far out of the boat.

His mind suddenly focused with total clarity as he opened his eyes in freezing shock from the cold water in his lap, and realized he was up against the left bank of the river. He had let the chill and his fatigue get the better of him, and he had fallen asleep, his boat had come to rest among the hanging fronds of a willow tree on the bank; its fingerlike tendrils were draped over his face and body and all over him.

His stomach dropped as he realized the ominous implications of his mistake. He felt much colder than before, and realized he would soon freeze if he did not reach safety, but he had other problems. He used the paddle to push away from the bank with ferocious energy, and struggled to get out of the clutching entanglement of the willow fronds, which trailed more water into his lap, and dropped snow and ice on him from above as he disturbed the branches.

But something else was bothering him; the second dunking sound, had his sword, precious heirloom, fallen in the water? His sword was beside him. It couldn't have been anything from his boat; the sound had been too far away, almost on the other side of the river.

With a groan of horror he looked over his right shoulder even as he redoubled his paddling efforts. The beast was about 60 feet away and closing rapidly. It was paddling in the water like a dog, it's appearance an almost comical combination of the clumsy inefficiency of it's swimming style, with the deadly serious malice and sinister intent expressed by it's great yellow eyes and bared teeth. The Man realized that if he had awoken even one minute later it would have been upon him.

He bent his back into rowing steadily and forced the boat away from the bank and back into the current. He looked back again wildly, and saw the beast had given up, and was headed back for shore on the right bank, but it was partially caught in a current which was sweeping it sideways.

He watched for a few moments, desperately hoping that the river would drown the beast, or dash it to pieces on the rocks. But it swam more powerfully than it seemed at first, and it soon scrambled out onto the bank. It shook the freezing water from it's coat, again reminding him of a giant dog, and then, after shooting him an icy glance which chilled his heart more than the water or the air, began galloping along the bank with a great sense of purpose. The man absent-mindedly followed the beast's gaze downriver to ascertain its goal, and realized with shock and despair that the game was still not up.

Ahead of him only a few hundred yards down the river took a great sweeping turn to the left, and narrowed considerably. But more ominous than that, there was a huge tree trunk laying almost all the way across the river at it's narrowest point. The beast was clearly making for this object. If the current didn't sweep him against the far bank, the beast would be able to leap upon him from the log; unless he beat it there. He considered for a moment turning back, but the current was far too strong. He also thought wildly of beaching the boat on the left bank and making a run for it or trying to make a stand, but that was a foolish idea born of panic. On foot, the beast would catch him in no time, and he knew alone, unarmored, and exhausted as he was, he would not be able to defeat it in a fight.

The only option was to race for the gap, and get there first. He bent into each paddle stroke, straining, his arms felt almost warm with agony as he crashed the paddle into the water over and over again, sweeping into the turn sideways. Behind and beside him he could hear the eager grunting of the beast, and the crashing of bushes and branches as it struggled to beat him to the turn. He could sense it's hunger, it's blood lust, his mind even tricked him into feeling the aching in his neck and shoulder as the beasts hot breath upon his back. But fear and panic did not freeze him into inaction, he was flooded with energy, and each icy breath drawn ragged into his body felt like another draught of pure will to live.

The boat swerved awkwardly into the turn, and was swept sideways toward the log and the right bank even as he struggled to steer forward and to his left. He could hear the beast crashing through the brush as he struggled against the current, aiming for the narrow gap between the jagged fringes of the huge log and the gravel and rocks lining the left bank of the river. He was now moving at such a rate that if he failed to reach the gap in time, he knew the boat would be smashed to pieces against the tree trunk, and he would himself enter the freezing water very suddenly and not by any means unscathed. He estimated that he could probably make it if he could sustain the heavy fast strokes he was cutting into the water with, but his back, his neck, his arms burned, and more ominously, he felt a faint trembling, a shaking of total physical exhaustion creeping into his movements.

Nevertheless, he rowed and rowed. The log and the gap swept toward him with impossible speed, he felt giddy, and suppressed an irrational urge to giggle hysterically, tensing up against the seemingly imminent collision. Though his body felt otherwise, in his mind he felt that he would make it, if he continued to paddle like a madman until the very last second. Beside him to the right, he heard the claws of the beast scrambling onto the base of the log where it met the bank. On his left and before him, he heard the mad rushing of the water through the narrow gap.

The little boat leapt forward toward the gap, and he felt underwater branches and rocks brushing and banging against his knees and feet through the bottom of the boat as he was partially beached on the gravel of the left bank. He felt the ominous freezing trickle of water from the boats bottom, but pushed into the left bank without hesitating, the scrabbling of claws along the tree trunk over his right shoulder all the encouragement he needed. He gave only one ferocious push against the bank, losing his paddle in the process, but together with the force of the surging water rushing through the little gap, it was sufficient to propel him well out into the stream.

Water was seeping into his lap; he looked over his shoulder to see the beast leap from the end of the tree trunk, over the gap he had just traversed, and onto the left bank. It then ran several steps along the shore, trying to catch up for a second leap into his boat. The man stared, helpless for the moment, dazed and shaking from exhaustion and not sure what to do without his paddle. The beast leaped over one clump of bushes and gathered itself to pounce into his boat, but fell clumsily into a deep snow drift at the last second, and, growling ferociously, began to tear at the branches around it and gnash it's teeth. It too, the man realized, was suffering from exhaustion and pain.

The man watched the beast for a long time as the river widened out. It panted and stared back at him for the second time, as if trying to bring him into attack range from sheer will. The man opened his pack and produced a brass bowl, which he began to bail water out from the damaged boat. As he neared the right bank, with great reluctance he dipped his already freezing hand into the water, used the brass bowl to paddle, allowing him to steer just enough to stay in the central current.

He drifted in the center of the current for a few minutes, but was finally swept against the river bank. After a brief moment of disorientation, he spied a sizable knout of driftwood floating near the shore. He snatched this out of the water and used it to push himself from the bank and back into the stream. As the current once more swept him along he took a moment to wrap his hands with some felted wool swaddling he unwound from his sword sheath. He knew the wool would wick the water away from his hands and help them to dry, but his swaddled fists were full of frost and he was afraid they would freeze solid into little knotted ice blocks before that happened. He clapped them together to stir the blood.

Everything around him looked cold and tired. As the freezing water slowly oozed into his buckskins from the cut in the bottom of the boat, he pondered the miserable way a solitary crow huddled on a high cypress branch, overhead, the droop of the scrawny riverside bushes under their impossible burden of snow, the harassed crouch of the frost stripped trees lining the banks, patiently waiting for spring with their knees in the icy flow. Then, far, behind him, he heard the beast howl, a deep throated, aggressive sound of pure thwarted rage and insane gnawing malice. He looked back, but of course could no longer see it, just the river, muddy with silvery reflections. He knew the sound would carry very far indeed.